Charmaine Borg

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, October 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. Unfortunately, some women are particularly vulnerable targets for misogynist comments on the Internet. The case of Amanda Todd is a good example. A sexual image of her was distributed because sometimes, people unfortunately see women as sexual objects.

The member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord moved a motion that we work on prevention. I think that prevention is very important, but it is nowhere to be found in this bill. If we work together, we can get to the root of the issue and figure out why cyberbullying happens and why people distribute sexual images without consent. We need to get to the root of the problem.

We can impose sanctions on people all we want, but if there is no means of preventing this crime, we cannot attack the problem on all fronts. Prevention is important, especially in the case of women who are the victims of these types of attacks. To combat this problem, we need to get to the root of this problem.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, October 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. We asked for the bill to be divided. The provisions pertaining to cyberbullying, namely the specific clauses that deal with the distribution of images without consent, could already be law and could already be protecting children.

The government decided to run television ads to announce the fight against cyberbullying when a law to that effect has not yet been passed. Things could be different if we could work together properly. I have already mentioned this, but I find it very disappointing that I had to spend about 15 of the 20 minutes of my speech talking about privacy. I really would have liked to speak on behalf of the victims of cyberbullying in my riding and across Canada and let them know that we are going to take action and work together. Unfortunately, the government put these two parts of the bill together and the debate is about both of them.

What is more, as a result of the Spencer ruling, some provisions of the bill will likely be deemed unconstitutional, which will block the entire bill. If we could have had a bill that included only the provisions about cyberbullying, this would not have been a problem, and we could have considered whether some of the provisions were constitutionally legitimate.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, October 10th, 2014]

For crying out loud. The member behind me said that because it is true. For crying out loud. They would have us believe that they can use this back door to ask Internet service providers for personal information, such as a person's IP address, but that they cannot track this stuff.

The government is saying that it cannot go back to determine, for example, how many requests were made and how many of those cases had to do with cyberbullying, child exploitation, national security or anti-terrorism. It claims that it does not have that data. How are we supposed to make sure that this is not being abused? Exploiting loopholes has become the norm, and that poses tremendous problems.

This bill grants legal immunity to Internet service providers that choose to share their clients' personal information when requested to do so by any government agency or on their own initiative. However, most of the time, it is government agencies that make a request.

A parallel system ensured that an Internet service provider that shared data it had no right sharing could be sued if it abused the process. That is the one and only aspect that gave people any sense of security.

In certain cases, Internet service providers refused to respond to a request because they did not want to take the risk of being sued. Bill C-13 takes away this one thing that made Internet service providers think twice. That is a major problem.

When the Conservative and Liberal members—since they voted together—say they want to ensure that there is balance and a warrant system, that is false, for they seem to be forgetting that they gave Internet service providers legal immunity in this bill.

Furthermore, the IP address reveals a great deal of information about users, including their conversations and where they go. Contrary to what the Conservatives like to say, it is not the same information that can be found in the phone book.

I talked a lot about the shortcomings created by PIPEDA. Rather than correcting the situation, the provisions in Bill C-13 make matters worse. In addition to providing legal immunity, Bill C-13 also reduces the threshold for intercepting communications—that is, the content of an email or text message—to reasonable suspicion.

There already was a threshold for obtaining a warrant, which was good. We should respect existing thresholds for being able to access personal information or communications. However, that threshold has been reduced to “reasonable suspicion”, which opens the door to abuse.

I would like to point out another very specific aspect of this bill. If government agencies can ask Internet service providers to hand over personal information, public servants will have access to that information with a simple phone call. Here is how “public officer” is defined in Bill C-13:

“Public officer” means a public officer who is appointed or designated to administer or enforce a federal or provincial law and whose duties include the enforcement of this or any other Act of Parliament.

I can think of many positions that would be included in this definition, including mayors. There are good mayors and bad mayors. Can they all be trusted? Are there any provisions to prevent abuse? No. This just opens the door wider.

When this bill was examined in committee, the NDP proposed 37 amendments, which were all rejected. We heard from a number of witnesses, and contrary to what the parliamentary secretary just said, the witnesses did not all agree.

Here is what Carol Todd, Amanda Todd's mother, had to say:

I do not want my privacy invaded. I do not want young people's privacy compromised. I do not want personal information being exploited without a protection order that would support individuals. I do not want any Canadian hurt in my daughter's name. I want her legacy to continue to promote hope, celebrate our differences, and give strength to other young people everywhere.

I think she would have been pleased to see us split this bill. She does not want anyone's privacy to be invaded, or the threshold for obtaining communications to be lowered, or for government agencies to be given access to personal information without a warrant. That is what she wants for her daughter's legacy. It is really quite clear.

There is another aspect that the committee was unable to assess because it happened after review in committee and that is the Supreme Court ruling in Spencer. It is an extremely important ruling that brought certainty to something that may have been rather vague before. In Spencer, the Supreme Court ruled that no one could have access to clients' names, addresses, telephone numbers and IP addresses without a warrant. Nonetheless, in Bill C-13 we just included statutory immunity for Internet service providers who share information without a warrant.

There is some serious and legitimate uncertainty as to whether these parts of the bill are constitutional and whether they will be blocked.

That being said, why could we not have sat down together and sorted this out? We know that the Conservative government seems to be short on respect for the Constitution and the Supreme Court's rulings, as we saw during the process for appointing a new justice to the Supreme Court. It is the government's responsibility to ensure that every bill, every law it wants to enforce respects the Canadian Constitution. It is the government's fundamental duty. When the Conservatives say that there was a review, that legal experts assessed the bill to ensure it was consistent with the Constitution, that is great, but the Spencer ruling was handed down after the bill was drafted.

I am puzzled by something else. As we know, the government is refusing to respond to this decision. It claims that everything is in order and that the bill is constitutional even though many experts doubt that it will pass the test of the Constitution in light of the Spencer ruling. What is interesting is that we expected the government to respond, but it was actually the Internet service providers that did so. Now Rogers and TELUS will no longer respond to requests for information about their clients made by government agencies. Why is the government not taking its responsibilities seriously by declining to make these requests? That would be the responsible thing for the government to do. Instead, it is the other side doing this. That really bothers me.

I agree completely that we must amend the law. It must keep pace with new technologies and the new problems that society faces. Many new things are happening, and we have to keep up to date. However, we cannot and should not put the protection of people ahead of the protection of privacy. We can find a balance. No matter what the Conservative MPs would like to think, this is not a balanced bill. Furthermore, there is a high probability that it is unconstitutional. It is therefore very problematic.

The government says that it is opening the door, that it is all right in certain situations. Yes, there are exceptional cases. However, I am afraid that the government is violating privacy and that once it opens the door, it will open it wider. Where will that take our society?

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, October 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is very disappointing that we are once again being forced to debate a very important bill under a time allocation motion. I have lost track somewhat, but I think this is the 80th time allocation motion. It has happened so many times under this government that there have been many complex, important bills that we have not had a chance to debate.

On top of that, the government decided to hold the third reading debate on this extremely important bill on a Friday, when everyone knows that most members are not present in the House on Fridays. I think that is appalling.

I would also like to talk about the vote at second reading. There was a vote at report stage and another one on this part of the bill, and it was revised in committee. That said, I must denounce the fact that the Liberal Party voted in favour of the bill, even though it had criticized the bill repeatedly. It boggles my mind. I am not normally a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, but I was there when this bill was being studied.

When they were asking the parliamentary secretary questions, some members said that the bill's first aim was to address bullying. On that issue, at least, we agree 100% with the Conservatives. All members on all sides of the House agree that cyberbullying must be stopped, for it is a very serious issue.

New technology has completely changed the problem of bullying. In the past, once you were home, nasty people at school could no longer bother you, since you were in a safe place. These days, new technology and social networks allow bullies to follow us everywhere.

If someone does not like what you wore to school, it will be shared on Facebook or in an email. Disturbing images can also follow us. Unfortunately, that is what happened in a couple of highly publicized cases, such as the Amanda Todd case. No matter what she did, that image followed her. I agree completely that this must be stopped.

That is why we asked that the bill be split. That way, we could pass the essential elements and make positive changes to combat cyberbullying and non-consensual distribution of images. It is too bad that the government did not have the good sense to get this part passed quickly. We agreed to do so. This part of the bill could have been at the other place by now. Unfortunately, the government did not want to go ahead.

It is a real shame because cyberbullying is a very important issue to me. I would like to use my 20 minutes to talk about only the parts of the bill that have to do with cyberbullying. Unfortunately, I cannot because we also have to talk about the problematic parts of this bill that could have very serious consequences for Canadians' privacy.

Victims of cyberbullying deserve better. The families of cyberbullying victims came to committee to share their stories. They were very courageous. Nonetheless, there are thousands of other cases that are not in the media, unfortunately or fortunately, I am not sure which. These victims deserve a debate on this issue alone. Unfortunately, we must debate both because this government is incapable of co-operating.

Some of my constituents are working very hard to combat cyberbullying. Someone even developed a website to create a safer social network where people cannot be anonymous. It is very interesting.

I want to point out all the daily efforts these people are making. Some are forming groups to combat cyberbullying. These are truly exceptional Canadians, and I want to thank them.

We have to talk about the other aspects because, unfortunately, very few pages and clauses of this bill really have anything to do with cyberbullying. The vast majority are on changes to the Criminal Code. Some parts of the bill are just fine, but others will seriously jeopardize Canadians' privacy.

The government keeps talking about the judicial oversight system for obtaining warrants to get personal information. Indeed, some parts of the bill call for a warrant. I will talk about the problems with warrants later.

However, what the government did not say in its speech and what it seems to have completely forgotten about is that a parallel system is being created, and that it completely bypasses all the mechanisms for obtaining warrants. That was part of the government's own bill. We are completely setting aside judicial oversight, which is the basis for our legal systems. We are creating a parallel system where someone can pick up the phone, call an Internet service provider and make an urgent request, and the service provider will send the information. The Liberals created this loophole in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Conservative government is taking advantage of it.

We know that there have been abuses. The acting information and privacy commissioner announced that in one year, government agencies made at least 1.2 million requests for information from Internet providers. That is huge. I have trouble believing that there are 1.2 million terrorists, for example, or 1.2 million criminals running around in the streets and that we need to obtain information about them.

Furthermore, it was the Internet service providers that informed us about the 1.2 million requests, not the government, which has shown an appalling lack of transparency. It does not want to give us that information.

Also, there was no explanation as to why these requests were made. There is no oversight system for these types of requests that could guarantee to Canadians that they were made in extraordinary cases. I believe that Canadians are prepared to accept extraordinary cases. There are urgent situations where we cannot turn to the regular processes and where we must obtain a warrant after the fact. However, in light of the 1.2 million requests, I find it hard to believe that Canadians would not think that there had been abuses and that there is a flaw somewhere.

I actually asked the government a question on the order paper about how many times it requested this kind of information from Internet service providers. That was just for one year, 2012-13. The Canada Border Services Agency said that it had made over 13,000 requests in one year. I asked the agency what kinds of cases or situations would result in such requests being made. Only two of the 13,000 requests were made for national security reasons. Can we honestly say that these are exceptional cases or national security cases? I think not. The question was asked, but the answer did not cut it.

I asked the government another question because it was not going to share that information. I asked how many times government agencies had made such requests for 2001, which is when the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, was passed. Here is something very disturbing: they did not have the data. We were told that there was no system to keep track of those kinds of requests and that the information could not be provided.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, October 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice's speech. I am concerned about two of his comments.

He said that the bill is enhancing “privacy protection”. He also said, “Nothing in Bill C-13 changes this”.

I am very surprised because there is a specific clause in the bill that would grant legal immunity to any Internet service providers that choose to share their clients' personal information when asked by any government agency.

What the government is doing is quite separate from the judicial oversight system and the process for obtaining warrants. I am very curious to know how the member can think that does not violate privacy protection.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, October 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, since I do not have a lot of time, I will get straight to the point.

Cyberbullying is an extremely important issue and the NDP wants to do something about it. We suggested splitting the bill in order to pass this part quickly. I want to reiterate that, because it seems that the members across the way are under the impression that this issue is not important to us. That is not true.

We are deeply concerned about the fact that the government is in the process of creating an entirely new system to gain access to personal information. I heard Conservative members say that this will change nothing when it comes to accessing personal information, but that is not true. Providing protection to Internet service providers who voluntarily comply with a request and hand over information, or who do so on their own initiative, is extremely problematic.

We have the Supreme Court's ruling in the Spencer case before us. We have not really had the chance to hear what the government has to say about this. We do not even know whether this bill is constitutional. I am not sure. Some telecommunications companies, such as Telus and Rogers, have even said that they no longer respond to requests from government agencies because they now believe it is not constitutional. Why can the government not open its eyes and realize that such things as an IP address do indeed constitute personal information?

As the court stated in its ruling, you need a warrant to obtain this information. There have been decisions against creating an entire system, a back door, for calling a telecommunications company to obtain personal information. I believe that the government has a duty to consider this before simply cutting off debate and quickly moving to a vote.

I would like to add that we are constantly being told that these requests are made in exceptional circumstances. That is not true. We saw that the Canada Border Services Agency made more than 13,000 requests in one year. Only two of these requests were listed as being required for national security reasons. I am sorry, but their argument does not hold water.

Furthermore, we were told that these requests are transparent and subject to review. However, there is no transparency. There is absolutely no oversight. When I asked the government in writing for the data for the past 10 years from all agencies, it did not have the data. The government has no record of the requests. How can we have a transparent system without even having the necessary data?

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, October 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate that we are talking about the urgency of adopting provisions on cyberbullying. The NDP has always said that we need to adopt this part very quickly. Nonetheless, we want to properly assess the parts that may cause serious problems when it comes to protecting Canadians' privacy.

What is more, the Minister of Justice responded to my colleague from Gatineau by saying:

“It is not our duty to slow things down here”.

I am sorry, but it is our responsibility. As parliamentarians, we must be sure to uphold the Canadian Constitution and Supreme Court rulings.

Can the Minister of Justice tell me why he does not even want to sit down and address the Supreme Court ruling to see whether the provisions of Bill C-13 are indeed constitutional?

[Petitions, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition aims to put an end to unfair fees and rip-offs. People in my riding are sick and tired of the never-ending fees. By presenting this petition, we are hoping to help families make ends meet.

[Petitions, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is calling on the Government of Canada to reject Canada Post's proposed service cuts and explore other options to modernize the crown corporation's business plan. Terrebonne is one of the cities where door-to-door delivery will be eliminated by 2015. People are very worried about that and wish to express their disapproval.

[Petitions, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present three petitions today.

The first petition was signed by people in my riding who want to ensure that the former Saint-Maurice shooting range is decontaminated within a reasonable time frame and that the wetlands and the imperilled flora and fauna in the ecosystem are protected and preserved. I have several hundred signatures and petitions, and I am very proud of my constituents who made the effort to collect these signatures.