Madam Speaker, it is with great interest that I speak this afternoon on Bill C-54.
You will allow me a few seconds to read into the record the title of this bill. I do want to read it because it is a rather long title of about ten lines. The titles reads as follows:
An Act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances, by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions and by amending the Canada Evidence Act, the Statutory Instruments Act and the Statute Revision Act.
It is a rather complex bill. A few moments ago, my colleague from Champlain asked what was the most important thing in Bill C-54. Is it promoting the sale of electronic material like computers or the protection of personal information? The hon. member for Champlain told me—and I fully agree with him on this—that he could hardly trust a government led by the present Prime Minister, who purports to respect personal information but does not even respect human beings.
The member for Champlain reminded me of the time when the Prime Minister, wearing his big sunglasses, grabbed an activist by the throat, threw him to the ground and then let his bodyguards break a few of his teeth. If my son did such a thing, he would be charged in court for assault and would surely be found guilty. In the case of the Prime Minister, however, the matter was settled by shelling out $700 or $800 to pay the dental bills of Bill Clennett. I am sure you remember this.
The hon. member for Champlain has doubts, which I believe are justified, about the good faith of the government and of the head of that government, the Prime Minister and member for Shawinigan.
He gave us more evidence of this when he welcomed Indonesian dictator Suharto. He forced RCMP officers to clean up the place by 4 p.m.
The place had to be cleared so that Mr. Suharto could leave with a good impression of his visit to Vancouver. The RCMP officers listened and came not with a small pepper shaker so he could sprinkle some pepper over his food, as the Prime Minister said so well, but with big gas cylinders that can reach much further. Excessive force was used against students who had the legitimate right to demonstrate in Canada against Mr. Suharto's lack of respect for civil rights and freedoms.
The Prime Minister did not even respect these students that are our future leaders. This afternoon, during Oral Question Period, in response to a question from a Reform member, the Solicitor General said that he had personally decided against paying the students' legal fees so that they could be properly represented before the commission investigating the conduct of the RCMP.
That is what the Henry VIII clause, which I call the Louis XIV clause, is all about: L'état, c'est moi.
The member for Drummond said the same thing a little while ago. The bill contains a Henry VIII clause, which essentially provides that the governor in council can change the law without parliamentary debate or democratic consultation.
We remember what happened in Quebec in the early 70s in response to the FLQ's activities. The RCMP—and the Prime Minister was then a member of the Trudeau cabinet—was ordered to set fire to barns, to steal dynamite and to blame the FLQ for all this. They even broke into the offices of the Parti Quebecois, a democratic political party. RCMP officers were asked to break and enter some places. There were leaks inside the RCMP. There was the Keable Commission. RCMP officers were prosecuted. The same government did not fire the RCMP officers. Instead, they were promoted with a pay increase.
Members can see how important this Henry VIII clause is. We cannot give so much power to people who sometimes lose control and act irresponsibly. We saw what happened when Trudeau threw 500 people in jail, including the late Pauline Julien. Nowadays, everybody is sorry about it, of course.
They lost their head. There were a dozen of FLQ members and they threw 500 people in jail. The War Measures Act abolished freedom in Quebec. The way several Quebeckers were treated is awful, they were treated the same way and sometimes worse than the students. A student said that he had to spend 12 hours in jail without any charges being laid and that a RCMP officer had him sign a promise not to protest during the APEC summit. That is how dangerous the Henry VIII clause is.
The Government of Quebec passed two bills for the public corporations, the government, and the private corporations, and that legislation is similar but more complete. That was not done by the Parti Quebecois. It was done during the last months of the Robert Bourassa government and under the following government led by Daniel Johnson Jr., that passed a much more complete piece of legislation than Bill C-54 before us.
Bill C-54 is full of assumptions, of words like maybe, we shall see, it could be. Let us take, for example, section 11(2): “If the Commissioner is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to investigate a matter under this Part, the Commissioner may initiate a complaint—”. Consequently it is always subjective. The Commissioner is given a power that he does not have as well as leeway that he should not have.
This bill is full of holes. It undermines Quebec's legislation. This bill will fail miserably, both in the spirit and the letter of its application.
In conclusion, I would like to remind the House that the Bloc Quebecois will vote against this bill, of course, and that it regrets many things. For instance, we believe that the right to privacy, which is recognized explicitly in the 1983 personal information charter and should be applied to all public and private organisations, could be ignored by this bill.
I wish to thank you for your attention, and if there are any questions and comments, I will try to respond to them, of course.
