Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, in Quebec, information is protected beyond Quebec's borders by requiring those contracted to gather it to provide this protection.
I would like to address another aspect of international trade and share my concerns with the member for Wentworth—Burlington.
When I engage in a transaction on the Internet, I do not always know where my query will take me. Will it be somewhere in the United States, Asia, Africa or Australia? I cannot really tell. It does not matter anyway. When a query is made it travels through phone lines and satellites to a place that may be totally different from the one indicated on the screen.
What recourse do I have if I am not satisfied with the transaction I just completed? In Quebec, we have the Consumer Protection Act. In Canada, representations can be made before a civil court in one province or another. In the United States, remedies can probably be sought through some bilateral agreement.
But the countries with which we have not signed agreements in this area outnumber those with which we have. The net result is that any real development in electronic commerce can only take place if there are multilateral agreements between participating countries—and we hope there will be a great many—ensuring a degree of consumer protection similar to the one enjoyed here, at home, regarding the quality of the service or product and the protection of personal information.
For example, I conduct a transaction, and my name, address, telephone number, credit card number, social insurance number and heaven only knows what else ends up in Timbuktu. From there it goes to Ankara, and Ankara sends it on to Moscow. In the twinkling of an eye, there is information on me all over the world, which does nothing to make my eyes twinkle, because from then on anyone in the world can use my name and other information in ways I would not necessarily want them to.
In my opinion, Bill C-54 does not provide Canadians with sufficient protection as far as international commerce and exchanges with other countries are concerned. There ought to be some guidelines for Canadian businesses on how to proceed in order to ensure service quality and protect information while doing business electronically.
The bill is extremely narrow, in fact. It should be far broader, if there is any real desire to promote electronic commerce as it deserves, while providing consumers with proper protection of their rights as consumers and as citizens entitled to privacy. What are the thoughts of my colleague from Wentworth—Burlington on this?