Madam Speaker, I cannot say how delighted I am to speak on Bill C-6 on personal information protection and the electronic documents act.
The reason I am delighted is that today we were talking about perhaps the birth of a whole new economy for the country. Others have described it in the last 24 hours as electronic commerce becoming the central nervous system of business, society and even of government.
We truly are into a form of commercial revolution, the consequences of which are almost unpredictable. The fantastic growth in the use of the Internet in terms of business to business relationships as well as consumer to business relationships is nothing short of astonishing. To illustrate this, Internet traffic doubles every 100 days and every second of the day seven new clients sign up on the Internet. It truly is a revolution that is happening before us.
Like all revolutions we actually do not realize there is a revolution going if we are part of it. One day we wake up and realize that the entire world has changed. I suspect during the industrial revolution people were not standing around talking about the revolution that was going on, except when they looked back and realized the tremendous change that had occurred.
I believe, as we have heard from the Minister of Industry, the Prime Minister and government spokespersons in a variety of capacities in the last number of weeks, that Canada is to become the most electronically connected country in the world by the year 2000. There was the commitment the other day to set up 600 Internet sites across the country and to mobilize 10,000 young people to serve those sites to ensure that every Canadian from coast to coast to coast, no matter where they live, no matter the size of their community, no matter the resources at their disposal will have access to the Internet of one kind or another.
Obviously there is a crucial issue that has to be dealt with and Bill C-6 attempts to do that. I refer to what happened last month at Microsoft when hackers broke into the hot mail service, exposing 40 million accounts and the integrity of the e-mail system. This kind of high profile breach of security obviously is something that consumers are concerned about.
Madam Speaker, I know that you are an e-commerce fan and I suspect that when you talk to your constituents about electronic commerce the kind of thing you hear is what the rest of us hear and that is that people are concerned about the security of the information they provide.
When we send off our credit card number or when we carry out a business transaction, is it secure? Do we have confidence that the person receiving that information is the person that we expect to be receiving that information?
In Canada the electronic commerce section will grow from $1 billion in 1997 to about $13 billion by 2002. There is an incredible rate of economic change that is occurring before us. In 1998 there were 414,000 active commercial websites and by 2002 it is predicted that number will jump to 1.6 million. It is astonishing economic activity that is occurring before us. Bill C-6 attempts to build in some security in terms of personal information.
Today we are dealing with the motions in Group No. 1. I want to say on behalf of the federal New Democratic Party that we will be opposing the motions in Group No. 1 put forward by the Bloc Quebecois. The reason is obvious. Bloc members believe, and they make a compelling argument, that we should have one system for the province of Quebec and one system for the rest of the country. Obviously that is going to be a messy, patchwork system of protection. We represent all Canadians in the House and we want to have a policy that will protect Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
My friends in the Bloc Quebecois argue that there is already protective legislation in the province of Quebec. They are right in that respect. It is lacking in most other jurisdictions of the country. However, to pass federal legislation that does not include all provinces and territories I think would be folly. We do not want a patchwork of different standards across the country. National standards are crucial. For that reason we feel that we must oppose this group of amendments.
It is not right or fair that some Canadians should be deprived of privacy protection because their provincial government has been slow to act. The reality is that there are some provinces that are dragging their feet on this issue. I suspect one of the reasons is that they really do not know what to do. The provincial governments are looking to the federal government to say that rather than all of the provincial jurisdictions introducing their own protective legislation, why not have a decent standard from coast to coast to coast introduced by the federal government, which is what Bill C-6 is all about.
In other policy areas where there is federal and provincial overlap both levels of government will be required to co-operate to ensure the strongest protection is given to Canadians and to reduce any confusion.
I listened carefully to the speech made by my hon. friend from the Bloc Quebecois, who argued that in his judgment the legislation presently in place in Quebec would be adequate. Let us ensure that whatever is the best piece of legislation to protect the consumer will be the piece of legislation that will dominate.
In conclusion, we support the federal government in its efforts to exercise its commerce power in respect to privacy protection. We support the intent of the legislation generally, and for that reason I am afraid we will have to oppose the motions in Group No. 1.