Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to respond to the remarks by the two hon. members who spoke before me. My Liberal friend spoke of piracy on the high seas, off Asia and on the world's seven seas.
I share his perspective; piracy is unacceptable. He could also have said something about the piracy of the employment insurance fund, which we have been denouncing for seven years.
Piracy is stealing someone else's property. In my opinion, piracy is not acceptable in any jurisdiction.
As for what my colleague from the Conservative Party of Canada said, I think he is partially right. Anyone can get access to a station, on condition that they pay for it.
The bill before us is designed to prevent this problem, the problem of people stealing signals that should not, normally, be coming into their houses, because they have not paid for them. If we open the door this that today, allowing anyone to pirate whatever they want, we are headed for trouble.
As lawmakers, it is our responsibility to ensure that what personally belongs to individuals remains their property.
If stealing signals or stealing from a store or from an employment insurance fund is considered acceptable these days, then there will be no limits anymore and we will lose control over society.
There are two memorable ads on signal theft. My colleague mentioned one earlier. It shows a young kid who steals from a store and is arrested by the police. The officers take him home to his parents. His father lectures him, and the son answers, “But, Dad, I am no different from you. You steal too. You steal satellite signals”. There is something that lawmakers can do to correct this situation.
There is also another, even darker, ad. There is a man hiding in a alley about to steal something. We watch him walk past an old woman carrying her purse, and we think she is going to get mugged. But he continues. He then passes a beautiful luxury car. We think he is going to steal the car, but no. In the end, he sits down in his chair and steals satellite signals.
We must correct this situation. The bill before us today addresses this problem. There are between 500,000 and 700,00 households that allegedly steal satellite signals. This means that broadcasters are losing revenues. Radio and television broadcasting and telecommunications are interrelated.
Artists are also victims. Everyone knows how to steal songs off the Internet using a CD burner. With what result? Stealing is on the rise, and there are artists whose creativity and talent goes unrecognized. Instead of selling one million CDs, they sell only 500,000, because 500,000 copies are being pirated.
This bill is justified, and it is extremely important. However, changes must be made to it, as it stands.
Clearly, all equipment used to reproduce these signals will be banned, unless an individual has an import certificate. The Minister of Industry will determine if such and such individual or company can import the type of signal or feed or equipment used to capture those signals.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of the Bloc Quebecois, the minister has a great deal of power with this bill. It is set out in such a way as to indicate that the minister will need to be convinced of the usefulness of the procedure, and that it is not illegal. This means a great deal of ministerial power.
This is not the first bill to give this power to a minister or a governor in council, that is the cabinet, and we find it is excessive power.
For a minister, it is even worse because the minister is the one who will make the decision. The factors would have to be clearly set out. The minister's decision would have to be based on a set of predetermined factors, without any partisanship or undue advantage to others, whether friends of the party or not.
In this government we have seen instances of people who have benefited from extraordinary advantages because of party connections. This makes us rather skeptical about this bill.
Then there is the whole matter of housekeeping measures, which we feel go a bit far. We have, moreover, objected to a number of bills in the past for the same reason, including the antiterrorism bill. In fact, you were the chair of that committee, Mr. Speaker. We voiced objections because we felt that people's rights and freedoms were in danger.
In the bill now before us, clause 5 is somewhat contradictory to section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. Yet clause 5 allows these inspectors to enter homes and search computers, or anything else. We feel that this is going too far.
We feel this is a good bill, but if no changes are made to it we will most certainly be bringing in amendments to ensure that it complies fully with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As it is worded at present, it does not.
We are, overall, in favour of the bill, but with some changes. We will be pleased to propose those changes as the various committees meet on it.