Bernard Bigras

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this most important bill. This bill is about a fundamental value in our society, namely the protection of privacy.

The need to adopt a bill to protect personal information and privacy is nothing new. Most provinces have already passed such legislation. The federal government was late in taking its responsibilities and introducing a bill that would apply to businesses under its jurisdiction.

We could have expected that lengthy delay to be beneficial to the Liberal Party, that it would have allowed it to introduce a bill that is coherent, effective, clear and in harmony with other jurisdictions. Unfortunately for all Quebeckers and Canadians, this bill is wide of the mark.

Instead of protecting privacy, this bill does nothing but protect the right of large private businesses to make profits with as few restrictions as possible. That is unacceptable.

In the next few minutes, I will review with the members some of the reasons why the Bloc Quebecois is categorically opposed to this incoherent, unfair and incomplete bill.

First, we deplore that fact the Liberal Party of Canada is using this empty and confused bill to try to convince Quebeckers and Canadians that it is concerned with the protection of privacy. No one can trust a bill filled with ifs and whens and shoulds, based on voluntary compliance and full of loopholes as far as protection of privacy is concerned.

First of all, I must stress the fundamental nature of the right to privacy. Others have spoken of this before me, but I am returning to it because, with this bill, the Liberal Party is putting the right to make a profit before the right to privacy.

The experts equate the right to privacy with other human rights such as the right to equality and justice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations 50 years ago and to which Canada was a signatory, states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. It also states as follows: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation”.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms also impacts on the protection of privacy, even though this is not specifically in the charter. This is how the courts have interpreted sections 7 and 8 of the charter. Section 7 reads as follows:

1. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Section 8 stipulates:

1. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

In Quebec, as you are probably aware, this right to privacy is explicitly recognized in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, which was enacted in 1975. There is nothing ambiguous about section 5, I repeat nothing ambiguous:

1. Every person has a right to the respect of his or her privacy.

This is from Quebec's charter of human rights and freedoms. The right to privacy is also recognized in chapter III of Quebec's Civil Code entitled “Respect of Reputation and Privacy”, from which I will also quote. I urge my colleagues opposite to listen carefully. They would perhaps do well to look at what Quebec is doing and follow its example. Section 35 reads as follows:

1. Every person has a right to the respect of his reputation and privacy. No one may invade the privacy of a person without the consent of the person or his heirs unless authorized by law.

I think I have shown that respect for privacy is a fundamental right that is recognized internationally, as well as in Canada and in Quebec. It is wrong for the federal government to introduce a bill that does not protect this fundamental right.

The situation in Quebec in this regard is particularly exemplary. The Government of Quebec is the only government in North America—that is correct—that has passed legislation protecting personal information in the public and private sectors. Furthermore, many experts say that Quebec's law, which applies to the private sector, is one of the best in the world.

It is surprising in this context that the government did not draw on Quebec's legislation. It would have achieved two objectives at once. It would probably have achieved its objective with its bill, but it ignored what inspired Quebec, preferring instead to focus on an empty bill. What are the two principles and two objectives the government could have achieved had it followed the Quebec model? First of all it would have ensured consumers would have top-notch protection. It would also have avoided all the inevitable loopholes and pitfalls of unharmonized federal and provincial legislation.

Had the government drawn on the legislation in Quebec, it would have met these two objectives. But it decided to ignore what has been done up to now in Quebec.

This leads us to believe that the real objective of this bill is not the protection of privacy, but a vague exercise in public relations. The government would like to use this bill to show that it responds to the public's concerns. This, however, is totally wrong. The bill does not meet the expectations of the people of Quebec who want their privacy protected. Instead, it serves commercial interests.

Even Canada's privacy commissioner notes that the working document proposed by Industry Canada and the Department of Justice focuses more on commerce than on protecting privacy. He also is critical of the federal government's defining the public as simple consumers and not as individuals with the right to protect their privacy.

The Bloc Quebecois and the opposition are not the only ones saying this. I just referred to the privacy commissioner of Canada.

In conclusion, one simply needs to compare the titles of the two acts. The hon. member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve did it in an eloquent way earlier. Quebec's act is entitled “an Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector”, whereas the convoluted title of the federal act is “an Act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances”.

While the Quebec act seeks to protect privacy and governs all organizations, the federal bill only applies to commercial transactions. The Quebec act is clearly more strict and more comprehensive, in terms of its format, definitions, clarity and because of the power of order given to the commissioner. Such power simply does not exist in the federal legislation.

It is for these reasons that we categorically reject Bill C-54. The federal government refused to follow the example of the Quebec act, even though it is recognized as a model in this area.

[Employment Insurance, October 21st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I understand from the minister is that he is looking out for the welfare of the young people, but in exchange he wants to take money from their pockets to give to the Minister of Finance. That is unacceptable.

Let us take as an example a young person who has worked ten hours a week at McDonald's. Will the minister acknowledge that this young person had not been contributing before and now he is, except that he no longer qualifies for EI.

[Employment Insurance, October 21st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources Development has already told us that young people will no longer have access to benefits as the result of his reform, because, and I quote “Every time we give young people ready access to the employment insurance system, we do them no favour”.

Is the minister not ashamed at having all the young people pay contributions, when, for their own good, they are essentially denied access to benefits?

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, my answer will not deal specifically with that case, but the Liberal Party currently has a modus operandi whereby it is through threats and arrogance that both the members opposite and the general public are forced to react. We will be having a vote on this today. Some hon. members have had the courage to take a stand. I would ask them to be consistent with that stand and to vote along with the opposition on this.

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

A real apology, as the hon. member says.

The Prime Minister must realize that some irresponsible action was taken. There is an issue of human rights that must be defended in this parliament, and the Prime Minister should apologize to the public and to this House.

The third request is that a public commission of inquiry be appointed to review the whole issue. How can one possibly think that the RCMP complaints commission is the best court to examine this political issue? It does not make sense. The commissioners are being put in an untenable situation. They are not comfortable with this issue and we can understand why.

The young members of the Canadian Federation of Students are asking for a public inquiry, so that light can be shed on this issue. The New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois are asking this government to take its responsibilities.

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Beauséjour—Petitcodiac for her comments and her question. This gives me an opportunity to elaborate on the requests made yesterday by the Canadian Federation of Students.

The government opposite talks a lot. It has a hard time answering our questions. Had it paid more attention to the Canadian Federation of Students, it would have understood what is really at stake here.

Yesterday, Canadian students made three requests to the Prime Minister. It is important to mention them again. First, they are asking that adequate funding be provided to pay for lawyers' fees. I think this is a matter of fairness.

Given that the government opposite has a whole team of lawyers before the complaints commission, it would only be fair to provide the necessary funding to the students, so that they can be adequately represented.

The students' second request is that the Prime Minister make a public apology. Again, this is a matter of fairness.

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I will share my time with the hon. member for Laval East.

I rise in this House today to speak on a motion of utmost importance. It is a matter of equity, justice and freedom in the face of the arrogance and cynicism of a Liberal government that will stop at nothing to please a foreign dictator.

The motion before us today is simple. It asks that the government allocate sufficient, separate funding to the students repressed by police to ensure fair and equitable legal representation.

So far, in debating this motion, we have gone over every connection between the Prime Minister's Office and the pepper spray used to repress students peacefully demonstrating against the presence of Indonesian dictator Suharto at the APEC summit held in Vancouver, in November 1997.

Previous speakers also noted the Prime Minister's arrogance in pointing out every move made by his office to hide his real involvement in the repression of students campaigning for the right to speak.

That is why I will be speaking today about how crucial the vote on this motion, following this debate, will be. In point of fact, this vote will show how far the Prime Minister is prepared to go to crush any dissidence on the part of Liberal members who may have been in favour of ensuring fair and equitable representation for students subjected to repression.

I would tell the hon. members across the way, who have been deprived of their most basic right to free speech, just as the students were before them, that they should thank their lucky stars they have a civilized Prime Minister. There is one thing they can be sure of, that the leader will not use a baseball bat to make them toe the line.

Unfortunately, the Liberal members have every reason to be afraid of their leader today, if they heed their consciences and vote in favour of equity and freedom of expression. They need only look at what happened to their colleague from Vancouver Quadra, who was forced to keep quiet after commenting that the RCMP Public Complaints Commission could not cast full light on what had happened at the APEC summit.

If this is not enough to convince them there is no freedom of speech left within their party, they just need to recall what happened during the vote on financial compensation for all Hepatitis C victims. At that time the Liberal MPs, who had always come out in favour of full compensation, were forced to vote against their consciences.

If that is not enough, they can also hark back to when female Liberal MPs were forced to keep silent when this government broke its promise and refused to obey the Human Rights Tribunal's decision on wage equity. That time it was their turn to get the prime ministerial pepper treatment.

The Prime Minister does not draw the line at just restricting freedom of speech on the streets of Vancouver or within his own caucus; he also goes after journalists.

Last week, in fact, the PMO tried to intimidate all journalists by unjustly attacking the reputation of one of their number. His office wrote an unjustified, and unjustifiable, complaint against an eminent CBC reporter, wasting no time in making sure the complaint was widely known so anyone who had not yet got the message would understand the price to be paid for telling the truth about the Prime Minister.

This is further evidence that the Prime Minister is prepared to do anything to impose his view of things, even to the point of accusing a journalist of lacking objectivity, when the journalist in question won a Gemini award for the quality of his work on the dubious events surrounding the APEC summit.

From now on, no one can talk of isolated facts. Repeatedly, the Prime Minister has acted to threaten the freedom of expression of those who do not think as he does. He uses cayenne pepper if he wants the RCMP to repress young students, threats when he wants to muzzle the members of his party and official complaints when he wants to intimidate journalists.

There is no longer any doubt about the attitude of this old politician at the end of his career. This is why he is today denying the students who were victims of the RCMP repression access to fair legal defence against the police and his government, which have a battery of lawyers and communications experts who are being paid out of the public purse.

In addition to denying basic legal aid to the students, the Prime Minister keeps making jokes about the repression they faced. Yesterday, he was back at it and pointed out to them that they were lucky they were peppered with cayenne instead of being beaten with a baseball bat. He even tried to calm the students by saying that the RCMP carried towels to wipe away the effects of the cayenne pepper.

However, intimidation, threats and arrogance are unacceptable, and it will not take the Prime Minister long to discover that. A big organization like the CBC was able to dismiss the Prime Minister's threats by standing behind the integrity and objectivity of its journalists.

The Prime Minister has learned it is difficult to destroy the credibility of a person with the means to defend himself. This is why he will do all in his power to deny the students the public funds that will give them fair representation before the battery of lawyers defending him and the police at our expense.

All of the opposition members are prepared to provide this financial help to the students so this entire matter may come to light.

I solemnly appeal to the members of the Liberal Party today to liberate themselves once and for all from the attitude of their leader and to vote according to their conscience. I appeal especially to the Liberal members from British Columbia, who already gave their support for funding to the students, but who may well remain silent today in the face of the thinly veiled threats of the Prime Minister.

These members should rise and vote in favour of the most elementary justice. It is time they set the example for all who still believe in freedom of expression and for their Prime Minister, who has yet to understand that this freedom underlies our democratic system.

[Programs For Young People, October 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, as the new youth critic for the Bloc Quebecois, I am pleased to speak today on the important issue of young Quebeckers' access to the labour market.

The motion before us today will shed some light on the two injustices the federal government is committing with its overall program for young people. First of all, the Liberal government is unfair to young Canadians because its first goal is not to maximize the efficiency of its youth programs, but to maximize its visibility in the eyes of young people. The government is also unfair to Quebec and young Quebeckers, because of the unfair distribution of money among the provinces.

Also, the motion will demonstrate the lack of openness shown by the Liberal government, which will once again object to any public review of its programs in order to conceal their unfairness.

Before explaining my point of view any further, I will read the motion by the member for Madawaska—Restigouche we are debating today:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should overhaul all its programs for young people, in order to evaluate their impact and performance, and in order to ensure that all funds for such programs maximize young people's chances of joining the labour force.

In theory, youth programs are aimed at creating jobs. Granted, but how many? Nobody knows. What everybody knows though is that these programs are a blatant intrusion into the provinces' jurisdiction. They create more duplication, which is bound to harm our young people.

This motion brings to mind one of the basic rules the auditor general quotes every year. In order to assess the effectiveness of government programs, we must know what their total budget and measurable goals are, and be able to measure progress in the field.

If these requirements are not met, taxpayers cannot know whether their money is wisely invested. This is a situation common to young people in Quebec and Canada as a whole.

In reality, if the Liberal government is refusing to assess the impact of these programs, it is not because it ignores basic accounting rules. It is because the first objective of the government's youth strategy has nothing to do with employment for young people.

According to the Minister of Human Resources Development himself, the ultimate objective of that program is to, and I quote “continue to work to keep our country strong and united”. He said that in the House of Commons last year on October 2, 1997, in a formal speech in response to the Speech from the Throne. It is now clear that the strong and united country he is trying to impose on Quebeckers will be brought about by attractive and highly visible programs.

The millennium scholarship fund is a very good example of a program that completely disregards the real needs of the young people of Quebec, of a program where visibility is the priority. First, it duplicates the Quebec loans and bursaries program. On average, Quebec students already have a smaller debt load than their counterparts in the rest of Canada: $11,000 compared to $25,000. In Quebec, tuition fees are about half what they are in the rest of Canada: $1,700 compared to 3,200$. Moreover, Quebec is the only province to award bursaries on the basis of financial need. The others only give loans.

But, as the prime minister said in this House, the visibility of the program is not negotiable, no matter what choices Quebeckers made collectively concerning their education system. This is a totally unacceptable situation, but there is worse.

Where is the money to finance such encroachments in areas of provincial jurisdiction coming from? The budget surplus was reached by robbing the provinces of transfer payments, for education in particular.

The Quebec government must now impose cuts of several hundred million dollars on its education system. This is one of the tangible results of federal budget cuts.

In other words, the federal government takes the money from one pocket and puts it in the other one, after stamping it with the Canadian flag. It has absolutely no concern for the provinces, which are responsible for consistently managing their education system as a whole, or for young people who gain nothing from being used by a government willing to do anything to promote its strong and united nature.

The money for these highly visible programs also comes from employment insurance reform. The fund surplus, which will reach $20 billion by the end of the year, was achieved mainly by excluding many young people from entitlement to benefits.

In fact, since these limitations have been imposed, thousands of young Quebeckers have had to go on welfare. The numbers speak from themselves: the recipient-unemployed ratio went down from 72% in 1990 to 26% in 1997.

Now, more young people than ever before pay premiums, while only one young person out of four is entitled to benefits if faced with unemployment. But do they receive this money back in the form of active measures, as the government claims? Let us compare the amounts.

The government wants to spend as it pleases the $20 billion surplus that will accumulate this year in the employment insurance fund whereas, for the same year, it plans on spending $391 million for all youth programs, which is less than 2% of the amount taken from workers and businesses who pay EI premiums.

In short, the federal government is hindering the academic training of our young people by contributing to the deterioration of the education system in Quebec. It makes our young people poorer by forcing them to go on welfare instead of making them eligible for EI benefits. And, to make itself look good and to promote a strong and united Canada, it fills university and city newspapers with ads praising its youth strategy.

As suggested in today's motion, it is high time the House of Commons as well as Canadians and Quebeckers examine the real objectives of the Liberal government's cynical youth strategy.

The figures are just as disturbing with regard to Quebec's fair share. Of the $391 million earmarked for federal youth programs, Quebec gets only $63 million. That is only 16% of the allocated funds, even though we represent 25% of the population.

Moreover, effectiveness is not the ultimate goal for these programs. The federal government has already recognized that the provinces are in a better position to meet this type of need.

That is what led the Liberals to give Quebec full responsibility for manpower training before the last federal election. If it was fine just before the election, why is the federal government now rejecting any opting out by the provinces, which could then keep on working in close co-operation with those affected by these programs?

First of all, a significant reduction in EI premiums would result in the creation of tens of thousands of jobs. As it stands now, small and medium size businesses are penalized by the regressive payroll taxes of the federal government. The end result is that the way we are financing the EI system not only kills jobs by increasing the cost of labour, but kills a great deal of them in the businesses that tend to create most jobs.

I used a few examples to show that a good youth strategy is not necessarily a strategy that will give the most visibility to the federal government. I support motion M-213 because it would help us make a clear distinction between these two fundamentally different goals.

Such a review would demonstrate once and for all that the federal government has lost touch with the young, because of its obsession with visibility.

[Employment Insurance, October 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Human Resources Development said the following about the millions of young people who pay into EI and are not entitled to draw benefits: “The ones without employment insurance coverage were perhaps people who ought not to have been covered from the start”.

Is this what the Minister of Human Resources Development's youth employment strategy is all about, telling young people they are not entitled to receive benefits but are required, on the other hand, to make contributions starting with the very first hour they work? That is my question.

[Employment Insurance, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am always surprised to see a baby boomer of his age trying to get the young people in Quebec to pay. And they will get their own back.

How does he explain the fact that, since his government's reform, barely one young unemployed person in four is entitled to benefits? If this is not exclusion, what is it?