Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on a particular part of this legislation, in fact, on the absurdity of putting this legislation forward in the first place. As the member would know, the bill is being proposed by a government that very recently told Canadians they had to do away with the long-form census because it was far too intrusive: “We could not possibly ask Canadians how many bedrooms were in their homes.” How intrusive, how appalling that the Canadian government should know that about citizens.
Everyone in the country, except members of the Conservative Party, seem to appreciate how important census information is for social planning, for effective planning of all kinds of programs that affect average Canadian families. Yet, while the Conservatives have a problem collecting that information, they have absolutely no difficulty sharing the personal information of Canadian citizens, with not only the U.S. government, but frankly with governments all over the world, potentially including governments like Panama and Colombia.
If Canadians realized with whom their information was going to be shared, I am not sure they would not be protesting, right now, outside of this building. The reality is that the kind of information being shared is not just point of departure and point of arrival for any particular air flight, it includes things like credit card information. More troublesome than that, it includes personal medical information, which we would now be sharing at the drop of a dime, as soon as this legislation becomes law.
The Canadian government has done nothing to protect the personal information of Canadian citizens from being spread around. It is almost like the government wants to hit “reply all” and send it to any agency, any government, that might want this information. It is doing nothing to protect that information.
I find it passing strange that is being introduced by the government that is so unwilling to share its own information, government information, to which we, as members of Parliament, have a right. We saw that in the House this week. We could not get access to the costing of the government's justice bills. We could not get access to the projections of the cost of corporate tax cuts.
We could not even get a straight answer about what happened in committee on whether a certain minister inserted the word “not” into the submission on funding for KAIROS. That is an institution that we on this side of the House certainly fully support. We thought KAIROS should get funding from this government. The government is obfuscating what happened around that funding initiative, although I have to say the obfuscation is not particularly effective, since every Canadian seems to know about it. It has become an item in every single news outlet and media outlet all over the country.
The government is trying to protect itself from having to give out information about what it is doing, but it has no problem with widely disseminating information about its citizens.
I wonder if the member is at all troubled by that.