Mr. Speaker, I am so disappointed that the government is not willing to consider sober second thought, having put forward such a scandalous abuse of omnibus budget bills as is found in Bill C-4.
What we have in Bill C-4, which is titled the affordability act, are many measures that are mostly about affordability, but magically, there is this bizarre inclusion of amendments to the Canada Elections Act.
Part 4 of this bill contains amendments to the Canada Elections Act. What does the Canada Elections Act have to do with the cost of living?
It is not just bizarre that we find in part 4 of Bill C-4, which is the affordability act, unaccountably, changes to the Canada Elections Act. The content of those changes is, and I will use the word again, scandalous. Canadians will be scandalized, and it is unfortunate that the way of going in this Parliament has been for things to be passed so quickly that people do not even know what they have passed.
Part 4 of Bill C-4 is all about one thing: removing any thought that there is any requirement on the part of any federal political party in this country to protect the personal private information of Canadians. The bill is a bit of overkill, one might say. At one point in part 4 of Bill C-4, it says that any of the provisions for protection of privacy are “deemed never to have come into force and is repealed.”
If they were deemed never to have come into force, I suppose it is a bit of overkill to also make sure they are repealed, but it gets worse. The bill then says that part 4 of Bill C-4 will come into force in the year 2000.
I remember the day this bill was tabled in June. I took around the hard copy of Bill C-4 to various friends on the side of the House of the Liberal Party and said, “Look at this. Why does this bill have to come into force in the year 2000?” People would say that it must be a typo, and I would say, “No, that is not a typo, my friend. That is a time machine.”
I have never seen before in this place that a bill in the future tense would come into force 26 years ago.
There is nothing extraordinary about the fact that there are things I have never seen before.
I am not the only one who has never seen this.
However, for the moment, this is a part of the bill that strikes me as odd.
The Senate looked at it and asked why, buried in the affordability act, there were amendments to the Elections Act. It is all well and good that, in the preamble the Speaker just read, the government says it is sending this back to the Senate and that they have no business in this, letting them slap them on the wrist for thinking they can presume to tell anybody in this place about the Elections Act, but the government had this coming and was well overdue to start looking at sections of omnibus bills. I think it is scandalous that we did not.
I know a lot of senators were disturbed by Bill C-12. They looked at Bill C-12 in committee, and they said that it had not been properly studied and that it would abuse the rights of refugees, but they held back. They thought that the government would not want to accept their amendments, so they did not make amendments, but they did put on the record that a subcommittee was concerned.
It would have been tough for the Senate to make amendments because the pressure was on them to not make amendments. In fact, the leader of the government in the Senate went so far as to misstate to other senators that Bill C-4 had been carried unanimously in this place.
I noticed they were careful in the preamble we just heard to refer to unanimous support from recognized parties. The Liberals, the Conservatives and the Bloc were happy to carry this unanimously, but my objections were recorded on the record, even in the so-called unanimous consent motion. It says, “that the opposition of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands be noted”.
Why do I dig in my heels? Why do I say hurrah for the senators who put forward some common-sense amendments? What is wrong with the government that it will not accept the Senate amendments?
If one has not looked at the Senate amendments, standing by what I have said, it is extraordinary that the Government of Canada would say it is bringing into effect a bill that would take effect 26 years ago. What kind of offence has the Liberal Party committed in the last 26 years that would require a time machine to say that laws that we might have had to protect the personal information of Canadians did not ever exist, were never carried and, on top of that, took effect in the year 2000?
The Senate amendment just says that three years from when Bill C-4 takes effect, three years from now, the government must come up with a way of protecting the personal and private information of Canadians held by federal political parties.
This was not that long ago, so I will cite the source, but there was an iPolitics news story from March 3 of this year where the leader of the government in the House, and of course I will not say his name but we know it, said, after citing that he was the former national director of the Liberal Party, “I can assure you that, for our part, and I assume all parties follow the same basic standard, we essentially comply with PIPEDA”, referring to the acronym for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
There is currently a court case in British Columbia because the privacy commissioner for British Columbia has said that this is a matter of law. Provincial political parties in British Columbia have to abide by the protection of privacy information for Canadians.
We know that there was a study before the ethics committee back in 2018. The study was entitled “Breach of Personal Information Involving Cambridge Analytica and Facebook”.
That particular case study should make us, as parliamentarians, and as people who believe in democracy, deeply concerned that the personal and private information of Canadians can be misused in the hands of those who develop systems, such as Cambridge Analytica did, to target, use algorithms, distort and deliver information that is misinformation directed to particular people who are likely to believe, as they are pre-inclined and predisposed to believe, that misinformation. In that case, in that study, the committee pointed to the need of protecting the personal information of Canadians held by federal political parties.
I will not disagree with the government for one minute, but it would be far better to not bury in an omnibus bill on affordability the taking away of rights regarding the personal and private information of Canadians held by federal political parties. It would be far better to be open about it and say that they are going to amend the Canada Elections Act and talk about the personal and private information of Canadians.
I think the government should be ashamed. Every Liberal, and every floor crosser who has joined this gang, should be ashamed of being associated with a piece of subterfuge as vile as saying that this is an act on affordability, to not look over there at part 4, that it has nothing to do with us, that it is something they are doing about privacy information and they are making sure that it took effect 26 years ago.
If they had nothing to be ashamed of, why would they not bring forward a bill that, on its own, is about updating the Canada Elections Act and that clearly asks Canadians what they want us to do with their personal and private information, those of us who are federal political parties? Certainly, the Green Party tries very hard to abide by all the personal and private information protections, as though the law already applied to us clearly, and we will continue to do so.
This is an abomination. This is a very reasonable amendment from the Senate that, three years from now, once the bill is passed, we would have a better plan of action. The government's motion today said it is planning to bring forward something soon. Will that be sooner than three years from now?
How can the government possibly object to an amendment from the Senate that says to get its act in order within the next three years? We should, in this place, absolutely refuse to accept the government's advice to reject Senate amendments. If there ever was a time for sober second thought, it is now. This is embarrassing. Are all recognized parties, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc, okay with passing a law that turns the clock back 26 years? Come on. This is embarrassing. I ask members to please accept the Senate amendments.