Debates of May 5th, 2014

Opposition Motion—Safeguarding of Personal Information

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed to hear that the government will be voting against such a crucial motion.

I would like to speak to certain elements of the minister's speech. He said that he will impose it because he wants to protect national security. That is all well and good, but we too want to protect Canada's national security; however, we want that process to require a warrant.

I asked a written question of the government and every department. The Canada Border Services Agency alone submitted more than 18,000 personal information requests to telecommunications companies in a single year. Of those 18,000 requests, the agency was not entirely sure how many were made in each category because it does not really keep track of that data.

However, the minister spoke about a robust review system. Yes, there is oversight, yet just last week the Privy Council Office asked for more information from agencies and departments about all of those personal information requests. Clearly, the government does not understand the scope of the situation. How can the minister talk about an effective review system?

If those personal information requests were actually made as part of an investigation or something completely legal and legitimate, why not disclose that? Why not make these measures more transparent? Why not obtain a warrant?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville for giving me the opportunity to remind her that a warrant must be obtained if more specific information is required. That is the difference here because, as I indicated in my speech, this information is provided voluntarily in accordance with the law.

What I find surprising is that the New Democrats agreed with this 14 years ago. All of a sudden, they are changing their tune. I am disappointed because this has consequences. The Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for enforcing the law, and every year, some 250,000 people from all over the world want to come live in Canada because we have created the conditions for prosperity here. People can have a job, achieve their potential, raise a family. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of Canadians' generosity. That is why nearly 115,000 illegal immigrants have been deported since 2006.

I would like to congratulate the Canada Border Services Agency on its hard work. It has used the information we are talking about today perfectly legally to ensure the integrity of our immigration system.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13, presently before committee, contains in it an immunity for the voluntary, secret, and warrantless disclosure of information by telephone companies. Bill S-4, presently before the Senate, expands the entities that can receive this information, so the two of them added together would result in greater lawful, warrantless, and secret disclosure of Canadians' subscriber information.

Does the minister not feel that Canadians have any right to know when and how their subscriber information is being disclosed to an increasingly broad audience?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member. Like him, in a past life I used to work for veterans.

The question he is asking is if it would comply with the law if, when I own a cellular phone, I am willing to share some basic subscription information. The answer is yes, and it is legal. However, if this is to be more detailed information, then a warrant is needed. There is no need to increase the legislation in that matter.

However, yes, there is a need, and that is why the Minister of Industry has brought forward a bill. The Privacy Commissioner, Chantal Bernier, has said this about the bill that that has been brought forward by this government: “...there are some very positive developments for the privacy rights of Canadians...”.

While maintaining safety first, we are bringing forward a bill that would increase the privacy rights of Canadians. This is the answer for my colleague specifically, and I would invite him to support the bill before the House and to continue to work at committee to ensure that the rights of Canadians are even better protected than they were before and that we continue to move on as the technology evolves.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to highlight the measures that our government has taken to protect the privacy of individual Canadians.

First and foremost, I would like to discuss Bill S-4, the digital privacy act. The bill would make important amendments to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, otherwise known as PIPEDA, with the express purpose of providing new protection for Canadians when they surf the web and shop online. PIPEDA was passed in the House of Commons in 1999 and implemented in 2001. There is nothing new about it, and there has been no mention from the opposition on amendments since that time. With Bill S-4, the government would implement new measures to better protect the personal information of Canadians.

Let me speak a little about PIPEDA in general. PIPEDA is our primary piece of legislation that lays out the ground rules for how private sector businesses collect, use, and share personal information. What kind of personal information are we speaking about? It includes name, age, banking records, shopping history, et cetera.

We know that this kind of information is gathered by many companies and organizations in the course of their day-to-day transactions. The fear, of course, is that in the wrong hands this kind of information can be exploited. In the worst cases, it is used to commit fraud, identity theft, or other harmful acts. To combat these kinds of malicious deeds, the digital privacy act would implement tougher rules to protect the privacy of Canadians.

Protecting Canadians is a major pillar of digital Canada 150, which the Minister of Industry launched last month, to help our country take full advantage of the economic opportunities of the digital age. Under the pillar of protecting Canadians, the digital privacy act would protect consumers online, simplify rules for businesses, and increase overall compliance with our privacy laws.

Before we tabled Bill S-4, the government consulted the Privacy Commissioner and got her views on how to best move forward with modernizing Canada's intellectual property laws. The minister spoke to her again before tabling the legislation. In fact, here is what she said about our digital privacy act and our efforts to best protect Canadians online. She said she welcomed the proposals in the bill. She said this bill contains “very positive developments for the privacy rights of Canadians”.

In addition, the NDP digital critic, the member for Terrebonne—Blainville, said this about our government's digital privacy act: “Overall, these are good steps. We have been pushing for these measures and I'm happy to see them introduced”.

The first element I would like to touch on is a familiar one to Canadians in this digital age, data breaches. New rules in the digital privacy act would require organizations to tell Canadians if their personal information has been lost or stolen. As part of this notification, organizations would also have to tell individuals what steps they can take to protect themselves from potential harm, actions that could be as simple as changing their credit card PIN or email password. At the same time, the bill would require organizations to report these data breaches to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. With the passage of the bill, organizations that deliberately break the rules would face significant penalties, of up to $100,000 for every individual they fail to notify.

In keeping with the motion before us and its reference to the Privacy Commissioner, I would like to address the changes in the digital privacy act that would ensure that the Privacy Commissioner has the right tools to help protect Canadians' privacy. Bill S-4 would give the Privacy Commissioner the ability to negotiate voluntary compliance agreements with organizations. Under these agreements, organizations would make binding commitments to ensure the privacy of Canadians. This would allow organizations to be proactive and work collaboratively with the Privacy Commissioner to quickly correct any privacy violations that may have been discovered. In exchange, those organizations can avoid costly legal action. At the same time, the agreements would be binding and would give the Privacy Commissioner more power to hold organizations accountable in court and make sure that they follow through on promises to fix privacy problems.

The digital privacy act will also provide the commissioner with more power to name and shame companies that do not play by the rules. This will ensure that Canadians are informed and aware of issues that affect their privacy.

Finally, the digital privacy act will extend the timeframe, to one year, for Canadians as well as the Privacy Commissioner to take a company to court. Under the current rules, the Privacy Commissioner has only 45 days. In many cases, this is not enough time for an organization to either voluntarily fix the problem or for the Privacy Commissioner to prepare a proper application.

At all times an individual's right to privacy, as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, must be respected. Despite any exception provided for in PIPEDA, law enforcement agencies must respect the charter and have a warrant or other justification to obtain private information.

Equally important in any of these circumstances, nothing in PIPEDA forces a company to turn over private information to police, government agencies, other private companies, or anyone. PIPEDA protects privacy; it does not force companies to violate it.

Bill S-4 makes sure that organizations can share information with appropriate authorities in situations that would involve providing information that will allow police to contact and communicate with the family of an injured or deceased person, sharing information in order to detect and prevent fraud, or allowing organizations to report suspected cases of financial abuse to appropriate authorities. All of these exceptions are clearly defined, and limited to circumstances where sharing this information is in the best interests of the persons involved.

Here is an example. Let us say that a bank teller notices a regular customer, a senior citizen, has been coming in lately with another person who is unfamiliar to the teller. They are making more frequent withdrawals, for more money than usual. The teller witnesses the senior handing over the withdrawn cash to the unfamiliar person. Most tellers or financial institutions would like to have the power to inform appropriate parties of this situation, such as the police, public trustees, or the client's next of kin. At the moment, our privacy law prevents the bank from informing those people who could help. The digital privacy act will remove this barrier and make sure that suspected cases of financial abuse can be reported, and the interest of seniors protected.

The digital privacy act also creates new rules whenever an organization asks an individual for their approval to collect, use, or share their personal information. This new measure will establish stronger protection for the privacy of more vulnerable Canadians, such as children. As children and adolescents spend an increasingly large amount of time online, it is important that they clearly understand the choices in front of them before they hand over private information about themselves.

The digital privacy act strengthens informed consent. Informed consent means that individuals are not just told of what is being done with their information, but that they understand the potential consequences of clicking on yes or no.

This change will require organizations to clearly and plainly communicate with their target audience when asking for their consent to collect personal information. They will have to consider whether their target audience is able to understand the consequences of sharing their personal information.

I am very proud of this aspect of Bill S-4. Given the proliferation of iPads, laptops, and BlackBerrys among our youth, the stronger rules included in this bill will make sure that individual Canadians, in particular children and adolescents, can understand the potential consequences of the choices they make.

In conclusion, the elements of the digital privacy act that I have laid out today have been carefully thought out, with the best interests of all stakeholders in mind. Our government is confident that by better protecting consumers, streamlining rules for business, and increasing compliance, the digital privacy act will make Canadians safer and more secure.

The digital privacy act will strengthen Canada's privacy laws by making sure that Canadians are informed if their privacy has been put at risk, and by holding to account those organizations that deliberately break the rules.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, although I appreciate the fact that they are participating in the debate, I have to say that the Conservatives seem a little confused. This is not a debate on Bill S-4; this is a debate about an NDP motion to make the system for the disclosure of telecommunications information to government agencies more transparent.

I would like to ask my Conservative colleague the following question. It costs between one and three dollars every time a government agency or department makes a request for personal information from a telecommunications company. If we add that up, it costs at least $1.2 million and as much as $3 million every year. How can the member justify these costs to the citizens who elected him?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I suppose the short answer would be that it is the cost of doing business. The member is right. That is the cost of a request, and that would be the math.

However, we are talking about a term that we have heard repeatedly, that 99.3% of those requests are basic subscriber information. An example of that would be the police, for instance, wanting to have information that is pertinent to a certain case. It is critical that they obtain that information.

On a voluntary basis, this subscribed information can be given by whatever organization has that information, and I suppose there is a cost involved. The member is right; that would be cost.

However, I think Canadians understand that it is important for the protection of young people, children, and seniors that these measures must be taken.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask what the member thinks about how many warrantless requests are out because this is what the motion is about today. We will get to the bill before the Senate and the Privacy Act, but how many of these are warrantless requests, and what information does not require a warrant? We are talking about many times that requests for this information are made without a warrant.

The member talked about basic subscriber information. What exactly is basic subscriber information? Would the member be able to tell us what basic information is okay to be provided? There is a lot of debate about how far this basic subscriber information goes. What is basic subscriber information?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, again, the short answer for basic subscriber information is a name, phone number, address, email, and IP address. Anything over and above that would require a warrant.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are unable to protect people's personal information. They are responsible for thousands of their own violations and violations committed by various departments. How did the Conservative government have the nerve to introduce a bill such as Bill C-30 on online spying without a warrant?

Public pressure was required for the government to reverse that decision.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it has to be understood that this is a request that the service provider can reject.

I want to mention one thing. I have served in the House for eight years, and I think in the first four years we struggled with this issue with PIPEDA. During the course of evaluating PIPEDA, it was obvious that there had to be clarification. Bill S-4 basically looks after those flaws within PIPEDA that make it impossible for police to make the request, and not only for police, but the clarity in the law so that subscribers know whether or not they are allowed to give it. This clears the air in a lot of those areas that were so important to fix.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate today and talk about what we have learned in the last few weeks from the Privacy Commissioner regarding how much information is being requested of government agencies and the frequency with which it is being requested. It is also about the backstops, what things are in place to ensure this stuff does not go unchecked. In a democracy we have Parliament and commissioners. We have a number of different backstops to ensure that people's information is protected.

We will be supporting today's motion. I have a similar motion before the privacy and ethics committee, because it is important that we dive into this issue in a bit more detail. It is quite troublesome to realize that when the Privacy Commissioner comes out with this type of information, she has no way of knowing if government agencies and telecommunication companies are following the rules and which government agency is involved.

I would like to quote an answer from the Prime Minister the other day because it is a bit out of step with what is actually happening. He said, “What we do understand is that various Canadian investigative law enforcement and other agencies...”. Let me pause there for a moment.

What other agencies are we talking about? Are we talking about the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency? How broad does this go into the Canadian government? Are we talking about DFO when it does surveillance activities? Are we talking about Service Canada when it requests information on clients? We really do not know, so we really need to dive into what other agencies we are talking about here. The Information Commissioner does not know. Canadians have a right to know what government agencies are asking for this information.

The Prime Minister continued on, “...from time to time, request information from telecom companies”. Time to time is hardly 1.2 million times. The statistics came from 2011. That would be every 26 seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That is hardly from time to time. These agencies are asking for this information quite frequently and we need to know when and how and we need some oversight on these agencies.

The Prime Minister went on to say, “They always seek a warrant...”. That is not quite factually correct either. It gets to the heart of the matter here.

There are warrantless requests and warrant requests. The ones that have a warrant involve an agency going to a judge, the judge reviewing the information and then disclosing a warrant for that information. Then there are warrantless requests.

There are two facets to this particular debate. The Prime Minister has said that the government always seeks a warrant when required to do so and it expects telecommunication companies to respect the law in all of their dealings. That gets to the heart of this issue. Which requests need a warrant and which ones are warrantless? What oversight is there for the warrant side of things.

We put a lot of trust in our judicial system. We expect our judicial system to respect the Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with regard to people's privacy when it comes to a warrant. I have limited knowledge of what judges go through. I think they do fair due diligence when it comes to complying with a request from law enforcement or another agency to grant a warrant. I have confidence in our system that judges do that.

Are there emergency circumstances from time to time that would require protecting the public from harm? Yes, and those are already dealt with in current legislation. Our current legislation is designed that way. If there is an immediate threat to life or national security, telecommunication companies are required to co-operate with law enforcement agencies without a warrant. We understand that. That is not where we are going with this. It is the staggering number of requests that have come in for this information that we are concerned about.

People listening to the debate might wonder what telecommunications companies we talking about. The commissioner revealed that she had asked 13 telecom and social media companies for information on how often they were getting requests. The 13 companies she asked, on the telecommunications side, were Bell, Telus, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel, Globalive. On the social media and companies on the other side, there were Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter, eBay and RIM. Out of that, nine responded anonymously through their lawyer.

That runs a red flag up the flagpole. If they are being so open and accountable, why do they need to go through their lawyer to reveal this information to the Information Commissioner? Would they not want to be transparent and open about that? What is even more staggering is that out of the 13, 4 companies did not bother to respond at all to the Privacy Commissioner.

It goes to the point that our Privacy Commissioner needs to have the tools and the teeth to compel these companies to release this information to her so her office can make a judgment. This is really about oversight. There is no oversight and there is no court oversight. As I said earlier, we have to take it to the warrantless and warrant disclosures and really get to the bottom of this.

One of the things that we have talked about today, and I asked a question on it a bit earlier, is basic subscriber information from an ISP, Internet service provider. What basic information was allowed in this legislation when other legislation was put into force? What is being provided and how far does it go? I asked the question a minute ago and a member of the government said that it was name, address, phone number, email address and IP address. One's IP address is a pretty detailed piece of information about oneself, because it can detect a lot of information about where we go, what we send. I am no technogeek, nor do I know enough about technology, but I know an IP address is pretty substantial in the information it provides about a person.

Experts in this matter also say that it goes even further than that, that it goes into transmission data or metadata, as they call it, that it is not only this basic information but they are interpreting this to go beyond that basic information. I learned about metadata from an article I was reading this morning. I believe it was Mr. Geist who was the expert so I will credit him to where I learned it. With metadata, it is like saying to Canada Post, “What is the information on the outside of the envelope? Where is it going and whom it has come from”. That is what is also being provided on our basic information. It is communication to and from and at which time. That is some of the basic information they are requesting.

It goes a bit deeper than that, and that is why we need to support this motion. We need to continue this debate and really get an understanding of the facets of this. As parliamentarians and as people protecting the public interest, we cannot just take the word of government or of our law enforcement agency. There need to be some checks and balances into this. All members should genuinely think this is very worthwhile issue to dive into to find out what is going on. I would be the first one to admit that hopefully it is all above board. Hopefully, the information it is providing on warrant is being done in a truthful and open manner and on the warrantless side of things as well. We should not hide under the guise of public safety and all that. It is our due diligence to really dive into this issue.

Another thing brought up this morning was the privacy bill that was in the Senate. There is a lot we could talk about that is coming forward in that legislation, but we should not confuse this issue today with the legislation before the Senate. These are two separate types of information and two separate things altogether. We should be very careful not to combine the two and muddy the waters.

The motion before us today is pretty clear. It talks about making public the number of warrantless disclosures made by telecommunications companies, the requests from federal departments and agencies and closing the loophole that allows indiscriminate disclosure of personal information.

The motion is pretty specific and something that needs further study. I hope we can study it before the privacy committee as well to see if it warrants more investigation and legislation.

It is a pleasure to support this motion and I hope all members do so.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what is being debated in the House of Commons is the need to ensure oversight, to protect the rights of Canadians and to ensure the laws are being applied.

That would be a fairly straightforward thing for any normal government to support. Unfortunately, it seems the current government is very threatened by anybody establishing any basic standard of accountability, which is why the Conservatives continually undermine and attack the officers of Parliament.

For the folks back home, the officers of Parliament have the role of protecting the basic rights of Canadians. Therefore, as New Democrats, we have brought forward a motion to ensure that the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has the tools to find out, when every 27 seconds somebody is spying on Canadian citizens, what the basis of that is. Why are they snooping and demanding this information?

For the government to not want to give that information out and for the telecoms to refuse to co-operate is very disturbing.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague what he thinks it says about the culture of secrecy and obstruction within the government that it wants to deny the officer of Parliament whose job it is to ensure laws are being applied fairly and being complied with. The government wants to keep her from doing her job of defending the rights of Canadians.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is sad see, and we see the government more and more often go in camera, go into secrecy.

We are here to dive in and ask questions. Do we get political, aggressive and try to get a “gotcha” moment? Yes, we do, but something such as prying into people's information every 27 seconds is serious, and we need to protect that.

If our agents of Parliament, as was described, do not have the authority, the teeth, to do it, and we cannot do it, then who does it? Do we just toss our hands up and say that we will hand the information over?

The other aspect is, as the member mentioned, where does this information go after it is provided? Who is the caretaker of this information? When someone calls and says that he or she needs to know some basic information about somebody and it gets put into a database or file, where does it go? How does that information get protected? How does the privacy and information get protected?

This is another question to ask. The 1.2 million times information was requested, it was written down somewhere. It was typed into some computer somewhere. How do we know that information is being protected once it leaves the hands of these telecommunication companies?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my Liberal colleague. He posed some very valid questions that all of us should be very concerned about.

In his comments, the member talked about a standing committee of the House where maybe we would be able to get some of answers to the questions he posed. There is a great deal of merit in exploring this issue in a more formal fashion. I know he is a member of a standing committee. What better way than to have a standing committee examine this issue?

We should take into consideration that over the last number of years technology, whether on the issue of identity theft or privacy concerns over the Internet, is more and more on the top of people's minds. We need to do more work on that.

Could my colleague provide some further thought on the important role that a standing committee could play in looking into this matter in a more in-depth fashion?

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, the committee has been doing some work on these and other issues. It just finished a study on protecting people's privacy online. We quickly learned through that particular study that the laws were made years ago, even if it does not seem that long ago, and technology moves pretty fast. Things change rapidly. There is more technology and there are more things happening. Our laws need to keep up to date with changing technology and also not be too restrictive. We have to keep an open mind. People's levels of privacy have changed over the years. We have to keep that in mind too.

We have to make sure that the independent agents of Parliament, such as the Privacy Commissioner, the Information Commissioner, and the ethics commissioner, have the tools. If people do not trust us with safeguarding the information, they should trust them. We put our trust in them, since we select them.

The committee is a very good place to do this and to do it on a non-partisan basis. We are studying the issue of identity theft right now in committee. It is a very important and prudent study. We are learning a lot about it. If we can do that in a non-partisan way and tone down the rhetoric, it can happen.

Last week, the Information Commissioner said that this is something that needs to be addressed. We have a duty, as politicians and parliamentarians, to dive into it.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to me that some time ago, when the current government cancelled the long form census, one of its arguments was that it felt that the census was an indefensible violation of Canadians' privacy rights. Many of us disagreed with that, but that was certainly one of the lines I heard from the government repeatedly. Yet here we have discovered that over a million times a year, the government is permitting the private information of Canadians, without their even knowing about it, to be divulged by telcos to government agencies.

I am wondering if my hon. colleague sees the same hypocrisy and contradiction I see and if he has any comment on what that says about consistency in government policy.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. Census information, vital information that is provided to government to make good government policy and to plan the future of our country, was deemed an intrusion into people's privacy. The census asked how many rooms were in people's houses, and the government said we should not know about how many rooms are in people's houses. However, basic subscriber information, such as IP addresses, people's addresses, and all that, is fair game. That can be done without a warrant.

The real issue is the warrantless side of this. How often does it happen? What are the agencies? Is Statistics Canada one of the agencies asking for this information? We do not know. The Information Commissioner does not know what government agencies are asking for that information. On the warrantless side, Conservative members should look back and reflect on the stand they have taken on other issues about people's privacy and take this one on with vigour as well.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on April 24, the Privacy Commissioner revealed that telecommunications companies disclosed an enormous amount of personal information to the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and others.

The question that I would like to ask the member is this: why did they not begin setting standards in 1980 so that this sort of thing would not be happening today?

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the Information Commissioner is the one asking for the authority so she can dive into it and see what standards need to be put in place. A number of standards have been recommended over the years, but they have not found their way into legislation.

A lot of the telecoms do business with government. They are government regulated, so they are not going to ruffle too many feathers when someone asks for some information. They are going to provide the information. It is not their responsibility to be judicious about the information, even though they have some responsibility.

There needs to be oversight. This is why the Information Commissioner exists. When she puts her hands in the air and says that she simply does not know what is going on, that should raise concerns. What we need to dive into is why the Information Commissioner does not know what is being requested.

Remarks Concerning Listing of Terrorist Entities

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to respond to the question of privilege by the member for Malpeque. It is particularly important for me to clarify this issue on the eve of Independence Day in Israel.

While I appreciate that the member opposite may like to revisit history around this topic, he is wrong on both facts and procedure.

In 2002, the previous Liberal government was asked nearly two dozen times to recognize the fact that Hezbollah was a terrorist entity. Time after time, we were told that the Liberal government would not proceed on this matter. On April 10, 2002, Bill Graham, the former Liberal minister of foreign affairs, said, “There is a dimension of Hezbollah...with whom we will work”.

Further, on December 2, 2002, the member for Malpeque said that more research was required to determine whether Hezbollah was indeed a terrorist entity.

It is very clear that the only reason Hezbollah was ultimately listed as a terrorist organization by the previous Liberal government was as a result of pressure applied by Conservative colleagues, not the desire of the member for Malpeque to do the right thing.

Additionally, the matter raised by the member for Malpeque could not constitute a prima facie case of a breach of privilege.

O'Brien and Bosc states quite clearly:

If the question of privilege involves a disagreement between two (or more) Members as to facts, the Speaker typically rules that such a dispute does not prevent Members from fulfilling their parliamentary functions nor does such a disagreement breach the collective privileges of the House.

As Speaker Jerome concluded in 1975:

...a dispute as to facts, a dispute as to opinions and a dispute as to conclusions to be drawn from an allegation of fact is a matter of debate and not a question of privilege.

In conclusion, I stand by my comments made in this House April 30, 2014. I thank the member for Malpeque for allowing me this opportunity to further elaborate on them.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre for her additional comments on the matter.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Pontiac.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Safeguarding of Personal Information

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of rising in the House on behalf of the people of Pontiac to support the opposition motion moved by my hon. colleague, who does an excellent job when it comes to protecting the privacy of Canadians in the digital age.

I will be sharing my time with the wonderful member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl, who tells me that his riding is the most beautiful in the country. However, I have to disagree with him because surely Pontiac is the most beautiful.

The subject of this motion could not be more important: the privacy of Canadians. The good people of the Pontiac are as concerned as other citizens that the increasingly technological world we live in should respect the privacy of individuals. This privacy may be breached in all sorts of ways today, but governments, as well as companies, have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that they protect the private lives of Canadians.

To me, the privacy of Canadians is sacrosanct. We are a G7 country where democracy has been stable, and we have a duty to our fellow citizens in this regard. However, we must remain constantly vigilant when the government begins to creep into the lives of Canadians. This is a slippery slope in any democracy, and certain inherent dangers exist in the sharing of private information with the government. This begs the question: what limits are imposed on governments today when they request information that is not voluntarily given by Canadians?

We have learned recently that Canadian law enforcement agencies have begun to request massive amounts of information on Canadians from telecommunications companies. Due to advances in technology, it is the telecommunications sector, and providers in particular, who collect massive amounts of data about their subscribers.

What is worrying is that this is not the first time we have heard this. In 2011, according to the Privacy Commissioner, telecommunications providers responded to 1,193,630 requests for the personal information of Canadians. That is an average of one request every 27 seconds. This does not even cover it, since only three of the nine major telecom companies actually informed the commissioner's office of how many times they granted the government's request for consumer data.

Of this staggering number of requests, figures provided to the office in late 2011 show that wireless telecom companies complied with the government's request for customer data, and the vast majority of these requests were done without a warrant or even information sent to the individuals concerned. No consent was sought, and no consent was given.

The situation is so bad, and so many requests have been made, that one major company actually had to install a mirror of their data on a network so that it could send this raw data traffic directly to the federal authorities requesting it.

A concerted government response is clearly required and urgently needed to protect the privacy of Canadians. Instead, seemingly to have an increased amount of information on Canadians, the government has actually eroded the protection of the privacy of Canadians since it formed government. Whether this has been on purpose or by accident, we can judge the consequences.

For example, it has consistently refused to update any of the laws that keep the government accountable with regard to the privacy information of Canadians. The privacy laws have not been updated since the 1980s. That was before Facebook. In fact, the Internet was in its infancy back then. We have to do better.

By allowing thousands of breaches of personal information, the government has also consistently shown itself to be incapable of adequately protecting Canadians' privacy within its own departments, as we have seen with the recent Heartbleed situation or as one can recall from the letter debacle at the CRA. Contradictions abound, because under the pretext of protecting the privacy of Canadians and while decrying heavy-handed government, the industry minister argued that the long form census was intrusive and eliminated it, yet the government sees nothing wrong with invading Canadians' private information without a warrant and without even telling them.

It has repeatedly introduced legislation that makes it easier for Conservatives and the government to snoop on Canadians. For example, we can remember the public safety minister's introduction of the infamous Bill C-30, known as the online snooping bill. Fortunately, Canadians were paying attention. They were outraged, and the government was forced to back down. Since then, though, Bill C-13, the government's cyberbullying law, though well-intentioned, includes lawful access provisions that would expand warrantless disclosure of information to law enforcement by giving immunity from any liability to companies holding Canadians' information if they disclose it without a warrant. This makes it more likely that companies would have to hand over information without a warrant, as there are no risks they would face or any criminal or civil penalties if they do so.

We can also mention Bill S-4, the new so-called digital privacy act, which would go even further and allow private sector organizations to hand over Canadians' private information. This again could be done without consent and without a court order to any organization investigating a breach of contract or potential violation of any law. This could also be done in secret, without the knowledge of the affected person.

We may, quite reasonably, ask why the government is not taking the privacy of Canadians more seriously. Where is the libertarian zeal that motivated so many of my colleagues on the other side of the House, the idea that government was too big and too intrusive in the lives of Canadians? The reality is that government has crept more into the lives of Canadians under the watch of this government than at perhaps any other time in Canadian history.

Many questions remain unanswered. The citizens of my riding would like to understand why breaches to their privacy are happening more and more frequently. The onus is on the government to prove there is enough crime or potential terrorism or other matters of national security to justify 1.2 million requests for personal information in a single year.

However, what concerns me the most is the lack of due process. It seems to me that when law enforcement agencies decide they want private information on citizens, at the very least there should be a good cause for them to seek it. In our current situation, that determination is assured by the warrant process. If a request does not meet the requirements of a warrant, then it should simply not be made.

Since I am short on time, I will skip ahead. Essentially, Canadians have a right to know who is snooping on them and how they are doing it. I just do not understand why the Conservative government does not simply come clean with Canadians and give them the whole picture of what is really going on. On our side of the House, we want this information to be provided to Canadians as rapidly as possible.

Canadians understand that law enforcement agencies need information to track down criminals.

However, the fact that the government is requesting Canadians' personal information from telecommunications companies without a warrant 1.2 million times a year is completely unacceptable. The problem with warrantless disclosure is that it is uncontrolled and results in information being disclosed much more frequently than is justified.

In conclusion, it is clear that our privacy laws need to be updated in order to better protect Canadians' personal information. These laws must not be weakened. We need to be able to take effective legal action against criminals without infringing on the rights of law-abiding Canadians and treating them like criminals.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that we recognize that through the Privacy Commissioner we know a request went in, I believe, back in 2011, and inquiries of some nature were put in place for literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. As a result, when information about those individuals was requested, it would have been given, and we do not necessarily know what authority put in the request.

My question to the member is this: how can we do more to try to get a lot of unanswered questions answered? One suggestion I have is for a standing committee of the House to study the issue more in depth to try to get a better understanding of the inquiries made into those hundreds of thousands of Canadians. Would the member concur that this is an important issue that we should be further exploring at great length?