Mr. Speaker, it is rather interesting, with all the talk of an election and the tension around it, that this bill should come up at this time. This bill was one of the first issues that came before me when I was running as a candidate in the last federal election. I had just been nominated and I do not believe the election had even been called yet. Yet lobbyists for this legislation in its old incarnation were out beginning to lobby and trying to push and influence candidates in order to get their views on the record.
I must admit that at that time I knew absolutely nothing about the issue. I had never really considered it and never really thought about it, but it proved to be one of my best learning experiences and it continues to be one of my best learning experiences. It taught me that it is often these seemingly little things that are the most important to voters and to electors. I know I am not the only member of this House who has had intense lobbying on this issue.
In many ways this is the first issue I began to deal with on which I did not have strong preconceived views, having run and, as we all have, staked out our respective party positions prior to getting involved even in our nominations.
That also goes a little to the nature of the bill, having listened to the debate from all sides here tonight, that the concerns seem to be cross-party. They do not seem to be historical or ideological disputes. It was interesting to listen to some of my colleagues from the NDP saying things very similar to the things that I will say later and things that my fellow Conservatives have also said.
However, it is very important that I put on the record my views here for a variety of reasons. This bill will be coming to the industry committee, assuming of course it passes second reading in the House. We want to have a thorough and thoughtful review of the legislation in committee and invite witnesses who will help us understand it better and make proper adjustments, amendments, et cetera.
This has been one of those debates where we have really started to learn the history of the legislation with a little interaction among members. I had not thought of some of the concerns brought up by previous members. This debate has actually been helpful in formulating my own response to the bill, both how I will deal with it here in the House and later on in committee.
I want to lay out some of the ideas and questions I have on this bill before we take it to committee, so that witnesses and interested parties could begin to interact and answer those question prior to coming to committee. I want to go through what I see as both for and against this legislation. Unlike many other pieces of legislation that have come before the House, I am not 100% for it or 100% against. How I will vote at third reading will depend in general on what comes out of committee. Let me state some of the reasons why I intend to vote for this bill at second reading.
However, I want to run through a few of the things and raise them as questions for people to answer in the future. These include some of the problems and some of the advantages of this legislation that we may have to deal with and that need to be answered very possibly through amendments.
The most severe concern I have is that this legislation could cause adverse future reactions. We all know that the dead cannot speak for themselves, but anything that affects the past, that affects previous generations, will affect the thinking of the living and current generations here. I am somewhat concerned that if we pass a piece of legislation that will have too broad a scope, as far as going back into past historical data, that we will again get a lack of cooperation from certain elements in society. It might be for personal, ethnic, cultural or religious reasons. We do not always know and this would unfortunately have the potential to skew data.
We talk about the various ways to solve this, but we do not want to be in a situation where we are a very small group in society that is somewhat afraid to answer questions honestly under the worry and assumption that this could some day be used against them. There are things that may seem ridiculous to the general population, things that may not be understand or even heard of, but to very small groups it may become very important, even this census genealogical data.
There is a situation between adherents of the Jewish faith and the Mormon Latter Day Saints faith over how previous data census from genealogy is being used in the application of their religions, their ancestors et cetera. I am not choosing sides or whatever and I do not really understand what the conflict is all about, but it is important to note that for those two faith groups this is very important. It is something that should be thought through and dealt with in any broad legislation dealing with it.
The other major concern that I have in the negative on this one is that some of this personal information was promised a degree of secrecy. It depends on which lawyer we are talking to in terms of degree of secrecy or privacy promised. I took one of the parliamentary secretary's comments fairly seriously when he said it is only theoretical. That may be true, but the law applies to everyone and if there is just one case, we still have to consider that. We deal with practicalities and the good of the larger community, but we must remember that the law is for everyone. The law is not just for the majority or the minority. That is the principle that needs to be considered in dealing with not just this legislation but with all legislation. Those are my two major concerns in the negative.
I will be voting for this legislation on second reading, partially because restricting this data also restricts it from people to whom in many ways it belongs. My ancestors, not all of them but most of them, had already immigrated to Canada by the time of the first census. They came from eastern Europe. There are various other things involved, health and so forth, not just the personal genealogy. We have to consider those things as well in that people want access basically to the records of their own family and so forth, so that needs to be balanced. Again, that may be balanced out with various amendments in committee.
This is a bill which I generally support. There are some privacy concerns. Some answers over the years to various questions in the census data may not always be what we want revealed, even for future generations because our ancestors' information is something that we may want to keep private to a degree. That is a real concern. There are both pros and cons to this legislation. Even though I may generally say that I am in favour of the legislation, I do think it needs to be reviewed thoroughly and clearly in committee.
I would like to hear again a more definitive answer on whether or not the promise of privacy, the covenant or however we wish to term it, was made to people when they were answering and filling this out. I would like a more definitive legal answer because we seem to get the typical lawyerspeak and it is very hard to get an absolute answer to that situation.
Generally, I am in favour, but it needs some adjustments. It needs a thorough look in committee. We cannot just rush this through in one or two sessions of the committee. We should have testimony from witnesses and genealogical groups, and a thorough review of all questions that have been conducted in previous censuses of Canada. The census is a very important document. It is part of our public record. We need it for history. We must also respect the rights of each and every Canadian. The abuse of the rights of even one Canadian is the abuse of all.
While I respect the theoretical versus the practical balance of arguments, I think we need to look at ways to ensure that no data whatsoever is abused by this legislation.
