Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again intervene on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois on Bill C-54, the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act.
Right at the start, the Bloc Quebecois had to remind this House that, when it comes to protecting personal information, Quebec's law has for some time been unique in North America.
Quebec had a law protecting privacy in the public sector as far back as 1982. The federal government and the provinces later enacted similar legislation. In 1994, long before the federal government had envisaged doing so, the Quebec law extended the protection of personal information to the private sector. Once again, Quebec was the first jurisdiction in North America to do so.
Quebec's privacy laws were adopted to ensure respect for major fundamental rights provided in international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantee the right to privacy.
These international instruments were reflected in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, which was enacted in 1975, and which was in fact the first law dealing with the right to privacy.
I remind this House that section 5 of the Quebec charter, enacted in 1975, provides that “Every person has a right to respect for his private life”. This implies of course that governments must pass laws to protect this right, including against any misuse of personal information.
The Quebec act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector is rather similar to the directive from the European Union on this issue, which is also a leading-edge document. This means that Quebec and the European Union are the jurisdictions that are most respectful of the right to privacy when it comes to the protection of personal information.
As for Bill C-54, which is now before us, it is in response to numerous commitments made by the government to enact a federal law to protect personal information in the private sector, which comes under federal jurisdiction.
However, the title itself shows a will to reduce the level of protection that the legislation should provide, since it reads an act “to support and promote electronic commerce”. This means it is first and foremost an act to promote electronic commerce. Then comes “by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances” only “by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions”.
Indeed, the title already tells us about the limits which the government wants to impose on the protection of personal information that may be used or collected by the private sector.
So, this bill is not an act to protect personal information but rather an act to manage the use of personal information in the sole area of commercial activities. Unfortunately, Bill C-54 is another bill whose core is to be found in a schedule and one that restates guidelines originally developed at the OECD and embraced by standards organizations in Canada. This is a bill whose schedule, which is its heart, its core, is written in the conditional.
One has to take a close look at this bill and its schedule to notice that the so-called requirements are in fact written in the conditional, which means that for all intents and purposes theses requirements are really only suggestions or recommendations being made to those who hold personal information and should ensure its best use.
In fact, in considering the bill, under paragraph 5(2), every government institution is required to specify the identified purposes to the individual from whom personal information is collected, but subparagraph 4.2.3 of the schedule states, and I draw members' attention to the use of the conditional here, that the identified purpose should be specified at or before the time of collection to the individual from whom the personal information is collected.
Two subparagraphs further, subparagraph 4.2.5 of the schedule states—and again I draw members' attention to the use of the conditional—that persons collecting personal information should be able to explain to individuals the purposes for which the information is being collected.
So, it would seem that the purpose of Bill-54 is, through watered down obligations written in the conditional, to promote electronic commerce by making the right to privacy in the private sector a secondary consideration. Worse yet, the Bloc Quebecois believes that, in some instances, this bill will restrict the rights Quebeckers currently have under legislation passed by the Quebec national assembly.
Under section 17 of Quebec's protection of personal information legislation, an Eaton employee in Montreal is entitled to see his personal file, even if it is kept in Toronto. However, with Bill C-54, he would not necessarily be able to view his file, because his request would be subject to legislation that ignores the right to privacy when the access to information request is made under labour relations provisions and is not of a commercial nature.
One of the weaknesses of this bill, and we have pointed this out in the last few days, is that clause 27(2)(b) gives the Governor in Council excessive powers that should never be given to a government and that should be spelled out in the bill if there is really to be any respect for the fundamental right to privacy.
The bill relies on the voluntary CSA code. This code is mentioned in the preamble to the schedule. But those with primary responsibility for protection of personal information were not impressed.
We gave an example that is worth repeating today. The access to information commissioners for Quebec and for British Columbia were quite critical of this code and argued that it did not go far enough and did not provide optimal protection.
In his 1997-98 annual report, the Quebec access to information commissioner said that going along with this proposal, the CSA standard, would be a step backward from the current situation in Quebec as far as protection of personal information is concerned. The British Columbia commissioner made similar comments.
In conclusion, the Bloc Quebecois feels that Bill C-54 makes this a long and complex procedure that will do nothing to protect the legislation—