Mr. Speaker, I regret that I cannot respond in French.
I will not respond in French because it would cause more pain for the questioner than is necessary for the answer right now. But I am practising and I will soon.
The member raises two really important points. I will deal with the second point first because I think it is possible to respond to that fairly quickly. The member is absolute right. It is a sale. There is a great value in collecting that information, organizing it and selling it and there are huge industries that have grown up around that. It raises interesting questions about information that is collected by governments. There is a debate to come on that which I will be very interested in down the road.
We have been giving that information away individually for a very long time, for example every time we give our credit card to someone for our Christmas shopping. I have a blue card in my pocket that we use in my province. Every time we buy our groceries they swipe this card and we can get air miles for that. When it first came out I thought that is kind of nice, I can get some air miles. But what they are really doing is getting my consumption profile so they can do exactly that. They know that I buy a lot of goods for babies because I have a new baby. Those guys who sell to new parents will all of a sudden start sending me the stuff.
There are 10 principles in the bill. Accountability is the first one. An organization is responsible for personal information under its control. The organization now has a responsibility.
The second principle is the purposes for which personal information is collected shall be identified by the organization at or before the time the information is collected. The knowledge and consent of the individual are required for collection, use or disclosure. I invite members to go on to the Internet and look. Almost universally the larger companies that are more advanced in the use of this ask that. If we give them information there will be a box at the bottom saying in a cute way, because they want to encourage us, would we like to receive other information from other suppliers of this product. If we click that box we are going to get exactly what we are talking about.
This legislation gives the control over your information to you. It says you can determine every time your personal information is dealt with electronically. You will know what it is for and you can determine whether it can disclosed. The choice rests with you.
The other issue where the difficulty lies is the balancing act. We have experienced a number of dreadful examples. This is not a statement about any particular philosophy. When governments become too heavy handed and controlling they slow everything down. They limit the ability for organizations to be innovative. They limit the ability for pricing to move quickly. There are a lot of negative consequences that come from that.
On the other hand, we know that if we do not have some regulation, control or penalty then we could be subject to all sorts of abuses. This is one of the problems we face in the House all the time, trying to effect that balance, how much regulation versus how much protection. That will be very much part of the debate.