Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up some of the comments made by the member for Trinity—Spadina in her speech.
We are seeing a spectacle here of Liberals supporting this bill without asking much in the way of questions. The Bloc is supporting this bill. Even the Conservative backbench is being very quiet and not asking questions that I would think some of their base supporters would want asked.
I recall listening to some of the criticisms made by the member for Eglinton—Lawrence a few months ago. One of his criticisms was that the bill was brought in on the last day of the June sitting. In fact, the member for Markham—Unionville said that he had only seen the bill two days before that. Without really having much time to examine the issues, he said he was okay with it and that he would be prepared to send it to committee.
Why is there a lack of interest in pursuing questions on this particular bill? We could be asking questions about many issues. I have asked the government privately about why it did not seek some sort of reciprocity.
The government has been negotiating free trade agreements in many sectors, and recently we met with a delegation from Trinidad, a country that is negotiating a free trade deal with Canada through the CARICOM organization. This deal has been in process for over a year. All of these issues are being dealt with in these negotiations, and have been since 2009. They are in their second round of negotiations. The issues are on the table and people are debating them and asking questions. There is no secrecy. In this case, on the other hand, it seems very much to be a rushed and secretive process.
I asked the government members why they would not ask for reciprocity. Given that 100 Canadian flights fly over the United States, as I am told, and 2,000 flights cross North America, why would our negotiators not simply say that if we are going to provide the information to the United States on the 100 flights, then we would want information on the 2,000 flights, and then see how the Americans would like that? Then we might watch the Americans retrenching and maybe backing off.
A government member told me that the U.S. would give us the information, but he asked what would we do with it when we get it. It would cost us, I believe he said, a half billion dollars for the computer system we would have to develop to process all of the information.
It sounds to me as though the Americans would have liked us to keep the information for them. However, we would have had to develop that computer system and the government does not want to do that. So the Conservative government says, “Well, let the Americans do it. They want the information, so they can pay for the computer system and we will give them the information, regardless of what in fact is going to happen to that information”. It is just an unbelievable approach.
I never heard of a government that does things like this. I would have thought the government would dig in its heels at the beginning, defend Canadians' interests and demand reciprocity. I would have thought they would demand that information regardless of what they would do with it, and then see what the Americans would do. I guarantee that the Americans would back off. Just to prove my point, that is exactly what the Americans did.
There was a big issue here, a discussion about what to do about flights that cross American airspace when going from one point in Canada to another point in Canada. Pretty well any flight out of Toronto to my home city of Winnipeg will cross American airspace.
If the Americans had wanted to be consistent, they would have demanded that this information be provided as well. What they did was to provide an exemption instead, which proves that they can be flexible if we dig in our heels and have some backbone in the negotiations. We were able to negotiate that if an airplane flies over American territory on the way from Toronto to Winnipeg or Toronto to Vancouver, or between any two Canadian points, it will be exempt from this list.
Now the question really is how much of this is about security? I say this because we can give all sorts of examples where if one flies from one Canadian city to another Canadian city but goes through American airspace, one can go over some very sensitive territory in doing so. Planes can fly over or be close to major American cities, major American landmarks and major American installations. Thus the argument that somehow there is difference between flights going across United States territory completely and not landing versus flights that are going between two points within Canada and crossing American territory, I believe, runs counter to the fact there is an exemption, which indicates this not as big an issue as we are being led to believe it is.
Then we have the drop-dead date of December 31. The member for Winnipeg Centre remembers that date. On December 31, the whole sky was going to fall if we did not get this thing passed. The government brought this bill in the last sitting day of June and said, “Here is the legislation and if we do not pass it by the end of the year, there are going to be no more flights over American territory.”
Well, I was just on one yesterday. It never seemed to end, by the way. It took me two days to get back from Trinidad. A five-hour flight ended up taking two days, but that is a story for another day.
The fact of the matter is that this agreement was supposed to be in place or the flights were going to stop. It is almost March 1. It is the last day of February, and the flights are flying just fine. As a matter of fact, we may be in an election in the next two weeks, and in a minority government the legislation may never see the light of day. Even if it gets through the House in a minority government, it still has to make it through the Senate. There could be an election before that happens.
So much for those flights not being able to go over the United States. Members need to start asking the question, what is this really all about? And why are there no questions coming from the Conservative backbenchers? Why are there no questions coming from the Liberals? Why are they so quiet?
Why are my friends in the Bloc so quiet? On two occasions when I have been here, the Bloc critic talked about how important this was and how this affected Air Transat. That was the Bloc's whole reason for supporting the bill. The entire issue about how the information could be misused and where it was going to end up and whether it could end up in North Korea, somehow that did not seem to faze them one bit, as long as Air Transat was happy.
The member indicated that Air Transat could not get its Airbus A-319s and 320s landed in Montreal because they were big planes that took such a wide berth in circling that they inadvertently circled over American territory. If we did not have the agreement, somehow they could not fly over American territory any more and poor Air Transat would be shut down. They would not be able to have any more flights from western Canada because, once again, they would have to fly around all the corners of the United States. They are right about that, and it would add to the costs and delays for the travellers.
However, the reality is that we have to deal with what is before us. The fact of the matter is that the deadlines have passed, the flights are still going and we have an exemption already. There are just too many questions about this whole issue to warrant quick passage of this kind of legislation.
Professor Mark Salter of the University of Ottawa talked about what I call best practices. In government, business, accounting, and IT issues, we try to pick best practices that have been agreed to by professionals worldwide. Canada already has a very high standard when it comes to the use of the PNR information, all the information the airline keeps in its data bank on a person. When people look at whatever they have booked with an airline, there will be a passenger record consisting numbers and letters. That is where the information about a person is located. The PNR information is what is being debated here. That information may end up in places the passenger may not want it to be.
We have a high global standard. We support that high global standard because we are signatories to the Canada-EU agreement relating to PNR matters. On the one hand we already agree and live with PNR issues that are acceptable to the European Union that best practices say is the way to go. This agreement is praised by Canadian and European data protection authorities for a number of reasons. What are those reasons? The member for Winnipeg Centre will be very pleased to hear this. There are time periods for the disposal of data. It is not 40 years and it is not seven days. There is a very specific period that puts a time limit on the disposal of data. It limits, in particular, the individualization of the data. That is what we are really concerned about.
The information is filtered. It is rendered anonymous. It allows the security services to build up a profile. That is what they want. If that is true and they claim they want to deal with profiles, they can build up profiles, but they do not need to attach them to individuals. That is what our biggest objection is to this type of activity. This agreement is a global standard for international treaties on PNR agreements.
The question is why would the government negotiators who are negotiating with the Americans not say to use that section. Why would the government's negotiators not say that there is wording and best practices in the PNR agreement with the European Union? Why not use that section? If it is considered a gold standard and everybody accepts it, why would we not make that argument? Why would we not say to the Americans that if they really believe they are not going to use the information for purposes we do not want it used for, why do they not simply live up to what is considered a gold standard? The wording could be cut and pasted. It is something that has been in agreements for years, something that even the Americans would probably agree to. They obviously did not want to do that or the government did not care to push that point.