Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-9, which seeks to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act and to provide certain measures that relate to the security of the transportation system.
This bill was presented in the beginning as a way to protect Canadians. Many of the provisions within it may serve some purpose in that way. As such, we in the NDP have not really taken exception to many of the things within the bill.
Where we have trouble with the bill lies in the provisions under proposed section 5.2, having to do with transportation security clearances. That has been a focus of our attention to the bill.
We recognize that many of the other aspects within the bill are important and will continue to be developed over time through regulation, but where we saw this bill going was contrary to perhaps even the way the minister described it in the beginning. When the minister spoke to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities on February 24 of this year, he indicated that the problem in terms of transportation security clearances, one of the main purposes of the bill, lay with international trade with the United States.
In 2005, when the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act was put in place in the United States, it required commercial motor vehicle licensed operators in Canada and Mexico to go through a background check under the U.S. regulations before they were permitted to bring their goods into the United States.
The minister went on to describe that Canadian drivers are currently doing this, but what the government really wants to do is set up a system within Canada that can satisfy the U.S. requirements under this act. He said:
Canadians enjoy access to the American market through the FAST program, and this will continue. But it is essential that we have long-term solutions to guarantee access to important markets for Canadian manufacturers, producers, and shippers.
This is a bit of a smokescreen in terms of what the bill actually offers up under proposed section 5.2.
After detailed questioning in committee, the minister and his departmental officials indicated that they were going to put in place a bill that would expand security clearances to any Canadian who handled or transported dangerous goods. When I asked why this was going on, they said they did not want to limit this to international travel.
Quite clearly, the way the bill was presented by the minister and the way it is actually written are quite different things. In reality, that is what the minister and the department were looking for. They chose to present it in a certain fashion, which certainly made the work in committee more difficult and also perhaps brought us to the situation today where we have a bill that, as it stands, we in the NDP have difficulty supporting.
Why do we care whether transportation security clearances, as outlined in the United States, would be permitted to be used across the board in Canada? Let us look at who could be caught up by a law like this.
Remember that, in the United States, as witnesses testified in committee, many of the people transporting dangerous goods in the U.S. lost their ability through the licensing and security clearance process. They could be farmers who pick up loads of fertilizer, workers in warehouses who move pallets of car batteries, aboriginal people who buy ammunition and take it to their communities, or home heating fuel delivery people.
I know these perhaps seem extreme, but the bill would allow that to happen. Why would we want to have these privacies invaded? Where is the protection for the little guy who Conservative members always are saying they are defending?
I have a letter from the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers. It is very concerned with the contents of the bill and what it will do to its costs and ability to compete. As retailers, they are looking for compensation for the type of changes the bill will permit. What about those people in the transportation industry? What about the people who may lose their ability to operate in Canada as a result of this rather wide-ranging legislation?
At committee, we put forward amendments to limit the scope of the transportation security clearances to simply those instances in Canada where Canadians were engaged in international traffic of goods. Those were defeated, which gives us a great deal of difficulty in supporting the bill.
The International Longshore and Warehousemen's Union of Canada is battling against the privacy invasion the government wants under the Marine Transportation Security Act right now. The case is scheduled for hearing in the Federal Court of Appeal in June of this year. In its brief to the committee, the ILWU said:
The ILWU takes its members' privacy interests and job security very seriously and is consequently concerned about the ramifications of imposing unnecessary invasive background checks on Canadian workers employees.
The longshore workers are particularly concerned about section 5.2(1) of the bill, which states that no worker can handle the transfer of dangerous goods unless the person has a transportation security clearance. This means, if we follow the American model, that the workers will be asked invasive questions about a series of irrelevant personal matters such as credit history, past travel, employment, education and who they associate with, along with their criminal record checks and a number of other things that may or may not be appropriate. They will also be asked to provide information about other family members. This is what we are opening the door to for Canadian workers right across the country in the handling of dangerous goods.
Workers who refuse to answer these invasions of privacy could lose their employment. Then what happens to those who fail their security clearance due to something as simple as a minor criminal conviction from their teenage years? They lose their job.
There is also concern about this invasion of privacy and with whom the information will be shared. This is a great concern to all of us in the House, following many of the things we have had in place since the terrorist incidents of 2001. The longshore workers found that their private information could be shared by CSIS, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, with foreign governments.
We also put forward an amendment that would limit the ability of the government to share any information collected under the transportation security clearances with another government. The amendment was put forward but it was voted down in committee as well.
Once again, our attempts to protect the rights of Canadians in a reasonable and logical sense, not going too far ahead and keeping within the bounds of what is required for security, were turned down.
We know the government has a problem with Canadians defending their human rights. Just look at what it did, under the guise of a budget implementation bill, with pay equity. It stripped women of their equality rights, their ability to deal with important questions like that as the result of a current economic crisis. Imagine what the results of a major security breach in the country could be to Canadian workers? If any kind of security breach occurred, what kind of draconian measures could the minister put forward with the kinds of powers he would be given under the bill?
Therefore, we tried very carefully, after those two amendments failed, to put forward an amendment which would deal precisely with the question of human rights and that any of the regulations that would be struck by the bill and by the minister on the issue of transportation security clearance, which are not complex issues, would come back to a parliamentary committee for examination. This would give us at least an opportunity in Parliament to understand what the laws were doing to the essential rights of Canadians.
The bill does not set out any restrictions on the minister or set out any criteria to determine who will or will not be granted a security clearance.
Transport Canada says that the assessment of whether to grant or refuse a security clearance is based on the global evaluation obtained by the background checks. This means Canadians will lose their jobs based on a subjective process, a process which may never get reviewed by Parliament without the proper amendments.
The Liberal amendment, which we supported, would simply allow, with the support of a committee, us to bring forward regulations for review. It did not ensure that the regulations that would impact the human rights of Canadians would be in front of the committee. It allowed it to happen with the majority support of a committee. Majority support does not always exist in a minority government, where the opportunity at the committee level for the opposition to look at what the government is doing with a critical eye, particularly when the majority on the committee can simply refuse to do so.
In the likelihood of a situation occurring, which would impact on the rights of Canadians under a majority government, the committee likely would not get a chance to review those things. That is kind of the fatal flaw in the Liberal amendment. Our amendment would have ensured that situation did not occur.
Therefore, the Liberals, with their toothless amendment, have satisfied their angst about some of the issues we raised in committee. I felt there was some angst there, but once again the half measure proposed by the Liberals is all we really have in the bill.
The issue of dangerous goods and their safety and handling is very important. We do not deny that. We do not deny that many of the provisions within the bill are correct and they are things that can be worked out between government and businesses. However, the fundamental rights of Canadians to privacy and the respect for their human rights are things that we cannot work out. They are fundamental and they have to be respected.
Our difficulty with the bill is that we have been unable to adjust it so it meets the nod test over a period of time that the bill has correctly outlined and that will work for Canadians. While it will ensure that the present government perhaps will respect the rights of Canadians, it does not give any assurances that the next minister of another government would do the same thing.
That is our problem. We want to ensure that legislation not only fits with this Parliament, not only fits with this government but fits in the future and will ensure that basic rights of Canadians are protected. That is why we are standing today to voice our opposition to what has happened with the bill. I would be open still at this stage to see the bill amended to provide slightly better legislation, and I had talks with the parliamentary secretary about that.
We would encourage the government to simply look carefully at the legislation right now. If it can offer up a solution to some of our issues, we would be very happy to support it in its efforts and bring unanimity to the bill to ensure it serves Canadians well. If the government chooses not to do so, then we are stuck in the position we are today.
Our job is not only to keep Canadians safe, to protect them from harm, but also to protect their rights. There is always a balance that we have to strike. It is difficult. We cannot say that legislation is simple or that the way we outline our rights is simple. The Bill of Rights was only established in Canada in 1982. Much of the legislation we deal with has not got to the point where it matches up to our Bill of Rights, so why would we put forward legislation now that still does not accomplish what was laid out in the 1982 Bill of Rights? Why would we not work together to come up with the solutions that could follow an orderly and good system of governance?
When we talk about providing transportation security clearance across the country to workers, we have another approach within the bill. We did not have to go that way. Because we are asking companies that handle dangerous goods to come up with transportation security plans, we have the opportunity to work them. We can work with them in a selective fashion to ensure that their transportation security planning covers the employees they use to move those goods.
We do not need to have a nation-wide program of transportation security clearance in order to accomplish what we want to accomplish with the bill. Already within the bill there is the option to do it another way.
Those are things we need to take into account when we look at this type of legislation. It has been on the books since 2002. The sense of urgency to get it in place now is simply theatrics. We need to ensure we get legislation right for a change.