Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in the House today to Bill C-17, the public safety act.
As members of the House who have followed the debates on Bill C-17, including the consultations in committee, will be aware, Bill C-17 is a necessary tool to improve the safety and security of Canadians, of our neighbours and of global air travel.
While I will be addressing my remarks primarily to one or two clauses of Bill C-17, those clauses that relate directly to the role, mandate and powers of the RCMP and of CSIS, I am aware that some of my colleagues will be speaking to Bill C-17 and will be addressing their remarks to the much broader aspect of Bill C-17, the public safety act.
I would like to look specifically at how the bill would help to improve the government's capacity to identify potential terrorists and other threats to transportation security in order to prevent deadly attacks here, at home or abroad.
At the same time, once Bill C-17 becomes law, and I hope it will receive the consent of the House and in the other House, it will give our law enforcement and security agencies an effective and timely tool to improve transportation security and the safety of all Canadians.
How will Bill C-17 do this? I believe the bill, if passed, will protect Canadian security within a framework of respect for privacy rights. I am aware that privacy rights have been a concern throughout the evolution of the bill but I am convinced that the Government of Canada has taken the necessary steps to address such concerns.
The concerns of the privacy commissioner and representatives of various interest groups and community groups within Canada were brought forward to the legislative committee that dealt with the bill upon direction from the House. A lot of their concerns with respect to clause 4.82 were addressed.
What would clause 4.82 do? Clause 4.82 amend the Aeronautics Act to require airlines, upon request, to provide a small core group of specially designated RCMP and CSIS officers with access to air passenger information for very restricted purposes. These purposes are limited to transportation security, the air carrier protective program and counterterrorism.
The specially designated officers would work with an automated system that will alert them when there is a possible match between an individual passenger record and an RCMP or CSIS record. Once this has occurred, the matched information will be verified by the designated officer.
These designated officers in turn, under clause 4.82, would be authorized to disclose passenger information to a third party only for very restricted purposes.
What are these purposes, members may very well ask, and rightfully so? In practical terms, CSIS needs to identify known and suspected terrorists before they board a plane, so a designated CSIS officer would be able to disclose the information to another CSIS employee for the investigation of a threat to the security of Canada.
Similarly, the RCMP needs to know if there may be potentially dangerous passengers on flights if they are to deliver an effective air carrier protective program. As a result, clause 4.82 would allow a designated officer to disclose information to the aircraft protective officers to assist them with their duties.
I will remind members what an aircraft protective officer is. Under previous legislation the government now allows the RCMP to have officers in civilian clothes who will travel on airlines undisclosed to regular passengers. They are protective officers and their job is to ensure the protection of passengers on airlines and of air transportation safety in general.
As a general public safety provision, if a designated RCMP officer in the course of reviewing this data for the purposes of transportation security, comes across the name of someone wanted on a warrant for a serious offence listed in the regulations for section 4.82 then he or she could also provide the appropriate police agency with this information to help lead to an arrest.
I would like to underline for my colleagues and for Canadians who are watching this debate that the types of offences we are referring to here are: terrorism offences, transportation security offences, serious violent offences, serious drug offences, and organized crime offences. They are offences punishable by a prison term of five years or more.
It is important that I highlight that because in the original proposed legislation the list of offences was indeed unacceptable. There were offences for municipal issues. There were outmoded, outdated criminal offences, minor crimes, et cetera. Many interested groups and many of my colleagues brought to the government's attention the inconsistency of having this whole list of criminal offences that had absolutely nothing to do with public transportation, nothing to do with security threats to our country, and nothing to do with serious violent offences, serious drug offences, and organized crime offences. The government took note and brought in appropriate amendments to the list of offences that would be covered under section 4.82.
The bill does not allow information sharing on individuals wanted on warrants for minor or possibly outdated offences. For example, it would not allow information to be shared on someone wanted for municipal corruption or for taking possession of drift timber. Those are just two examples of some of the original offences which were included on the list and have now been deleted because the government listened to the representations and the concerns raised by members of the House, interested community organizations, and other interested parties in the wider community.
The bill would allow the RCMP to notify local police in cases where a data match identifies a dangerous wanted criminal or terrorist so individuals could be apprehended before they harm someone else. The public would not expect any less from the RCMP. I would also like to stress that any passenger information that is collected by the RCMP or by CSIS under section 4.82 must be destroyed within seven days after it is provided by the air carrier unless that information is required for transportation or national security purposes.
Mr. Speaker, the legislative committee which you chaired on Bill C-17 regarded seven days as a reasonable length of time. Seven days would provide the RCMP and CSIS with the minimum amount of time they need to analyze passenger information access before planes actually depart. As for the information that is retained beyond the seven day period, section 4.82 would require the RCMP or CSIS to each conduct an annual review of information retained by designated officers. If continued retention were no longer reasonably required for transportation or national security purposes, it would have to be destroyed.
To ensure accountability and transparency the bill requires written records to be kept to justify retention and disclosure of any passenger information. This would enable review agencies, governing agencies, and civilian oversight agencies like the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the inspector general for CSIS or privacy commissioner, to readily examine records to determine compliance with the law.
I would like to emphasize that the government listened to several recommendations made to the legislative committee on Bill C-17. As a result of the government listening to these recommendations, Bill C-17 has been improved to include additional privacy safeguards. Based upon recommendations from committee members the government brought in a motion to amend section 4.82 in order to restrict urgent disclosures to only those persons who are in a position to take measures to respond and who need the information in order to do so.
Acting on a Canadian Bar Association recommendation the government brought in another motion to ensure that the destruction test used at the annual review is the same as the one required within seven days. That test would require the destruction of passenger information unless reasonably required for transportation or national security purposes. In the original manifestation of Bill C-17, that test for information that was retained past the seven day delay was not the same test. As a result of the Canadian Bar Association's recommendation the government has amended the bill in order to ensure that the same test is used. That test stipulates that the information would only be required for transportation or national security purposes.
In closing, the proposed data sharing scheme would provide a balanced approach that would achieve the goal of public safety while maintaining the privacy rights of individuals. Canadians want safe air travel and they want protection from terrorism. Canadians are entitled to expect that information collected under a scheme such as this one would be used effectively for their safety while at the same time respecting their privacy.
I am convinced that the government has taken into account concerns expressed about proposals in the previous legislation. The government has listened to others and believes that we have struck the right balance between public safety and respect for the privacy of individuals.