moved:
Motion No. 4
That Bill C-54, in Clause 20, be amended by replacing line 9, on page 12, with the following:
"sion or Statistics Canada,".
Motion No. 13
That Bill C-54, in Clause 43, be amended by replacing line 14, on page 26, with the following:
"tions or Statistics Canada, or to".
Motion No. 15
That Bill C- 54, in Clause 47, be amended by replacing lines 36 to 38, on page 29, with the following:
"ment of Supply and Services or the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission;".
Madam Speaker, clause 20 is entitled "Access to privileged information" and reads as follows:
Except as provided in this section, all information with respect to any applicant or beneficiary or the spouse of any applicant or beneficiary, obtained in the course of the administration of this Act, is privileged and no person shall knowingly, except as provided in this Act, make available or allow to be made available any such information to any person not legally entitled to it.
The next paragraph allows the Departments of National Revenue, Finance, Supply and Services, Canada Employment and Immigration Commission, Statistics Canada or Canada Post access to the information.
We do not agree with Canada Post having access to the information. We were not told, we were not explained adequately why privileged information could be available to Canada Post, especially since Canada Post, through several of its components, is now broken up, and we know the government tendency in that respect. So, in this amendment and the others, we oppose having privileged information available to Canada Post.
I must say that we hesitated and that it is with reluctance that we accept privileged information being available to the agencies or departments that we have mentioned.
We are living in an age where the danger of disclosure of private information is ever increasing due to the interconnection of government data bases and its potential consequences. In these days and ages we are running the risk of coming under the watchful eye of Big Brother, as described by a famous novelist.
Because of some arguments that were made, we concurred with the proposition, although reluctantly, and I wanted to make that quite clear. Again, a very large part of this legislation will be managed by phone. A very large portion of the information will be transmitted by computer. In this age of technology, there is always the risk that the information will fall into the hands of people who could put it to bad use.
Consequently, we are firmly opposed to giving Canada Post access to privileged information, considering the changes made.