Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise to speak to Bill S-4 this afternoon.
It is an important piece of legislation, as it at least attempts to deal with an issue that many Canadians are quite concerned about. They see the merit of the government introducing legislation on how Canadians can be protected. However, there is also a great deal of concern about the manner in which the Conservative government, as it has in the past, appears to be attempting to overstep concerns related to privacy and protecting the privacy of Canadians.
We have before us Bill S-4 this afternoon. It attempts to deal with and expand warrantless access to subscribers' data. This is an issue which can no doubt be exceptionally controversial. It is something that needs to have more consultation and work with the different stakeholders so that we do not make mistakes.
As suggested in the bill's title, this bill has come from the Senate. There were concerns upon its departure from the Senate and entry into the House regarding the constitutionality of the legislation. I have found that quite often the government will bring legislation into the House in anticipation that it will ultimately pass, yet a great deal of concern has been expressed regarding the degree to which it would be in compliance with Canada's Constitution, the Charter of Rights, and so forth.
Time and time again, I have heard it suggested, and I have suggested it myself, that the government needs to be more forthright in providing information which clearly shows that the legislation it is bringing forward would pass our laws. More often than not, we do not receive the legal opinions from the department giving clear indication that the legislation being debated is in fact constitutional and will pass the Supreme Court. That is important to note, for the simple reason that when the House of Commons passes legislation and it gets challenged, it costs literally millions of dollars, especially if the government has done it wrong.
The idea of seeing Bill S-4 go to the committee is something we are quite comfortable with. Going through the summary of the bill gives us the sense of the scope we are dealing with. The act would amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to do a litany of things. It covers quite a broad area. We have expressed a great deal of concern about some of it to the Liberal Party critic.
The primary concern we have is ensuring that the privacy of Canadians is being respected. Checks need to be put into place to ensure that there is accountability.
Let me give members a couple of very specific examples of what the legislation is proposing. This comes from the summary of the bill itself. It would “permit the disclosure of personal information without the knowledge or consent of an individual for the purposes of...”
Here it lists some very specific things. These are:
(i) identifying an injured, ill or deceased individual and communicating with their next of kin,
(ii) preventing, detecting or suppressing fraud, or
(iii) protecting victims of financial abuse;
As I said, there are a litany of things. One that really caught my eye and that I think is a very strong positive is related to the Privacy Commissioner. The bill says, “modify the information that the Privacy Commissioner may make it public if he or she considers that it is in the public interest to do so”.
We have seen an expansion of the role, if I can put it that way, of the Privacy Commissioner, and giving more authority to him or her. Through the legislation, we are also seeing more penalties being brought in.
This is not only the first but the second piece of legislation over the last number of months dealing with privacy. It was not that long ago that I was speaking to Bill C-13, the protecting Canadians from online crime act. It deals with cyberbullying. Canadians have little tolerance for cyberbullying and the types of things that take place.
Bill C-13 focuses a great deal of attention on the distribution of pictures without consent onto the Internet. We had some difficulty with Bill C-13, as we do with Bill S-4, but we ultimately ended up supporting the legislation because we recognized how important it was to stop cyberbullying. There were concerns with that legislation just like there are concerns with this particular piece of legislation.
We would like the government to provide more answers and be a bit more transparent about what it hopes to achieve with this legislation. We call upon the government to do just that in anticipation of the bill going to committee where it will be changed in order to provide some comfort to Canadians with respect to their privacy. Privacy is an issue that the Liberal Party takes seriously. Our party critic has had the opportunity to express many of our concerns with regard to it.
Bill S-4 would allow for warrantless requests of companies. Telecom companies and service providers could be approached in order to access personal information.
Over the last decade we have seen an explosion of technology in the computer and Internet areas. Who would have thought 15 or 20 years ago that we would be where we are today? In many ways we are playing catch-up in terms of trying to bring forward legislation in order to protect Canadians. Canadians have great access to the Internet as a whole. Many things are done through the Internet and unfortunately, at times, people are exploited, so we need bills such as Bill S-4 to deal with that.
Today we are talking about corporations getting personal information about people living in Canada who ultimately go to a particular telecom provider. That means company x could request specific information from a telecom provider about a particular customer who is being serviced by that provider. All of us should be concerned about that. All of us should want to do what we can to ensure that the privacy of Canadians is respected and that there are checks in place to ensure no abuse is taking place.
What we are talking about are warrantless requests. People would be surprised to know that in 2011, almost 800,000 warrantless requests by telecom companies were documented. People would be amazed to know the amount of information that leaves Canada through the Internet via, for example, the United States and ultimately comes back into Canada. The U.S. national security agency no doubt has access to a lot of Canadians' personal information.
At the end of the day, the bottom line is that the government has a responsibility to provide assurances to Canadians that their right to privacy is being protected. This is the greatest concern I have as the bill continues to go forward.
The challenge is to ask the government to provide the necessary amendments that would protect and provide assurances to Canadians that their privacy would in fact be protected. I am very concerned that private corporations, on a whim, could say a copyright has been infringed, or there is a perceived illegal activity and then are able to get personal information on Canadians.