Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to talk about the extremely important motion on the privacy of Canadian citizens.
I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra. Mr. Speaker, could you also give me a signal when I have only one minute left?
I am particularly pleased to share the floor with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra and my colleague from Malpeque, who spoke earlier. In December, all three of us were at a news conference when this issue came to light in Canada because of Edward Snowden's revelations. There was a possibility that Canada was spying on one of Brazil's ministries.
At that time, we talked about the importance of exercising more effective control over our surveillance agencies to make sure that they stay within their mandates.
I would like to bring up the fundamental point of this debate and the motion we are talking about today. It has to do with something that is very dear to all Canadian citizens, their right to privacy. Canadians care deeply about their privacy and they now have questions about whether it is being respected.
I am delighted that the NDP will support our motion today. I know that the Conservatives claim to care about the privacy of Canadian citizens. I remember when they decided they were going to get rid of the long form questionnaire. I remember in particular a comment by the Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time that the government had no business knowing how many bathrooms someone might have in their house. They claim to be very concerned and, in fact, got rid of the compulsory long form census because they say they respect the privacy of Canadian citizens. I share that belief.
At this point, however, questions are being raised and Canadians, particularly in this age of Wi-Fi and the Internet, have reason to question whether or not their privacy is being respected. Many Canadians come from countries that were authoritarian and know very well what can happen when their privacy is not respected. The Edward Snowden allegations that started a while back and touched on Brazil, the G8, and G20 summits, and more recently the possibility that Wi-Fi traffic is being monitored at a couple of Canadian airports to gather metadata have shaken the confidence of Canadians.
From the outset, the work that CSEC does is critically important for Canada's security. Let there be no doubt about that. One of its roles is to protect us against the possibility of terrorism, especially after 9/11. As a result of that, we expect it to be monitoring certain things. However, at the same time, we want to make sure that CSEC respects privacy and that it never monitors Canadian citizens. That is a very important point, the fact that we must ensure that while it carries out its very important and difficult task, CSEC stays within the bounds of its mandate.
In the end, it all comes down to the issue of the interpretation of this metadata. Many people are hearing for the first time about metadata and are wondering what it is. It sounds rather complicated and I am not exactly sure what it means. Yesterday, the national security advisor, along with the head of CSEC and CSIS, assured Canadians that their privacy was being respected and that there was no monitoring of Canadians. What they did say, however, very clearly, was that they are gathering metadata. In fact, the purpose of the period during which they were looking at Wi-Fi traffic in the two airports was to try to obtain a picture of the kind of traffic that occurs in a busy public space where Wi-Fi exists, as this would help them perform their task.
What is metadata? Metadata, according to Mr. Rigby, the national security advisor, is "data about data". Some people may say it does not sound as if it is very intrusive of their private lives, but let me give the House an important example. If a person is being monitored and we discover that every weekday around 7 o'clock in the evening, he or she phones the same number, that information can be extremely useful in knowing something about that person. We know that every day around 7 o'clock he or she phones a particular number. In addition to that, the identity of the person being called can also be worked out.
Another very good example is where a person phones someone several times in a particular week, with the number happening to belong to an oncologist. So there is a very good possibility that in this particular case the person making the phone call has cancer. That is an extremely personal bit of information. I do not want people to know that I have cancer, if I have it, unless I choose to share that information. I do not want people to know where I am in Canada at any particular time, unless I choose to share that information. I do not want people to know whom I am contacting on the Internet, unless I choose to share that information.
Never mind whether or not the content of my messages or my cellphone calls is not known, the fact that people know that I am phoning or using the Internet to contact particular people at certain times is very private information, and Canadians share the belief that it is private information.
So what do we do about this? We have come up with a very practical suggestion in the Liberal Party. We believe that having one retired judge, who I am sure is working very hard on this, does not cut it. In this particular case, we are calling for the creation of a parliamentary oversight committee, which can proactively look at what is going on within CSEC to ensure that the organization is staying within its mandate.
This idea goes back to 2005. This is not the first time it has been brought up. It was proposed in 2005 and it had the unanimous consent of all the parties, because we recognized the importance of keeping a closer watch over our surveillance agencies.
That unanimous support in fact came from people like the current Minister of Justice and the current Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. It came from you, Mr. Speaker, at that time and from the NDP and the Bloc. It came from people who examined this and recognized its importance.
We have tried, as Liberals, four times through private members' bills to bring this back. Currently, we are hoping that the motion today will be supported by all parties and that the bill being proposed by my colleague from Malpeque will have an opportunity to go forward. Our partners in the Five Eyes have quite clearly signed up to this. We as a Parliament of Canada need to do the same thing.
Let me conclude by quoting my colleague from Malpeque, who put out a press announcement recently to say that there was an urgent need for a parliamentary committee mandated to review the legislative regulatory policy and administrative framework for agencies responsible for national security in Canada. He said:
This proactive oversight of all aspects of national security handled by the federal government will fill a gap addressed by Canada’s major allies long ago—namely providing oversight and accountability for agencies that have functioned in nearly complete secrecy.