Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to the motions in Group No. 1. We strongly oppose the motions in Group No. 1. These motions, which were tabled by the Bloc, strike at the heart of Bill C-54 and undermine the government's ability to introduce a national law that will protect the privacy rights of all Canadians.
Moreover, these motions attack the government's competence to deal with federal laws that impede electronic government and electronic service delivery to Canadians.
In our consultations as well as in the industry committee consumer groups and industry have expressed the view that the government has achieved the right balance in Bill C-54. We have balanced the right of individuals to have some control over their personal information and to have access to avenues for effective redress with the need of industry to collect and use personal information as a vital component of success in the information economy.
For these reasons consumer groups like the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Consumers, as well as industry groups like the Information Technology Association of Canada, the Canadian Marketing Association, cable companies and telephone companies have all called for the rapid passage of Bill C-54. Swift passage of Bill C-54 will help build the consumer trust and market certainty needed to ensure that Canada is a world leader in electronic commerce and the global information economy.
The motions tabled by the Bloc are unacceptable and must be rejected. With the passage of Bill C-54, Quebec citizens will benefit from the best data protection in the country. Bill C-54 will provide all Canadians, including those in the province of Quebec, with complete and comprehensive privacy coverage across Canada.
I will quote some of the witnesses. The Chief Regulatory Officer for Bell Canada, Bernard Courtois, told the member for Mercier that Bell welcomes this legislation. In responding to a question from the member the witness said:
This bill clearly applies to companies operating under federal jurisdiction. It leaves a place for the Quebec legislation within its particular area of responsibility. That seems to us to be quite a clever way of not getting involved in needless jurisdictional disputes.
Members of Quebec's historical community, the Quebec Association of Archivists and the Historical Institute of French-Speaking America, expressed support for Bill C-54. In fact, I asked them specifically to comment on the Quebec privacy law. They said that the Quebec legislation has problems because it does not make any provision for the preservation of personal information for the future. In other words, for historical or archival purposes.
I would point out that Action réseau consommateur and Option consommateurs, which were involved in the adoption of the Quebec legislation, told the committee:
We fully support the bill's underlying principles. We would also like to highlight the importance and the relevance of federal government intervention at the Canada-wide and international level to ensure the privacy of Canadians.
We are here today because we strongly believe in the importance of truly protecting the personal information that companies have concerning Canadians. We congratulate the federal government for its initiative and for the ongoing efforts by the Minister of Industry, as well as the many people who have given concrete expression to this requirement which has become, over the past few years, more and more obvious.
The committee heard constitutional experts who spoke of the need for a law that applies between provinces and across the country. Roger Tassé of Gowling and Henderson said that the federal legislation could stand with the provincial legislation because they deal with different areas.
Finally, Jacques Frémont of the University of Montreal, who does not support this bill, acknowledged on March 16 the following, which the member for Mercier left out:
If there is a federal law, it's perfectly proper for parliament to regulate the transfer of information between provinces.
What I'm saying is there's a perfectly, and I want to repeat it to stress it, there's a perfectly legitimate federal presence for inter-provincial international commerce and for inter-provincial international circulation of private information.
(There is) perfectly legitimate room for Canada and the federal parliament to have a Canada-wide law which applies to federal fields of jurisdiction.
Finally, I would have expected better of the Bloc than to table amendments which would deprive the rest of Canadians, who have no privacy protection in the private sector, from getting the benefits of this new national law. I have full confidence in the privacy commissioners of this land, in each of the provinces, and the federal privacy commissioner. I urge all members to support consumers and reject the motions in Group No. 1.