Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to this motion and to tell the House and those people at home who may be watching why the motion is important and should be supported by the House. I am referring to a motion that would require the Government of Canada to toughen up the privacy commission's role and responsibility in safeguarding the rights of Canadians and their right to privacy.
Every Canadian citizen has the right to the security of the person under our charter of rights and freedoms. It is my contention, and I think most if not all members of the House would agree, that the security of the person would include the security of the private information held by government institutions or other institutions which could in some way jeopardize or prejudice the individual if the private information were to be distributed among the public.
Most sensitive and private information on Canadian citizens is held by government institutions. We should think about the tremendous amount of information Revenue Canada has on each and every one of us as taxpayers and about all other information held by government in terms of birth certificates, marriage certificates and so on which the government routinely collects from us in one way or another, largely through Revenue Canada. Revenue Canada is the institution most people would be most concerned about because it concerns financial matters, but there are other matters as well.
A federal body of legislation known as the Privacy Act safeguards the privacy of Canadian citizens. The privacy commissioner and his office were established to oversee the administration of that act, to receive complaints from Canadians when they feel their privacy or their right to privacy has been violated, to investigate those complaints, and to make determinations on whether or not those allegations are well founded.
The Privacy Act is a good idea. As a matter fact it is absolutely imperative to have the Privacy Act, the privacy commissioner and his office to field complaints from Canadian citizens, to investigate those complaints, to make determinations and to discharge those complaints to the best of their ability. I take no issue with the privacy commission or the privacy commissioner.
The issue we are dealing with today is not that the Privacy Act is deficient in the sense of defining a person's rights, what private information ought to be held as private, and how government, financial and private institutions ought to act with respect to information that is sensitive or is considered to be private.
The problem we face right now is the Privacy Act has no teeth in it. In other words we have a body of legislation, and it is absolutely correct, which protects the rights of Canadian citizens and to safeguard their privacy and their right to privacy. However, if anyone violates that act, even if the violations are wilful or intended to prejudice the individual or individuals involved, there are absolutely no penalties contained within the body of the Privacy Act.
I ask members to reflect on how ludicrous that is. It is the same as having laws that govern how we drive our vehicles. We have posted speed limits and laws on how we conduct ourselves on the road when we operate motor vehicles. For example, it is against the law to be operating a motor vehicle if one is impaired. In most places in Canada it is against the law to operate a motor vehicle without wearing a seat belt. It is against the law to be driving faster than posted speed limits. It is against the law to disobey stop signs. There are penalties attached to each and every one of those laws and regulations. The penalties more or less reflect the severity of the violation or the potential violation of each of those regulations or laws.
Human nature being what it is and human beings being what they are, we can only expect people to behave in a certain way when there is a real deterrent for them if they violate the laws upon which society is based. In the instance of the Privacy Act where there are no penalties or downside to violating the act, how can any Canadian citizen feel good about expecting the privacy laws to protect him or her?
I will tell the House how the lack of protection within the Privacy Act first came to my attention. A couple of years ago a fellow in Alberta by the name of Bruce Starlight, an aboriginal person living on the Tsuu T'ina reserve, wrote a private letter to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development that was not circulated to anyone else. In his two page letter he made a number of observations and allegations with respect to financial mismanagement on his reserve. In her capacity as the minister responsible for that department he asked her to investigate and determine whether or not what he was alleging was true. Mr. Starlight did not receive a response to his letter from the minister.
About two and a half or three months later he received a knock on his door one night. It was somebody serving him legal notice that he was being sued for defamation for making allegations against his chief and council. Part of the evidence of his allegedly making defamatory allegations against the chief and council was the letter he had written to the minister with her actual office stamp on it.
That private letter was received in her office in Ottawa. To this day we still do not the exact trail, but it was handed back to the chief and council against whom the band member was making allegations. It put Mr. Starlight in a very difficult situation.
He contacted me, as a member of parliament and as critic for Indian affairs and northern development, and asked for my assistance. He asked “Is the government wallowed to do that? If I write a letter to a minister, which is considered to be a private matter, is the minister allowed to circulate my letter to anyone in a way that may possibly prejudice me, my family and my position in my community?”
We contacted the privacy commissioner and the privacy commission on Mr. Starlight's behalf and posed the same question. We asked the privacy commissioner to investigate. I have to tell the House and anyone out there who is listening that we received absolute co-operation from the privacy commissioner's office and from the privacy commissioner himself. We were very pleased with the way they responded to our requests. We were very pleased with the way they conducted an investigation. We are very pleased with the fact that at the end of the day they did come back to us and to Mr. Starlight. They concluded in a very substantial way that Mr. Starlight's privacy had been compromised very badly by the minister of Indian affairs and her department. The minister of that day is currently the minister for HRDC.
The privacy commissioner also advised us at the time that although there was a violation of privacy there was no penalty. There was no recourse for Mr. Starlight at all. The fact that he was put in a very difficult situation and in a position of financial hardship because he ended up having to partly finance a legal suit out of his own pocket did not give him any recourse whatsoever to go back and initiate any kind of action against the minister of Indian affairs and/or her department.
In the course of the investigation the privacy commissioner determined that there were at least 61 or 62 people within the minister's department and the higher echelons of the department of Indian affairs that had access to Mr. Starlight's letter. The privacy commissioner determined that it would be virtually impossible to determine the actual culprit or culprits in the violation of Mr. Starlight's privacy, short of getting honest and truthful statements from people who were involved, which I gather were not forthcoming.
The privacy commissioner made a number of recommendations to the department and to the minister for instituting better security surrounding correspondence. The minister and the department made public statements that they would take the privacy commissioner's advice and tighten up security.
In the meantime that does not help Mr. Starlight. It does not send the right message to government institutions when they see a minister and a minister's office in blatant violation of the law with absolutely no penalty to be paid in a milieu—and it has been patently obvious for the last few days that this is very true—where ministers of the crown routinely refuse to take responsibility for their departments and the bungling that goes on. The minister in question in this case, who is now the minister of HRDC, in my estimation is incapable of taking responsibility simply because she is not a capable minister. She is not in charge and never has been in charge of any department over which she has been given responsibility. What recourse do Canadian citizens have in that kind of milieu where nobody wants to take responsibility, in a situation where the privacy commissioner says that there were 62 people who had access to that letter and nobody has taken responsibility, and the minister responsible for the department is not taking responsibility?
There must be teeth in this legislation. There must be a penalty attached to violations of these regulations and it has to be a penalty commensurate with the violation. In other words, there must be real teeth in this legislation.
It is not much wonder that government is not interested—and we can see that by the lack of support this motion has received from other members of parliament, notably on the Liberal side of the House—in amending the Privacy Act to include tough penalties for those who would violate the act. I would suggest that most of the time it will be government that is actually in violation of its own act, in violation of its own laws.
I ask members of the House how Canadians can possibly have faith in the Privacy Act and in the work of the privacy commissioner and how they can feel their privacy and their right to privacy is secure and held sacred by the Government of Canada when the laws have absolutely no penalties and no teeth.
I strongly urge the House to make this a votable motion. I ask for unanimous consent that we agree to make this a votable motion and that we send it to the justice committee for a review and ask it to report back to the House as to how that could be done.