Mr. Speaker, I was interrupted by the government House leader for a good reason, for a motion to allow a House committee to do its work. Before that, I was explaining why the Bloc Quebecois will vote against Bill C-17 on third reading. We think that this piece of legislation does not always strike the right balance between the means to ensure public safety against terrorism, and respect for human rights. Personally, I think the worst abuse of rights that could happen and one that we should not condone concerns the disclosure of information.
On May 6, the Privacy Commissioner published a letter detailing his concerns with Bill C-55—which existed prior to Bill C-17—and information obtained by the RCMP and CSIS. He expressed reservations about provisions allowing the RCMP to use personal information on air travellers to search for individuals subject to an outstanding warrant for any offence punishable by imprisonment of five years or more and, second, allowing CSIS and the RCMP to retain passenger information in search of suspicious travel patterns.
It would appear that the government tried to tighten these provisions and failed. In fact, although the RCMP can no longer collect information to search for an individual subject to a warrant, it can still provide a peace officer with information obtained under Bill C-17 if it has reason to believe that such information is needed to execute a warrant.
An example of this is a Canadian citizen who ended up in Syria due to a broad and possibly erroneous interpretation of that section, or that type of procedure. That is an example of the kind of abuse that can result. To this end, the federal government should think about referring this to committee again—as we just sought to do with another bill—to find ways to further tighten these provisions to ensure there will be no abuse.
The RCMP decides when a situation threatens transportation safety, thereby allowing it to request passenger lists from airlines. This provision has no control mechanisms. The RCMP has carte blanche. Furthermore, once it has obtained information, there is nothing to prevent it from holding on to that information, as long as the reasons are recorded.
There is no mention of what kind of reasons would be valid. Perhaps being a frequent traveller, for example, would be reason enough. So, the RCMP could decide to retain this information. Perhaps, in some way, frequent flyers will be suspected of violating that section.
Therefore, it is not really serious enough. There is some tightening up to be done. These provisions need to be worked on some more to achieve the right balance.
We also heard that the government has tightened up the definition of warrant. In the previous version, it could be an outstanding warrant for any offence punishable under federal law by imprisonment for five years or more. Now the definition stipulates that there will be a regulation stipulating exactly what crimes are involved.
According to the commissioner, the seven-day period for which the RCMP and CSIS can retain information is excessive and a 48-hour period would be sufficient. The fact that this information can be retained indefinitely by the RCMP and CSIS as a security measure is cause for concern. Limits have to be set. Neither of the changes the Privacy Commissioner proposed has been included. In November 2002, the commissioner issued a new press release in which he expressed his concerns about this situation.
We in the Bloc Quebecois believe that the amendments introduced by the government in connection with the powers of the RCMP and CSIS to gather information on air passengers are still far too broad. Although the proposed amendments may appear to be plugging some of the loopholes, the problems raised by the Privacy Commissioner remain. In that regard, the bill is certainly not good enough.
A little over two years have gone by since the events of September 11, 2001. We obviously went through very difficult times in the days and months following these events. Today, as we are debating this bill, we should be even more aware of the need to strike the right balance between the right to privacy and the right to security so as to avoid any abuse on either side and to have the necessary tools to obtain the desired results.
In this case, since the government was really improvising—the same bill was introduced three times—strong representations were required by the Bloc Quebecois to eliminate the most unacceptable parts of this bill. We had to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that there has been intolerable abuse in a democratic society. We obtained a certain number of improvements.
The current version of the bill is still inadequate and does not strike the balance we think it should. That is why the Bloc Quebecois will vote against this bill, in the hope that the government will allow it to be sent back to committee, or think twice before implementing it.
I am convinced that within five years, abuses will have been committed in practical applications, particularly by the police. And people will say that they never would have thought such a bill could lead to such abuses.
In the Bloc Quebecois, we demonstrated that it was most certainly possible. We hope the government is listening to the arguments that have been presented so that the bill, which still needs a lot of improvement, is studied again.
It is unfortunate that the government decided to move a time allocation motion, which limits debate on this issue. It is odd that the time allowed for debating a bill on human rights would be limited. If we heard about such a thing happening in other countries, we would say that they have a democratic deficit.
Indeed, Canada has a major democratic deficit, with the future prime minister convening the Liberal caucus this evening before the official caucus meeting tomorrow. There is something unacceptable about that for citizens.
We also realize that many bills move forward even though they are not perfect, or are not what they should be, because there are no clear guidelines in this government.
For all these reasons, I hope that, despite its time allocation motion, the government will reconsider its decision to have us vote on a bill when several of its provisions are unacceptable and fail to protect human rights.