Debates of April 28th, 2014

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member referred to warrantless searches and telecommunication companies retaining data and potentially providing it to the police. Could the member give an example of that?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that is addressed in the bill is the so-called low threshold for what is called metadata. Professor Geist has been talking about the voluntary disclosure resulting from privacy threats of personal information and the lack of civil and criminal immunity granted to intermediaries like Internet service providers and telecom companies that provide disclosure. It is the definition in the bill of transmission data that is so concerning.

The bill would create a new warrant allowing judges to order the disclosure of transmission data when there would be reasonable grounds. However, there is also this continuing concern about metadata, which if we have learned nothing from the revelations in the last while concerning the national security agency and CSEC, we obviously have to address very carefully.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues have already said in the House, we have some reservations about this bill. We would certainly change a number of things.

I would like my colleague to tell us what he would like to change about this bill and whether he has confidence in the committee process given the Conservative majority in Parliament.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about the provisions that used to be in Bill C-30, the “you're with us or you're with the child pedophiles” bill as the former minister of public safety referred to it. It would appear that many of those provisions have been put into this bill without a lot of analysis. We have an amalgam of a bill that everyone supports on cyberbullying with its controversial provisions of that sort dealing with public safety.

The bill will go to committee for which I am obviously grateful, but a lot more work needs to be done with it. Whether the government of the day, having tried once, failed and come back again, will accept amendments will remain to be seen. We live in hope.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague said, there clearly is a difference between the Conservative talking points around critical issues of privacy and what is actually in the bill.

I have also reviewed what Professor Geist has had to say about the bill and I am concerned that the privacy of Canadians could be infringed.

Could the member for Victoria explain more clearly what the difference is between the sections where the judge would have supervisory powers over the access to evidence and where telecommunication companies would turn over private information without review?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, to do so would require an analysis of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act that has been the subject of a mandatory review by the House but has yet to take place; that is to say, we have not had that bill reintroduced. It deals with telecommunication companies and the like. How that is going to connect with this initiative is something about which many people are worried. In other words, we have a two-legged stool but we are only examining one leg here to fully understand how it is going to work.

The government should finally come forward with the amendments to PIPEDA that are long overdue and awaited by so many sectors so we really can effectively and fully answer the question by my hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-13, the protecting Canadians from online crime act.

I would like to use this opportunity to speak to some of the misconceptions about this important piece of legislation. Much has been reported in the media about Bill C-13 proposing an expansive new power that would allow police to collect and obtain evidence without a court order. Further, it has been reported that this new provision would encourage telephone and Internet companies to provide as much information as they want, because they would be protected from criminal and civil liability.

In all honesty, I am not sure where to start when addressing these assertions because they are misleading and inaccurate. The much maligned provision in question is the proposed section 487.0195 of the Criminal Code. This proposed section has been portrayed by some as a convenient way for the police to sidestep court authorization requirements by requesting, from organizations, for example banks, telecommunication service providers, et cetera, voluntary disclosure or voluntary preservation of documents or data.

I want to be clear at the outset that this provision is included in Bill C-13 for greater certainty only. As is the case for similar types of provisions used sporadically throughout the Criminal Code, proposed section 487.0195 is intended to clarify Parliament's intent relating to a provision and to assist the courts in interpreting the law. To be clear, proposed section 487.0195 would not provide the police with any new powers.

Under the law today, and under the law prior to the creation of production orders in 2004, police, as part of their general policing duties of common law, have always been permitted to obtain information voluntarily from a third party without a court order. In 2004, production orders were included in the Criminal Code to allow police to obtain a court order that would compel a third party to provide information in situations where the third party could not or would not do so voluntarily.

I say “could not or would not” here because companies have obligations regarding the protection of information. Companies that collect the personal information of Canadians have to store it, use it, and disclose it in accordance with privacy legislation, such as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. In addition, they may have other relevant obligations not to disclose information, for example, pursuant to their contractual agreements with the customers.

It may also be of interest to note that most privacy legislation is crafted in a permissive manner when it comes to disclosures. This means that the legislation spells out when a company can voluntarily disclose information. In other words, the legislation permits the disclosure of personal information in certain circumstances but never requires it.

This is a very important point, because there have been concerns expressed that section 487.0195 is somehow creating a new power requiring companies to provide access to information. It is not a new power, it is merely a re-enactment of an existing “for greater certainty” clause, nor does it contain any requirement to co-operate with a request. Police can ask for the voluntary disclosure of information, but the third party is free to refuse to disclose it until a judicial warrant or order has been issued. The initial version of this “for greater certainty” provision was enacted in 2004 as section 487.014 of the Criminal Code. It was created to make it clear that there was no need for the police to obtain production orders when persons were providing their assistance on a voluntary basis as long as there was no prohibition against the person doing so.

To put it another way, the primary purpose of this provision was, and still is under the proposed section 487.0195, to clarify that police do not need a judicial protection order every time they ask a person for information.

To sum up on these points, section 487.0195 is not new to the Criminal Code. It has existed since 2004. It is not a power. By its very definition, it can only clarify what already exists in the law, and cannot be the source of new legal authority.

The explicit protections from criminal and civil liability now found in subsection 487.0195(2) of this “for greater certainty” provision have also been mis-characterized as a “get out of jail free” card or as a provision that will open up the flood gates and allow the free flow of information between the private sector and the state.

It is true that Bill C-13 proposes to amend the law to explicitly refer to the protections from civil and criminal liability when a person chooses to provide voluntary assistance to the police. However, this amendment would not be a major change to the law as it presently stands. The Criminal Code currently provides this protection under section 25, which is cross-referenced in the current version of this section, section 47.014. The cross-reference to section 25 in the law currently and the new text proposed in Bill C-13 are both designed to clarify that a person who discloses information could not be sued or prosecuted for voluntarily providing information that they are not prohibited from disclosing.

It should be noted, however, that the considerable case law interpreting the scope of the existing protections under section 25 is consistent in that it only protects conduct that is reasonable in the circumstances. This is not a blanket protection for assisting police. A telephone company that voluntarily provides information to police that they are legally obligated to protect, including under contract, could not avail itself of these protections.

To be clear, whether Parliament again legislates in this area or not, this protection already exists through the court's interpretation of section 25 of the Criminal Code. Including language in the bill that explicitly indicates more clearly the existing protections from civil and criminal liability in the current law is not a proposal for substantive change. It would make the provision more transparent and understandable on its face. This is not a significant development of the law in this area, nor is there any hidden agenda.

This provision is not expected to have a large impact on current practices. All it does is clarify and make more transparent the current protections. This clarification may help new companies that are just entering into co-operation with law enforcement for the first time to more easily be able to understand the scope of the law in this area. They would not have to hire lawyers to research the jurisprudence to understand how the protections afforded by current section 25 of the Criminal Code would apply in this context.

I will take a moment to speak about the other minor changes that are proposed for this section. Bill C-13 proposes to incorporate a reference to preservation demands and preservation orders into the section, to clarify that a person may also voluntarily preserve data, so long as doing so is not otherwise prohibited.

Bill C-13 also proposes to remove a reference to the public officer “enforcing this or any other Act of Parliament” from the current section 487.014 to ensure that the provision is not misinterpreted as precluding voluntary co-operation in the context of general policing duties that do not directly relate to the enforcement of a statute. Such common law police duties include contacting the next-of-kin of an accident victim, returning stolen property to its owner, or contacting the homeowner in the case of a break-in.

Police are better able to keep society safe and to investigate criminal activity when persons, groups, and organizations are willing to assist them. The purpose of the current Criminal Code section 487.014 and the proposed section 497.0195 of Bill C-13 is to ensure that police and the public can continue to work co-operatively. In the context of this provision, the proposed legislation does not provide the police with any new powers. The bill proposes small revisions to the current law, to make clearer in what circumstances the police do not require production orders if a third party voluntarily assists in a police investigation by voluntarily providing information.

I would add that the type of mis-characterization of the bill that we have witnessed by some commentators distracts from fruitful debate on the subject. This is an important bill, not only for what it provides Canadians in the form of increased protections on the issue of cyberbullying, but also because it provides police with an investigative tool box for modern technology that protects and respects people's privacy.

Canada's international partners have been using these kinds of updated tools for over a decade. These new and modernized investigative tools will not only give police access to the information and evidence they need to apprehend Internet criminals, but they will also assist police in addressing crimes generally in today's advanced telecommunications environment, where smart phones and computers are ubiquitous and telecommunications technologies are constantly evolving.

These tools have been carefully tailored to balanced the interests of the state in collecting vital evidence relating to the commission of a crime with personal privacy interests that Canadians value so profoundly.

Each tool was calibrated to reflect its relative level of invasiveness against the privacy interest in the information it is used to obtain. Although many of our international partners have had access to these types of tools for well over a decade, the extra time Canada has taken to enact these updates has allowed us to learn from the successes and failures of others, and I am confident that the investigative toolbox that Bill C-13 would provide police has incorporated the most sophisticated privacy protections for Canadians.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech and many of the speeches this afternoon with great interest because at the heart of it, all parties agree with the essential underpinning of part of this bill, which is to protect young people from cyberbullying.

However, there is a history here, and my hon. colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour presented a bill 10 months ago that would have done exactly this. We have been asking the government, as we have on many other occasions, to split this bill to make this a much clearer declaration and protection for young people, and with the adoption of the measures that were in the previous bill that my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour presented.

Could my colleague answer a simple question? If this entire House is focused and agrees on the importance of this, why would the government muddy the waters by bringing in a variety of other issues including the imposition of a two-year sentence for somebody who steals cable? Why would that be thrown into a bill that is supposed to protect young people from cyberbullying?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it has been pointed out by my colleagues very clearly why this bill is so important to be collectively put together in this manner, to try to protect from cyberbullying not only our youth of today but others as well in our Canadian society, particularly from electronic cyberbullying. There are many types of cyberbullying that are not offensive, but the type of cyberbullying that can be done electronically without consent is certainly not acceptable in our society. It does not keep our streets safe. It does not keep our young people, or many adults, from being put into abusive situations, because the type of cyberbullying we are talking about has been done without their consent in many cases.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested to hear the member talk about the privacy safeguards contained in the bill. I would say “incredulous” would be closer to the right word.

There is a provision within the bill that would provide an immunity for Internet service providers and telcos who voluntarily provide information. So this is an immunity against civil prosecution and against criminal prosecution. Could the member explain how this immunity ties in with his thesis that there are privacy protections contained in the bill?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I made it very clear in my comments that in relation to some particular types of questioning that can be done by individuals for their privacy on this particular bill, there are many areas where disclosure is not part of the laws we have in Canada today. Particularly, as I pointed out, in the case of some companies, there are privacy legislation and laws in place that they have to work with their employees before a company can provide such disclosure, and it would be up to the individuals.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his excellent speech on Bill C-13. We have heard a few times today from opposition members about splitting the bill, and it was part of a previous question.

We seem to have agreement among the parties that first, the bill is going to go to committee, which is excellent; and that second, making cyberbullying a criminal offence is important. However, there seems to be a discussion about whether we give the police and the legal system the tools to actually enforce that criminal offence.

Can the member talk about why it is important that the bill have both? Not just identify and create a criminal offence for cyberbullying but also give police and other law enforcement and judicial systems the ability to enforce the new criminal law.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the concern, of course, is to put some teeth behind being able to define what cyberbullying might be. Without having some kind of penalty put in place for law enforcement, it is a very difficult bill to enforce.

The opposition would perhaps like to have an identification of cyberbullying with no consequences. Our government is committed to providing an outcome that is very clear. There has to be some way of backing up the identification of cyberbullying with an enforced result that tries to protect and prohibit people from continuing to provide such cyberbullying mechanisms in the future.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and pleasure to speak in the House to Bill C-13, from a couple of perspectives.

As the chair of the justice committee, I am looking forward to the discussion and debate we will have with the many witnesses who come forward on this important bill. Because of the issue of cyberbullying, the Government of Canada, and all of us, recognize the importance of Bill C-13 and taking a proactive approach on this.

However, before I get into that, I will admit that I did not know much about the aspects of cyberbullying. Therefore, over the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to talk to my daughters, who are 23 and 24, one of whom has just graduated from university. The other one is still in university, which is not that far away from high school.

We live in a relatively affluent community. There is no denying that Burlington is relatively affluent. I asked them what they knew about cyberbullying in their high school or this community. To my surprise, both of my daughters indicated there were two incidents within their own high school. Young women were photographed without their consent, in what I will describe as compromising situations, and those images were distributed throughout the high school. It did not result in the kind of tragedy that we have had elsewhere in Canada; however, it was an absolute form of bullying that I was not even aware of.

This issue, which we all agree is an issue, does affect all areas of Canada. There is no economic disparity in terms of lower-income people being more apt to experience higher aspects of cyberbullying than higher-income communities. It affects everyone. That is why this bill is important and needs to be comprehensive.

I know we have heard a few discussions from the other side about there being a motion to deal with a strategy. Strategies are great for collecting dust. From our perspective, we need action. This bill takes action.

We heard that there was a private member's bill from the opposition on a specific portion of cyberbullying, which is accurate. However, I think we have, in a more appropriate way, taken a more comprehensive approach to attacking this issue and applying the laws of the land to it.

I have not heard anyone say that this is not a complicated issue. Once in a while it has been said that there is a simple answer. There is no simple answer. What we are doing today will not end cyberbullying. I do not think that anyone is declaring a victory over cyberbullying.

However, these are the tools we need to attack this problem. We need to make it a criminal offence. We need to give police and the judiciary the tools to enforce this law. We need it so that when we do catch these individuals who are spreading inappropriate, non-consensual photos of youth, which is the example I will use because we are familiar with it—although it can happen at all ages, and the bill does not apply just to youth but to everyone—the country will have the tools to say that it is a criminal offence, something that we will not tolerate, and they will face a consequence for doing it. In addition, we will provide the police with the ability to do investigations, to collect evidence to sustain a criminal offence in terms of prosecution through the court system.

My hope is that as we attack this problem through the police, the judicial system, and our criminal court system, and that as those who are committing these crimes are found guilty, it will be a wake-up call to end cyberbullying. It is a process that will not happen overnight, but it is one that we need to start.

I want to talk for a few minutes about some of the myths we have heard regarding this bill. In one of the earlier speeches, someone said we are making the stealing of cable signals illegal. Guess what? Stealing cable is already illegal. People are not allowed to take cable without paying for it. That is already in the Criminal Code. All the bill does is to improve the wording, to capture that activity and the new ways of telecommunications and cable providing Internet services. That is what the bill would do. Stealing cable signals is illegal. Everyone in the House should know that and should not be questioning why it is in the bill.

A big myth about the bill is that it incorporates the controversial elements of Bill C-30, which rightfully was withdrawn by our government, in response to two things. One was regarding some activity that could take place that would not require a warrant. It was clearly in the bill, and it is not in Bill C-13. Every activity requires a warrant. That was the reaction we had, and we went through the bill and changed the process to reflect what we heard from the public and the opposition parties.

We should be congratulated on that, but that is not what happens around here. That is part of the problem with the House. When a government listens to the opposition and the public and makes a change, it should be congratulated and not criticized for making that change. That is not what happens around here. The government was told that it was not competent to know that in the first place, so it was criticized for making a change. Why bother making a change? In this case, making the change was the right thing to do, and that is why we did it.

There was another piece in Bill C-30 that dealt with the framework by which a provider of Internet services would have to have something so that we could monitor the traffic, basically. We got rid of that piece. It is not in the current bill, and that was part of what we heard in terms of a response to Bill C-13.

I have heard from the opposition members not to be reactive, to be proactive. This is exactly what Bill C-13 does. It is proactive activity that the police are able to undertake so they can do their job, so we can bring criminals who are attacking our young people to justice. Being proactive is exactly what Bill C-13 does.

The third issue we heard about is that this is an omnibus bill. We agree with making it a criminal offence, which is excellent, and everyone should agree with that. However, there are other parts in the bill that actually implement the criminal offence, that allow the police and the judicial system to charge folks, investigate, bring them to court, and bring them to justice, to end this horrific crime that is mostly done against young people.

We need Bill C-13. I am looking forward to the committee stage. It is my understanding that we have a tremendous number of witnesses to talk about the different issues. That is where the debate will really happen, in terms of witnesses telling us what could be better. We will have a discussion among the members of Parliament, ask good questions, and we will get the best bill we can to help protect the young people of this country.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP would obviously like to change a number of things in the bill. Honestly, I must say that we do not have a lot of trust in the government, because it has rejected all the amendments proposed by the NDP in committee. I do not believe that the government will work with us on improving this bill and ensuring that the bill truly meets the needs of people who are bullied.

I would like to ask the following question. Why did the government not support the bill introduced by my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour? He introduced Bill C-540 to address cyberbullying. Why did the government wait for months instead of simply supporting my colleague's bill, which would have helped speed up the process?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have two answers. One is to the question and the other is to the lead-up to the question.

First of all, on the lead-up to the question, if the member from the NDP checks with the Chair, she will find that there have been NDP amendments for different items at the justice committee that have been accepted. To say that we are 100% no-confidence or that 100% of the NDP amendments have never been approved or accepted at committee is completely inaccurate.

Secondly, I personally did not support the NDP private member’s motion because it was not comprehensive enough. The motion dealt with making cyberbullying a crime, but it did not give the tools to enforce the Criminal Code. That is why we needed a government motion that would be properly vetted through the justice department. We are much more comprehensive in our approach to this very complicated issue.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the member indicated that the warrantless production of documents and the warrantless search is now a thing of the past, and that this element of Bill C-30 is not present in Bill C-13. However, there is something in Bill C-13 that would provide immunity to Internet service providers and telephone companies when they produce records at the request of law enforcement authorities. In order to make it easier for them, this immunity would apply to both criminal prosecution for the production of these records and any civil suit.

Given that the member's position is that there are no longer warrantless searches, is it not the case that there is now an incentive for co-operation among Internet service providers, or at least a disincentive has been removed, which is tantamount to having warrantless searches all over again? What the government is doing indirectly is what it tried to do directly, through Bill C-30.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a huge stretch and it is just not accurate. In any criminal activity right now, a Canadian, whether a company or an individual, has the right and the opportunity to voluntarily support and help the police in an investigation. If my house gets broken into, I can invite the police in to do a search to help find the culprit.

All we would do with this legislation is try to encourage businesses to actively and proactively support finding the culprits who are carrying out criminal activity against our youth. I see no problem with that. I know that the Canadian public has no problem with that, and I will be supporting that in this legislation.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, could the member comment on transmission data? It has been a bit of a question here on what the police can and cannot do with transmission data, and what they can and cannot reveal.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had to read about what transmission data is. It is the information that the Internet provider has. The police can go and say it is not allowed to delete the information. We have that in Ontario legislation, but I think the Liberals did it anyway. The information has to be put on hold. The police do not have access to it. They have to go and get a warrant to get access to it, but it prevents the Internet provider from actually deleting it.

As we know, bits and bytes are pretty easy to delete. We want to keep them for the police to do their proper and proactive investigations.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-13. We could call it, among other things, the bill to protect Canadians against cybercrime.

This bill focuses on cyberbullying and bullying, something that I feel very strongly about. I have worked on this almost since I became an MP and even before that. I am the father of two daughters, one in elementary school and the other in high school. Thus, I am very concerned about the issue of bullying and cyberbullying. Furthermore, I was formerly a teacher. I was a high school and adult education teacher for almost 10 years.

I realized that bullying and cyberbullying are very important concerns. We have to tackle them and work on prevention. In fact, prevention is the first thing we must work on. This bill provides for solutions once the damage has been done, but we also have to work on prevention.

In that regard, even before I start talking about the bill, I would like to point out that the NDP is leading the fight against bullying. Two NDP members did an excellent job of bringing this subject to the attention of the Conservatives, who really did not have this on their radar. The first, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, worked very hard after being elected to introduce a motion, which unfortunately was defeated by the Conservatives. I still cannot believe what happened. It is mind-boggling to see all that.

What is important is that this motion was about a bullying and cyberbullying prevention strategy. The strategy was very well laid out. I will come back to that later because it really is an important element that the Conservatives should take a look at.

There was also the bill introduced by my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, Bill C-540. I still do not understand why the Conservative did not vote in favour of this bill. I do not understand why they voted against it, since the main provisions in that bill can be found in Bill C-13. We could have saved some time if everyone had supported the bill introduced by the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, which could have been sent to committee to be amended. That is what democracy is about. We fully support democracy.

However, it is completely unacceptable that the Conservatives voted against the bill and have now introduced a very similar bill. Furthermore, they are turning it into a partisan issue by saying that the Conservatives are the ones who drafted this bill and that they are very good.

It is sad to see this kind of partisanship in the House of Commons, especially on such an important issue. We are talking about the future of our youth. Young people are our future. We need to take care of them because our wealth lies in them. We need to pay attention to them and combat bullying and cyberbullying. This should not be a partisan issue. We should have been able to address this problem, which transcends party lines.

I am very disappointed that we were not able to move forward with these bills.

Before I go into more detail on Bill C-13, I would like to commend some groups in my riding of Drummond for the work that they have been doing day in and day out for years. Recently, in 2012, there was a big event to provide information, promote awareness and speak out against bullying.

All of the groups in the greater Drummond area that work every day on these issues were there. Sometimes large events like this are organized, but most of our organizations' work is done on a day-to-day basis.

The anti-bullying committee, which is part of the anti-violence committee, welcomed representatives from Sûreté du Québec, the Commission scolaire des Chênes, Collège Saint-Bernard, CALACS La passerelle, CAVAC, École aux Quatre-Vents—which has shown great initiative in the fight against bullying—Buropro, Commun Accord, the Association québécoise de défense des droits des personnes retraitées et préretraitées, the CSSS and others. Many concerned people in the greater Drummond area came together in the fight against bullying and cyberbullying. This was a major gathering in the greater Drummond area.

Earlier, I listened to the excellent speech given by my colleague from Sherbrooke. I also listened to the very heartfelt and passionate speech given by my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, who has been fighting against bullying and cyberbullying for a long time.

The NDP members are the ones at the forefront of the fight against bullying and cyberbullying. That is why we are going to vote in favour of Bill C-13. However, we do so with a twinge of regret because we know that the Conservatives voted against a similar bill that we introduced.

This bill contains all sorts of measures. Unfortunately, the Conservatives use good bills that make sense, such as Bill C-13, as catch-all bills. This is what we call omnibus bills. They confuse the issue and therefore we do not know whether we will vote for or against the bill. If the fight against cyberbullying were the main focus of the bill, we would definitely have voted in favour of it.

What this bill is missing is a focus on prevention. I know how important that is from my experience as a teacher and a father and from listening to my colleagues, such as the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. He proposed a strategy to combat bullying and cyberbullying. I would like to talk a little bit about it because it is extremely worthwhile. It is disappointing that the Conservatives voted against it, but it is not too late.

Front-line groups in Drummond and Sherbrooke are essential, as the member for Sherbrooke so rightly pointed out during his speech. They are the ones doing the work on a daily basis. However, the government must also stand firm at the national level, give good guidance and provide support.

I see that I have less than a minute to talk about this important, topical issue. The motion moved by the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord stated that the House should study the prevalence and impact of different types of bullying, including cyberbullying. It is important to understand what this is really about. Then, we need to identify and adopt a range of evidence-based best practices to combat bullying and cyberbullying. Finally, we need to promote and disseminate anti-bullying information to Canadian families.

Schools and organizations are important, but families are too. Parents have a role to play by talking to their children about the serious nature of what they are doing. Bullying and cyberbullying are serious and can have a serious impact on the community.

The organizations that are working on this issue in Drummond and Sherbrooke and across Canada need support.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the way has acknowledged the importance of this bill. It is an ongoing issue now in Canada.

Lianna McDonald is the CEO of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection in Winnipeg. Lianna has a lot of experience in working with victims of cyberbullying. She said that Bill C-13 “will assist in stopping the misuse of technology and help numerous young people impacted and devastated by this type of victimization”. For someone like Lianna McDonald who works every day with this, I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about her very insightful comment.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question and comments.

She is absolutely right. Bill C-13 is a useful part of the fight against cyberbullying. The first problem is that the Conservatives already voted against a similar bill that we introduced.

The second problem is that this bill is a catch-all. It contains amendments to certain laws concerning financial data of banks, such as the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, as well as changes that concern telemarketing and the theft of a telecommunication service. It includes a number of the provisions of the former Bill C-30.

If Bill C-13 actually allowed us to seriously address cyberbullying, we would pass it quickly. Unfortunately, this is a catch-all that contains some very bad measures. That is what we have a problem with.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Drummond for his excellent speech. I would also like to thank him for mentioning the organizations in Sherbrooke that are doing excellent work on the ground. These stakeholders in Sherbrooke work on a daily basis with young people, whether in schools or in other sites in Sherbrooke. Their essential work in our communities is based on prevention rather than providing a cure.

Can my colleague explain why it is important to adapt our legislation to new technologies? Does he think that bullying has changed over the past 30, 40 or 50 years? Has the way in which young people bully each other changed, even if they are doing it unconsciously? Why should we adapt our legislation as a result?

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Sherbrooke. Indeed, cyberbullying has become a very dangerous weapon and is much easier to use than traditional bullying. Bullying and cyberbullying are both extremely dangerous.

Recent studies have shown that cyberbullying has an adverse effect on the social and emotional aspects of a young person's life and on their ability to learn in school. Effects include anxiety, shorter attention spans, lower marks in school, feelings of despair and isolation, depression and even suicidal tendencies.

Bullying and cyberbullying are tragic. We need to tackle and prevent these issues. First and foremost, we need to prevent this phenomenon altogether. When we cannot prevent, we must stop it, but sometimes it is too late for some young people. That is why it is important to tackle this problem. We need to take the bull by the horns and support organizations like the ones in Sherbrooke and Drummond.