Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in today's debate on Bill C-6, an act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances, by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions and by amending the Canada Evidence Act, the Statutory Instruments Act and the Statute Revision Act.
The bill that we are debating today at report stage is the old Bill C-54 which, in spite of being the most significant step taken by the federal government since 1983 to protect personal information, does not fulfil its primary objective of protecting citizens. It falls short of our expectations.
The minister has failed to put forward a bill whose real objective would be to protect people's private lives in the private sector. In a technological world where this basic right is threatened, the Minister of Industry is proposing a fragile and confusing act whose core element is a schedule that repeats verbatim the principles set out in the code of the Canadian Standards Association.
The minister's bill is one that gives huge discretionary powers to the governor in council, while not giving any authority to the privacy commissioner. This is a bill that puts the emphasis on electronic commerce at the expense of the basic concept of the right to privacy, that ignores Quebec's unique experience in the area of personal information protection in the private sector and which, ultimately, could create problems for Quebec's current legislation.
Before dealing specifically with some of the major flaws of this bill before us, I want to say a few words about the concept of privacy, which is at the core of this bill, in the context of the Canadian and Quebec legislation.
The right to privacy is a human right along with the right to equality and justice. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is celebrating this year its fiftieth anniversary and of which Canada is a member, clearly states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. The declaration also states that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation”.
In Canada, this protection is provided under sections 7 and 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Moreover, in 1983, the Canadian government passed legislation respecting the protection of personal information that applies to over one hundred government agencies under its jurisdiction.
Since then, the federal government has promised an umbrella act to force the private sector to protect personal information. Bill C-6 is the sad outcome of all this.
In Quebec, the right to privacy is explicitly recognized in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and in the Quebec Civil Code.
Furthermore, the Quebec government is the only government in North America to have passed laws to govern the protection of privacy in the public sectors in 1982 and in the private sectors in 1994. Experts agree that Quebec's act governing the private sector is probably one of the best in the world.
The federal government is once again causing confusion, and this act will give a different meaning to the Privacy Act, just as Bill C-68 will with respect to the young offenders legislation. This is contrary to what Quebec has put in place. This bill has many flaws, it is a weak bill whose essence is in its schedule, a small one at that. Most of the provisions that will govern the protection of personal information are set out in the schedule to the bill.
Moreover, this schedule is nothing more than the model code for the protection of personal information developed by the private sector and consumers as a framework to protect personal information on a voluntary basis.
By not going beyond this text, the minister endorsed neither the consumers' recommendations nor those of the privacy commissioners, who recognized that the model code proposed by the Canadian Standard Association was a good basis for reflection, but that it should be reviewed and improved if it ever were to be incorporated in the act.
This shows beyond any doubt that the minister gave precedence to economic values over social values, at a time when this fundamental right is so threatened by the expansion of electronic commerce.
This bill gives huge discretion to the governor in council. Under paragraph 27(2)b), the federal government gives itself the right to amend the act through a simple order in council, without consulting parliament.
We know that the Liberal government has mastered the art of not being accountable to parliament. Therefore, it will be possible to amend the act under the pressure of lobbying efforts on behalf of the large companies that fund traditional political parties in Canada. The Liberal Party knows what I mean.
This bill gives no power to the Privacy Commissioner. Although the other Canadian provinces followed Quebec's model, giving the commissioner the power to issue orders, the federal act does the exact opposite. Thus the commissioner will not be able to issue orders, which will make access to the act difficult for consumers and cause it to have no effect on business.
This bill ignores Quebec's unique experience. It ignores its unique experience in the protection of personal information in the private sector.
Here are some examples: the objectives of the act are better defined in the Quebec legislation because the purpose is to protect privacy independently of any commercial consideration; the Quebec legislation clearly covers all undertakings, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, whereas the federal calls for the protection of personal information only for commercial transactions; Quebec's act allows a group of individuals to appoint a representative in a class action case. There is no such provision in the federal bill.
It is therefore obvious that this is a bill with the potential to make life difficult in Quebec. In addition to all the flaws that have been pointed out, there is one still greater area of concern. The only guarantee Quebec has that it will be exempted from this legislation is a timid statement by the Minister of Industry. Its mistrust is in large part motivated by Quebec's past experience with certain formal commitments made to it, about which the federal government has too often kept mum or which it has denied.
For example, I will remind this government if I may of the present Prime Minister's promises made within days of the 1995 referendum in the Verdun auditorium.
The stakes are clear, then. For the Minister of Industry, it is a question of ensuring that Canada participates fully in the rapidly expanding e-commerce without inordinate concern about peoples' worries about their privacy. Nor does the Minister of Industry hesitate to adopt a centralizing position that runs counter in a number of respects to what should be done in the provinces of Canada, and could have served as a model to Quebec in particular.
As the Deputy Premier of Quebec so aptly put it, “If Quebec were to participate fully in the concert of nations, its culture and the protection of its policy on the privacy of personal information, as concretized in its charter, its Civil Code and its two pieces of privacy legislation, would have been advanced by its government at the Ottawa OECD meeting in Ottawa”.
The Bloc Quebecois calls for immediate withdrawal of Bill C-6.