Madam Speaker, as the Bloc Quebecois representative, along with the member for Mercier, on the Standing Committee on Industry, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-54 at report stage.
It will come as no surprise to anyone if I say that I agree fully with the member for Mercier, whose strenuous and very articulate defence of our position was noticed by all members of the committee from both sides of the House. However, we have not succeeded in persuading everyone that we are right.
The main problem with this bill is that it was announced rather extemporaneously by the Minister of Industry at last fall's OECD meeting. The Minister of Industry was bent on showing leadership. He wanted to take the lead with a modern bill on e-commerce.
It is possible to want to promote e-commerce and still protect personal information. Personal information insofar as industry is concerned is a provincial responsibility. It is also a fact that the majority of provinces have not assumed their responsibilities in this regard, unlike Quebec, which for five years has had very effective personal information legislation.
It therefore comes under the jurisdiction of the province of Quebec—I use the word “province” because that is what we still are—which we call the state of Quebec. At the OECD meeting in question, during a reception at the Museum of Civilization in Hull that I attended, certain federal government officials had praise for Quebec's personal information protection legislation but still the Minister of Industry wanted to wow them with his bill.
There are some astonishing things in this bill. For instance, the CSA standards in the schedule to the bill were something industry members came up with voluntarily at the time, a code of ethics, as it were. Many of the verbs in this code are in the conditional.
Because the minister was in such a hurry to introduce this bill, he threw the voluntary standards used by people in the various sectors into the schedule as guidelines.
There is a difference between a voluntary code of ethics written by people from the industrial sector and legislation that is not only supposed to provide a framework, but also to prohibit and to regulate. This bill is too vague, a fact that a lot of people have condemned.
This bill is nothing but wishful thinking in many respects, but there are certain provisions that Quebec cannot not support.
For example, the minister may change any provision of the bill without consulting the House. The bill gives him this power. We will come back to this later on. It is unusual for a bill to give a minister the power to change the famous CSA code contained in the schedule to the bill.
The Reform Party usually adheres to the principle of respect for provincial jurisdiction and often defends this principle, as does the Bloc Quebecois. I am somewhat surprised that my colleague from the Reform Party, who took part in the work of the committee on Bill C-54, would not follow his party's usual policy. I am somewhat surprised and, I should say, disappointed.
Usually the Reform Party recognizes that the provinces have jurisdiction over certain areas under the Constitution and that the federal government must respect that. Reformers are not sovereignists, but they often talk about that in their speeches. However, in this case they decided to support the Liberal government. They decided that we needed this bill, as flawed and as vague as it may be, because many provinces have not passed legislation regarding the protection of personal information.
Constitutional experts told us that this bill could be challenged under the Constitution and that the government could lose its case. In spite of that, we are being told that this bill is good and that it must be passed.
The title talks about protecting personal information in the area of e-commerce. Of course, we are on the eve of the year 2000. Everyone is talking about e-commerce. We know abuse occurs, but laws do exist. The government could have dealt with the provincial ministers in other ways and more properly. All the provincial ministers have contested the fact that this occurred without their being consulted.
In Quebec, if only the Bloc Quebecois and the ministers of the Parti Quebecois were opposed, people could say “We know the traditional positions of these two parties”. However, there are also the Conseil interprofessionnel, the Barreau du Québec, the Chambre des notaires and the Conseil du patronat, all saying essentially the same thing we are. We cannot say that the Conseil du patronat du Québec is a part of the sovereignist movement or a branch of the Parti Quebecois.
There is a consensus in Quebec on this issue among the unions, management, notaries, lawyers, the Conseil interprofessionnel and consumer associations. This represents quite a lot of people. People in other parts of Canada too have said much the same thing.
A representative of the Ontario ministry of health said that this was excessive meddling and that they had something in the works that would better protect personal health care information. All this was said by many witnesses and many groups.
It is probably very difficult for such a proud minister, who announced to the people of the other countries of the OECD that he had a super bill and suggested they follow his example, to drop his idea now.
It is difficult for us too. We are looking at a real constitutional coup. It would take too long to relate all the examples, but this is often what happens. Once again the federal government is interfering in an area of provincial jurisdiction.
On the subject of personal information, Quebec has an excellent law, and everyone recognizes that. Even federal officials have said so to representatives of foreign countries. But no, the federal government continues to use its bulldozer style, ignoring the objections of the people in Quebec.
Our role is to represent the interests of Quebec and to remind this House that this bill fails to respect Quebec's jurisdiction.