Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Frontenac—Mégantic spoke eloquently of the flaws we see in this bill.
We mentioned on several occasions that Quebec has its own act, which works well, it is efficient and truly protects consumers. For the benefit of the House and in keeping with my colleague's comments, I would like to read a few sections from the current Quebec act. This might inspire the House to make the necessary improvements to Bill C-54.
This is part IV, section 27 of the Quebec Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector. Section 27 states: “Any business manager who has a file on someone must, when requested by the person concerned, confirm its existence and release to said individual any personal information it contains”.
You and I, every member of the House and the public at large know that we have a file in many organizations. It may happen that the information on file is wrong, which might have an impact on our capacity to enjoy life; for instance a credit file might contain errors which might result in a person being denied or looked at in a funny way when applying for a credit card or a loan, without having a clue as to why or how to rectify the situation.
This cannot happen in Quebec. In Quebec an individual can ask for confirmation of the file and ask the bank manager: “Where did you get the information that my credit is bad?” “I got it in such or such a place”, he will answer.
I quote section 28: “Besides the rights provided for in paragraph 40(1)of the Quebec Civil Code, the individual concerned may have any personal information concerning him or her erased if its gathering was not authorized by law”.
So, I go where the records are kept and realize some data have been included without my knowledge. I never authorized any company or body to disclose such data to the agency and I can ask that it be withdrawn without prejudice to other legal action that I might take to ensure that those who broke the law are adequately punished.
Under section 29, anyone who operates a business and keeps personal records on other individuals must take proper measures to ensure that they can exercise their rights under Quebec's Civil Code as well as under this act. Moreover, the person must inform the public where it may consult these records and how to do so.
Quebeckers are protected by strong legislation, the main purpose of which is to protect the public. This is obviously not the purpose of Bill C-54.
I would like my colleague, the member for Frontenac—Mégantic, to tell me what he thinks about the wide discrepancy between the meagre protection proposed for Canadians and the concrete, solid and honest protection provided for Quebeckers.