Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the Group No. 2 proposed amendments to Bill C-6, the personal information protection and electronic documents act. The majority of the Standing Committee on Industry of which I was chair in the last session strongly supported Bill C-54, which is now Bill C-6.
In the last session from December 1, 1998 to March 18, 1999 the committee held 28 hearings and heard from more than 70 organizations, producing over 45 hours of testimony outlining the merits and deficiencies of the bill. Bill C-54, as it was referred to in the last session, was then deliberated in committee on three separate occasions for more than eight hours. The committee put forth more than 50 improvements to the bill and passed these amendments on March 25, 1999. I had the privilege to report the bill back to the House as amended on Tuesday, April 13, 1999,
The privacy commissioner was one of many witnesses who told us why the bill was so important. In his first appearance at committee he noted:
I support and my office supports this bill. It is in my opinion, long overdue. If fills a necessary gap in the protection of data in the Canadian community. It recognizes the necessity to establish legal privacy rights for citizens of this country, no matter where they live or in what particular activity they are engaged. It puts Canada close to the same level of privacy recognition and data protection that now exists in almost all of western industrialized Europe and various other jurisdictions. It puts us ahead of the game with the United States.
Bill C-6 is intended to protect personal information in the private sector and to give electronic signatures a basis in law. It provides clear ground rules for business and helps improve consumer confidence, resulting in an environment that will foster the growth of electronic commerce in Canada.
The purpose of the bill is to establish rules to govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in a manner that recognizes the right of privacy of all individuals and the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information for a reasonable purpose. This is necessary in an era in which technology increasingly facilitates the collection and exchange of information.
As I mentioned earlier, the purpose of the committee's hearings was to listen to expert witnesses from various sectors of industry to determine how the bill could be improved to ensure the individual's right to protective privacy and industry's ability to make an honest living.
Consequently many changes and suggestions were made. To begin the committee added the definition of commercial activity to subclause 2(1). The committee heard from Anne Cavoukian, the privacy commissioner of Ontario, that the definition was necessary to distinguish commercial activities from non-commercial activities.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre stated that such a definition was necessary. As the Public Interest Advocacy Centre indicated in its submission, some activities by private sector enterprises may or may not be considered commercial, for example data processing within the organization for administrative purposes, data sharing among businesses for the purpose of detecting bad credit risks, collection and use of personal data by professional bodies.
Where provinces fail to act there will be an incentive for data users to characterize their activities as non-commercial so as to avoid application of the legislation. It would therefore be helpful to define the term commercial activity so as to provide more certainty for both data users such as academics, researchers and non-profits and data subjects.
Several witnesses including the Insurance Crime Prevention Bureau, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Pharmacists Association, the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Canadian Bar Association asked for or provided suggested wording to define commercial activity, and commercial activity is now defined in terms of the nature of the transaction itself rather than the activity of the organization per se.
Therefore commercial activity means any particular transaction, act or conduct, or any regular course of conduct that is of a commercial character. The definition of personal information was modified in subclause 2(1). Several witnesses such as the Association of Canadian Archivists, the Writers' Union, the Western Forum of Credit & Financial Executives and the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters criticized the definition as being too broad. Others such as Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Valerie Steeves, the Ontario privacy commissioner, the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Canadian Medical Association wanted it to be more specific with reference to data elements such as health records, anonymized records and biological tissue samples. The proposed definition will therefore capture all personal information about an identifiable individual, except business addresses and phone numbers.
The committee also heard strong arguments as to why the definition of use should be deleted from the bill. In recommending this change Telus and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce testified that they wanted to ensure companies would be able to transfer information from one division to another within an organization. The committee listened and acted on this request. Principle 5 of the schedule will however ensure that information transferred within an organization is used only for the purposes for which it was collected.
The purpose clause of the bill was also amended, clause 3. The original purpose clause attributed the right to privacy to Canadians. It was felt that this was too restrictive since we wish to assure our trading partners that their information is protected. It was important to recognize this international aspect and afford the bill's protection to all personal data coming into Canada. It will also assist in meeting the adequacy test found in the EU directive on protection of personal data.
It also avoids complications regarding non-Canadian residents, tourists and landed immigrants. As the privacy commissioner commented, Bill C-54 represents a significant step toward filling in the gaps in the patchwork of laws and policies that offer data protection in Canada. It promises to bring Canada into line with international data protection norms. This advance is long overdue. Most European countries and many other jurisdictions around the world long ago extended the right to the protection of personal information held by the private sector.
Today we are also talking about changes to clause 7. Several changes were made to clause 7 at committee stage. Several groups came to us and talked about other changes that should be made. Regrettably at committee stage we did not have everything in front of us.
Because of the complex issues we are now able to make an amendment and Motion No. 17 would allow organizations to disclose information to the private sector investigative bodies which are listed in the regulations in order to investigate breaches of agreements or contravention of laws.
This addresses a number of the concerns of witnesses, particularly in the insurance industry. This new section will allow these listed investigative bodies to share information. The amendment completes the exception that was provided for in clause 7(1)(b) for collection without consent for fraud detection by extending it to disclosure.
There are many things to talk about today with respect to this bill and how important it is as we move forward. I would like to let members know that the committee felt that because of the importance of the privacy provisions of the bill, and the need to assess the impact and workability of the provisions, Part 1 of the bill should be reviewed every five years. That is good news.
In her second appearance before the committee the Ontario Privacy Commissioner, Anne Cavoukian, welcomed this change. She stated:
I am pleased that the bill calls for a mandatory five year review as a means of judging the overall effectiveness of the legislation in practice. This review, to analyse the working of the law in practice, both on a national level and a provincial level would note which provinces, aside from Quebec, have adopted corresponding legislation where any gaps or omissions may appear in the country's privacy coverage.
I would like to thank all members of the committee for their hard work on this bill. I believe that the amendments put forth both at committee and in the motions presented today by the government forge a stronger bill for all Canadians.
As the Privacy Commissioner said in his first appearance at the committee:
It is not a perfect bill. I cannot recall in my own experience, in one capacity or another, ever seeing what could be described as a perfect bill. But it goes a long way toward doing what has to be done.
With that the Privacy Commissioner predicted that various suggestions would occur during the hearings for the bill's improvement. They did and the bill was improved. Today there are further motions which improve the bill even more.
Regardless, though, I think Mr. Phillips' opening comments as Privacy Commissioner speak to the significance of this bill. He stated:
I want to make it clear now that I would be very sorry to see this bill fail because of what I consider to be minor deficiencies. It recognizes the basic principle that people have a right to some control over their personal information no matter where it is being used in the Canadian community. That is the first and most important principle of good privacy protection. It embodies the notion of consent for usage. It embodies the notion of transparency in its usage. It embodies the notion of knowledge of things that are being done with people's personal information. It is a good bill in that respect.
I hope that all members of the House support the government's motions and amendments today and will support Bill C-6.
