Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on two things in the bill, the first having to do with the sharing of information, and the second having to do with interim orders. I then wish to comment on whether in fact this is creating an environment of security or one of insecurity.
I just returned from a week abroad and my transfer point was Miami. I was flying in from a foreign country through Miami to Toronto. Frankly, Miami was a horror show. All I had to do was transfer from one airplane to another. It was the same airline in the same constellation of lounges. However, in order to be able to do it I had to disembark from the one airplane, go through U.S. immigration services, customs services, go back through security again, line up in front of the desk going into the gangway of the airplane, and then line up in the gangway of the airplane itself again. It was a nice waste of about two and half hours.
Apparently that is all for security purposes. I was kind of hard pressed to fathom how I would become a security risk by virtue of transferring from one airplane to the next airplane, in the same lounge which is a transit lounge, but apparently I was.
I can see how these so-called security needs lead to great frustration and create air rage on the part of the travelling public. I am hard pressed, however, to see how all of these security measures, as I experienced them in Miami yesterday, relate to security at all. In fact, it gets a little bizarre. Just to add on to the add on, the number of pieces of baggage with the number of passengers could not be co-related, so we sat there for an hour on the tarmac trying to count the baggage all over again.
I find that this kind of environment, particularly in the United States, leads to more paranoia than it does to security. If one ever wants to thank his or her lucky stars to be Canadian, one should travel in the United States now. Everyone there is walking on eggshells and I respectfully suggest that it is a society at war with itself, that in fact it is turning in on itself and contradicts some of the values it prizes the most, namely its freedoms and openness. I feel sympathetic to many of my American colleagues, but I must ask myself whether we in fact, by doing bills such as this, feed into that paranoia.
The paranoia in my opinion is further hyped by those who have a political agenda. For those in the security business these are good times. It serves those folks and they do not seem to be overly fussed about losses to rights of privacy.
Bill C-17 would allow the transference of all of my travel information to all security services around the world, particularly in the United States. They will know with whom I travelled. They will know that I travelled with my wife in this instance. They will know where we went and how I paid for it. They will know how often I travel, where I travel, with whom I travel and how I propose paying for it. That may in itself sound relatively benign except if one is the innocent victim. Make no mistake that this information will never be used for us. It will only be used against us.
I and everyone in the House will have a travel profile which will be gathered here and transmitted electronically around the world. There are no restrictions on how it would be used and who would use it and it could be cross-referenced with other data from various agencies that have information on me.
Our privacy commissioner has likened it to a police state mentality and while I think that is a bit overboard, I want to comment on having actually travelled in a police state, namely Estonia, when I was younger.
I recall vividly going to church on a Sunday morning, sitting in a service and while the minister was preaching, four soldiers from the Soviet army marched into the church, walked to the front and just starred at everybody in an attempt to intimidate those who were still going to church in that country.
The point is not that Canada would become a police state but that it would create an environment of fear. It would be sharing information with countries, some of whom clearly are much closer to police states. It would feed a climate of fear and fear builds on itself. To put an ironic twist on, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a former president of the United States said “You have nothing to fear but fear itself”. It is indeed ironic because all these bills create this environment of fear.
We are proposing this bill even though the results are not in on Bill C-36. One of the provisions of Bill C-36 is that there must be an annual report presented to Parliament on how it was used and possibly abused. We do not know whether the changes in the Criminal Code were actually helpful or a hindrance. We passed Bill C-36 in great haste but we have yet to see a report on its effectiveness.
Files tend to have a life of their own, especially where security forces have already reached a conclusion and like to secure evidence that advances that conclusion.
Bill C-17 would reduce the time a minister would require to make an interim order where immediate action is required to deal with a significant risk to health, safety or the environment.
I suppose the first question is: What is a significant risk?
This would allow the minister to act rapidly to address an emergency situation. Should a threat be identified, the Minister of Health, for example, could impose more stringent controls on the storage and distribution of potentially dangerous biological and chemical products to prevent them from being diverted for terrorist purposes.
What is envisioned here are situations which may not justify a declaration of national emergency but still require immediate action. The scope of the powers that could be exercised under Bill C-17 are more limited than we would get under the Emergencies Act but nevertheless are quite extensive in and of themselves.
I must congratulate the minister who has listened to some of the complaints that would limit some of the timeframes and some of the review processes. I guess the best that could be said here is that it is not as bad as Bill C-55.
However, the cabinet could still extend an interim order for a year. Parliament is not bypassed since an interim order must be tabled with Parliament, which is an unusual procedure and again I congratulate the minister for taking up that concern and tabling the interim orders before Parliament so they can in fact be reviewed within 15 days. This may or may not address the concern expressed by the previous speaker about ministerial excesses but that would largely be up to the vigilance of Parliament.
The interim order would still have to be gazetted within 23 days after it is made, thus ensuring some level of transparency. It is also subject to judicial review, as are other government decisions.
We still have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which we continue to fully apply.
One would hope that as we add up all these checks to these potentially significant intrusions into the security and privacy and freedoms of our citizens we can have some measure of sense that these checks and balances would serve as useful legal instruments to protect Canadians in an emergency situation.
I do not know whether we will end up looking like the United States in the not too distant future. It is certainly not a future I covet as a husband and as a father for my children. I certainly do not covet it as a parliamentarian. I would hope that we here in Parliament act as a significant check on those kinds of intrusions into our rights.
Are we doing the right thing by sharing this information with other security services? I frankly do not think so. Are we doing it because we have to? Largely that is true. We are doing it because we have to. If people want to travel to the United States, those will be the rules of the ball game. Will interim orders be abused? I do not know. I do not think so.
Parliament needs to be at the centre of the vigilance and protection of our rights. Let us hope that both Parliament and the committees will do their job.