John Bryden

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I think part of the problem is the Access to Information Act itself which was passed in 1983. It has not been upgraded or overhauled since that time.

We have to get at that legislation and make it so that it is very clear the type of information that the bureaucrats should release automatically. In other words, if he wants to perform his audit, I would say to him that it should not be a matter of an access to information request. It should be so defined as being the type of information that should be automatically released, and I think better out through the Internet.

I think we are headed in the right direction. I served a little while on the government operations committee in 1995. I was very surprised to see how behind the times a lot of this performance management, or lack of it, was. I think we are headed in the right direction, but it is really up to us, the politicians, to lead.

I really deplore it when I see members of the opposition, and not the member who just spoke, because I know he is very interested in reforming the Access to Information Act, but I really deplore it when other members of the opposition do not support what Canadians think is the right thing to do, for minor political gain, for their party, Reform, former Reform. I am not sure what it is, but whatever it is allied to, I am sorry, I have just forgotten.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I have difficulty grasping this new name, but I believe it is in order if I still call it the former Reform Party. I do not think there is any rule in the House that requires me to call it the perfidious alliance or whatever it is.

Apart from that, there are two types of audits. There is a financial audit and there is a performance audit. Actually since this government came to power in 1993, the civil service has been moving more and more toward performance audits.

There is no question that there has been a very serious problem in governments before and we are moving in the right direction. The problem has been that the money has been spent and there has not been a decent tracking of whether that money has been spent wisely and well.

I think what we are talking about here in reforming accounting practices and reforming the Access to Information Act is keeping track of the money and making sure that money is spent well.

It is really transparency that you must have before you have accountability, and I do believe, not just the political government but our bureaucracy is headed in that direction as fast as it can go.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member opposite would just wait for about two minutes, we will give him his little reality check.

The gist of the opposition argument is while acknowledging that treasury board practice and policy is to release audits as soon as possible, it is suggesting that the government is somehow dragging its heels because it cannot get the audits it requests under the Access to Information Act in a timely fashion.

The reality check is that I am going to read from the Access to Information Act. Section 21(1)(a) says:

The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested under this act that contains advice or recommendations developed by or for a government institution or a minister of the crown.

In other words, since 1994 it has been this government's policy to release the very information that the Access to Information Act entitles it to refuse.

Read the section again, I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker. You will see it very clearly states that the minister does not have to refuse to release that information and yet we have a government that, starting in 1994, almost as soon as we came to power, opened up that kind of information.

Mr. Speaker, when you resort to the Access to Information Act to try to get this type of information and the government is withholding it, if you will forgive me, Mr. Speaker, the suggestion is false. I believe that is in order, Mr. Speaker, the suggestion is false.

In fact, all that is happening is that of course the government when it is doing an audit wants to give time for its officials to examine the results of the audit. That is what timely release is all about. You have to give the government time to consider the results and then release it to the public.

The member's colleagues suggest that all these internal audits should be released to standing committees. This government, which is very sincere in its desire to bring the best level of management possible, does internal audits all the time, not just financial audits but performance audits. If all of those audits went out to a standing committee, the standing committee would be absolutely smothered.

The real answer is to put this kind of information on the Internet. Put it on the Internet where everyone can see it, Mr. Speaker, and then you will have the type of management control by the people of Canada that is the target of this government and I think is very, very poorly understood by the members opposite.

Indeed, if they really and truly wanted to ensure that it was government legislative policy and it was the law that the government had to release these audits, then all the members opposite would have to do is to support a certain private member's bill that is around. Bill C-206 offers them the opportunity to make amendments to the very clause I cited. This particular private member's bill, Bill C-206, uses that clause and adds the words that public opinion polls are to be disclosed automatically. You could easily add the words that government audits should be disclosed automatically to that clause, but no, that is too simple.

To think that the Reform Party, or the Canadian Alliance as it is now known, would actually take advantage of a legislative initiative of a private member in order to bring more openness to government is, just too much to ask. The party opposite has made it very clear that it does not support reform to the Access to Information Act. It does not support it at all. It will be very amusing as time goes on to see it vote against a bill that calls for openness in government. But we will see.

However, I am glad of the opportunity to speak on this particular issue because if they were really interested in bringing more transparency to areas that really matter to Canadians, then they should be looking at this whole question of making the audits of non-profit organizations, charities and crown corporations available to the public. This is a huge area of secrecy. We have a President of the Treasury Board who has established a policy despite the restrictions of the Access to Information Act, a policy that does call for audits to be open and yet we have all these other bodies that spend billions and billions of taxpayers' dollars, who, when they are audited, can keep those audits secret.

I would suggest again that there is an incredible opportunity for the opposition members if they really want these audits made public, and I think the majority of Canadians would say that is correct, they should be supporting a certain private member's bill, Bill C-206. If it passes and goes through, it would overtake the Income Tax Act and its restrictions on the disclosure of the audits of charities and non-profit organizations and would make these available to the public.

I ask you, Mr. Speaker, what is wrong with the opposition? What is wrong with the opposition that it cannot get on board with legislation that is supported by 70 backbenchers on this side alone and dozens of backbenchers or members of the opposition on the other side? For some reason I cannot understand, the Reform Party has abandoned the issue entirely and so has the Bloc Quebecois. They do not care about openness and I know why.

It is because a government that is closed is a good target. A government that is open, as we have seen from the minister of the treasury board as she explains that these audits are available now, you can get them now. Well, Mr. Speaker, that does not give much opportunity to the members of the opposition. And so they come up with a motion, Mr. Speaker, that I can even barely understand. Mr. Speaker, I am in despair with them. I just do not know what I can do with them.

What they do not seem to understand is that our time in this House is precious. They should get behind legislation, either government legislation or private members' legislation, that is good for Canadians, instead of putting trivial motions on the floor that we have to vote against because the motion goes nowhere and suggests by implication that the government is not doing its job when in fact it is doing more than its job.

This is a government that stands for transparency. We are moving in the right direction. I do wish the opposition would get on board.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is late in the afternoon and there have been hours and hours of rhetoric. I think it is high time for a reality check. I do not include the hon. member for Broadview—Greenwood in the rhetoric. I was referring to the rhetoric coming from the other side. I must correct myself on that.

[Points Of Order, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to your ruling on a point of privilege raised by the then Reform Party, I have again obtained the hundred plus seconders for my Bill C-206.

However, between the time you made your ruling on February 8, in which you said that Bill C-206 should be dropped from near the top to the bottom of the order of precedence while you awaited the advice of the Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs, and now after the committee has debated, after it has reported and after you have made the final ruling that I should again get the seconders to my bill, and my getting those seconders, there has been a draw.

Consequently I find Bill C-206 to be not at the bottom of the order of precedence as it existed when the member for Athabasca's point of privilege was first raised but now in 28th place behind all those bills and motions from the most recent draw.

On March 29, Mr. Speaker, you spoke of fairness to myself and all those who prepared items by the hundred signature rule. The essence of the member for Athabasca's point of privilege was whether Bill C-206 could still command the requisite more than 100 seconders, given that he wished to withdraw his signature. I have demonstrated that it can and does, despite a very narrow timeframe in which to make such a demonstration.

I therefore question the appropriateness of dropping Bill C-206 to the bottom of a second round of order of precedence when all seem to agree that I have not acted improperly and my Bill C-206 continues to have the confidence of more than 100 members of the House.

Because of teething problems associated with the new procedure, Bill C-206's scheduled appearance before this House has already been delayed two months. Is it fair, not just to me but to its 100-plus seconders, that it be delayed a further two months? I would ask that it be restored to where it would have been prior to the last draw, immediately behind Motion No. 128, the motion of the member for Langley—Abbotsford.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite complains about government collecting data before it agrees to award grants to organizations. That is precisely the Canadian Alliance's complaint with respect to the HRDC file. It is because the HRDC bureaucrats failed to do their homework in some instances, failed to get enough data about who was receiving money and failed to examine the credentials of those people receiving the money, that we have some problems in HRDC right now. If the government is going to give money to anyone it has to find out who that person is and whether they are entitled to the money. So it has to ask close, probing questions.

The problem is that we have passed through a terrible age of political correctness in which too many bureaucrats have failed to ask the questions they should have asked. If people go to borrow money from a bank they darn well have to answer certain questions about how much acreage they have under cultivation and what are their basic assets.

What Bill C-6 is all about is that the existing privacy act protects this kind of information when the government collects it but when private corporations collect it there has not been adequate protection. The member is quite right. If the people in his community are answering phone calls from someone that they do not know, maybe someone from the United States, that is precisely the problem and that is precisely the problem that Bill C-6 addresses, except, in my view, it does not address it quite specifically enough. I think it has to be much harsher, much more direct and much more specific than what currently exists.

At least this party on this side of the House does want the government to ask those probing questions of any organization or any person it is going to give money to because it is taxpayer money. We are entitled to know how that money is being spent. If people want money from the government they darn well had better show some evidence as to why they deserve that money.

I would argue that, except in cases where a person's real personal financial information will adversely impact on the person's future, then of course it should be protected. I wish this legislation protected that kind of information more specifically. Nevertheless, it is going in the right direction.

As far as the member's other remarks, they are a little off topic. However, I have to say that I think Bill C-23 is an excellent piece of legislation, particularly because finally it defines marriage in law as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I think that is a very fine thing that the government did.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, as far as I am aware, Statistics Canada is covered by the Statistics Act. That act provides for absolute confidentiality. It is actually quite an interesting piece of legislation because that confidentiality is supposed to go indefinitely.

The member is probably aware that there is quite a movement in Canada right now to try to open some of the very old census records. Contemporary Statistics Canada data are absolutely protected. He should certainly assure his constituents that they do not have to worry. It is protected from other departments. Otherwise, I would have to say, if it is not protected when collected by Statistics Canada there would be a serious breach. I think we have to take it at face value.

The member raises another issue that is related to that, and that is this whole question of when a farmer, say in the Saskatoon area, has to sign on to a government program, the disaster relief program or whatever other program. He has to disclose by the very act of signing on to a program that he has financial difficulty. This is the kind of financial information that I was talking about. It is very, very clear that when information is collected that reflects on the financial status of individuals it needs to be protected.

I am sure this kind of information is protected under Canada's Privacy Act as it pertains to this kind of program, but remember Bill C-6 actually goes beyond the government and goes into the general community. It is really talking about corporations and private enterprises.

That is where we have the problem, or at least I have the problem. I think that is where the member raises a very, very serious point, because you can be a small entrepreneur, a farmer or whatever else, and as a result of running on hard times you may be making purchases or not making purchases. Not making purchases is a form of information. Not buying seed grain in a particular year is an indication of what you are doing. It is that kind of financial information that may be moving around there that would enable people commercially to create a profile. Then you know what happens, Mr. Speaker. They cannot borrow. Then they are stuck.

I just think the member raised a really important issue. Again I believe this bill is an interim bill. I know the minister is listening. I think this is a point that needs to be examined, because we all know the trouble that is happening out on the prairies and I think these people need the protection of a good privacy law.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, March 30th, 2000]

There are quite a few members and I am very pleased. I know that they have a particular type of constituency, not 100% this type. I do not want to characterize them too specifically, but there are a lot of people who support the Reform Party who are associated with Christian fundamentalist organizations. They would be appalled to know that their religious association is easily identified by the way they use the Internet.

For instance, as I was saying before, Mr. Speaker, where you go on the Internet leaves a trail that is recorded not only on your machine but on parent machines elsewhere. It can be in the United States or anywhere else. I have noticed, Mr. Speaker, that the religious denomination, be it Christian, Muslim, be it whatever, by the way you actually search the Internet becomes part of your profile. Suddenly people in the United States, people anywhere in the world who are the masters of this information can profile you wherever you are because you have used your computer to go to various sites that are related to your particular religious interest.

You can see, Mr. Speaker, that I have been doing a lot of work on the Internet. Similarly you can do the same thing if you are an ethnic Canadian and you are interested in, say, India. You go to various sites that are either in India or are related to people who are from India who have been in the country for some time, organizations that may exist in Canada or wherever. You go to those sites, Mr. Speaker, and you build a profile so someone can tell who you are.

The thing about this legislation, the fact that it does not aim at this type of personal information and it does not specifically protect this type of personal information I think is an inadequacy. It does not go far enough.

I got interested in this in the second reading debate. I have to say that the minister was very receptive to this type of criticism. One of the things that happens in a debate in the House of Commons is that we do not all get our way because of course it takes time to make an amendment and you do not know the impact. Sometimes, even if the minister likes an amendment or something is proposed from the opposition, you cannot implement it immediately simply because you do not know the full ramifications.

I was able to persuade the minister to accept an amendment that I put forward. That amendment was actually to the definition of commercial activity. What it did was it expanded the definition of commercial activity to include non-profit organizations and political parties. The reason I did that was because I am aware, as so many members are and other people, that many charitable organizations and even political parties collect fundraising lists. When you donate to them they collect that information and they give that information to central suppliers, central information moguls in the United States, who then send out direct mail advertising missives usually to senior citizens and the vulnerable. A lot of people have lost a lot of money as a result of this program.

The minister accepted an amendment that brings that type of activity under this legislation. I think that is very positive, but it does not go anywhere in addressing the problem of people using the Internet and these information czars in who knows where, in some hyperland that may be hovering somewhere over southern California. They collect that information and they know, Mr. Speaker, about you, about you, about you and about me. That is a very dangerous thing. This legislation moves in the right direction, but we have a long way to go.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to this bill and to say that, in my opinion, members of the Bloc have made a great contribution to this very important debate. I congratulate them on that.

I do not think many of the fears the Bloc Quebecois have raised in terms of the sovereignty of Quebec in this particular issue are fears we have to worry about to a great degree. Where their contribution has been best is in analysing the shortcomings of this bill as a bill that purports to protect personal information.

Myself, I come to this bill at this stage with the point of view that it is an interim measure. I do not think it has even begun to address the vast problems of privacy in a world where so many thousands of households are connected through the Internet to other sites that they have little knowledge of.

Just to give you an example, Mr. Speaker, you can do this yourself on your own computer. You can be surfing the net, Mr. Speaker, going to sites in Canada, the U.S. and abroad. You can do whatever kind of net surfing you like. I have a program on my computer at home that is not a Windows program. It is a computer search program. What I am able to do with the program is, after having surfed the net, I can go into the deep files of the computer and I can get a readout, to some degree, only a limited degree, of the so-called cookies that have been left behind wherever I have visited sites, and also something called preferences.

I have a classic example of what happens. I was using a search engine. You know how you are just searching around for this, that and the other thing. I saw a site that said redheads so I called up the site. It was just a picture of pretty women with red hair. It was not a porn site, Mr. Speaker, I have to assure you.

I went back after and found that topics pertaining to redheads kept on coming up whenever I used the various search engines for some weeks following. I used the search program and went into the data bank. What I found was, it was not a cookie because cookies are something quite different, but it was still data that had been deposited in my computer that biased my computer for searching topics that had to do with redheads.

When I further analysed this particular data bank of information in my computer, I found that it had an extensive list of my tastes in terms of what I had been calling up on the Internet. In fact, I call up a lot of science subjects because I have a particular interest in certain fields of science. These were reflected in the list of these so-called preferences.

There are other things. If you go to a stock site, or to a porn site for heaven's sake, all these things are recorded on your machine. They are recorded to tell your machine to bring certain types of data forward when you use a search engine.

Mr. Speaker, if these so-called preferences are recorded on your machine, they are recorded on other machines. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that when you use your search engines in your home computer, what in effect you are doing is you are creating an intimate profile of yourself that is available not just in Canada but internationally.

Mr. Speaker, the problem with this legislation as I see it is it does not go deeply into this whole issue of how we put a filter on this type of information. As far as I can see, the legislation does not actually deal with this problem of distributing personal information that goes abroad and is obviously used commercially.

Ironically, Mr. Speaker, the legislation as I see it does try to put controls when you take out a newspaper subscription for example or when you buy certain products like automobiles and so on and so forth. This legislation provides for certain controls on the use of that kind of data, but it does nothing as far as I can see to address the larger problem of controlling personal information that is going out on the Internet worldwide. Mr. Speaker, I think this is a fundamental problem that I am not sure there is any solution to.

Yet we have legislation before us that I think was created with the very best of intentions. I have studied it actually at some length. I felt that basically it spins out of the existing Privacy Act which pertains to the documents held by government agencies chiefly about government civil servants and anyone who has had anything to do with the government or worked for the government.

Mr. Speaker, that is a pity because that legislation desperately needs an overhaul. It does not reflect the changing world where we have the possibility of knowing a great deal about one another. I would have been much happier if this legislation had directed itself toward putting controls on Internet service providers and those who stand at the various stages at which they can intercept personal information and sell it.

Mr. Speaker, what it does instead is it basically uses a commercial standard, I believe it is called. Organizations which are handling commercial personal information are supposed to conform to these standards. Basically the principal one is if they have collected the information, they are not to distribute the information without your consent. But, Mr. Speaker, I still do not see how this is going to be addressed when it comes to international service providers collecting information every time you go outside the country or even within the country when you are using your computer at home or your laptop in the office. It is very difficult to control these things.

On the other hand, and this is why I do not agree with the opposition, particularly the Bloc Quebecois' opposition to this bill, it does do some very positive things. It advances the desire for openness. I know that sounds odd when we are talking about privacy legislation, but it advances the cause of openness in government agencies very significantly. Mr. Speaker, it does this because for the first time it brings crown corporations under legislation that determines how they should use information.

Mr. Speaker, crown agencies currently are exempt from the Access to Information Act. You cannot find out what crown agencies are doing. Canada Post, AECL, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and many other organizations are exempt under the current Access to Information Act. You cannot find out the details of their budget. You cannot find out what the salaries are. You cannot find out whether they have a problem with nepotism, that they are bringing people in as a result of who is a friend of whom. You cannot find out that kind of thing. I think the Access to Information Act desperately needs to be reformed in that area.

The nice thing about Bill C-6 is what it does do is that for the first time it brings some of these crown corporations under privacy regulation. It includes Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the new port corporations that were created by the recent port authority bill, Maritime Atlantic and VIA Rail. The theme being is it is looking at broadcasting, financial and transportation industries that exist as parent corporations.

Mr. Speaker, this is an incredibly positive step in the right direction. We can no longer tolerate arm's length government agencies that use taxpayers' money and are not in any way accountable to the taxpayer. You cannot find out information on these various organizations if you want to examine their books because their books are not available to you.

This bill puts them under certain requirements of the Privacy Act in terms of the type of personal information they may collect. The irony there of course is because they are protected under the Access to Information Act, I am not quite sure whether we have the other side of the equation to make sure that they are actually implementing the Privacy Act, as explained in the notes we have before us.

On the one hand, symbolically, it is a wonderful thing for the government to do but it does not go sufficiently far enough. I suspect as I regard this entire bill, we should take it as the government's intent to try to find a way not only to open up government documents of all kinds, but to also build a proper regime of protecting personal information. But we still have a long way to go and I think this is only a very first step.

I should talk a little about the amendments that have come back from the Senate. These amendments pertain to defining personal information. There was concern expressed in the Senate that the definition of personal information was far too broad.

The various representations before the Senate were seeking better clarification of what is meant by personal information in terms of health related information. The problem is that in the existing act the definition of personal information is very broad, Mr. Speaker. It does not specify anything more than your name and address. It is not personal information, and just about anything else you disclose is.

I see you yawning, Mr. Speaker. Do I need to pick up the pace a little? I will do my very best. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, forgive me. There must be a House rule against drawing the attention of the country to the Speaker. I am going to get myself into terrible trouble. I will get control of the debate again.

The personal information clause that comes from the Senate was originally a very important clause in this bill. I think the senators were right to challenge this particular clause and to demand that it be defined more clearly. The definition that has come to us from the Senate is a definition that expands the idea of personal information in terms of health related information. When you go to a doctor and give information, that should be personal information and should be specifically protected in this legislation.

I would suggest, and I do not want the Senate to send the bill back after we send it up there, but I think it put its finger on something very important. My problem with personal information is when you make it too broad. The reality is that there is a lot of personal information that we divulge that we do not care about. I come back to the whole idea of commercial information. When you purchase something at Radio Shack it asks us for our name and address. Obviously, it is going into a data bank that is building up a personal profile. Most people are not bothered by that.

This legislation is directed precisely toward that sort of thing and says that this should be regulated and that information should not be distributed without your prior consent. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that nobody cares about that kind of information. Nobody cares about what kind of automobile you buy because when you buy a brand new Buick or a Volvo or an Audi or a cheap Ford, if you will, you advertise your purchase every time you drive that car. It is no secret. So why that data should be subject to this legislation I do not know.

On the other hand, where the senators are correct, there is a type of personal information that we do guard. One of the types of information that we do want to guard and protect is medical information. Hence, I believe this amendment is apropos, but I would have pursued it further. I would have suggested that another type of information that we would have like to have safeguarded and we should specify in legislation like this is financial information.

The problem is that we are not very certain. There is a huge difference between people knowing how much is in your bank account or how much is on your credit card or what your indebtedness is than what purchases you make. I would have thought this bill would have been far stronger if it had specified that financial information is something that should be specifically protected.

Again, I would have thought in terms of personal information what a religion is should be specified as something that should be protected. It is no one's business knowing what religion, what denomination or whether you have a religion in terms of what is available in terms of personal information that can be bought and sold.

I will switch back to my suggestion about the Internet. I see there are some members from the Reform Party who are watching this.

[Privilege, March 28th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on the member's remarks.

First, the reason there was no quorum at the time I tried to move my motion suggesting that the minutes of the committee come out of in camera and be published as soon as the report was tabled was because the Reform MPs had left the committee. In fact, every time I tried to do something with respect to the minutes being in camera, I could not move the motion because the member opposite and his colleagues had left the committee.

I ask the member opposite how he can take this position, especially with me who has always argued that committees should not be in camera if they can possibly not be in camera. In this case the chairman explained very clearly that it had to be in camera up until the time the report was released. That was fair but we all agreed that the minutes could be released as soon as the report was released. Would that not have satisfied the member?