Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues opposite for introducing this amendment. It gives me an opportunity to speak again to this legislation.
The amendment is basically that this House drop second reading examination of Bill C-54 and return it to committee for re-examination or drop it from the order paper entirely.
I disagree with this for one very simple reason. Bill C-54 is undoubtedly the most important legislation that has come before this House since this session of parliament commenced. Bill C-54 is legislation that deals with trying to bring some sort of control in the way private industry uses personal information.
As Canadians we are all schooled in the idea that our religion, colour, financial status, medical records should all be private. The reality is in the commercial world more and more of this information is becoming available. Bill C-54 attempts to address this problem.
I have been very candid in my earlier remarks with respect to Bill C-54 in saying I believe it is flawed. Bill C-54 does not fully address all the concerns of personal information in the marketplace. But because the issue is so important I think we have to get this bill to committee as quickly as possible so that the committee and the public can study the changes necessary to create legislation that truly is workable in this field.
I will tell members what is at stake. I will try to be very simple about it. What is at stake, from my point of view and from what I have been able to see in my own experience, are lists of personal information bought and sold not only here in Canada but in the United States.
I pointed out that non-profit organizations and charitable organizations in order to do fundraising efficiently give their lists of donors to direct marketers in the United States.
I was lucky enough to obtain a list of donors of the organizations that were giving their names to a particular fundraiser in the United States. This list of names represents various organizations engaged in various activities and is available for money. People can buy these lists.
For example, it is possible to get a list of all the Canadian Jewish donors in Canada, 70,000 names. One can get that list in the United States. One can get a list of all those people who have donated to planned parenthood or pro-abortion organizations. One can get lists of people in Canada who are considered to be wealthy, 500,000. I did not think there were that many wealthy Canadians but according to this list in the United States there are 500,000 wealthy Canadians. What is at stake here is what happens if crime gets a hold of these names?
What a wonderful thing to know which households in Toronto, Vancouver or Calgary are big donors of perhaps $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 a year to charities. Is that not just a perfect target for criminal activity? Yet that can be bought in the United States.
We read today in the Ottawa Citizen that there are worries about an anti-abortion sniper approaching doctors who perform abortions. We can get that type of information from these lists and it is not just lists from non-profit organizations and charities.
In the United States organizations rent their lists of names for fundraising. Scientific American rents out its list so people can use the subscriber list in order to identify people who are likely to give to a scientific charity. One can imagine that someone who has other agendas might find this list handy as well, a list of medical practitioners for example. In the United States one can rent a list of the March of Dimes, of Greenpeace.
As long as there are no controls on this type of information all someone has to do is purchase personal information on our citizens that this country is trying to protect. I do not believe this legislation sufficiently addresses that problem. I wish it did. This is no time to fool around. We cannot leave it to the next century. We have to do something about it now. The only way we can do something about it now is to get it in committee and get it examined by our colleagues. I wish it would be examined in committee because I am not satisfied with the response from the other parties here. It has been a dialogue between the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. There has been almost no input from the Conservatives, no input from the Reform Party and almost no input from the NDP.
Perhaps if we can get this in committee where there is representation by the other parties they will not be so willing to sit silent on an issue that is probably one of the most important issues facing this country today. Personal information is marketable. It is big bucks. It is big business and it is all about personal safety.
I look across to the other side and remember all the complaints about the gun control legislation and the fear that because people had to register their guns they would be targets of I do know what. I guess the fear is that if a person had to register their gun, it was known that the person had enough money to buy a gun and would be a target of a break in. I do not know, but that was one of the fears.
Right now, because of the lack of legislation in this area, we can buy a list that tells us how much money is in that household. We can buy a list that tells us what religion that household is. We can buy a list that tells us how that household stands on abortion.
I think the time is now to address this. We have to do it urgently. It is one of the most important things before the House and I thank the Bloc Quebecois for putting this amendment forward so that I could speak again on this issue. But I am not supporting the amendment because we have to move ahead now on this legislation.