Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to finally have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-42, which amends the Aeronautics Act to allow airlines to send personal information of passengers to foreign security services.
Let me begin by reminding members in this House that the right to privacy is a fundamental cornerstone of any western democracy. Equally important is the right of the people to know what their government is doing so that the government can be held accountable by a knowledgeable electorate.
Bill C-42 turns that accountability on its head. It suggests that the Government of Canada has the right to know what its people are doing at all times and that it even has the right to share that information with foreign governments, but it reserves for itself the right to be the most secretive government in Canadian history with its citizens continually being denied access to information. It is a government run amok, and frankly in this instance, it is dangerous.
The law before us today purports to hand over to foreign security agencies undisclosed information about Canadian passengers who may not even be landing on their soil. As my NDP colleague, the member for Welland, pointed out earlier in this debate, this is really a fundamental question about the rights of Canadians to privacy as opposed to the decision of a foreign government, be it the United States, Colombia or even Panama, that wishes to have the personal information of anyone in our country who chooses to travel by air. He said:
I find it quite astounding that somehow we think that giving this information up is okay and we can trot out security as being the justification for giving up our private information.
Honestly, where is it going to stop? Is it just our names, the hotel we are going to, the car we are renting and our destination? The government is trying to play Canadians for fools.
We all know that security agencies, including our security agencies, build profiles of those they deem of interest. We are also talking about the security agencies of other countries that do not share our laws and with whom we have had a serious concern about violating the rights of Canadian citizens. Even our own security agencies have behaved badly. We can try to remedy our own institutions, but how can we remedy those of other countries?
Dr. Mark Salter, an associate professor at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, had this to say:
Governments want this information so that they can build profiles of not just risky passengers but safe passengers as well.
He went on to say:
What worries me about this particular legislation is that the data not only go to the destination country but may go to all states that the airline might fly over.
That, I feel, is the significant change this legislation brings and that worries me a great deal. He is right when he says:
I think it is dangerous to sacrifice our privacy and our freedoms for the dream of zero risk or perfect security.
This particular measure does not provide additional security for the aviation sector and it places an additional burden on Canadian citizens who are flying.
I noted earlier that this hypocritical secretive government is so eager to divulge its citizens' private information to other governments, yet it will not disclose these agreements to its own citizens.
Fortunately, we have some understanding of a similar information transfer agreement between the European Union and the United States. I want to share some of the contents of that agreement.
The information forwarded will be the passenger name record, which is the file a travel agent creates when a vacation is booked. The passenger name record could include credit card information, the person a citizen is travelling with, hotel details, and other booking information such as tours or rental cars. Astoundingly, that agreement also provides details on any serious medical condition of the passenger.
The information collected can be retained by the United States for up to 40 years. This information may be forwarded to the security service of a third nation without the consent or notification of the other signatory. The United States may unilaterally amend the agreement as long as it advises the EU of the change. No person may know what information is being held about him or her by the United States and may not correct that information even if there are errors.
I want to come back to this last point, because as I noted earlier, we have no control over agencies of other countries. Who in their right mind would agree to allow a foreign country to hold private information about a Canadian citizen? Who in their right mind would allow that country to hold wrong information about a Canadian citizen for up to 40 years? Who would accept that there is no recourse to correct this wrong information about a Canadian citizen? Well, none other than the Conservative government. That is who. The bill that is before us today would essentially allow data mining of Canadians' personal information by foreign security services.
Dominique Peschard, president of Ligue des droits et libertés, gave two examples of the consequences of ending up on the U.S. secure flight program. I quote:
My first example is that of Hernando Calvo Ospina, a Colombian journalist living in France. On April 18, 2009, Mr. Ospina was travelling to Nicaragua via Mexico for Le Monde diplomatique. Five hours before Air France's Paris-Mexico flight was scheduled to land, it was diverted to Fort-de-France, Martinique. The captain informed the passengers that the United States had not authorized the aircraft to fly over the country because one of the passengers constituted a threat to national security. Unknown to him, Mr. Ospina was on the United States' no-fly list. Mr. Ospina is a regular contributor to Le Monde diplomatique and has written a number of articles criticizing U.S. foreign policy and the CIA's role in Latin America. Mr. Ospina's prohibition has nothing to do with air security. The flight's co-pilot even went to see Mr. Ospina during the flight to verify that he was indeed the person targeted by the prohibition. In Mexico, Mr. Ospina was briefly questioned by Mexican authorities before taking another flight to Managua.
Another case I would like to discuss is that of Paul-Émile Dupret, a Belgian citizen who is an analyst for the European Parliament and who has conducted a campaign opposing the transfer of European travellers' personal information to American authorities. As his flight was on route to Mexico—his final destination was Sao Paulo, where he was travelling to attend the World Social Forum—the aircraft had to circumvent the United States because U.S. authorities were not authorizing Mr. Dupret to fly through American airspace.
These individuals clearly do not represent a threat to air security, and individuals like Mr. Ospina and Mr. Dupret could very well have been Canadian journalists or public servants travelling to Latin America.
It is an illusion to think that the information provided under the Secure Flight program will be protected, that it will be destroyed or that it could be corrected in the event of any error. On the contrary, that information will be added to the data bases of the U.S. intelligence agencies and will be compared with information held by all the agencies I've just mentioned to determine whether such and such a person should be prohibited from flying over the United States or even placed on another list.
Justice O'Connor's investigation of the Arar affair has shown to what extent the ill-considered sharing of information can have harmful effects. Four years after Judge O'Connor's report was tabled, we are still waiting for implementation of his recommendations for the introduction of a mechanism for monitoring security intelligence activities in Canada.
We know that Canada is being bullied by the U.S. and that unless this bill passes, the United States could close its airspace to Canadian aircraft.
I have stressed before, and so have my colleagues, that Canada and the United States have a long history of co-operation in politics, economics, defence, security and culture. We know that our closest neighbour and ally, the United States, cannot simply cut off its airspace to our flights and passengers. That simply is not realistic.
The government could do better for its citizens, but it is not. We on this side of the House are dumbfounded why the government, which bills itself as the great defender of our privacy, would so readily abandon our rights. The Conservative government's sponsorship of Bill C-42 is truly shameful.
I want to stress that this debate is not an ideological one. Its significance is due to the extent to which the federal government would go in relinquishing our rights without any disclosure to its citizens. This bill is truly reprehensible.
Members need not take my word for it. Here is what others have said about this legislation.
Roch Tassé, the national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, states:
After running a risk assessment for each passenger, Homeland Security in turn issues a “boarding pass result” back to the airline. The “result” instructs the airline to issue a boarding pass, deny permission to travel, or issue an enhanced screening requirement.
These regulations give the U.S. access to a whole subset of information on air passengers who are not entering the U.S. but merely overflying its airspace. Furthermore, this information can be shared among at least 16 U.S. agencies and with foreign governments. The program gives the government of a foreign country a de facto right to decide who gets to travel to and from Canada since the vast majority of Canadian flights to and from Europe, the Caribbean and South America overfly American airspace.
Maher Arar is on the U.S. no-fly list. Several other cases in which Canadians have been denied boarding by the U.S. even for domestic flights in Canada have also been reported. Those cases include several individuals who have been deemed by Canadian courts and commissions of inquiry not to pose a risk to the national security of Canada. They include Abdullah Almalki, Adil Charkaoui, and others.
If Bill C-42 is adopted, even the rulings of Canadian courts would not be able to be enforced.
Mr. Edward Hasbrouck of the Liberty Coalition, a U.S.-based civil liberties group stated:
You should be very clear that the enactment of Bill C-42 would grant to the U.S. government de facto veto power over the ability of virtually anyone to obtain sanctuary in Canada, since in most cases it's impossible to get to Canada to make a claim for political asylum or refugee status without overflying the U.S., and that power of the U.S. would be exercised at the worst possible point: while a refugee is still on the soil of and subject to the persecution of the regime they are trying to flee.
There are measures that could be taken to balance the needs for enhanced security with protection of our citizens' privacy. In 1998 the European Commission put forward six key principles which must be included. They are worth repeating.
First is the purpose limitation principle. Private personal information should be processed for a specific purpose and subsequently used for further communication only insofar as this is not incompatible with the purpose of the transfer.
Second is the information quality and proportionality principle. Information should be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date. Further, the information should be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which it is transferred or further processed.
Third is the transparency principle. Individuals should be provided with information as to the purpose of the processing and the identity of those in control of the information in the third country and other information insofar as this is necessary to ensure fairness.
Fourth is the security principle. Technical and organizational security measures should be taken by those in control of the information that are appropriate to the risks presented by the processing. Any person acting under the authority of those in control of the information, including a processor, must not process information, except on instructions from the controller.
Fifth is the right to access rectification and opposition principle. The subject of the information should have the right to obtain a copy of all the information relating to him or her that is processed and a right to rectification of the information which is inaccurate. Furthermore, in some situations, the person should be able to object to the processing of the data relating to him or her.
Sixth is the restriction on onward transfers principle. Transfers of the personal information to further countries should be permitted only where the second country is also subject to the same rules as the country originally receiving the information.
Bill C-42 does not include any of these protections. Under this bill, it would be open season on the private information of Canadians. This bill is an affront to our rights as Canadian citizens.
In conclusion, I want to end with another quote from Dr. Mark Salter. He states:
Canadians' data should not be hostage to the most paranoid regime that an air company chooses to fly over. The proposed change to these data protection regulations to include overflight states dramatically increases the vulnerability of Canadians' data while offering no means of redress or appeal.
We can assume that citizens know when they travel to a particular country that they are consenting. They know they go through a visa process and a border process, so they know their data is being evaluated. However, Canadians would have no way of knowing which of the countries they flew over would get their data, what would happen to their data, or how to appeal the use of that data. I think this is a dangerous change that poses clear costs but offers no benefit.
Clearly, this is a bill that should not be passed by this House. It embodies all that is wrong with overzealous governments that are prepared to sacrifice their citizens' privacy in the name of unspecified threats.
To my Conservative colleagues, I would say this. Just this past summer, the government did away with the long form census. The justification given was that it was an intolerable invasion of Canadians' privacy. It was deemed an intolerable invasion of privacy to ask how many people are living in one's home.
The fact that census information is vital to making evidence-based decisions so that we can design programs that are appropriate and adequate to meet the needs and demands of the population did not matter.
We were simply asked to accept that no end could justify the means of such an onerous invasion of privacy. Yet here we are less than a year later and the government members are suffering from a case of collective amnesia. Privacy no longer matters.
They now just want all of us to accept that somehow it is okay for the government of the United States to know not only that someone is flying on a particular day but also to know the person's credit card information, with whom the person is travelling, the hotel he or she will be staying at, other booking information such as tours or rental cars, and the person's personal health information, one of the things that nobody has the right to know except that person and his or her doctor.
I cannot square that circle and Canadians cannot square that circle, either. However, what is absolutely clear is that they deserve better from their government. By voting against Bill C-42, we are sending the government back to the drawing board.
As I said at the outset, the right to privacy is a fundamental cornerstone of our democratic society and we will not condone or support the data mining of Canadians' personal information by foreign security services.