Mr. Speaker, I know my time is very limited, given that we have pulled time allocation on this particular debate, but I want to address the bill very quickly.
The official opposition is supporting the bill, as was mentioned by my colleague from Peace River. My colleague from Essex earlier stood to talk about the merits of the bill. However, she did say that the bill was far from perfect, although a number of amendments put forward by the government would bring it closer. I would argue that if the government chose to support the amendments put forward by the official opposition, the bill would be even closer to being perfect.
I encourage my colleagues opposite to support the motions. I will read them into the record. They are Motions Nos. 11, 14, 18, 19, 21 and 22.
Sitting through the industry committee hearings during the last session I had the time to hear from many different witnesses, a number of whom were from the health care profession. Some of them were health care service providers who had a lot of concern about privacy when it comes to the transfer of documents, especially documents of a personal nature pertaining to health care.
Because I do not have time to expand on the motions, I want to read a quick summary of what the motions deal with, especially in the case of pertinent health care documentation.
The proposed amendments should require organizations to obtain an individual's fully informed and express consent before using personal health information for a new purpose that is substantially different from the purpose for which the information was originally collected.
The Liberals may argue that this protection already exists in the legislation, but our goal is to strengthen the legislation, with respect to health information in particular.
This is not to come into conflict with the fact that health care is a provincial domain, but just to set the tone in order to strengthen information pertaining to health care and the privacy issues surrounding that particular information.
The proposed amendments would also require that any—