Mr. Speaker, the question I was asking is: Does this bill meet our expectations? As I said, the answer is far from clear.
First, the legislation has different titles at the federal and provincial levels. The provincial legislation's main goal is to protect personal information and privacy whereas the thrust of the federal bill is to support and promote electronic commerce. The protection of personal information comes second.
Whereas the Quebec legislation is aimed at protecting privacy and applies to every organization, the federal legislation only applies to commercial transactions. Electronic commerce is the main object of the bill. Personal information also means businesses' trade information.
The federal act should not hamper the very same trade activities it seeks to promote. English newspapers talk about this bill in terms of a “lightheaded government approach to cyberspace”. One can reasonably state that the Quebec bill is stricter and more encompassing both in its form and its definitions, its clear wording and the power to issue orders it gives the commissioner.
I will immediately move on to my conclusions, because I will not have enough time for all my remarks in the five minutes at my disposal.
What impression do we get from a more careful examination of Bill C-54? First of all, this is a jumbled and shaky bill, full of ifs and whens, whose central feature is a schedule that includes without any changes the voluntary code of the Canadian Standard Association.
When a bill says that an organization should do this or that, we cannot be sure it will do it, because it is not necessarily required to do so.
Second, this legislation will make federal-provincial linkage extremely complex, at least in Quebec. Our legislation being stricter and more specific than the federal bill, we will end up once more with legal wrangling over the interpretation of both pieces of legislation, and lawyers will make a fortune out of this.
Third, this bill grants new discretionary powers to the governor in council. Indeed, he will be able to amend schedule 1, the core of this legislation, simply by passing regulations. He can amend it as he sees fit to take any change to the CSA standard into account. As a result, the industries normally subject to the legislation will be in a position to amend the legislation without parliamentary debate and with the minister's consent.
We know the pressures that some companies can exert on the governing party through their contributions to campaign funds.
Finally, I would like to underline the fact that this bill is mainly concerned about electronic commerce, relegating people's fundamental right to privacy to second place.
Democracy is under constant siege, as we have seen in other countries. Some of the people visiting Canada tell us that, in their countries, democracy is trampled on a daily basis. Because Canada is a democratic country, as Quebec will be when it becomes independent, it is important that we do everything we can to protect people's privacy and not let any legislation weaken the mechanisms in place to protect this privacy.
No matter how important new technologies are, they should never take precedence over the protection of privacy, which is the very foundation of the democratic society we all value.