Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk again about Canada's census and Statistics Canada with regard to privacy and ensuring that our census is done in the proper context.
Changes were made to Canada's census process and the information-gathering process that raised a lot of concerns about privacy. Most recently, Statistics Canada was able to obtain individuals' banking information and data without their consent by going through companies themselves. Banks and other financial institutions were asked to provide that information to Statistics Canada, basically unvetted and unaccounted for. That raised a lot of concerns.
I am here to report that since I asked my question and wrote to the Privacy Commissioner, there has been an investigation. The Privacy Commissioner has responded very positively with regard to oversight and analysis.
The fact of the matter is that the Liberals, when trying to fix the changes made to the census by the previous government, left some gaping holes with respect to public policies that continue to undermine the ability to get good information that is important with respect to housing, to the distribution of funds for transit, to infrastructure investments and to a number of different things that are necessary for a civil society to be effective in distributing funds to deal with socioeconomic issues.
I recently tabled a bill that proposes to eliminate Crown copyright in this country. Canada is the only country that still has copyright on basically public information that people pay for. Government information for research and reports and a number of different things is held by the Liberal government. This is based on a 1911 law in Great Britain. Other Commonwealth nations, and even the United States, never had this law, which prevents information paid for by the public from getting out. The information is often redacted. Ironically, the minister has been advised that ending Crown copyright would improve public information.
There is a solution. Jack Layton always told us that we had to be in proposition versus just opposition. Our colleague from Burnaby is now asking for the same type of work.
In the dying days of this Parliament, I have laid out a proposition asking the Liberal government to eliminate Crown copyright to alleviate some of the pressure on the issue I am raising here today, which is the census and privacy.
Again, this goes back to banking information that was requested under the chief statistician. What changed is that the Liberals allowed the chief statistician to basically have free reign on the collection of data through third party groups.
This expedition to get individuals' private information from their banks through a third party without their even having a chance to opt in or out was done through changes to the law and legal practice, which we warned the Liberal government about, and it is undermining the census. This so-called pilot project is actually enshrined in part of the law.
My question has really been resolved by the Privacy Commissioner. Unfortunately, the Liberal government has not participated in the solution. I hope the government will deal with the issue of Crown copyright, because that would help the situation.