Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to this bill and to say that, in my opinion, members of the Bloc have made a great contribution to this very important debate. I congratulate them on that.
I do not think many of the fears the Bloc Quebecois have raised in terms of the sovereignty of Quebec in this particular issue are fears we have to worry about to a great degree. Where their contribution has been best is in analysing the shortcomings of this bill as a bill that purports to protect personal information.
Myself, I come to this bill at this stage with the point of view that it is an interim measure. I do not think it has even begun to address the vast problems of privacy in a world where so many thousands of households are connected through the Internet to other sites that they have little knowledge of.
Just to give you an example, Mr. Speaker, you can do this yourself on your own computer. You can be surfing the net, Mr. Speaker, going to sites in Canada, the U.S. and abroad. You can do whatever kind of net surfing you like. I have a program on my computer at home that is not a Windows program. It is a computer search program. What I am able to do with the program is, after having surfed the net, I can go into the deep files of the computer and I can get a readout, to some degree, only a limited degree, of the so-called cookies that have been left behind wherever I have visited sites, and also something called preferences.
I have a classic example of what happens. I was using a search engine. You know how you are just searching around for this, that and the other thing. I saw a site that said redheads so I called up the site. It was just a picture of pretty women with red hair. It was not a porn site, Mr. Speaker, I have to assure you.
I went back after and found that topics pertaining to redheads kept on coming up whenever I used the various search engines for some weeks following. I used the search program and went into the data bank. What I found was, it was not a cookie because cookies are something quite different, but it was still data that had been deposited in my computer that biased my computer for searching topics that had to do with redheads.
When I further analysed this particular data bank of information in my computer, I found that it had an extensive list of my tastes in terms of what I had been calling up on the Internet. In fact, I call up a lot of science subjects because I have a particular interest in certain fields of science. These were reflected in the list of these so-called preferences.
There are other things. If you go to a stock site, or to a porn site for heaven's sake, all these things are recorded on your machine. They are recorded to tell your machine to bring certain types of data forward when you use a search engine.
Mr. Speaker, if these so-called preferences are recorded on your machine, they are recorded on other machines. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that when you use your search engines in your home computer, what in effect you are doing is you are creating an intimate profile of yourself that is available not just in Canada but internationally.
Mr. Speaker, the problem with this legislation as I see it is it does not go deeply into this whole issue of how we put a filter on this type of information. As far as I can see, the legislation does not actually deal with this problem of distributing personal information that goes abroad and is obviously used commercially.
Ironically, Mr. Speaker, the legislation as I see it does try to put controls when you take out a newspaper subscription for example or when you buy certain products like automobiles and so on and so forth. This legislation provides for certain controls on the use of that kind of data, but it does nothing as far as I can see to address the larger problem of controlling personal information that is going out on the Internet worldwide. Mr. Speaker, I think this is a fundamental problem that I am not sure there is any solution to.
Yet we have legislation before us that I think was created with the very best of intentions. I have studied it actually at some length. I felt that basically it spins out of the existing Privacy Act which pertains to the documents held by government agencies chiefly about government civil servants and anyone who has had anything to do with the government or worked for the government.
Mr. Speaker, that is a pity because that legislation desperately needs an overhaul. It does not reflect the changing world where we have the possibility of knowing a great deal about one another. I would have been much happier if this legislation had directed itself toward putting controls on Internet service providers and those who stand at the various stages at which they can intercept personal information and sell it.
Mr. Speaker, what it does instead is it basically uses a commercial standard, I believe it is called. Organizations which are handling commercial personal information are supposed to conform to these standards. Basically the principal one is if they have collected the information, they are not to distribute the information without your consent. But, Mr. Speaker, I still do not see how this is going to be addressed when it comes to international service providers collecting information every time you go outside the country or even within the country when you are using your computer at home or your laptop in the office. It is very difficult to control these things.
On the other hand, and this is why I do not agree with the opposition, particularly the Bloc Quebecois' opposition to this bill, it does do some very positive things. It advances the desire for openness. I know that sounds odd when we are talking about privacy legislation, but it advances the cause of openness in government agencies very significantly. Mr. Speaker, it does this because for the first time it brings crown corporations under legislation that determines how they should use information.
Mr. Speaker, crown agencies currently are exempt from the Access to Information Act. You cannot find out what crown agencies are doing. Canada Post, AECL, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and many other organizations are exempt under the current Access to Information Act. You cannot find out the details of their budget. You cannot find out what the salaries are. You cannot find out whether they have a problem with nepotism, that they are bringing people in as a result of who is a friend of whom. You cannot find out that kind of thing. I think the Access to Information Act desperately needs to be reformed in that area.
The nice thing about Bill C-6 is what it does do is that for the first time it brings some of these crown corporations under privacy regulation. It includes Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the new port corporations that were created by the recent port authority bill, Maritime Atlantic and VIA Rail. The theme being is it is looking at broadcasting, financial and transportation industries that exist as parent corporations.
Mr. Speaker, this is an incredibly positive step in the right direction. We can no longer tolerate arm's length government agencies that use taxpayers' money and are not in any way accountable to the taxpayer. You cannot find out information on these various organizations if you want to examine their books because their books are not available to you.
This bill puts them under certain requirements of the Privacy Act in terms of the type of personal information they may collect. The irony there of course is because they are protected under the Access to Information Act, I am not quite sure whether we have the other side of the equation to make sure that they are actually implementing the Privacy Act, as explained in the notes we have before us.
On the one hand, symbolically, it is a wonderful thing for the government to do but it does not go sufficiently far enough. I suspect as I regard this entire bill, we should take it as the government's intent to try to find a way not only to open up government documents of all kinds, but to also build a proper regime of protecting personal information. But we still have a long way to go and I think this is only a very first step.
I should talk a little about the amendments that have come back from the Senate. These amendments pertain to defining personal information. There was concern expressed in the Senate that the definition of personal information was far too broad.
The various representations before the Senate were seeking better clarification of what is meant by personal information in terms of health related information. The problem is that in the existing act the definition of personal information is very broad, Mr. Speaker. It does not specify anything more than your name and address. It is not personal information, and just about anything else you disclose is.
I see you yawning, Mr. Speaker. Do I need to pick up the pace a little? I will do my very best. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, forgive me. There must be a House rule against drawing the attention of the country to the Speaker. I am going to get myself into terrible trouble. I will get control of the debate again.
The personal information clause that comes from the Senate was originally a very important clause in this bill. I think the senators were right to challenge this particular clause and to demand that it be defined more clearly. The definition that has come to us from the Senate is a definition that expands the idea of personal information in terms of health related information. When you go to a doctor and give information, that should be personal information and should be specifically protected in this legislation.
I would suggest, and I do not want the Senate to send the bill back after we send it up there, but I think it put its finger on something very important. My problem with personal information is when you make it too broad. The reality is that there is a lot of personal information that we divulge that we do not care about. I come back to the whole idea of commercial information. When you purchase something at Radio Shack it asks us for our name and address. Obviously, it is going into a data bank that is building up a personal profile. Most people are not bothered by that.
This legislation is directed precisely toward that sort of thing and says that this should be regulated and that information should not be distributed without your prior consent. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that nobody cares about that kind of information. Nobody cares about what kind of automobile you buy because when you buy a brand new Buick or a Volvo or an Audi or a cheap Ford, if you will, you advertise your purchase every time you drive that car. It is no secret. So why that data should be subject to this legislation I do not know.
On the other hand, where the senators are correct, there is a type of personal information that we do guard. One of the types of information that we do want to guard and protect is medical information. Hence, I believe this amendment is apropos, but I would have pursued it further. I would have suggested that another type of information that we would have like to have safeguarded and we should specify in legislation like this is financial information.
The problem is that we are not very certain. There is a huge difference between people knowing how much is in your bank account or how much is on your credit card or what your indebtedness is than what purchases you make. I would have thought this bill would have been far stronger if it had specified that financial information is something that should be specifically protected.
Again, I would have thought in terms of personal information what a religion is should be specified as something that should be protected. It is no one's business knowing what religion, what denomination or whether you have a religion in terms of what is available in terms of personal information that can be bought and sold.
I will switch back to my suggestion about the Internet. I see there are some members from the Reform Party who are watching this.