Charlie Angus

[Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. Since we are near the end of the Lenten season, I believe that there can be a road to Damascus and that a bright light can come down and throw one off one's horse, and one can wake up and realize that one's whole life has been wrong.

I am listening to the Liberal Party suddenly now interested in protecting privacy rights in terms of warrantless access. In fact, the Conservative government initially took the Liberal bill off the shelf and it became the lawful access bill that would have allowed all manner of wireless snooping on the rights of citizens. We know that the Liberal critics supported that.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague if, at this moment of conversion, he has realized that yes, the privacy rights of Canadians need to be protected, and we need to limit how it is done, unlike how it was defined under the Liberal legislation.

[Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague, and what struck me was the fact that within Parliament it is the role of parliamentarians of all parties to work toward the development of good legislation and legislation that will stand a test in the courts.

Unfortunately, the government has time and time again ignored input from the other parties and also tried to defy the courts. With Bill C-30, the Conservatives were completely slapped back because it was such an intrusive, invasive attack on the basic civil liberties of law-abiding Canadians. We see with Bill C-55 that the Conservatives have gone for a much narrower range in terms of legislation that would actually pass the charter test.

Does my hon. colleague not think that the Conservatives would have been wiser, and may be wiser in future, if they actually learned the lesson that at the end of the day they are not supreme in this land, that it is still the Supreme Court, that they still have to work with other organizations and other parties to ensure that legislation would be to the benefit of all and not just for their attack ads?

[Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's excellent discourse on this issue. I have a number of questions that I will try to get to in the limited time I have.

I am concerned because what we saw with Bill C-30 was an attempt to use the spectre of crime, the very debate of the accusation of an ordinary citizen supporting child pornography because we dared question the wisdom of the minister.

Bill C-30 would have used the cover of crime to allow all manner of attacks against basic privacy rights, including the fact that the minister could designate persons, and it was not clear who those persons were, to go in and demand warrantless access to information from telecom service providers on undisclosed persons. Who knows, it could be a political staffer who would be able to go in to telecoms to demand ISP information. That was under clause 35 of Bill C-30.

We still have a bill in the House, Bill C-12, which is supposed to be protecting personal privacy data, but we see that is creating all manner of loopholes. Bill C-12 would allow telecommunications companies to disclose personal information to government institutions, and it is unclear exactly who in the government, without the knowledge and consent of individuals for the purpose of "policing services". This is under clause 6(6) of the proposed Bill C-12. The language is in there again to undermine the rights of ordinary citizens to know that there will be due process and oversight.

Why does my hon. colleague think the government is so fixated on undermining the basic legal private rights of Canadian citizens?

[Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, what is very interesting about the Supreme Court decision is that it says that the rule of law still applies in this country, even when dealing with criminal matters, despite the Conservative government's attitude sometimes. The Conservatives seem to believe that if they throw the word “criminal” out there, they can suspend all manner of civil liberties and due process.

In the act on the issue of warrantless wiretaps, the reasonable choice is that if police officers believe that a life is at stake or that a crime is being committed, they can obtain that data. However, they are accountable. Later on there has to be a written record of how it was used so that we know that this was not some personal vendetta or wild goose hunt.

Bill C-55 is very narrow in its definition. I think the Conservatives were forced to be narrow in their definition, because the Supreme Court held them to account. Compare that to Bill C-30, with which the government was looking to obtain all manner of information on Canadians on the Internet. The Conservatives would have allowed the minister, under section 34, to designate persons as inspectors who could go to a telecom operation, but they did not describe what those inspectors were. They could be police officers. They could be political staffers for all we knew. They were writing into the bill a wide variety of opportunities to throw as wide a net as possible to go after ordinary Canadian citizens.

The Supreme Court says that even in the case of dealing with criminal activity, the rule of law has to be in place. Whether on this bill or on deporting landed immigrants with crimes of six months without any due process, what does it say about a government that is that uninterested in the basic rule of law that has made Canada the democracy it is?

[Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very closely to my colleague's excellent discourse. We see here an attempt to deal with a Supreme Court decision that said yes, as is normal with Canadian law, it is possible for law enforcement officers to obtain data in order to save someone's life; however, there are the issues of accountability and oversight.

When we look at the government's previous Bill C-30, we see it completely disregarded the privacy rights not in the case of criminals but of ordinary citizens. It would have allowed undefined police services, whoever they might be, to gather all manner of private information without warrant oversight. The attempt to shut down debate by accusing anybody in Canada who was concerned about the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens of being supporters of child pornography is probably one of the most baseless slurs that has ever been uttered in the House of Commons.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague what she thinks would have happened had Bill C-30 gone to the Supreme Court, because it was such an outrageous abuse of the privacy rights and democratic rights of an enfranchised citizenry.

[Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I find this bill very interesting, because it recognizes the emergency needs of police officers to get information to save lives. However, as the Supreme Court pointed out, there was a lack of accountability measures, which would, in the long term, affect the free and democratic rights of citizens.

In light of the Supreme Court decision on this, was that part of the reason the government killed the lawful access bill, in which there were very few provisions to protect accountability for average citizens, let alone potential criminals?

[Ethics, March 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I take it that answer tells us that they are going to defend their unaccountable buddies in the Senate while the New Democrats stand up for the taxpayers.

This is a more dodgy scheme. Last week, the Charbonneau commission shone a very interesting light on the donation scheme at SNC-Lavalin, where executives were encouraged to give maximum donations and were then repaid with phony bonuses.

Coincidentally, at the exact same time, the same number of executives were funnelling amounts of money into a dead-dog Conservative riding association in the Montreal area. All of the numbers were the exact same amount.

Will the government investigate to ensure that with the donations that were given, no fraudulent tax credits were given out?

It is a simple question. Will the government defend the taxpayer?

[Ethics, March 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, they are very defensive this week.

Let us talk about Mac Harb for a minute, and the fact that he hits up taxpayers for a housing allowance of $20,000 a year based simply on his word that he lives in the Ottawa Valley. The funny thing is that the neighbours have never seen him. One man said, "I would not know him if he came to the door”.

Canadians deserve better accountability. That is why we want to bring the Senate ethics officer to our committee to explain her role.

Will the Conservatives work with us to bring some accountability there, or will they keep defending their friends?

[Ethics, March 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, now that Peter Penashue is being shown the door, let us talk about a few other problem cases we have over there.

We have Mac Harb, who has been hitting up the taxpayer for a housing allowance of over $20,000 a year, based simply on his word that—

[Democratic Reform, March 6th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, those members get very uncomfortable about being schooled in accountability.

The fact is that in 2008 Senator Angus stated that Arthur Porter was “a man who could recognize power and knew how to get close to it”, and the Conservatives got him as close to the Prime Minister as one can get. This is another example of the dodgy ethical standards of the Senate, which is tarnishing Canadians' trust in public accountability.

Why will the government not do the right thing and end that patronage trough down the hall? Why will it not abolish the Senate?