Mr. Speaker, I want to re-read the amendment put forward by my hon. colleague from the Bloc Quebecois.
That Bill C-54, Personal Information and Electroinic Documents Act, be not now read a second time but that the Order be discharged, the Bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Industry.
The purpose of this bill is to protect personal information. It is a very timid piece of legislation that could hurt a lot of Quebeckers.
In 1982, the Quebec government passed an act respecting the protection of private information in the public sector. All the other provinces and the federal government eventually passed a similar act. Let me remind the House that those acts only protected private information in the public sector.
In 1994, the Liberal government in Quebec, first under Robert Bourassa then Daniel Johnson, improved the 1982 legislation by passing an act extending the protection of private information to the private sector.
Therefore, the Quebec government is the only administration in North America to have an act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, which has been in effect for four years now.
Bill C-54 comes as the federal legislation to protect personal information in the private sector which we have been promised many times.
I do not want to reread the title of the bill, since I only have 10 minutes, but the previous speaker, the oustanding member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, did take the time to read the very legalese title, which is eight lines long. At the end, we realize that the purpose of this bill is not really to protect personal information in the private sector, but to promote the sales of electronic equipment.
Bill C-54 is a very timid bill. Indeed, it could, as I said before, deny many Quebeckers rights that they had in the legislation passed in 1994 by the Liberal Party.
A little while ago, my colleague gave the example of an Eaton employee in Montreal and the parent company in Toronto, where all personal files are kept. The Eaton employee who would like to check if there are errors in his file can now do so under the Quebec legislation. But once Bill C-45, as proposed by the government of the Prime Minister and member for Saint-Maurice, passes third reading in the House, that employee will no longer have that right because the legislation says this is not a matter of commercial relations, but of labour relations. So he would lose that right.
If he really wants to see his file, he will have to go before a federal court This makes no sense.
This legislation should at least be greatly amended or better yet, struck from the Order Paper . The members for Sherbrooke and Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière only suggested that the bill be referred to the Standing Committee on Industry, where government and opposition members could make sensible and meaningful amendments.
What hurts also are the excessive powers given to the governor in council in section 27(2)( b ) of Bill C-54. This is dangerous. As I become more familiar with the evolution of this Parliament and of the whole country, I realize that we should not give more power to the Prime Minister, especially this one.
I will never forget—and I am sure all members will remember—the significant role played by the current Prime Minister in the Trudeau cabinet. They had agreed to apply the War Measures Act and almost 500 public figures were imprisoned in Quebec, including the late Pauline Julien. She was in jail for eight days without ever being accused of anything but only on the pretence that she might be dangerous. Those are the absurd situations that happened under the Liberal government in the early 1970s.
Orders originating from the Prime Minister's office show that, on November 25, 1997, in Vancouver, the Prime Minister himself ordered the RCMP to clear the place by four o'clock in the afternoon. Twenty seconds after the RCMP officer gave these orders, young students accompanied by their parents were pepper sprayed.
Fortunately, the RCMP had foreseen this. They had already brought with them not only pepper spray but also wet towels to alleviate the harm done to those students who are the ones who will succeed us tomorrow, who will be our elite, possibly future prime ministers, members of Parliament, speakers of legislatures or of the House of Commons.
This government will invest more than $2 billion in education. Appropriations have been voted and money has already been invested in the millennium scholarships, in an area which is not under federal jurisdiction. The government does this to make itself look good to students and then, a few hours later, it goes off and roughs up several hundred students before throwing them into jail. A student said that he was kept in prison for eight hours without any charge being laid against him and, worse yet, he was forced to sign a form saying that he would not go back to the APEC summit to demonstrate.
The Prime Minister misused his power. Bill C-54 gives him powers which will be transferred to future prime ministers. I think that this man can sometimes be dangerous. We must not give him powers. The Prime Minister went so far as to say that it could have been baseball bats instead of pepper spray. The next day, he said that the RCMP could have used water cannons instead. So why not do as China did in Tiananmen Square and use tanks and simply kill the protesters. He is a dangerous man and I do not understand that some of my colleagues refuse to pay lawyers so that we can finally know the truth about what happened on the 25th of November of last year, almost eleven months ago.
Therefore, I find it hard to believe that the government seriously wants to protect our personal information with Bill C-54, when it does not even respect our civil rights. In Canada, the right to express one's opposition to a dictator on an official visit or to applaud Queen Elizabeth II when she comes to Ottawa is well recognized.
Where is the government leading us? To a dictatorship perhaps? Mr. Speaker, I invite you to exert all the pressure you can on the government to convince it to withdraw Bill C-54 as soon as possible.