Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to contribute to this debate today. I listened to the parliamentary secretary speak to the bill. He left out a few interesting facts.
Bill C-12, which was the government's bill, was introduced in 2007. Five long years have passed since then, and the government has not kept its commitment to changing PIPEDA and making the necessary changes. Twice the bill has fallen off the order paper. The government has not been taking PIPEDA very seriously at all.
I commend the member for bringing forward the bill. It would deal with two small measures. First, it talks about reporting the loss or disclosure of unauthorized access to personal information. Where a reasonable person would conclude that there exists some possible risk, the commissioner would have to be notified. The other part would give the commissioner some actual teeth to dig in and fine when personal information is lost.
We, as a government, are falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to protecting people's privacy.
I find it comical that the parliamentary secretary says that PIPEDA has kept its relevance. I am going to quote Commissioner Stoddart with respect to its relevance. She stated:
Back in 2001, when PIPEDA began coming into force, – and even when I became Privacy Commissioner in 2003 – there was no Facebook, no Twitter and no Google Street View. Phones weren't smart. “The cloud” was something that threatened picnic plans. And predictive analytics was largely the domain of tarot card readers.
A lot has changed since 2001, and our PIPEDA legislation just has not kept up.
This is a good start. It would give the commissioner more enforcement powers. Currently the commissioner can only publicly shame a company for breaching PIPEDA. It is time for the commissioner to have the strong enforcement powers needed. Some of that may have been contained in the government's bill, Bill C-12, but that bill has not seen the light of day.
Bill C-475 is with us now. It is something we need to refer to committee. We need to update our privacy laws, and we will be supporting the bill.