Madam Speaker, for very many years now—as I am going to document—Canada has been waiting for legislation on the protection of personal information, privacy legislation relating to the private sector. The bill we have before us this morning is titled as follows:
An Act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances, by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions and by amending the Canada Evidence Act, the Statutory Instruments Act and the Statute Revision Act
The problem with this bill is that it is not a bill addressing the protection of privacy. My colleague has just referred to the need for leadership, and the Minister of Industry has spoken of his desire to take a lead role by introducing this bill in the House of Commons.
Where he was expected to show leadership was not only in protecting consumers involved in electronic commerce—and even here we need to look at how much protection they have, because it is far from sufficient—but also in protecting privacy.
Privacy is a fundamental right. In 1983, Canada enacted privacy legislation relating to government bodies coming under federal jurisdiction. The Charter contains certain provisions, but the minister himself has acknowledged that this protection is sporadic and uneven, and no longer acceptable. This situation is no longer acceptable.
The leadership in privacy protection came from Quebec. Since 1984 Quebec has had legislation, effective legislation, to protect personal information in the private sector. That legislation has proven itself. We would have expected to see it used as a model, because it is the only legislation based on experience and know-how. It has not had the catastrophic results some were predicting in the private sector.
Now more than ever, when private information can be collected and collated without an individual's knowledge, transmitted, sold, used for all sorts of reasons, with impunity, or just about, except in Quebec, what we would have expected from the minister was a bill with some teeth.
That is what we are going to ask him for. And we are going to take this opportunity not just to talk about the importance of the right to privacy, but also to get some information across. Because, all too often, members of the public, who are not just consumers of commercial services, but people living in the real world, faced with a plethora of intermediaries collecting potentially erroneous information and selling it or using it for their own or other purposes, deserve much more.
Members will tell me that, if Quebec's legislation is so effective, it can go on being effective, and Quebeckers should decry the fact that Canadians cannot count on a better law. But it is much more complicated than that, because not only does this bill fail to provide sufficient protection for the public's privacy but, as it now stands, it undermines—yes, undermines—the protection Quebeckers enjoy under Quebec's legislation. And that is even more unacceptable.
I will give clear and documented examples. Right now, under Quebec's legislation, an Eaton's employee in Montreal has access to his personal file held by his employer, even if this personal information is kept in Toronto. With Bill C-54, this request for access becomes part of a interprovincial access request. Thus, since it is not part of a commercial transaction, according to the interpretation in the bill as it now stands, and given the recourses available, that employee will no longer be entitled to access.
Let us consider another example: at the present time, if a person undergoes a medical examination for insurance purposes, the results of that medical are recorded by an American organization with a branch in Toronto. At this time, the client has the right to access his records. Since this will no longer be part of a commercial transaction, there is a good chance that right will not continue. This is not taking into consideration the type of recourse that is in the federal legislation. I will come back to this point a little later.
We have read the minister's press releases which intimated that the Quebec legislation would apply in its entirety. Yet this is not at all what we see in the bill, in a number of aspects. Clause 27 gives all of the power to the governor in council, or to put it more simply, to the government, for deciding whether or not a provincial act will apply in whole or in part. I think it is worthwhile reading this clause, although it is couched in the curious language used in bills.
It states:
27(1) The Governor in Council may make regulations—
(d) if satisfied that legislation of a province that is substantially similar to this Part applies to an organization, a class of organizations, an activity or a class of activities, exempt the organization, activity of class from the application of this Part in respect of the collection, use or disclosure of personal information that occurs within that province.
It is all very well for the law in Quebec to be the law in Quebec, the governor in council can decide what part of the law applies or does not apply within the province involved.
This provision is shocking. I could say we are used to this, but it is more than that. This is serious. In the very area the minister wants to open up, electronic commerce, there are a number of players, including a major one, our neighbour, the United States. We know that, in the United States, and this is one of the problems we will talk about, the government wants to let business regulate itself.
Then there is the European Union. Canada wants to establish a free trade zone with it. A meeting to this end is being held here right now. The European Union has already established guidelines that are very much along the same lines as the law in Quebec, in fact so much so that it had planned not to authorize any business links except with Quebec, because the other provinces and the United States could not properly guarantee the protection of the personal information of the people of the European Union. This issue of effectively and efficiently guaranteeing personal information is more than a Quebec-Canada dispute. It is far more than that.
I must underscore, and perhaps members will think excessively so, the fact that Quebec was really at the forefront in formulating clear, readily implemented and effective legislation—unlike the federal one—which meets the criteria of the European Union.
Had the minister wanted to demonstrate the leadership he is claiming, he should have adopted these principles, not because they are our principles or because Quebec is involved, but because this is the sort of protection the people of Quebec and of Canada are entitled to expect. Instead, Quebeckers' rights are being infringed. And Canadians do not have enough protection, not in the least.
A number of the provisions in this bill fall short, but one involves the reduction of Quebec's rights and that is the one concerning all the provincial provisions. Under Quebec law at the moment, as I was saying earlier, an individual working in Quebec can access his record, wherever it is, or a person having a medical examination can see his records, wherever they are.
From now on, it will no longer be the case, since all the provisions that go beyond provincial jurisdiction will be subject to federal legislation. One might wonder whether federal legislation will provide the same protection. The answer is no. When it comes to information that is not of a commercial nature, the act is vague, to say the very least.
The core of Bill C-54 is a standard, a CSA national standard that bears a number and that was approved in a totally different legislative context by the standards board, in consultation with the telemarketing board and another body whose name I forget, as well as with consumer representatives.
While this self-regulating project is commendable, particularly since it originated with the private sector, it is also full of conditions. There are a number of very important provisions for people on the information needed to create their files, and on the use of these files, that are full of conditional “may”.
The act provides that these conditions may be overlooked. The problem is that all this is extremely confusing. What can a person do when he or she is refused access to his or her file?
Under the federal act, the person may file a complaint with the privacy commissioner, who then conducts an investigation. Fine. We hope he will have the proper means to do so. The commissioner may attempt to resolve the complaint through mediation. Fine. If a solution can be found, great. But what happens if no solution is found? This is what people want to know.
What happens is that the person must go to court. The commissioner can take it upon himself to go to court, but this is not automatic. The person, even assuming he or she has the means to do so, cannot do it. He or she cannot directly take his or her complaint to a court at the beginning, because he or she must wait for the commissioner's report.
There is question of means involved. There is a delay, because the person must wait for the commissioner's report. First of all, there is a degree of confusion in the drafting of the legislation, a lack of clarity that surprised even the experts from what they told me.
This means that, instead of the legislation the minister promised, one that would be user friendly—he described it as simple yet effective—where users may not always be commercial services consumers but are citizens, the legislation before us is not simple to use and, on the face of it, certainly not effective, except when good will is involved and mediation may suffice.
We agree it will work that way some of the time, but legislation is required when the government has to say where it stands, on whose side it is, the unco-operative business or the citizen; the government does not side with citizens unless the commissioner himself decides to go to court. Do members have any idea what this means?
This bill will disappoint a great many people. I for one might say I understand the minister may be feeling stuck between the United States on the one side and the European Union on the other, but his primary duty as minister is to reassure the people of Canada and Quebec that the current level of protection will be maintained.
It is not the role of Canada to undermine the protection they are currently afforded. It is not to reduce the level of protection but to increase it because, as a country, together with other countries—and I have never found it so sad that Quebec was not one—it could push to have all countries adopt compatible rules, to reassure the public. But the public will not be fooled and no one will believe that a meaningless piece of legislation will provide consumers across Canada and Quebec with greater protection against American companies. There is a real problem.
An OECD conference was held in Ottawa on the initiative of the Minister of Industry, and I congratulate him on this. One thing came out very clearly at this conference, however. Right now, 80% of e-commerce is U.S based, 80% of it in business.
When it comes to the defence of consumers and the public, governments should sit up and take note. Many have said so. I was pleased to hear that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business does not want it forgotten that consumers are not just individuals, members of the public, but also small and medium sized businesses, which do not have the wherewithal of big business, and which are also in a David and Goliath situation, much worse in fact, as things now stand.
This bill is extremely disappointing. It fails to give citizens the protection they are looking for. The Internet is not just a place were business is transacted, and cannot be divorced from civil society.
Telemarketing was debated in this House. We saw that the government wanted to clamp down on businesses engaging in deceptive telemarketing, by requiring them to state very clearly over the telephone who they were and the purpose of their call. We wanted to amend this to apply to the Internet as well, and now we are looking at a bill on e-commerce. This provision remains completely vague in the bill. But members of the public wishing to use this medium—which is just a medium, and not another way of life, as the OECD recognized—will increase their use of it only if they are truly protected.
The first step is protection that is not just partial, not just aimed at e-commerce, but real protection of privacy. Then we can consider it further, but first there will have to be international agreements.
Yes, we are waiting for Canada, the country we are depending on, to show some leadership, but not without first reassuring the public.
Successive Liberal governments have repeatedly promised real legislation, legislation that would protect privacy. In 1982, the then communications minister, Francis Fox, said that the next step with respect to privacy legislation would be to extend the principles governing the protection of privacy to the federally regulated private sector.
In March 1987, the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General endorsed this recommendation in its report entitled “Open and Shut: Enhancing the Right to Know and the Right to Privacy; a Review of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act”. Quebec embarked on a similar process which resulted in 1994 in the passing of its current legislation.
In his 1996-97 annual report, the privacy commissionner saluted as a fundamental and highly significant event the undertaking by then justice minister Allan Rock to enact before the year 2000 a bill protecting privacy in the private sector in a real and effective fashion. What happened next?
In 1996, the industry minister himself promised an umbrella bill on the protection of privacy in response to the Information Highway Advisory Council's report. I stress that the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques moved a motion which was unanimously approved providing that all crown corporations be subject to the Privacy Act, but not all of them are.
In April 1997, the Standing Committee on Human Rights adopted a report entitled “Privacy: Where Do We Draw the Line?” recommending that the current act be replaced by one applying only to parliament and to all government agencies as well as to private sector entities under federal jurisdiction.
Today the minister is tabling a bill to promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information. I will not read the full title again. This is sad and woefully inadequate. This bill will not meet the desired goals and will actually weaken the current rights of Quebeckers while recognizing the efforts by the private industry in its own code, which contains many conditions.
We have to demand that the federal government give proper protection, not one that is so limited, so minimal, and in many cases inexistent, because of the nature of the procedure, of the conditions and of the confusion and also because of the power of the governor in council, who can even change the content of the legislation to adjust to the changing standards of private business.
We cannot let this bill go unnoticed. We cannot be content with saying that we would like to see many more provisions included in this bill. This was to be such an important piece of legislation, but, should it pass without amendments, it will create more problems than it will solve in the long run.
The Bloc Quebecois and all governments in Quebec, of whatever political stripe, have always very strongly supported the principle of respect for privacy and personal information. The Parti Quebecois and the Liberal Party did so again, recently, in a review of the legislation. We are deeply committed to this principle, and that is why we cannot agree with this bill to promote electronic commerce, because it does not meet its stated goals, and does not protect the needs of citizens and consumers.