Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member concluded his speech by saying that he wants to protect individual freedoms and privacy rights.
I will simply quote a text published in today's edition of La Presse , which is not necessarily a sovereignist newspaper, members will agree. The heading is “The Privacy Commissioner condemns Bill C-55”. The privacy commissioner is also not a sovereignist and he is definitely not a Bloc Quebecois member. The text goes on to say that “some practices are similar to those that exist in totalitarian states”.
This is an excerpt from a letter addressed by the commissioner to the government. I will quote part of it for the benefit of the Quebecers and Canadians who are listening. I continue reading the text:
Some measures including in the new anti-terrorist bill introduced by the Chrétien government are squarely patterned on those that exist in totalitarian states, according to privacy commissioner George Radwanski.
Mr. Radwanski condemns Ottawa's decision to include in Bill C-55 new provisions that would give the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) unrestricted access to personal information from all Canadians travelling on domestic or international flights.
According to the commissioner, these “exceptional” measures go far beyond anti-terrorism and are in fact “a dramatic expansion of privacy-invasive police powers without explanation or justification as to its necessity”.
I am still reading the letter addressed to the government by the commissioner:
“The precedent set [by the new provisions] could open the door, in principle, to practices similar to those that exist in totalitarian societies where police routinely board trains or establish roadblocks to check identification papers in search of anyone of interest to the state”, said Mr. Radwanski in a written statement released yesterday.
It should be noted that these measures were not included in the first version of Bill C-42, which was suddenly scrapped, and that the commissioner feels that police forces might eventually ask the government for similar powers in the case of Canadians travelling by train, bus or rental car.
What does the Liberal member think of these comments by the privacy commissioner?