Jack Harris

[Afghanistan, March 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, first it was to be military training in classrooms behind the wire in Kabul. Then the line was that it was to be Kabul-centric. Now we find out that the Conservatives do not know where our troops will be going.

This is not the first time the government has extended our military mission in Afghanistan by saying one thing to Canadians and doing another. Previous extensions were supposed to be about training too, but our soldiers continued to be put in harm's way.

How can the government expect Canadians to keep buying the same lines over and over? It is time the government kept its promise, repeated again and again, to bring all of our soldiers home in 2011.

[Afghanistan, March 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are right to distrust the government's plans for the extension of the military mission in Afghanistan.

We know that weeks after its about-face announcement of the extension, the government had to send a fact-finding mission to the region to figure out what to do.

Today we learn that the government still has not decided what our soldiers will be doing and that it is running out of time to do so.

How can the government promise a Kabul-centric mission when it has not even figured it out for itself?

[Regional Development, March 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, Atlantic Canadians are still struggling to recover from the recession, but this government continues to chip away at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The 17% cut to ACOA's budget while the unemployment rate is above the national average is a stark reminder of the Prime Minister's opinion of Atlantic Canadians. Included in the cuts is a $2.5 million drop in the promotion of official languages and $24 million from RInC funding.

When will this government accept that the people of Atlantic Canada are not locked in a culture of defeat and give them the support they need to prosper?

[Business of Supply, March 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, perhaps the member could elaborate on his views.

I heard his very enthusiastic and vigorous speech. One thing I did not hear, though, is whether or not he supports the idea of Canadians getting to decide whether they want to get rid of the Senate or not. This is what the motion is about with respect to the Senate. Are the people of Canada sick and tired of this notion of an undemocratic Senate, with the kind of concerns that he raised? Having the powers it has under our Constitution, should people not be given an opportunity to express their view? And if they want to get rid of the Senate, then it is up to us as political leaders to find a way of doing that.

Could he tell us whether the Liberals support the idea of Canadians having a say, or at least find out what their opinion is as to whether or not we should rid ourselves of this relic?

[Business of Supply, March 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the very intelligent minister on this issue, but when this issue of abolishing the Senate is raised, the complaint that I hear from over there is that it would involve constitutional change. How can we do what the member suggests without getting into that quagmire?

We have Alberta with six Senate seats compared to 10 in New Brunswick. The whole thing is a mess. To even try to get any sense of it would require the most agonizing amount of constitutional bargaining, disagreement, and unhappiness that one could imagine.

The simplest thing to do, what the minister's leader said to do, is to abolish the thing. I do not think it can be fixed.

[Business of Supply, March 3rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member would like to comment on the fact that after prorogation in December 2008, when the Prime Minister did not want to face Parliament and the music, he then appointed 17 senators on January 2, 2009, one of whom was the individual who lost the election in Avalon in my province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

That person, Senator Fabian Manning, voted very recently to kill Bill C-311, the very bill the person who defeated him, who is sitting in the Liberal caucus, voted to support in the democratically elected House.

What does the member think of that, and what should Canadians think of a system that allows a Prime Minister to appoint a defeated candidate to an unelected Senate, who then votes down something that the person who defeated him voted for in the House of Commons?

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, March 1st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I had hoped that we had passed the high-water mark of paranoia. Understandably, the Americans were concerned about what happened September 11, 2001, but that was not a result of problems that this agreement is designed to solve. The people who did this nasty business in the United States in 2001 at the World Trade Centre did not fly from other countries, they were inside America. They were not coming from foreign states to do this nor over-flying the country. I think an awful lot of work has been done since then to be more vigilant, there is no question about that.

I hope that we are at the high-water mark and that the invasion of privacy envisaged by both this agreement and by the perimeter agreement are not going to be implemented. We oppose them. We think they are going too far and we will vote accordingly when the time comes.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, March 1st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that will give me a chance to tell the story of my visit to Russia in 1981.

I met an individual who that very day had been interviewed by the KGB because she had been seen in a place where foreigners would visit. I asked her what the consequences of being interviewed by the KGB were. Her answer was very interesting. She said, “One never knows”.

What we do know is that they wrote down the fact that there was a meeting, why there was an interview, everything that was said, and they put it in a file somewhere. That information could affect one's future when applying for a job, or trying to travel to a foreign country. This was 1981, before the wall came down.

Her answer stuck with me ever since, “One never knows”. One never knows what the consequences are of information that a secret agency might have on a person. That is why people like me and other Canadians value our privacy, freedom, and our own security. We consider it wrong that foreign government agencies have information that they have no need for without any protection, safeguard, or any ability to correct that information.

That's the essential reason why this legislation ought to be opposed. The agreements are not transparent, the information is not protected, and there are no safeguards as to what the information may be used for. These are the concerns we have and continue to have. This is why we oppose this bill.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, March 1st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-42 and to review some of the concerns that we have raised time and time again.

I am afraid I do not share the optimism of the member for Random—Burin—St. George's in terms of the expectations she has for U.S. participation in making changes to this and in reviewing its procedures. There have been no discussions about these procedures, no safeguards have been put in place and no limitations whatsoever on the kind of information that the American government, its agencies or the foreign governments to which it will be passed on, would obtain from this process.

The legislation is very simple. It is an agreement to release information. It causes us very grave concerns. We have not seen the agreement itself but we have seen are other agreements. The European Union has an agreement on this. The United States and the European Union have agreed that all this information, called PNR, the passenger name record, that the travel agencies or airlines have will be passed on to the American homeland security.

The information that is collected can be retained for up to 40 years and it may be forwarded to the security services of a third party nation without the consent or notification to the other signatory, and that includes the individual who is the subject of this. People may know what information about them is being held by the United States and may not correct that information. In the case of the EU agreement with the United States, the Americans can amend that agreement unilaterally any time they wish by themselves without the consent of the other party.

That is a pretty devastating amount of invasion of privacy of Canadians who, in this case, are not even going to the United States. They may be travelling to Cuba, Mexico or on an international flight from one part of Canada to Europe or South America which happens to over-fly U.S. airspace.

This is rather disturbing. In fact, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, told the committee that Bill C-42 raises important sovereignty issues. She said that she was not questioning the American government's authority to implement its own program. International law is clear that a state's sovereignty extends to its own airspace.

However, the Privacy Commissioner said that the Canadian government had a duty to protect the privacy and civil rights of its citizens. That is not what is happening here at all. There are, in fact, very few or no limitations on the protection of privacy here.

Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, spoke to the committee as well. She said that the bill did not really meet the protection of privacy in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it had no limitations.

This is a mystery bill. There is no requirement in either Bill C-42 or in the regulations for the United States to safeguard and protect the information from other people. There is no safeguard that the TSA will not pass information on to other government agencies. In fact, it has been suggested that the information will be available to some 16 United States government agencies.

There is no safeguard that the U.S. will not pass the information on to third countries, and, in fact, it has the right to do that. As we know, this has been a particularly difficult issue for some Canadians given what happened to some Canadian citizens, such as Maher Arar who was tortured as a result of information being passed on by the Americans which they had obtained in part from Canada.

This whole no-fly list, as has been mentioned here, is part of the issue. One of the issues around the United States homeland security no-fly list is that it is under constitutional challenge in the United States.

The concerns the Americans have are similar to the concerns we have. In the United States, for example, Americans are not allowed to know whether they are on the no-fly list, how to get off the list or what evidence their presence on the list is based. This is a concern we are having here.

We need to understand how this process works. If a passenger will be overflying the United States, the airline must advise the American homeland security as to what information it has on its passenger record. The Americans will then do data mining of their own and they will issue a result to the travel agency. The instructions will be one of the following: issue a boarding pass, deny permission to travel or issue an enhanced screening requirement. This regulation will give the United States access to a whole subset of information on air passengers who are not even entering the United States.

This information can be shared with at least 16 United States agencies and foreign governments and the government of a foreign country, in this case the United States, has a de facto right to decide who gets to travel to and from Canada since the vast majority of Canadian flights to and from Europe, the Caribbean and South America overfly American airspace. That is not true for all overseas flights, obviously, but for the majority it is.

We have a serious concern about the bill, so much so that we are voting against it. I am surprised to hear similar concerns to ours being raised by members of the Liberal Party, including the previous speaker. Again and again the Liberals raise the same issues and say that they are concerned about them and yet they seem to be quite happy to support this legislation. I do not understand that.

There are a lot of concerns. People have mentioned the success in getting the exemption on the issue of overflight when airlines fly from one Canadian city to another. If an airline is flying from Vancouver to Toronto and is overflying the U.S., there is an exemption. I wonder why the Americans were so happy to grant that exemption in this arrangement. I suspect it has something to do with the perimeter security agreement. I suspect that Canada in the perimeter security agreement has already given up the right to information on who is flying on any plane in Canada. Even the information on someone flying from Toronto to Ottawa may already be available under the perimeter security agreement. Therefore, it may be that this exemption is merely just a sop to public opinion.

The reality of this legislation is that we are now entering into a world of mystery. I am not normally into conspiracy theories but we are entering into a world of mystery that the homeland security no-fly list, for example, has been called Kafkaesque in reference to a very famous author who wrote about a mystery world where one does not know what is going on, one does not know why one is being charged with something, one does not know why one is being held, one does not know why one is being treated in a certain way by authorities. That is the essence of the Kafkaesque world.

We are getting there with this kind of agreement because, if this legislation passes, information on us will be available to the American authorities, some 16 agencies and whatever government they want to give them to. They can make decisions on our future or our situation based on whatever they think of the information that happens to be there and we may have consequences.

I do not really have time to go into the story, but I was in Russia one time, and maybe one of my colleagues will ask me to tell a bit more, but one never knows what happens to this information. One never knows whether there are consequences or not. One never knows whether one is the subject of some kind of oppression because of information that has been made available. That is the essence, the difficulty and the problem I have with this legislation.

I believe my time is nearing an end and in my 10 minutes I would be happy to respond to any questions or comments that my colleagues on both sides of the House may have.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, March 1st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, could the member comment on the kind of data that would be required? Would this be useless data or would this be data that could be used by any one of the 16 American agencies that might have access to the information?