Dennis Bevington

[Petitions, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present this petition on behalf of constituents from a variety of communities across the country.

The petition is in support of Bill C-544. It calls upon the House of Commons to bring forward and put into legislation this bill, an act to amend the Health of Animals Act and the Meat Inspection Act, thus prohibiting the importation or exportation of horses for slaughter for human consumption, as well as horsemeat products for human consumption.

[Tackling Auto Theft and Property Crime Act, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech. In the spirit of that, I just want to go to one particular item and see how he feels about it, and that is the mandatory minimum sentence for a third offence on automobile theft. Does the member think this part of the bill is really necessary?

Certainly, as he is pointing out, when we differentiate the type of theft taking place, such as a joyriding offence, it may have some extenuating circumstances. It may be that in the crowd of people that young people are sometimes in, these offences could be taken a bit differently.

When the judge is looking at an offender who has stolen a vehicle for the third time for profit, would we not expect that the judicial system could come up with a decent sentence for that person?

[The Economy, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Motion No. 518, a motion from the member for Calgary Centre, taking up his private member's opportunity with a motion that basically tries to debate the continuing direction the Conservative Government of Canada is taking with its economic policy.

For one who, after five years in the House, is only getting his first private member's bill in front of the House for debate, I find it was a very large sacrifice on the part of the member for Calgary Centre to put forward a motion like this when he could have been doing something much more useful for his constituents.

Having said that, of course I am very pleased to have the opportunity to debate the issues within that motion. I note that our previous speaker from the Liberal Party did not dwell overlong on the corporate tax cuts in the history of the Liberal Party. Quite clearly the New Democratic Party has believed and continues to believe that the corporate tax cuts that were initiated in the 1990s and carried through to this day have fundamentally altered the tax system of Canada to a point where it is no longer recognizable.

The burden has fallen directly upon average Canadians, who when they do make a profit on their income, so to speak, would invest this in Canada. Certainly average Canadians take their dollars and put them directly into the Canadian economy. That is the case, and what is happening since we have moved the tax burden over to the individual is that is those individuals do not have the same capacity.

What has happened within the system for businesses? The very best businesses do very well in Canada. Canada still has, if we look at it, a resource-based economy. Where businesses are doing well is in selling the natural resources, taking the natural resources out of the ground here in Canada and selling them to customers who require these resources in order to conduct their business in this country as well as in other countries.

We have an economy that is robust in its sale of natural resources. Those resources, of course, are finite and will eventually be extracted and be no longer part of the Canadian economic equation. That is a deficit that we are building within our natural resources sector.

Profitable companies and Canadian resources go hand in hand. Those are two things that go hand in hand in this country. So when we talk about reducing corporate income tax, we are talking about reducing the value to Canadians of the exploitation of their resources, to a large degree.

Whether it is in the financial sector where much of this money is made or whether it is directly in the resource companies, it is coming from virtually the same source.

Since the advent of free trade, we have seen a huge decline in our manufacturing sector. That will not come back with free trade because, of course, free trade encourages the movement of manufacturing to the lowest cost labour situation. That is exactly what has happened now.

We see that free trade has caused an imbalance in the world's economy, with huge surpluses of capital in those countries that were most successful at harnessing their low-cost labour and applying it to products. So we see that China and India are very strong right now with their ability to influence the world economy and to do well in that. All the much better for them.

Getting back to corporate income taxes, what can we do in Canada to promote what we are doing better? Let us take a look at the Mackenzie Valley gas project. It is one that has gone through environmental assessment. It has gone through a process and has now come to a point where we in the north can support this project, because we have identified what has to happen with it and what can make it go well.

I had the opportunity to read more about this in the last few days, and one of the things that is clear is that we will not see the development of the Mackenzie gas project without investment by Canada. Where is the investment going to come from at a time when we have billions of dollars of deficit in our fiscal situation? Where is that money going to come from to do the things we need to do? Should it come from the average Canadian, to invest in an opportunity for a large corporation to move ahead with the further exploitation of our resources? No, I would say it probably should come from corporations, which will benefit in the end from those investments.

When we look at the investment there, we see quite clearly that we need infrastructure. The cost of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline is extremely high, yet it could be reduced to a huge extent by the building of the Mackenzie highway prior to the development of the pipeline. That would not take a very large investment on the part of government, whether it be our government in the Northwest Territories, which is still suffering from a borrowing limit lower than that of our major city in that territory, or it could come from the federal government if it chooses not to cut $6 billion out of the budget through corporate tax cuts every year. Then we would have some money that we could see invested in things like the Mackenzie Valley highway, which would create the opportunity for the Mackenzie Valley pipeline to be built at an economical rate, much as we are competing with the Alaska pipeline project that is to be built along the Alaska highway.

We are in a situation in the Northwest Territories where we are trying to compete with a project that has better infrastructure than we do. So we need investment that will make corporations more money and they will be able to pay more taxes. It is a good situation. We are agreeing to the exploitation of the resources, but we need investment by the federal government in this type of activity.

Will the federal government have the fiscal capacity to put that into the Mackenzie Valley pipeline if the Conservatives continue with their rather poor policy of reducing the corporate taxes benefiting those that are in place already, that are wealthy already and are in a good position to exploit Canadian resources and to take profit from that?

No, we need the investment of government in order to make that possible. Right around the world, we are the one single country left that is an energy exporting country that does not have a national presence in the energy business. Where are we in Canada? Why are we taking this path rather than the path that every other energy exporting country around the world is taking? Why are we doing that? Why are we continuing to look at our economy in a fashion that rewards the very best and does not help out those who really need help?

The NDP in the last while has proposed that we look at the potential for reducing taxes on small businesses, which employ many Canadians, which give opportunities to Canadians to expand their local industry to work in their communities. That is where tax reduction will give the biggest benefit. So what we have is a situation where the government continues to favour the very large corporations and does not look at the economy in a holistic sense, does not look at how we can invest to ensure the best return to all Canadians. It thinks that by giving it to the corporations we are somehow going to get it back in a better fashion, and that just does not make sense.

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 21st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, less than a week ago the people of the Northwest Territories learned that their negotiators, after decades of trying, had reached an agreement in principle for the transfer of control and administration of crown lands and waters inside the Northwest Territories.

This event is significant as it is the furthest the people of the NWT have gotten to throwing off the colonial shackles that impede them from building a better north for themselves.

There is still much work to be done as this AIP is far from perfect. Mainly it is an agreement between only two parties. In order for devolution to work, an agreement must be reached that includes all of the aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories, as well as the territorial government in Ottawa.

Perhaps if we could find a way to work together on this AIP, it will be the start of a new form of governance in Canada. This would make the NWT a truly unique part of Canada where public governments and aboriginal governments, through shared responsibility, work together for the benefit of all.

[Petitions, October 20th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition from a variety of Canadians in communities such as Claresholm, Alberta, Lethbridge, Grantham and Fort Macleod.

The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to bring forward and adopt Bill C-544, An Act to amend the Health of Animals Act and the Meat Inspection Act (slaughter of horses for human consumption), thus prohibiting the importation and exportation of animals for slaughter for human consumption as well as horse meat products for human consumption.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the question of how the information moves from one country to another, the European Commission has said it does not have control over this information in the agreement that was signed between the EU and the United States. That agreement is not public. The process by which they determined this is very interesting, and I am sure it could do with some more investigation. However, the commission said that there were no strings attached as to where the information could go after being shared with the United States.

We have a situation where information is going to move out, whether it is credit card information or information of other kinds. There are dangers there. There are dangers with shared information. We know that. We know that this is the case. However, we also know there is equally a problem with misinformation. As we move through a system, as we go from one country to another, who is to say that the transcription or processing of that information would even be accurate?

How do we understand the systems of the third country? How do we understand how it uses that information, how it holds it, and what this might mean to a Canadian caught up in a land where that information had been used improperly and they found themselves in a dire situation?

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, there is continual air traffic between our two countries. The United States has many more flights over Canada than we have over the United States. Most of ours are on their way to Mexico, the Caribbean, or Latin America.

I think there was room to negotiate on this. There is linkage and there was room to negotiate.

What I question is the government's motives. The government has already started on agreements with other countries that do not apply the sort of pressure we may feel from the United States. Does that mean that the government agrees with the basic principle that it should be giving this information to the United States?

I think this goes beyond U.S. pressure to the attitude of the government toward privacy and information about Canadians being handed to other countries. That is where the problem lies.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that fundamental to protecting someone's privacy is the right to understand exactly what information is being taken and kept by authorities.

In this situation, we are not dealing with criminal offences. We are taking information from every Canadian who flies in a plane. For 99.99% of people, that information will be of value to no law enforcement agency. It simply is on the record.

However, if it is transmitted wrong, or transcribed wrong, it can be an enormous burden on that Canadian.

The other night, I talked to someone who had applied for Canadian citizenship. When that person applied, he was accused of a number of things that were clearly mistaken. Later, he found out that information from the next applicant had been erroneously put on his account. When he asked to have that information removed, the government refused. It would put in a disclaimer, but it would not take the information off his record.

We must understand that when we give information to our government, it is tough to get it off the record. If we give it to the government of the United States, it will be impossible. That is not going to happen. It is going to remain there.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-42.

Before us we truly have a misleading bill. On its face, Bill C-42 seems pretty innocuous, with simple changes to the Aeronautics Act, a word here, a word there, which do not appear to provide much difference. What it really does is implement secret letters and memorandums of understanding, not treaties, to invade the privacy of Canadians by handing over our personal information to secret service agencies in foreign countries. Under the bill, just flying over another country is sufficient reason to hand over detailed personal information.

The government would have us believe that we need the bill to fight terrorism. The truth is the government needs the bill so it and other foreign organizations can compile detailed files on Canadians. It will tell us the information is only name and address, et cetera. In reality, what the government is getting ready to hand over is the passenger name record, which includes such vital pieces of security information such as what one ate on the plane, one's medical condition, among other things.

However, the government will not admit to this. In fact, we have a situation where the government is moving ahead with a variety of secret agreements with other countries that will provide the same information to other countries and not simply to the United States.

The government wants us to believe that it is working hard to protect our privacy. Cynically, with Bill C-42, it is stripping away the privacy protection of Canadians.

Perhaps there is a need for some information sharing on flights between countries. That is something the government has said there is a need for. How can we deal with that and maintain the basic principles of privacy for Canadians?

In 1998 the European Commission put forward six key principles, which must be included in any kind of arrangement that is struck with other countries in terms of sharing information. This was specifically tailored towards the aviation industry.

One of the principles is the purpose limitation principle. Private personal information should be processed for a specific purpose and subsequently used or further communicated only in so far as it is not incompatible with the purpose of the transfer.

Another principle is the information quality and proportionality principle, which is Information should be accurate and, when necessary, kept up to date. The information should be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which it is transferred or further processed.

This is extremely important to Canadians. If we hand over information about Canadians to another country, we need to have the ability to ensure that information is kept correctly and is kept up to date. If that is not the case, then we can come into situations where, in the case of a Canadian getting a pardon for particular offences, those are not included in that record.

There is the transparency principle. Individuals should be provided with information as to the purpose of the processing and the identity of those in control of the information in the third country and other information in so far as this is necessary to ensure fairness. In other words, it is part of the rights of people right to understand who else has information about them, where it is kept, what they are using it for, how long it is going to be kept, all those particular things.

The security principle is another one. Technical and organizational security measures should be taken for those in control of the information that are appropriate to the risk presented by the processing. Any person acting under the authority of those in control of the information, including a processor, must not process information except on instructions from the controllers. In other words, if the person collecting the information is not capable of upholding the security of that information, then that is not something we wish to see for the personal information of Canadians.

There is also the right of access, rectification and opposition principle. The subject of the information should have the right to obtain a copy of all the information relating to him or her that is processed and a right to rectification if the information is inaccurate. Further, in some situations people should be able to object to the processing of the information relating to them. In other words, when we take information from people, they should have an understanding of what that information is and the opportunity and the access to those who control that information if the information is not correct.

Then the final one is the restriction on onward transfers principle. Transfers of the personal information to further countries should be permitted only where the second country is also subject to the same rules as the country originally receiving the information.

We have a situation where, when we pass the information on to the United States, it may use it in one fashion. If it passes it on to another country, we understand how that information will be used in the third country and we accept and control how they use that information in that third country.

Bill C-42 does not include any of these protections. It has nothing about the protection of personal privacy in the putting forward of information about Canadians. In other words, under this bill there is an open season on information about Canadians being given to foreign countries.

Two weeks ago, we spent considerable time on an opposition motion talking about the use of the long form consensus. The government was very concerned about the collection of information from Canadians, even though that information was anonymous.

Here we have a situation where, not anonymously, with people's names attached it, we are giving information to another country without any understanding or any control of how that information is going to be used, in a public fashion.

The government may have an agreement behind the scenes about how that information is to be used, but that is not in the legislation. That is not in the law. The government or any further government following it will not be bound to do that with that information.

In defence of this bill, the office of the Minister of Public Safety said it had to do this to ensure Canadians do not face any undue delays in their travel plans. However do we really want to trade off a few minutes' delay for the total loss of our privacy? Is that what is going on here? I do not think so. I do not think that is really a reason at all why we should move ahead with a bill without any controls attached to it.

If we accept this at second reading, there will be no opportunity to insert a major change to this bill, which is required in order to protect Canadians, to make the primary function of this to protect the personal privacy of Canadians. I do not think that is possible. I do not think we will be able to accomplish that in any committee setting.

Not too long ago we went through this with the long form census. I wish the government would bring back the argument it was using then. I wish it would take those arguments and ask, “Does this not mean something to us? Did we not get up and pontificate on this particular issue? Did we not make this a point of principle for us, that the personal information of Canadians is personal, that it belongs to them, that there are privacy aspects to that?”

The government chose not to engage in that principle here with this bill. It chose not to put principles attached to the bill, which would guide the government and ensure that, if we chose and had to put it into a context of giving Canadians' information to another country, if we chose to do that, Canadians would understand how their information was protected.

On November 22, 2007, the government issued a press release saying it strongly opposed handing over to the United States, and one assumes other countries, the personal information of Canadians.

In that release the government said,

However, in light of our complementary security systems and the security cooperation of Canada and the United States, and the relative risk, we believe that there are excellent security grounds for the proposed Secure Flight Program to exempt all flights to, from and within Canada that overfly the United States.

Why did the government give in? It certainly would not have said that if it did not think it had some opportunity to negotiate a different arrangement. Remember, the flights that overfly Canada from the United States are considerably more and considerably more important to the United States than the flights from Canada that overfly the United States. That is clearly the case. Clearly Canada had the leverage to do something different with this bill.

My question is: Did the government even want to do that, or has it made a decision along with its secret negotiations with other countries around the world to share information? Has it made the decision that it is okay to share this information, that we want to give up this information, that we do not care about the privacy rights of Canadians, that we are going to leave them wide open?

A year later, just before they prorogued for the first time, the Conservatives assured the House that the secure flight program would not apply to Canadians. The government then told the House that the U.S. had indicated the secure flight program would be exempt for countries with a comparable security system. This was in response to a tame question from the government's own benches. We could not put it down to the minister not understanding the question because he had been given the answer directly. At that time the Minister of Transport said, “Our government is committed to respecting the safety, security and privacy of each and every Canadian”.

With Bill C-42 this commitment has gone straight out the window, flushed down the toilet, disposed of. This is the same government that killed the long form census just recently because it was too much of an invasion of privacy. This is the government that feels the long gun registry is too much of an invasion of privacy. The same government brings forward Bill C-42, which will make it possible for the personal and private information of Canadians to be sent out not just to the United States but perhaps to Panama, Mexico, the Dominican Republic or any other country the Canadian government deems appropriate.

It does not take much to fly over a country and give the Canadian government the right to hand that information over. Whether the current government does it or the next government, the rights of Canadians are not being protected.

In August 2007, the European Commission released an opinion on an EU-U.S. agreement on the processing and transfer of PNR by air carriers to the United States Department of Homeland Security. The opinion compared the 2007 agreement to others, and remember that the European Union does not fly over the U.S. nearly as much as Canadians do.

The opinion found that safeguards for private information are weaker than other types of agreements. Especially and specifically, the amount of information transferred is increased; the Department of Homeland Security may use sensitive information that has been excluded by previous agreements; transfers of information to foreign agencies were made easier and no longer subject to previous protection safeguards; and information under that EU agreement with the United States would be kept for at least 15 years and, in some cases, for 40 years.

The opinion also found that the new agreement contains an increased number of exemptions. Specifically, safeguards protecting personal information can be waived at the discretion of the United States.

So if we are following in the footsteps of the European Union in its secret agreement that is not public with the United States, we are going in the wrong direction.

The European Commission stated: “...the new agreement does not strike the right balance to uphold the fundamental rights of citizens as regards data protection”.

However, I am not the only one to oppose this bill. Roch Tassé of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group said: “The Americans will have a veto on every passenger that gets on a plane in Canada even if they are not going to set foot on American soil”. Mr. Tassé added, “What will happen if Canada invites the ambassador from a country such as Cuba?”

The Air Transport Association of Canada made its grievances known to America's Department of Homeland Security last December. Chief in ATAC's critique was that “the submission of Canadian passenger’s details by Canadian airlines violates Canada’s laws on the protection of personal information and electronic documents, as well as laws on aeronautics”.

We are changing the law, so this quotation might be a bit out of date, but the purpose of the law would protect information.

Interestingly enough, the government has already been handing over personal information about Canadians to foreign security services for some time, even if it was against the law. Take the case of Teresa Healy.

In June 2007, Ms. Healy, the lead researcher of the Canadian Labour Congress, was the subject of a prolonged interrogation by American customs officers at the Cornwall, Ontario, border crossing when she set off a radiation detector. After it came to light that the radiation was due to medical tests, they switched the subject of her interrogation to her 1991 arrest at a non-violent protest. No charges were filed at the time, but the customs officers had her digitized fingerprints at their disposal nonetheless. She said that they told her, “Do not worry about it; we are just keeping them in case you do anything else”.

That is the truly worrying issue here. This information can be held for years and used for purposes other than what it was first provided for. Now the government will tell Canadians it is taking steps to ensure the information handed over will be only kept for a few days. The reality is that, once this information is handed out, the monkey is out of the bag. That is it for that.

The only way we can ensure the privacy of Canadians is protected is to stop this information grab by the U.S. and other countries, but the government will not protect Canadians' personal privacy.

What should have been done when the Americans and other nations demanded that we violate the privacy of Canadians? If the government had the concerns of Canadians really at heart, it would have clearly said no, but the government cynically plays the game of let us pretend. Let us pretend we are protecting Canadian privacy, while all the time working to erode the very laws protecting our privacy.

What will Canadians get for this gross violation? Not much. Maybe they will get a slightly shorter waiting time to board an aircraft, but they will get an increased risk that they will be arrested or denied boarding, by mistake, by accident or for some unknown purpose.

The no-fly list has a very dismal record, and my colleague in the Bloc referred to a number of very prominent cases that fit under that, such as Maher Arar and the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

The likelihood is that this information is going to be used in an incorrect fashion. This bill, as it stands, is a poor attempt and a miserable little bill that does nothing to protect the personal privacy of Canadians in difficult situations that we face. If the government had come forward with a bill that showed it was serious about protecting personal privacy, I could support it. I could find some way to support it. However this is not a bill that can be supported in this fashion, and there is no opportunity to change the bill in committee to the degree that it needs to be changed. That is not on. So what are we to do here? What can we do with this bill?

My sense is to send it back to the government and get it to come back with a better answer.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the ostensible reason why this bill has come forward now is the Conservative government has indicated there has been pressure from the United States to conform with this provision of providing information. We do not really know what information it is going to be asking for yet, but we are going to be giving permission for the Canadian government to provide it. This is in the nature of a threat.

The United States government is threatening to disallow Canadian flights to fly through its airspace unless this information is given. The fact is there are between 1,000 and 2,000 U.S. flights a day over Canada. Does he think the type of action the U.S. is taking on a much more limited number of flights than Canadian airlines are engaged in that would overfly U.S. airspace is justified and practical? If we were to incorporate the notion of reciprocity on information, would this be an incredible burden on the U.S. aviation industry?