Thank you, Mr. Chair.
At this point, we're at page 24 of the bill and my amendment seeks to delete lines 14 to 24.
The reasons for this, Mr. Chair, relate to the immunity for voluntary disclosure. This has been one of the most controversial parts of this bill. This is one of the very strong reasons that so many of us in the opposition wanted the bill split, so that we could deal with the legitimate concerns about cyberbullying without creating what is a loophole so big you could drive truckloads of personal data through it without anybody noticing.
What this allows for, of course, is immunity for those who are holding personal information to voluntarily disclose it. The level at which this is already occurring that we know about is the revelation that the 1.2 million requests to telecom companies for private customer information in just one year alone, 2011, affected 750,000 user accounts. That was voluntary disclosure. This bill will, of course, absolutely confirm and increase the risk of such voluntary disclosures of personal information. It also expands the nature of public officers to whom this information may be disclosed.
It isn't at all about combatting cyberbullying. It is something of a different character altogether in the guise of protecting children from Internet crime and predators. It's a clever disguise, but behind the disguise is Big Brother. This should be removed. It's inconsistent with the government's claims that it cares about court oversight.
I strongly urge my friends on the other side to give this amendment a chance, to vote in favour of it, to make it clear to the Canadian public that this Conservative administration is actually interested in cyberbullying, not in gathering up personal information on spec.