Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act. This act seeks to create an exception from the application of another statute, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, for operators of aircraft.
In our opinion, this bill should be defeated, as it is nothing more than data mining by foreign security services, primarily of the United States. It is an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of Canadians. This invasion of privacy is backed up with the threat that U.S. airspace will be closed to Canadian aircraft unless this bill is passed.
Currently, the Aeronautics Act exempts airlines from PIPEDA's restrictions on disclosing personal information without consent when the laws of a foreign country require disclosure of information about anyone onboard a flight landing there. Accordingly, passenger information for any Canadian flight that will land in a foreign state, whether or not the flight originates in Canada, can be disclosed to a foreign government without restriction by the air carrier. Such disclosure would not require the consent of the passengers or the triggering of normal exceptions in PIPEDA.
Bill C-42 amends this section to expand its ambit. It would now apply not only with respect to foreign states in which the flight is landing, but also to any foreign states the flight would travel over. Accordingly, whether or not the foreign state that a flight lands in requires the disclosure of any personal information, an air carrier, under this bill, would be able to provide disclosure without consent if the laws of a foreign state on the flight path required it.
The U.S. secure flight program already has Canadian airlines passing on passenger information, including full names, date of birth, gender and, if available, passport numbers and itineraries to the U.S. government 72 hours prior to departure of the flights scheduled to land there.
Now the U.S. government is attempting to expand this approach by making the program international through the implementation of mandatory reporting requirements, which would see the disclosure of sensitive personal information on all flights passing through designated U.S. airspace. Therefore, Bill C-42 is an attempt to placate these American security concerns related to foreign individuals flying over United States airspace.
Let me make this clear. It means that under the new provisions of Bill C-42, Canadian citizens would be subject to the disclosure of their personal information on all flights passing over the U.S. on the way from Canada to a third country, such as a planeload of Canadians heading to Mexico, Cuba or Jamaica. I could rhyme off many places that Canadians fly to in the winter months.
Moreover, according to Roch Tassé of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group:
The Americans will have a veto on every passenger that gets on a plane in Canada, even if they are not going to set foot on American soil.
Mr. Tassé added:
What will happen if Canada invites the ambassador from a country such as Cuba?
Although the government has apparently negotiated an exemption for domestic Canadian flights that enter U.S. airspace, the expanded disclosure of the personal information of citizens to foreign governments is troubling, especially considering that the creation and maintenance of the U.S. no-fly list has been described overwhelmingly as a disaster.
For instance, reports have indicated that children and even infants have been mistakenly included on the no-fly list. Of course, the most famous case is that of the late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, who was declared a terrorist due to incorrect information being included on the no-fly list. In Canada, the Arar case should serve as a warning as to how the sharing of incorrect data can lead to horrifying results.
With this in mind, how are Canadians going to be assured that their personal information will be kept confidential?
Furthermore, how are Canadians going to be assured that this information will be used in the prescribed manner?
Although there appears to be an agreement in place with the U.S. stipulating that any information collected that is unrelated to terrorism will be erased after seven days, what assurances do we have that these measures will be taken in a timely and efficient manner? If the maintenance of the no-fly list is any indication, there is a significant chance of the confidential personal information of Canadians being mismanaged.
That is the truly worrying issue here. This information has the potential of being held for years and being used for purposes other than what it was first provided for.
The government will tell Canadians that it is taking steps to ensure that the information handed over will only be kept for a few days. The reality is that once this information is handed over, we will have no control over it. The only way that we can ensure that the privacy of Canadians is protected is to stop this information grab by the U.S. and other countries. We must strongly assert our conviction that although security is a primary concern when regulating the aviation industry and those who have access to flights, this does not mean that security concerns trump the privacy rights of Canadians.
The New Democrats understand the need to balance privacy and security concerns in order to protect individuals from security threats while ensuring that individual liberties are not infringed in the process. However, the broadening in scope of the disclosure of personal information fails to properly meet this balance.
Why should Canadians believe that this expansion of information sharing with foreign governments is in the best interests of Canada and Canadians, especially considering the mismanagement of the collected information that has been prevalent under the U.S. no-fly list?
What will Canadians get in exchange for this gross violation of their privacy? Not much. They may get a slightly shorter waiting time to board an aircraft. However, there will also be an increased risk that their confidential personal information will be mismanaged, which, in the past, has often been the reality.
Why is the government willing to engage in the collection and dissemination of personal information in this instance when it was more than willing to dismantle the mandatory long form census on the basis of its supposedly intrusive collection of personal information?
The reality gap posed by the government needs to be exposed. Why are there grossly different standards for the collection and dissemination of personal information? The government cannot have its cake and eat it too in this case. Either it agrees with the collection and dissemination of confidential personal information or it does not. Which is it?
I would like to quote my colleague from the Western Arctic, our critic for transport and infrastructure, who stated:
On the face of it, this bill seems pretty simple. It seems it is just changing a couple of lines in the Aeronautics Act. However, this bill has many more ramifications. What we have seen from the government is a failure to address the ramifications prior to putting the bill forward....
Canadians will give up their information, but they will give up more than their information....
We heard testimony about the passenger name record. Most of the information accessible to Canadians will be transferred. It will not simply be names and passport numbers and dates of birth; we will be giving the United States the opportunity to examine the full passenger name record. This is a very serious business, because it brings in much more information. We have heard many examples in the media over the past months of individuals whose information has been used in a manner that has caused them to have difficulty when trying to enter the United States. We have set up a system that can create much discord among passengers who are travelling over the United States.
In August 2007 the European Commission released an opinion on the EU and U.S. agreement for the processing and transferring of personal information by air carriers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The opinion compared the 2007 agreement with others. The opinion found that the agreement's safeguards for private information were weaker than in other types of agreements and, specifically, that the amount of information transferred was increasing and that the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, might use sensitive information that had been excluded by previous agreements. It also found that the transfer of information to foreign agencies was made easier and was no longer subject to the previous protection safeguards. Information would be kept for at least 15 years in some cases. In other cases, it was found that information was kept for 40 years.
This opinion also found that the new agreement contained an increased number of exemptions from the safeguarding and protecting of personal information, safeguards that could be waived at the discretion of the United States. The European commission stated, “—the new agreement does not strike the right balance to uphold the fundamental rights of citizens as regards data protection”.
As I mentioned earlier, Roch Tassé of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group has said, “The Americans will have a veto on every passenger that gets on a plane in Canada, even if they are not going to set foot—” on any state or any part of the United States.
The Air Transport Association of Canada, ATAC, made its grievances known to the American Department of Homeland Security last December. Its critique was that the submission of Canadian passenger details by Canadian airlines violated Canada's laws on the protection of personal information and electronic documentation, as well as the aeronautics laws.
With the passage of Bill C-42, the handing over of this private information will no longer violate Canadian law. The only way to ensure that we can protect Canadians' personal information is to stop this information grab by the United States.
It is the opinion of New Democrats that this bill should be defeated, as it is nothing more than data mining by security services, primarily of the United States, and is an unwarranted invasion of Canadians' privacy. This invasion of privacy is backed up with the threat that U.S. airspace will be closed to Canadians who want to travel abroad by simply passing over, not going into, the United States.