Reg Alcock

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises a critically important issue. On the narrow question of putting information together today to solve an important problem today, the answer the member has received is absolutely right. Prohibitions in the current Privacy Act prevent that.

Some of the prohibitions were written at a time that predated the existing Privacy Act. If we look back at legislation through the last half of the last century, it is literally peppered with prohibitions on sharing information because of people's inherent fear of the combining of information. The image the public has about government's use of information technology is a frightening one. It is “big brother”. It is the malevolent, all controlling government.

I was in the state of Texas last week talking to the e-government folks there. Texas has 529 separate statutes preventing the sharing of information. That is an attack that has to be made, not to reduce people's right to privacy but to restructure it in light of what the tools enable.

I have said publicly in many venues that our current privacy commissioner is wrong. His approach to the privacy legislation is wrong. He does a disservice to our government and to Canadians in his approach to the delivery of privacy protection. It is outmoded.

We think of these tools as providing a bit of fast exchange. However what the knowledge economy is about is by assembling information it creates new understandings of how things work by bringing information together.

The big changes that drove the big movements in large private structure organizations were based on an ability to all of a sudden see the organization in ways they could not before. They could now assemble information about the organization and extract knowledge from it.

Government prohibits the assembling of the knowledge. How the heck can we build a comprehensive view of what government is all about to enable change? It is a huge problem, and the member is absolutely right.

Do I think that kind of combining should take place when it is in the best interest of citizens? Absolutely, but the minister is quite right. It is prohibited under the Privacy Act, which is why the House has to get its head around the changes that are necessary in that legislation.

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on the Christmas budget, the good news budget, a present from the government to all Canadians.

One thing on which people need to focus is the situation we were facing leading up to this budget: flattening revenues prior to 9/11; concern internationally about the slowdown of the global economy; and the terrible shock of 9/11 which at first threw everyone into no-man's land. I do not think there was a country in the world that had a good grip on what would happen as a result of it.

People were understandably worried throughout the fall as to what it meant. The message just before Christmas was that although some tough decisions had to be made we were still able to balance the budget, implement the decisions made in prior budgets regarding infrastructure and tax cuts and keep a focus on innovation and the growth agenda. It was a good news budget. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, all ministers and staff who worked on it and the thousands of Canadians who contributed to it should be congratulated.

I think people have not realized fully another part to the budget. It shows the fundamental wisdom of the finance minister, not just in this budget but in all his budgets. At a time when revenues are flattening and we are approaching what might be a recession, about which people in Canada are still wondering, what are the remedies? One of them is to cut taxes. The other is to increase investment.

A year ago we started down the road to a new round of infrastructure. We had infrastructure investments in place to provide some stimulus before we began to address the more serious concerns about the downturn so those projects could be up and running as unemployment began to rise. This was reinforced in this budget and we were able to put more money into infrastructure investment.

We also started down the course of tax cuts a couple of budgets ago and now we are into the implementation phase of that. Each year the tax burden is being reduced and the money in the pockets of people is growing.

The combination of the foresight of the finance minister and the government, as well as the ability to manage the finances, allowed us to continue to keep an eye on the larger agenda, which is helping Canada become one of the most innovative and creative countries in the world. I am one who thinks they have done a marvelous job.

As someone who has a great deal of interest in innovation, the fact that they were able to make investments in universities, assist the research councils and continue the path which had been established a while ago to enhance our capacity to create knowledge was important.

Having said all that, I still have concerns. I have concerns about the structure of the innovation programs in Canada. We are too heavily skewed to a few government institutions in Ottawa that suck up far too much of the resources. The way the Canadian Foundation for Innovation functions is wrong. The models used by NSERC need review.

Like any large organization there are still problems which is why we need the innovation agenda and why we need to see the white paper and get on with the work of building a comprehensive strategy for innovation which includes not just the five large universities in Canada but also all parts of the country.

I want to talk about something else in the budget. It is something in which members will know I have a deep interest. It is one of those areas that is tempting to cut when times get tough; that is the progress toward enhanced use of information and communication technologies by government.

There are several flavours of that. In the window right now is something that goes by the name of Government On-Line. Essentially it is the placing online of more and more information that citizens can access about government services and how government functions. It shares the information available in government, but also transacts business with government online in a fast, efficient and secure environment and accesses services quickly when they are needed.

However there is no democratic government in the world that has succeeded in doing this. Canada is at the front of the pack in making these attempts and it is progressing. In fact, in some ways we were very smart when we started to connect Canadians in the last decade. Canada is far more connected than some other countries. In some other countries the digital divide arguments are all about how they get connected. Canada has done that. It is now heavily into the systems design and the systems change issues.

When we look at the basket of issues that members deal with in the House, I would ask members to spend some time to get up to speed on these issues because they are at the heart of the change agenda that will affect every member of the House over the next decade.

As I started to talk about accessing information online, someone made a comment about the current concerns regarding freedom of information. I share the concerns of the member. There are serious flaws in the way the current freedom of information system operates and some of the recent decisions make those flaws worse.

However there is another aspect to that, which is the culture of secrecy that exists within all governments, but particularly within the Canadian government. We do not share shareable information in an efficient or effective way. At the end of the day, what is one of the big functions of this Chamber? It is to hold the government accountable. How do we hold the government accountable if we do not understand what it is doing and if we do not have comprehensive and complete information on the activities of government?

A lot of work has to take place in the next while to get both the access to information and the privacy legislation right, privacy being the companion legislation. The government collects involuntarily information about individuals and holds it. People have the right not to have that information shared publicly. Having a balance between privacy and access is important.

Also, we need to follow an investment curve. I am pleased that the finance minister saw fit to continue with the progress in GOL by giving departments the capacity to build competent online systems. It is time for the House to begin focusing on the issues around how the created information is used and how to turn government into a learning organization. How do we build an information infrastructure for this House that allows us to be part of the knowledge economy?

A friend of mine has suggested a title for one paper we have been writing, which is: In the knowledge economy is it possible to have a smart government? Is it possible for government to get up to speed and start to function at the same rate that the external community is?

I would argue that one reason there are concerns about the functioning of this Chamber is that the instruments of parliament have not been modernized. I am not talking about tinkering with a few rules. Rather how do members get themselves ahead in the information flow? How do they and the Chamber become informed about issues before they come crashing in on us with a very short deadline?

Members know the world has changed dramatically but we in the House have not. As a colleague of mine suggested, the decision making structures in the House are ones with which Sir John A. Macdonald would be very comfortable. We are taking the first step down a road that will change all that, but if it is to be done right it needs leadership and guidance from the members of the House. I encourage members to take some time to get themselves up to speed on these issues because they will be the leadership issues of the next decade.

With that I will take any questions, including the one from the member for Winnipeg Centre, if he wishes to get back to his discussion about the enormous amount of support the federal government is giving his riding.

[Anti-terrorism Act, November 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words on the bill at report stage.

When I spoke on the bill at the time it was introduced to the House, I was concerned, as I believe a great many members were, about law being made in haste. There was a feeling at that time that the terrible events of September 11 had caused us to react very quickly of course, but, as the Prime Minister said when he spoke on terrorism, law made quickly, law made in haste, can sometimes contain errors. I was concerned that we needed the time to reflect on the issues that affect the basic rights of all Canadians.

At the same time, we were pressed because events that were unfolding and of the need to provide protection and the tools needed to investigate and to ensure that no further harm came to people.

I outlined three things when I spoke the last time. The first was the necessary modernization. I felt that a great many clauses in the bill were a simple modernization of the rules of investigation. They were pieces of work the department had been working on for a very long time. They were bringing into effect in Canada some of the UN conventions that we had already agreed to and they were part of what I believe we will be coming back to over and over again, a necessary modernization of the ability of the police to investigate in the light of advancing technology.

That was a portion of the bill. However there were portions of the bill that were created quickly and specifically to address the issues of September 11. I asked for two things. I asked that attention be paid to the oversight mechanisms, that when we acted upon information provided in confidence by other governments, there would be a third party mechanism to review the decisions that were taken so that no Canadians would have their rights threatened.

The third thing, which I spent a fair bit of time researching and working on after that, was the necessity to create a sunset clause. I agree very much with the member for Mount Royal when he talks about the fact that the strength in the bill is not just the ability to review it five years hence, but the elements within the bill that allow us to see and understand what is going on. It is the transparency and the opportunity for third parties to examine what is going on that will ultimately be the guarantee of our freedoms.

What I really want to do today is congratulate the members of the committee from all parties. They worked exceptionally hard on this. I know how hard members I know on the committee struggled with each one of these. We owe a great debt of thanks to the chairman of the committee, to the member for Mount Royal, the member for Winnipeg--Transcona, the member for Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough and so on. These members worked very hard and put in long hours trying to meet two tests: first, to get a piece of legislation passed that would enable the police to act in this very difficult area; and second, to protect the rights and freedoms that Canadians have. They struck a balance.

I knowof the nights that the members for Vancouver Quadra, Oshawa, Erie--Lincoln and Berthier--Montcalm spent thinking about this, trying to find solutions and trying to find compromises. The member for Scarborough East, who shares a hallway with me, was up late worrying about this. I think people struggled hard to figure out how we could improve the bill. However, I think we all understood, although there was some confusion at times in the debate, that no matter how hard we worked there was still a fear that we would not get it right.

I thought the debate that took place around the sunset clause was very important. I saw some reporting on this that suggested there was a belief in the House that terrorism would cease to exist in two, three or five years. That is not the point of the sunset clause at all. It is simply a mechanism that would allow us to step back, distance ourselves from the events that drove this and re-examine them in a calm and dispassionate way.

When I spoke the last time, I argued for three years with a possible two year extension, but five years achieves the same end. It brings the clauses in the legislation back before the House for further examination and debate.

The committee has done exactly what the Prime Minister asked, and that is improve the bill. I realize there is still dissent and people do not believe we have gone far enough, but there always will be in a House like this. However I think all members of the committee are to be congratulated for the time, energy and effort they put into this. We have a bill that will meet the immediate needs and still give us an opportunity to guarantee that the rights of Canadians are protected.

I am quite prepared to support the bill, not necessarily the amendment.

[Louis Riel Act, November 7th, 2001]

seconded by the hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette-et-la Mitis, moved for leave to introduce Bill C-411, an act respecting Louis Riel.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Rimouski-Neigette-et-la Mitis and a number of other members from all parties in the House who participated in the development of the bill. I recommend it to the House for early passage.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[E-Commerce, October 30th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in the knowledge economy the race goes to the quick. The ability to take advantage of the opportunities that the new information and communication technologies enable will determine the winners in this global competition.

Canada, with its relatively small, well educated population, high degree of connectivity and overall sophistication in the use of these tools, has an unparalleled opportunity to lead the world. In addition to computers and networks, businesses need the tools that allow them to move quickly in this new market.

Today I am pleased to draw the attention of the House to the SourceCAN initiative of Industry Canada. It is a state of the art online service that allows small Canadian businesses to access vastly increased international markets while at the same time reducing the costs of doing business online. SourceCAN is one of the tools by which Canada will reach its goal of 5% of worldwide e-commerce.

I congratulate the staff at Industry Canada and all the people involved in this important initiative.

[Privilege, October 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is difficult for me to be terribly specific. Frankly, it is a huge bill which I just received yesterday and I am not a lawyer. It references 23 separate acts and does not necessarily give the text of them. It is a huge piece of work, and I thank God every day I am not a lawyer.

However I do have a lot of faith, quiet frankly, in the justice committee. I served on it for a while. I know a good portion of the membership. They are smart as can be. They will give this real review. On the government side, there has been an indication that the government is prepared to accept the advice from the committee.

The member makes a good point about the difference in the two systems, although I think the committee, if challenged, can find a Canadian solution to that. The proposal is really simple: sunset it for a specific date.

The sunset is better than review because it forces us to debate it rather than simply have it done in committee, then table a report saying that it is okay. I would sooner have the House engaged in it, as it should be on issues of individual rights. However, it gives an out clause because we do not know what will happen in three years from now.

It was suggested to me that if we get all these security services ramped up and it has the potential of ending in three years, about half way through people may start getting nervous about whether they have these powers or not. Therefore, give the authorities one extension and at the end of that, it is either reviewed and passed or it is gone. I think that is reasonable.

I would not do that for all acts. Reviews are a legitimate mechanism when we are talking about economic and commercial acts. However, the bar should be higher when we talk about things that affect our rights.

[Privilege, October 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time. Given that I have a very short period of time, I simply want to frame two or three quick arguments by way of advice to the committee that will consider the bill.

As everyone has gone to some lengths to point out, these are difficult times.

I would like to start by congratulating all the public servants who have worked so hard to make the very necessary adjustments quickly to provide us with increased security and protection as we sort out what is going on in the world.

I want to congratulate the staff at the justice department. This huge bill amends more than 23 other bills. It deals with some of the most sensitive issues in our body of law, issues that affect our individual, personal and civil rights. It is not easy.

I also want to congratulate the members of the cabinet. It has been little more than a month since the events took place. They got all this work done and produced a bill that is, on a very preliminary reading, quite fair and balanced.

I do have concerns about some of it which I will speak to in a minute, but it was remarkably more balanced than I had feared when I first heard they were coming forward with a bill of this magnitude.

At the same time, there is an old saying that there are two things children should never see: the making of law and the making of sausages. Justice done in haste can carry within it some very big problems. To try to put through a bill of this size, which deals with so many important rights of individuals, raises cause for at least wonder and concern.

I congratulate the Prime Minister in this instance. I listened with great care to his speech last night. I was particularly taken both last night and today with not just his willingness but with his instructions to and urging of the justice committee. He said:

But we all recognize that the legislation has, of necessity, been prepared quickly. Therefore, the role of the justice committee of this House in scrutinizing the bill will be of particular importance. It must examine the bill through the lens, not only of public safety, but also of individual rights.

With his history in protecting human rights, I thank him for handing that responsibility over to the committee because I am sure it will do a good job. It will give us some time hopefully to reflect on some of these issues.

I really want to frame three arguments here.

By and large the bill does a very good job. It brings into force a couple of United Nations conventions that we had not yet ratified. I would recommend to everyone in the House that they read the speech of our colleague from Mount Royal who went through the 12 conventions in some detail and talked about Canada's leadership role in this area. It is an important opportunity for us to share with the rest of the world some of the expertise and feelings we have developed here.

Some of the issues regarding the changes to investigatory powers could be better understood as modernizing the body of tools that the police have available to them. In fact, the communication technologies have changed rapidly over the last couple of decades. Some of the instruments the police have to do investigations simply have not kept up.

There is a recognition that there needs to be more work done in this area and I believe we will see a more extensive review. This one was done quickly to deal with those most egregious or difficult areas in terms of mobile wiretapping to allow them to take advantage of the various technologies or to interact with some of the newer technologies to track people or to confirm their suspicions of terrorist acts.

I can broadly support that, but given the rapid changes in technology we need a more thorough review of this. I hope the minister will reinforce our intention to proceed with it, even though we have passed some of these articles of the law.

The second area is a more difficult one. Anyone who has dealt with privacy or access legislation knows that there are certain categories of information that not only are secret, but the very existence of them needs to be denied.

It is a funny conundrum in a free and open society. One of the simplest examples, and we went through this when we looked at freedom of information relative to organized crime, is that if we had the right to ask a question not about the substance of an investigation, but about the very existence of an investigation, that could be enough to alert criminals to something of which they were not formerly aware.

In this case some of the secrecy provisions are around information to be received from other countries. It is a necessary provision. The U.S. or any other country will not share with us information that has been uncovered by their systems if they feel that information may be leaked. However it is necessary to have comprehensive arrangements to track down terrorists worldwide. It raises questions though when things are done in darkness and are absent from public review.

There was a question, which I rather agreed with, about the need to establish third party review. It can be done in secrecy. Judges can be sworn. However there needs to be a mechanism. This is a fundamental question: Who watches the watchers?

One of our jobs in this Chamber is to ensure that people's rights are protected. If we cannot for legitimate reasons, and I would say this is only when there is legitimacy to the secrecy, we still need to have an oversight mechanism that is empowered.

In many cases there is evidence of that, there is reference to the courts and we have a lot of opportunities to get a third party involved. However it is not quite as clear in the areas of the Official Secrets Act and some of that information. The committee should have a look at that.

The final thing of which I want to speak is the thing that worries me the most. Perhaps I should not say worries me, but I would like to offer it as a solution to the problem. The problem is we are in an extraordinary time. There is a lot of need to act quickly to address this but we do not know how we will feel about this in two or three years. We do not know how effective it will be. We have made some fairly sweeping changes and they will have an impact on the body of rights that we exercise, so we should consider sunsetting certain clauses of the act.

By that I mean not just reviewing, I mean certain clauses of the act should cease to be in effect by a given date, and I have a recommendation on that, unless the House re-debates and re-passes them.

This is not a provision we use in Canada very often and I would not normally argue for it except for two things. The mechanism that we use is one of parliamentary review. We have 32 acts outstanding right now that contain review clauses. The trouble is we do not necessarily get around to it in a timely way.

I note there is a three year review for the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. The bill came into effect in 1992. The subcommittee was established to review the act in November of 1998 and to review it again in February of 1999. We have not been very good at following up on these reviews.

Also, reviews sometimes carry within them the sense that we will just look at it and tinker with it. When it is something as fundamental as our individual rights, they deserve more fulsome debate at a time when we are not immediately under the pressure of the anthrax, or the terrorist attacks or everything else that is going on in this environment.

I can support the passage of the bill, subject to the review and advice from the justice committee, but I would recommend that we do as the U.S. house did when it put a sunset clause that had an interesting kind of additional version to it. I would not sunset the whole bill. I would sunset only certain clauses in it.

The U.S. sunsetted it for three years. It said that those sections would cease to have effect on December 31, 2004, but it gave an out clause. It said to the president in that case, and we would say it to our Minister of Justice or the Prime Minister, that if it were indicated that the sections were required for national security they would remain in force for two additional years. That would buy a little time if there were concern about this thing failing.

I think that would work here. It is critical that when we get more distant from these events that we re-debate and re-pass these provisions.

I also want to share a bit of information from Canadians. Canadians are quite worried about what has been going on, as one would expect, and there has been a fair bit of surveying. Ipsos-Reid just did a lengthy survey on what people would be prepared to accept. This was within 10 days of the events in New York City.

The question asked was: “Do you agree or disagree with the statement, I would be prepared to see our police and security services get more powers to fight terrorism, even if it means they might tap my phone, open my mail or read my personal e-mail?” At that time, 10 days after those events, only 50% of Canadians agreed with that; 53% in the weighted sample.

Then they were asked “Would you be willing to give up some of your civil liberties?” Again there was an ambiguity about that.

[Privilege, October 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great care to the member's remarks. I served with him on the justice committee and know him to be a thoughtful member in the area of human rights. We recently did work on the organized crime bill, the money laundering bill and others, but I was not part of the committee at the time. Those bills were subject to review, I believe.

Could the member share with us his position or his party's position on the review of those acts versus the review of this one, and give me a sense of how they are different?

[Attack on the United States, September 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, obviously I am not going to attempt to answer the question that was directed to the Minister of National Defence.

It is unfortunate if we allow this debate to slip back into a bunch of debates which we will have in the normal course of business because this is a very different situation. We will do what needs to be done in whatever way we are asked to and are able to serve. We will not put people in harm's way without the resources or the equipment they need.

I will end with one thing. It is from the Prime Minister's speech. I do not often do this but I was quite taken by some of the things he said today. He said that we have never been a bystander in the struggle for justice in the world, that we will stand with Americans, as neighbours, as friends, as family, that we will stand with our allies and that we will do what we must to defeat terrorism. He also said to let our actions be guided by a spirit of wisdom and perseverance, by our values and our way of life.

[Attack on the United States, September 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I can imagine how worrisome that is for the hon. member and his family. As it is, when we talk about going to war most of us are at an age where we would not normally be drafted or brought into a war. We really are talking about whether we are willing to spend the lives of our children. I think that Canadians are saying they are willing to do whatever is necessary to stop this.

Is the Canadian army as big, strong, fast and powerful as the army of the largest country in the world, the richest country in the world, a country ten times our size? No, it is not.

However, is it sharp? Is it equipped? Is it smart? Can it do the job it is called upon to do? Yes, I am confident it can.