Madam Speaker, that is why we have standing committees, to handle difficult problems with legislation. I would expect that the competency of the industry committee looking at this will show and we will get good legislation in the end.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2000, with 41% of the vote.
Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act October 19th, 1998
Madam Speaker, that is why we have standing committees, to handle difficult problems with legislation. I would expect that the competency of the industry committee looking at this will show and we will get good legislation in the end.
Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act October 19th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to follow my colleague's speech, although I hope to be a bit more brief.
I agree with some of the comments made by members opposite which find fault with schedule I of this bill. So much of the bill depends on this schedule which is, in essence, a code of conduct that has been established not just by industry, but by general a consensus of the various stakeholders, including non-profit organizations, which is an area of specialty for me.
Earlier in the questions and comments it was observed that there were shortcomings in the bill insofar as it relies heavily on the interpretation of what is sensitive information and what needs to be protected. If it is sensitive, then the organization collecting the information is required to do certain things with it, including protecting and handling it in a responsible fashion. The difficulty is that unless you define what sensitive is in legislation there are going to be problems and I believe that situation exists with this legislation.
However, there is another aspect that I would like to draw attention to which is again in schedule I. It raises the issue of lists. When we buy or donate to a charity or anything like that we go on a list. Sometimes these lists are held within Canada and sometimes they are held outside Canada. At any rate, there is a great industry in collecting, selling or renting these lists to various organizations.
According to the schedule's standard, the observation is made that an organization may not always be able to seek consent from individuals and sometimes individuals are unable to request information from an organization concerning themselves, but a charity or a direct marketing firm that wishes to acquire a mailing list from another organization can keep that information.
In my mind there is a bit of a hole there. I would like to know that any organization that is using my name is responsible for that personal information. However, it would appear that schedule I allows direct marketing firms to not be held responsible in the trading and marketing of these lists.
When we know that our name is on a list and we want to get that information from a charity or a for profit fundraiser that has our name on a list, what the schedule states is that certain information cannot be disclosed for legal, security or commercial proprietary reasons, or that information cannot be disclosed which is subject to solicitor-client privilege.
What schedule I states is that if there is a commercial proprietary reason for which an organization does not want to divulge our personal information to us, it does not have to do so. That creates an enormous problem. What if I want to know how my name is being used by one of these fundraisers? Is it being distributed, for example, to other organizations that do not have my interests at heart? Is it being distributed to organizations that will take advantage of the knowledge that I give to one organization, one charity or another?
According to schedule I, as it now exists, if I donate $10 to a charity and another person donates $100 to a charity, that is not considered sensitive information, or it could be considered proprietary information that I cannot get.
I happen to have something for the House to contemplate. This is a list of all the non-profit organizations that have placed their donor lists with a U.S. direct marketing agency. According to the schedule as it now exists, that agency can deny me the information as to who has access to my name on that list.
Therefore, if I had contributed, for example, $1,000 to the lifetime members of a TV ministry, another organization can get that information and find out that I actually donated to an evangelical TV ministry. Talk about religion being sensitive. By merely paying money, this organization can supply me with a list of all the people who contributed to B'nai Brith. It is the total list of all Canadian Jewish donors. Anyone who wants to know who is Jewish can simply find out by contacting this direct marketing firm.
I ask members where the protection is of my private information concerning my religion if organizations, even in the United States, can get that information and distribute it as widely as they like.
It is even worse than that. We would agree that those in Canadian society who are particularly wealthy or affluent would probably like to keep that information secret. If they make generous donations to a charity, they will turn up on this list as “Hotline Canada wealthy donors, 502,000 names”. Those are 502,000 names that anyone can access. If that is not personal information, I do not know what personal information is. If that is not information that can be used unwisely and improperly, I do not know what such information is.
I fear that the schedule as presently drafted does not provide adequate protection for the distribution of donor lists or commercial lists of any kind. We are now in an age when we can go into Radio Shack, buy a speaker or a piece of electronic equipment and that firm will record our name and address in a data bank. We are in an age when because of these lists and the electronic control of these lists we can build up a complete data profile of any individual in Canadian or American society. I would submit that is very dangerous.
While I support this legislation in principle, I hope that when it goes to committee we look very carefully at it because I do not think it addresses the problem of the selling and buying of information on donor lists or commercial lists, and that is something the legislation has to address.
Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act October 19th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I will say to my colleague opposite that I noted the same problem, that the bill allows too much latitude for interpretation. Were I to have had the opportunity to elaborate on the comments that I began, I would demonstrate to the member opposite that the amount of latitude leads us into the situation where we have to wonder whether the bill, as currently written, is going to have the effect that we desire. I have a suspicion that it will not.
I believe this bill is something that has to go before the committee to be studied in great depth.
Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act October 19th, 1998
I knew you would.
In another section it says that organizations are obligated to get consent for personal information if it is deemed to be sensitive. Then the code sets out to try to explore what sensitive means.
We do know that sensitive presumably means the religion one happens to have or medical records or financial information. It leaves it to the organization to decide what is to be considered sensitive. It makes an example. It says, for example, that if a subscription to a magazine is taken out and one's name goes on a list elsewhere it would not necessarily be considered sensitive information. However the legislation says that the names and addresses of subscribers to some special interest magazines might be considered sensitive.
If that is the case I would suspect that they are thinking about prurient magazines, sex magazines. They are willing to protect sex magazines but they are not willing to protect subscribers to Scientific American , Homemakers Magazine or religious magazines. That makes us wonder.
If the opposition will ask me a really interesting question I will continue with my comments.
Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act October 19th, 1998
My friends on the opposite side should be enjoying this.
Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act October 19th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I have a few comments to make. I presume that after the member opposite took considerable time that the Bloc Quebecois and the member opposite will perhaps enjoy my comments.
I support Bill C-54 in principle. It should go to committee for further study and hopefully we will get good legislation in the end, although I send up a flag indicating I have found some problems with the bill in my initial examination.
One of the first problems was a translation problem and the definition for work being done by federal agencies. In the French version we see the word radiodiffusion which was translated into English as radio broadcasting. This is one of the areas of federal influence that the bill is to apply to initially. I believe the intention is for the CBC to come under the act, but because of a misunderstanding of the French word radiodiffusion which in the Larousse translates only as radio broadcasting—and I understand that in Quebec it means broadcasting in general—it would appear that the English side of the equation is in error.
In any event the bill is easily understood as comprising a front section that deals in general with how the law will apply. The key in looking at the legislation is schedule 1 in the back of the bill. It pertains to the principles set out in the national standard of Canada entitled the “Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information”.
This was a code of conduct in the handling of personal information that was obtained by elaborate consensus. All kinds of stakeholders contributed to it. The government was very proactive in seeking this input. It became a general code of standards for protecting personal information and it is the corner piece of the bill.
Unfortunately when legislation is created by consensus there sometimes are difficulties. My concern about the legislation is that I do not feel, much as I support it in principle, that it adequately addresses the problem of charity lists or special lists that are comprised from the consumer, put in databanks and held by either private for profit corporations or by non-profit corporations.
The standard in schedule I waffles on the issue elaborately. In the first place it says the organizations that have these lists may indeed have reasons not to ask for the consent of individuals whose names are appearing on the lists. These could be lists of charities or donations. They could be lists of such things as buying a computer at Radio Shack. They could be any kind of list like that. If an organization possesses these lists, the proposed legislation indicates that it does not have to be responsible for the personal information contained in it.
It goes on in schedule I to observes that while consent is required, the whole principle of being able to get consent—
Supply October 5th, 1998
Madam Speaker, I strongly feel that if any province is disadvantaged in this country then it is the duty of the federal government to come to its rescue.
Right now things are fairly good in Quebec. Elsewhere in the country they are not so good. It is true that, given the money, Quebec does have the expertise to manage it well. I do not doubt that for an instant.
However, as Canadians we must look to the entire country. This is federal money we are talking about. It is all very well to talk about provincial rights, but we are talking about federal money. As long as this money is coming from the federal government, then surely the federal government should make sure that it is used in the interests of all Canadians.
Supply October 5th, 1998
Madam Speaker, we are all in the same boat. We must work together on that boat. In my opinion, the federal government must show leadership in this matter.
Supply October 5th, 1998
No, Madam Speaker, I would not support the motion, simply because if we are going to have a standard in every province across the country then it has to be the national government which sets that standard.
The problem with the provinces is that they all seem to want to go it alone. Ontario made a 20% cut. However, it did not think to create efficiencies in the institutions that it was cutting. I think that leadership has to come from the federal government so that we can give all Canadians the same opportunities to health care.
I am the first one to admit that Quebec, if it can go it alone, may do it better and more efficiently, but what about the rest of the country?
I think it is very important that the national government be a national government and show leadership in this.
Supply October 5th, 1998
Madam Speaker, I begin by observing that politicians are the representatives of the people. We are supposed to hear from the people and carry on a debate such as this one in a forum like this place. This is democracy in action.
I congratulate the member for Témiscamingue for putting his motion on the order paper and giving us an opportunity to debate it today on behalf of all our constituents and all Canadians.
I am pleased to take part because I would like to take the debate around the corner and deal with another aspect of the problem of transferring money from the federal government to the provincial government for health and education.
One idea we have not debated much in the House today—and it has not been much of a debate at all—is that we should be examining, among other things, how efficiently that money is used by the end users, principally education and medical institutions.
It is certainly true that the federal government cut social transfers and that the Ontario government passed that cut on to hospitals and universities. This is not to disparage the Ontario government. Indeed I hope it is listening. One of the problems with what it did is that it basically cut approximately 20% out of the funds available for hospitals and universities as a result of the cuts in transfer payments by the federal government.
The problem with that is when an efficient organization running at 100% efficiency is cut by 20%, the organization gets hurt. On the other hand, if institutions that are running at 50%, 60% or 70% efficiency are cut by 20% they are not hurt. In fact they become even more inefficient.
The question I would like to raise is whether or not, particularly the hospitals and the universities and especially the hospitals, are using the money they receive from all levels of government as wisely and effectively as they should.
The money involved is big. It is not just the $12.5 billion in social transfers from the federal government. It is also from the provincial governments. It amounts annually for hospitals alone from government sources to $17 billion a year. When we include universities and other higher education institutions the amount is $34 billion per year. That is a lot of money.
The difficulty is that the institutions receiving this money, again particularly hospitals and universities, are charities. They are usually incorporated as non-profit organizations under the Canada Corporations Act. These two business entities or organizational entities that comprise hospitals and universities have very little requirement in law for the kind of transparency that other institutions have which leads to accountability.
It might amaze members to realize that a non-profit corporation, for example, does not need to have, certainly under the federal statute, a chartered accountant perform its audit. It does not have to submit annual financial statements to the government as do non-profit organizations. There is a serious omission here.
The board of governors of a non-profit corporation has no standards set by any level of government to explain what it does. When they are charity boards of governors the only legislation that pertains to them is no legislation at all. It is case law.
We have this very big difficulty about whether a charity or non-profit organization, the collective of these, is actually spending the money it is receiving from both the provinces and the federal government in a way that the public can monitor effectively and know that money is being well spent.
The member for Témiscamingue earlier in the debate said that we should let the control of health care and education be done by the citizens, those who are closest to the situation. We cannot do that if the citizens do not know what is happening.
When it comes to hospitals I will give a few examples from my own area, although there are anecdotal examples across the country. The Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation in my riding is in a bit of a controversy. It was contracting out brain injured patients to a facility in Texas which turned out to have such a bad reputation for treating patients that the state of Texas would not use the facility. When the Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation was challenged on this by local journalists and the local MPP, its chief executive responded that it was not the obligation of the institution to monitor what was happening in Texas. This is the problem of a hospital contracting out without careful due diligence as to whether it is a good facility and the public does not even know this is happening.
We must ask ourselves if we want to know in detail how hospitals and other institutions are carrying on when they contract out services. I suggest that this is only the tip of the iceberg of a very big problem. It is not just a matter of health care and care for the patients, it is a matter of the effective use of taxpayer dollars.
There are other areas concerning compensation which have created another major problem in my riding. Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals gave a severance package to their chief administrator worth $818,000. That is an incredibly unacceptable use of taxpayer dollars, but that was done. I will not go into the details of this controversy because it is the subject of litigation, but when the chief executive was hired in 1991 she immediately hired onto the staff a close personal friend. This is a case of nepotism.
One might say that the board of directors of the hospital should be in control of this. But I challenge members to talk to politicians and citizens who have served on hospital boards of directors. They will say that trying to get information out of the administrators of hospitals is near impossible. The reason is that there are no standards. There is no countrywide standard for the administration of charities and non-profit corporations which would apply in the case of hospitals that are spending $17 billion a year as of 1993.
There is a great deal of anecdotal information about how hospitals contract out for goods and services. Hospitals do not have to issue tenders. They can do it however they want, and indeed this happens. Gifts are received by people in the business of purchasing for hospitals. I do not know about universities, but certainly for hospitals there is a lot of very negative information about how goods and services are purchased and gifts are exchanged. This is all because of a lack of transparency.
The cuts originally made by the federal government and the cuts that were inevitably and maybe properly passed on would have worked. I do not know whether the Ontario government had much choice or whether any other provincial government did. Those cuts would have been efficient if only we could have rid the institutions of the inefficiencies. These institutions cut nursing staff and beds when they should have been cutting administrators. They should have been cutting the fat out of their bureaucracies. The machinery is not there and the transparency is not there to enable this to happen.
I would encourage and seek the support of other members of the House for any initiative that might come in this House that would involve bringing a greater level of transparency and accountability to charities and not for profit organizations. It is imperative that we re-examine the Canada Corporations Act and require at least the same level of transparency that exists with for profit corporations or, at the very least, the same level of transparency that exists now with bureaucracies. That would be an important first step.
The next thing would be to re-examine the government's obligation to oversee charities across the country and perhaps to write new legislation that defines the standards of accountability and transparency for charities. That would go a long way to making the cuts in social transfers acceptable to Canadians.