Mr. Speaker, as a lawyer, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh asks a very relevant question.
We have been asked to buy a pig in a poke. We have been asked to put in place the underlying principles and the framework of an agreement, the details of which we do not know. We would not buy a house without reading the fine print, but we have been asked to buy a pig in a poke and to trust the government that it would never enter into an arrangement that would be detrimental to the best interests of Canadians.
We have recent evidence, experience and empirical evidence from which to draw. There is the absurd situation of a do not fly list where a freely elected Canadian member of Parliament cannot get on an airplane in his own country because of a list being kept in Washington, DC. We have recent examples, like the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen subject to the overzealous trading of information between countries, which caused an atrocity in that regard.
We do not know the details of the agreements being entered into with other countries. We do know the details of the one agreement that has been released, and that is between the United States and the European Union. In that case, every time people travel, the right to information they will have is their credit card information, who they are travelling with, what hotel they are staying at, other booking information such as tours or rental cars and any medical condition they may have.
Personal credit card information and personal health records will now be in the hands of another nation. Canadians' sovereign right to privacy is being compromised and undermined by this legislation. It should be condemned. We should be unanimous in our condemnation of a foreign nation intruding in our Canadian national sovereignty and the absolute obligations of the government to protect the sovereign and fundamental freedoms of privacy.
We have a right to know what the government is doing. It does not have an absolute right to know what we are doing.