John Bryden

[Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks. I have great sympathy for his objection to environmental groups. They often have agendas that have nothing to do with preserving the environment but have a lot to do with getting donations and publicity.

I know that he is a proud Canadian and that he is concerned with national values. However, I have to say to the member, as a Canadian, that there are too many examples across the country where major problems have been created in the environment because provincial governments have not acted.

In Ontario the provincial government is retreating from environmental issues in every way. In Newfoundland, for example, there are environmental problems occurring in the logging industry. If we fly over Corner Brook we can look down to see that the trees are gone. While perhaps what is growing back may be good for some types of wildlife, there still is the disruption of the natural landscape. I could cite examples right across Canada.

My problem with the member's remarks is that in siding with the Bloc Quebecois he simply asserted that the federal government has no role in the environment. I fundamentally disagree with that.

If he sets aside that criticism, upon which the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois are constantly together, that is, provincial power at the expense of federal power, can he tell us something about what his genuine concerns are about this legislation as it pertains to the marine environment, and not the logging industry, the mountains and the forests?

[Division No. 248, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I regret very much that I missed the earlier vote, but I would like to be counted with the government on this vote.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues opposite for introducing this amendment. It gives me an opportunity to speak again to this legislation.

The amendment is basically that this House drop second reading examination of Bill C-54 and return it to committee for re-examination or drop it from the order paper entirely.

I disagree with this for one very simple reason. Bill C-54 is undoubtedly the most important legislation that has come before this House since this session of parliament commenced. Bill C-54 is legislation that deals with trying to bring some sort of control in the way private industry uses personal information.

As Canadians we are all schooled in the idea that our religion, colour, financial status, medical records should all be private. The reality is in the commercial world more and more of this information is becoming available. Bill C-54 attempts to address this problem.

I have been very candid in my earlier remarks with respect to Bill C-54 in saying I believe it is flawed. Bill C-54 does not fully address all the concerns of personal information in the marketplace. But because the issue is so important I think we have to get this bill to committee as quickly as possible so that the committee and the public can study the changes necessary to create legislation that truly is workable in this field.

I will tell members what is at stake. I will try to be very simple about it. What is at stake, from my point of view and from what I have been able to see in my own experience, are lists of personal information bought and sold not only here in Canada but in the United States.

I pointed out that non-profit organizations and charitable organizations in order to do fundraising efficiently give their lists of donors to direct marketers in the United States.

I was lucky enough to obtain a list of donors of the organizations that were giving their names to a particular fundraiser in the United States. This list of names represents various organizations engaged in various activities and is available for money. People can buy these lists.

For example, it is possible to get a list of all the Canadian Jewish donors in Canada, 70,000 names. One can get that list in the United States. One can get a list of all those people who have donated to planned parenthood or pro-abortion organizations. One can get lists of people in Canada who are considered to be wealthy, 500,000. I did not think there were that many wealthy Canadians but according to this list in the United States there are 500,000 wealthy Canadians. What is at stake here is what happens if crime gets a hold of these names?

What a wonderful thing to know which households in Toronto, Vancouver or Calgary are big donors of perhaps $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 a year to charities. Is that not just a perfect target for criminal activity? Yet that can be bought in the United States.

We read today in the Ottawa Citizen that there are worries about an anti-abortion sniper approaching doctors who perform abortions. We can get that type of information from these lists and it is not just lists from non-profit organizations and charities.

In the United States organizations rent their lists of names for fundraising. Scientific American rents out its list so people can use the subscriber list in order to identify people who are likely to give to a scientific charity. One can imagine that someone who has other agendas might find this list handy as well, a list of medical practitioners for example. In the United States one can rent a list of the March of Dimes, of Greenpeace.

As long as there are no controls on this type of information all someone has to do is purchase personal information on our citizens that this country is trying to protect. I do not believe this legislation sufficiently addresses that problem. I wish it did. This is no time to fool around. We cannot leave it to the next century. We have to do something about it now. The only way we can do something about it now is to get it in committee and get it examined by our colleagues. I wish it would be examined in committee because I am not satisfied with the response from the other parties here. It has been a dialogue between the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. There has been almost no input from the Conservatives, no input from the Reform Party and almost no input from the NDP.

Perhaps if we can get this in committee where there is representation by the other parties they will not be so willing to sit silent on an issue that is probably one of the most important issues facing this country today. Personal information is marketable. It is big bucks. It is big business and it is all about personal safety.

I look across to the other side and remember all the complaints about the gun control legislation and the fear that because people had to register their guns they would be targets of I do know what. I guess the fear is that if a person had to register their gun, it was known that the person had enough money to buy a gun and would be a target of a break in. I do not know, but that was one of the fears.

Right now, because of the lack of legislation in this area, we can buy a list that tells us how much money is in that household. We can buy a list that tells us what religion that household is. We can buy a list that tells us how that household stands on abortion.

I think the time is now to address this. We have to do it urgently. It is one of the most important things before the House and I thank the Bloc Quebecois for putting this amendment forward so that I could speak again on this issue. But I am not supporting the amendment because we have to move ahead now on this legislation.

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, shame on the opposition.

The member opposite illustrated it perfectly. Instead of raising a point that is substantial to the governance of this country he admitted that question period has been engaged for weeks on one or two maladroit remarks made by the Prime Minister or the solicitor general.

There are all kinds of problems out there that we should be be addressing as a parliament.

Let me also say that when I saw the film clip of the RCMP spraying the students I was alarmed. I was very concerned. Do not ever mistake that. I think it is absolutely right to have the Public Complaints Commission investigate this. But we Canadians do not prejudge people.

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, with the greatest of respect, I say to the member opposite, what rubbish. He cannot give me lessons on democracy. He knows full well that this is a country which respects the dignity of individuals, probably to the highest degree of any democracy in the world.

We have the Public Complaints Commission to make sure that our police forces, be they the RCMP or any other police force, do not step out of line. That does not happen in other countries.

We talk about the incident. I was not there when the incident occurred with the demonstrators. However, as a former student, I know what it was like to demonstrate in the late 1960s because I was one of those sixties individuals. That was the era of the protest march. We protested all kinds of things. We tried to elicit a reaction from the police or from the politicians because that is what we did in those days. We sought that type of response. It was a game. We have to allow for the fact that perhaps these students may not have had all the right motives when they engaged in this particular protest.

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in this debate without any feeling of pleasure whatsoever because I feel the debate has been a misuse of this parliamentary forum. I will tell you why, Mr. Speaker.

I sat during question period today and all the previous days when the accusations were flying back and forth. There were accusations that the Prime Minister had to apologize for something no one knew for sure he had done or not, this kind of thing. There were the attacks on the solicitor general for having made some remarks in an airplane. I looked up at the public gallery today and I saw a school group that had come to watch parliament at work. They heard accusations, innuendoes, catcalls and jeering. It was very loud. There were hardly any questions of any substance.

Indeed on other occasions in this House all the questions have been on this very subject of APEC and statements made by the solicitor general, while all kinds of other issues, issues of great importance to this country, have been ignored. We went through a whole period in which this country was in dire jeopardy because of the collapse of financial markets around the world. It was a serious problem. I do not know about people on the opposite side but I can say many on this side were thoroughly frightened by what was happening in southeast Asia and Latin America. And we are not past that crisis yet. There was not a word in the House on that.

There was not a word about issues like hepatitis C. That was such an issue with the Reform Party at one point and now it has disappeared.

I am saddened because I remember. I must say that with respect to the New Democratic Party, I expect nothing more of them and I expect nothing more of the Conservatives either. This type of tactic in the House of Commons was the hallmark of the NDP and the Conservatives in the years before 1993. I will say at the very least that one of the reasons parliament changed after 1993 was that the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party really did come here to try to make changes and try to bring dignity to parliament.

In these past weeks this has all been lost. Now they sit there. I am sorry there is not a school group in the House so that they could see my colleagues opposite who have nothing more to do but to catcall and heckle. They know I am speaking the truth and they know they should be ashamed of themselves.

I will take another step along in this argument. One of the key points in this argument was the fact that the member for Palliser was sitting on an airplane and overheard a private conversation that was occurring a few seats over from him. This has caused great controversy in this House. The suggestion has been that this has compromised the public complaints commission hearing into the APEC situation.

I would suggest that the contempt that was shown for that commission was shown by the member for Palliser who brought it up in this House and made it a point of public debate. Had that conversation remained private, the public complaints commission never would have heard of any thoughts of the solicitor general. I suggest it is the member for Palliser who ought to search his conscience in compromising the public complaints commission.

When we talk about people talking out of school and being recorded by their colleagues, let me say that walking down the corridor last week I happened to encounter the member for Kootenay—Columbia who is a Reform member.

He expressed to me pleasure at the questions he was asking on APEC. He said he was having such fun and that there was no limitation on what he could do. There was not even any control in his own party.

In other words, he did not tell me that he was doing something he thought was important for the nation or he thought was really exposing a problem with the Prime Minister or the government. He said that he was having fun and that he was getting the Reform Party's name in the media. That is what it is. It is a media game.

I should point out that I know what I am talking about because I spent many years in the media. Something I am disappointed about that has occurred with my colleagues in the Reform Party, and less so perhaps with the Bloquistes, is that they are talking with the media and they are conducting question period in terms of the type of headlines they hope to get rather than addressing substantive issues.

I will give members a classic example. Yesterday in this House we debated Bill C-54. This is important legislation that deals with the privacy of individuals. This is legislation introduced by the government that would set rules and regulations governing the way private enterprises can disclose personal information about the citizens of Canada.

This is important legislation. When I spoke I said that the legislation had flaws and that it needed to be debated. The Bloc Quebecois responded many times with very compelling arguments.

What is so very interesting about that debate is that if we look at Hansard we will find that only one Reformer spoke. Only one Conservative spoke. Most of the exchange occurred between the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois.

Who cares about good governance in this country? Who cares about the future of Canadians? It is the people who engage in meaningful debate, not the hecklers, not the ones who can sense an opportunity and go on the attack using innuendoes that have no foundation in truth. People who engage in those tactics should be ashamed.

I expect nothing more than that from the NDP and nothing more than that from the Conservatives because they come from the traditional parties that did nothing more. But I expected much more from the Reform Party and I am disappointed. I think members of the Bloc Quebecois have acquitted themselves quite reasonably in this instance. At least they debate real legislation.

Now I come to the issue of financing for lawyers for the students who are appearing before the Public Complaints Commission. Whatever happened to candour? What is wrong with young people coming before the commission and explaining what they saw happen? Why can they not speak from their hearts? Why do they have to get lawyers?

What is wrong with this country is that because of previous political parties giving funds to all kinds of special interest groups we are lawyered to death.

We read in the paper last week about the hepatitis C issue, which was pursued persistently by the opposition. What did we find? We found a gaggle of lawyers on the west coast who hope to gain millions upon millions of dollars in contingency fees if the government pays up for the hepatitis C victims. Is that what members on the other side want? Are they out to benefit lawyers?

I am very surprised. I expected more of my colleagues who were elected in 1993 and in 1997 who came to parliament to change things. I deplore seeing parliament turned into a heckle house, into a chicken coop, a place where sheep cross the floor.

Look, when you baa, we baa. You baa, but you are the ones who are baaing first. You are following the example of the press. You are allowing yourself to be led into controversies that have no substance.

I can tell members opposite that I am getting no complaints in my office. Those members are fond of saying they speak for Canadians. Quite frankly, they are not speaking for Canadians. They are speaking for themselves. They should be ashamed of themselves. Those members should have brought dignity to this parliament. I do not know what to do with them.

I know Canadians are looking at this debate and making their judgment because in my office, on my constituency lines, I only hear silence. Nobody is on the side of people who will merely throw garbage across this floor.

I beg members of the Reform Party to bring back to this House the kind of dignity it once had. Maybe they could follow the lead of members of the Bloc Quebecois because they have shown themselves to be far better parliamentarians than any of the others on that side.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity after the member's remarks to pose a question to her. It arises out of my earlier remarks in which I observed that the bill is deficient insofar as it does not clearly and explicitly explain what the parameters are in sensitive personal information when it comes to fundraising for donor lists for non-profit organizations.

Moreover, in another aspect it also is very deficient in that if a person knows that their name is held as a result of donating to some charity or another and they go to that direct marketing firm that has their name on that list and ask that direct marketing firm how many other lists their name has been distributed to, how many organizations it is out to, according to the legislation as I see it, because of commercial proprietary reasons that direct marketing firm can withhold that personal information about how a person's name is being used and who it has been given to.

I have a list from an organization in the United States that has this kind of information. It gets the names of these individuals because these individual organizations approach the organization to do direct mail fundraising in Canada for them. It has the list and once it has done direct mail fundraising for a particular organization, it offers that list of names to other organizations for hire or for rent.

For example, the Canadian Abortion Rights League is a group of 7,500 women. We can get their names, as well as the International Planned Parenthood Federation. So someone who is perhaps very virulently anti-abortion can get the information of all those individuals who directly support abortion with their money. I submit that is a very dangerous thing.

I mentioned also that this list contains 73,000 Canadian Jewish donors. I submit to the member that this is a highly dangerous thing because organizations that may be engaged in anti-Semitic activities can therefore access this information one way or another, yet the legislation does not prevent this information from being given out.

When I as an MP have tried in the past to get information from my own government about the funding of women's programs or anti-poverty programs, the names of the individuals involved have often been withheld in this information. I have not even been able to get them under access to information on the grounds that those who seek government grants, either poverty groups, women's groups or other minority groups, need the protection of the government that has their personal information sought as grants. It is very hard to get this information.

Yet on this list to this direct marketer in the United States, this for profit fundraiser, we find the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. There are 5,000 names there. Immediately underneath it is the National Anti-Poverty Organization. There are 17,000 names there. The National Association of Women and the Law, 1,300 names. Under that we have the National Gay and Lesbian Rights Supporters. These are all actually in alphabetical order.

I submit to the member opposite that there is something dreadfully wrong when an MP cannot get the basic information of who these people are who support these organizations. I am not saying that we should but we as MPs cannot get that information from the government even though the government is funding these organizations. Yet for mere money we can go to the United States and get the names of every one of these people.

Is this something that is acceptable to the hon. member? Does she not think that these organizations should not be giving their donor name lists to an American organization and should we strengthen Bill C-54 in such a way as to make this type of thing not occur?

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1998]

Maybe in Quebec. I hope the member is right on that.

I appreciated the remarks. Does my colleague opposite see some opportunity in the legislation to address an entirely different dimension, that is being able to buy time on satellites which can peer down into our backyards?

This is a problem that extends across borders. Various spy satellites run by Americans and other powers are now offering satellite time to peer into backyards anywhere in the world. Does the member have a comment with respect to that?

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it would appear that in this day and age the RCMP does not have to use unusual methods to obtain any political membership list. I am sure it can be purchased now anyway. It is available somewhere for a certain price.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I do not doubt that the first obligation to the protection of information is at home. I cited a list of an American direct marketer deliberately to illustrate to the House the dimensions of the problem. It is not just a domestic problem. It is not confined to Quebec. It is not confined to Alberta or to Canada. It is a worldwide problem.

We are at a particular disadvantage because we sit next to one of the most aggressive countries in the world in terms of trying to gather information for commercial uses. We do not have to go anywhere but to the United States to discover people who know very well the value of personal information and who will willingly use it to make dollars for themselves.

We need a very strong piece of legislation at home that puts the obligation on the people who are collecting information in this country to be answerable for how that information is eventually used. But also we have to be cognizant that we can only do so much. We do live in an information age and we cannot expect to create miracles. Information is everywhere available and it is very difficult to control it in an absolute fashion.

One of the things that concerns me in this debate is that we have probably lost sight to a certain degree on just what is the kind of information we need to protect. Is it really a matter of having to protect what religion we are or is it, as I said in my earlier remarks, a matter of protecting information that relates to our financial ability? That is the information that I think can be used very dangerously.