Mr. Speaker, as this is a chamber of debate, I would like to start by responding to an implication that I heard from the Conservative side. It was that we have had oversight for many years now, so why do we need something new?
In response, I would say that technology is a wonderful thing. It is something, however, that changes. We have had many changes in technology in the last 10 or 20 years, amazing changes. For example, I can contact someone with the push of a few buttons. All of us can. We have these great smartphones and all sorts of other ways of contacting people around the world instantaneously. There is no need to remember email addresses, no need to remember phone numbers or any other contact information. All that information is available at the touch of a button.
It is also around us, and it moves. That information moves from place to place as well. That is why it is always handy. I can start an app on my smartphone that can tell my family in real time where I am on a road, what my velocity is, and what my estimated time of arrival home for dinner might be. I could also run another app, a much more recent one, that can figure out where I am in a store, a museum, or a shopping mall and, by using the ambient Wi-Fi signals that are now ubiquitous in large buildings, send me content depending on where I am.
Technology changes, and that is the thing that has changed. That is why we have to look at what kinds of risks come out of the opportunities that are being exploited by technology. Technology can be used to serve people and can be used to protect Canadians, but it can also threaten privacy, and there is no reason that we should not have the public participate in a review of how the government uses technology to protect us from potential foreign threats.
Last week we learned from a leaked document that was obtained by the CBC that the Communications Security Establishment Canada, CSEC, may have illegally intercepted and tracked the personal information of ordinary Canadians who were using public Wi-Fi at Canadian airports, and then tracked those people or the devices that used the Wi-Fi as they travelled elsewhere.
The problem is that this happened at a Canadian airport, where undoubtedly many Canadians were using the public Wi-Fi and then became part of the tracking that was alleged to have taken place. The problem is that the Communications Security Establishment Canada is supposed to be keeping track of potential foreign threats, not monitoring Canadians.
Canadians, having heard about this story and having heard about what the NSA was doing in the United States, are worried about privacy and worried about the rule of law. They are wondering if we as Canadians need to rely on leaks from people like Edward Snowden in order to know how their government actually does its work.
Canadians are wondering what sort of information is private. They are wondering about the digital economy and what will happen if people fear using the Internet. They are worried about online government services. We know that the government is trying to move more and more government services to websites. It is very commendable to have good government websites that provide service to Canadians, but now it is very fair for Canadians to ask what the risks are and how they can know that their privacy is being respected.
What we are not hearing from the government is a flat denial and that Canadians' privacy is being respected. I know there is a conversation about the difference between data, which is, for example the content of an email, and metadata, which is information about who sent the email, who received the email, and what time the email was sent.
I know there is a difference, but Canadians are worried. The way that members of the public can and should respond to this concern is to have their elected representatives, parliamentarians, oversee what the government is doing. This is a way for Canadians to be assured that there is some sort of check on what the government is doing by people who are accountable to the public. This right that Canadians have is expressed through what their elected members of Parliament ask for, in this case today for oversight and accountability.
It is important to talk about the difference between aggregate data and private data. Here it is important for good government and smart government to know, for example, how many Canadians live where. Even a municipality needs to know what sort of sewage system to put in place and what capacity is required. We need to know the aggregate data on how many Canadians live in a certain place. We need to know how many people travel down a certain street, even for the simple reason that we want to manage the traffic or parking. We need to know how many people work in a certain industry, or how many people are out of work, so that we can be good economic managers. That is something that Statistics Canada, for example, has done very well, both protecting individual privacy but also providing aggregate numbers so that government can have a good idea of the country it is supposed to be governing.
What Canadians are worried about is information about individuals, about where a particular person lives, where that person goes, what time of day that person goes to a certain place, whom that person goes with, and how long someone stays in a certain place. These sorts of pieces of information about individuals are what Canadians worry might get into the wrong hands or be used for purposes that are not legitimate. Or, they simply want their privacy respected and do not want that information out there.
That is why the member for Malpeque has introduced Bill C-551 in this Parliament, which would create a national security committee of parliamentarians to oversee what the government, in particular the CSEC, is doing and to oversee from legislative, regulatory, government-policy, and administrative points of view what the agencies responsible for national security are doing. That parliamentary committee would be representing the public and giving the okay from the public for what the government decides to do regarding national security and privacy. This is not a particularly new idea. It has certainly been championed by Liberals for many years in government and in opposition, but it is something that is important to do. Canadians, directly or through their elected representatives, have a fundamental need to understand what their government is doing and to have confidence that their government is doing the right thing. A parliamentary committee is the right way to express that oversight.
I would also add that we have international partners, the U.K. and Australia, who have parliamentary oversight to protect the privacy of their citizens. Looking at it from CSEC's point of view, I am sure there are people in CSEC who want to do the right thing, so it would be very appropriate for them to consult with Parliament and say what they are doing and why they think they are addressing privacy concerns, just to get an okay from people of Canada.
I call on all members to support the motion today that the Liberal Party has proposed.