Libby Davies

[Petitions, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition is from residents of the Edmonton area who are calling upon Parliament to enter into negotiations with the Chinese community on redress and urging it to deal with the unjust situation that took place at the turn of the century regarding the head tax.

[Petitions, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from concerned citizens who want to draw the attention of the House to the need to protect our children from child pornography and to take all necessary steps to do that.

[Petitions, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present three petitions.

The first petition is from constituents who are concerned about adopting open and fair rules, and procedures for immigration selection that do not reasonably deny access for potential immigrants based on education, background, language, religion, sexual orientation or place of origin.

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has raised a very good graphic example of what already happens and how we have to be vigilant about the protection of data. That is under an existing situation. We have even had situations in the House where data has been shared between departments. That has been a huge issue at HRDC.

Again it really elevates and raises the concern of what would happen if we had a national card and some sort of centrally controlled databank and how that would impact on the privacy of people.

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, coming back to the comments of the privacy commissioner, he has said very clearly that the burden of proof has to be on the government or agency which wants to intrude upon privacy. They have to clearly establish that it is for a particular purpose.

The member has raised the gun registry. Whenever a new card or a new system of registration is created, it must always be on the basis of some established need. The onus in terms of public policy is on all of us to demonstrate that exists.

The idea of a national identity card as a super card or a mega-card goes way beyond anything we have ever seen in terms of the need for individual cards or registration. We can argue on the gun registry, but we should be clear that the national identity card will go way beyond that in terms of whatever specific need has been demonstrated.

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments. There has been some debate already about the benefits. One benefit is that it will help deal with theft. People lose their credit cards and other cards. If there are security measures around this card, it will somehow deal with that.

However the irony is when we place so much information in one card, from the point of view of someone who wants to steal that information, it becomes an even more valuable item to access. Even from a security point of view in terms of theft, which is supposedly one of the benefits, there are some very serious questions.

Just because these cards exist elsewhere should in no way compel us to embark on a similar course of action. We have a tradition in this country of respecting privacy and individual rights. We have documents and cards for individual purposes. I would ask the question back to the member. What is wrong with that system? Is that not adequate to deal with the purposes of travel, driving or other kinds of identification?

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the introduction of a national identity card offends the principle of privacy and other civil rights of Canadians and this House therefore opposes its introduction.

Mr. Speaker,we hope the debate today will be an opportunity for all members of the House to state their opinions, positions and concerns about the proposal for a national identity card.

I would like to begin my remarks by quoting from the federal privacy commissioner George Radwanski. He said:

The right to anonymous is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

He went on to say in a speech that he gave at Carleton University in Ottawa last March, that:

We need to make loss of privacy the exception, not the new way of doing business.

He went further and said that:

The burden of proof must always be on those who say that a new intrusion on privacy is necessary to meet some important social need.

He went on further to articulate and lay out some of the tests that would be involved in whether a need had been established.

I point out, Mr. Speaker, that I am sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg—Transcona.

On that basis, the burden of proof is on the government to show why a national identity card should be introduced.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration came to the standing committee last week. I was there when he spoke. Although he said we needed to have an open debate and he and the government welcomed ideas from the committee and Canadians, I really felt the minister seemed quite intrigued with and sold on the idea that we needed a national identity card. He presented it on the basis that there were issues around national security and that there was a need to have information contained in a card that could be clearly identified, and so on.

However, he also raised another question which I found quite disturbing. At the committee meeting, he said:

--any debate about identity cards should not centre exclusively on issues of national security. Far more important are the issues of citizenship and entitlement to services.

He then went on to say:

--it will be important to acknowledge that we have before us more than an opportunity to debate an identity card. We are also seeking to clarify what it means to be a citizen, a Canadian... Establishing one's identity goes to the very essence of these questions.

This is disturbing because it raises the spectre that somehow the state has the power to not only create a national identity card, maybe for the purposes of some sort of security, but also now because it revolves around the question of establishing what is a Canadian identity, what is one's own self identity. It seems to me that the state has no business in that determination. Who we are as Canadians is something that we individually have the right to determine. That is not a power that can be or should be conferred on the state.

In looking at the question of whether there is a need for a national identity card, already quite a debate has unfolded. Some of the very dangerous situations that could come from a national identity card have already been articulated and it really moves us into a very slippery slope.

There is no question that such a card can be seen as a tremendous invasion of privacy, as set forward by the privacy commissioner. A widely used identity card would in effect allow the state and various enforcement agencies like the police to monitor the movements of citizens.

I am sure the minister will tell us today that the card will only be used for specific purposes, that it will be well guarded and our privacy will be well guarded, but this is the thin edge of the wedge. This is the beginning of a whole new kind of society where personal information about each of us will be encoded on a card, stored somewhere and used in a variety of ways.

That is a fundamental concern based on principle. Beyond that, there are other concerns. One concern is, if the national identity card did exist, it would be opened to abuse. Some say that they have the most honourable of reasons for having the cards, but once the system is in place it is open to abuse by police and various other authorities. Also, it can be used to harass, for example, minority groups by demanding that the identity cards be shown, if they are stopped.

We have other identity cards such as a drivers licence or a passport, and they are used for specific purposes. However to have everything wrapped up in one card and if someone fails to produce that card, it sets the stage for more intrusive searches and for racial profiling, which we have already seen post-September 11.

The New Democratic Party has been very vigilant in calling the government to account for allowing practices of racial profiling to take place at the border, for example. We believe the introduction of a national identity card will take us further into that kind of environment where minorities become subject to harassment and abuse by authorities.

This card will allow for very controlled information. The individual, who is the subject of that card, will have no knowledge as to whom may share that information. I would like to quote from a constitutional lawyer, Mr. Morris Manning, who appeared before the immigration committee on February 10. He said:

If it goes to the RCMP it will surely go to the FBI. If it goes to the FBI it will surely go to Interpol and if it goes to Interpol it will be disseminated around the world.

He issued that as a warning as to what kind of direction we would be taking as a Canadian society if we embarked on this venture of a national identity card.

We have been told that the United States will become a lot stricter in its rules and requirements for allowing people to cross the border. A national identity card may be one way to respond to this. However it is ironic, while we are considering the use of this card, that within the United States there is no such discussion about a card. We have to wonder who is calling the shots here. Are we as a society willing to give up our privacy? Are we willing to abandon civil rights on the basis that somehow our Canadian passport is not a legitimate document to travel with across the border?

The NDP has very serious concerns about the card. We encourage members of the House to think about where this proposal will take us. We hope that members of the House will look at the substantial reasons around principle and substance that should make us incredibly cautious about moving in this direction. We should send a message to the minister who, according to various news reports, does not necessarily have the support of cabinet. In fact there may be voices on the other side that are very concerned about this.

We hope the debate today will allow an airing of opinions and positions and will send a message to the government that this is not the way that we should go. We should protect the privacy and the rights of Canadians. We should not allow this identity card to become the thin edge of the wedge. We should not go down a slippery slope to a different kind of society I think that none of us want to see in Canada.

[Privilege, February 12th, 2003]

Mr.Speaker, it is a rare occurrence when a member of the government stands on a question of privilege to challenge what a cabinet minister has done. Therefore, I believe it is something that warrants our investigation.

Based on what the minister said yesterday, that the program was running at minimum cost and “we are able to fulfil our duty”, I presume he was speaking about fulfilling his duty to the program. However we have a procedural question being raised here today, a question of privilege, as to whether or not the minister is fulfilling his duty to the House in terms of the vote that took place December 5.

The government needs to disclose where those funds are coming from. If it is running this program at minimum cost, have other moneys been moved in, contrary to the vote that took place on December 5? The House made a very strong decision that $72 million would not be approved and the government agreed to that. There is a question here as to how this program is now running at minimum cost, and whether or not other funds have been brought forward to continue the program.

It is important that there be a full disclosure because, surrounding the issue of the gun registry, there is also the matter of tabling of reports a couple of weeks ago and the fact that not all reports were tabled.

This is something of great concern to all of us in terms of abiding by the principles and the rules of the House to ensure that there is full disclosure and that when we vote on something we are voting on the basis that we understand what has been approved and there is not then a backdoor route to continuing something that has not been approved by the House.

[Government Spending, February 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, today we have another example of the Liberals listening to the Alliance instead of listening to Canadians.

The so-called balanced approach of half the surplus going to social programs is more like a paltry 10% to social programs and everything else to debt reduction and tax cuts for the wealthy. So much for Liberal values.

The Liberals have missed their budget projections by $80 billion, 130 times more than Enron over-reporting its revenues.

Why is the government hoarding its revenues instead of housing Canadians who desperately need it? That is the priority. Where is the investment in the social sector?

[Privilege, February 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the comments and allegations made by the hon. member. I have spoken to the member for Winnipeg Centre.

First, if we want to go back and retrace this situation and how information is now in the public realm and is being commented on in terms of the committee's report, we should go back to at least January 31 when the National Post ran a story in which it was made clear that it had obtained a 34 page draft report.

I want to be very clear that the member for Winnipeg Centre did not breach any confidentiality. He did not release a draft report or any other report from the committee. This story became part of the public realm on January 31. There was extensive coverage of it in terms of what the committee was considering.

I want to be very clear that the member did not release a draft report to the National Post . The National Post obtained it by whatever means, but certainly not from the member. Maybe that needs to be followed up. In terms of that information then being in the public realm, certainly there were stories again today

I find it curious that the allegation is that the member has released a report. The report is not yet concluded. Clearly the member was expressing his own opinions about how the report was moving forward, his own concerns about the whole situation, but he in no way released a report. The report is not yet concluded.

I do want to say that the member for Winnipeg Centre had sent out a media advisory for a briefing on his dissenting report for today. That was cancelled when it was clear that the committee report was not yet concluded and in fact his own report is not concluded. On that point he clearly did acknowledge that he should not have done that and he cancelled the briefing.

Again I do not believe that the information the member has brought forward in any way shows that the particular member has breached confidentiality or the ethics of the House. Clearly as of 10 days ago the information was available in the National Post . It was in the public realm. The member for Winnipeg Centre then commented on his own speculation about where the report was going and his own opinions about that, but in no way has he released the report from the committee. In fact it is still under consideration in that committee today.

I do not believe that a case exists against the member and I would urge the Speaker to take that into account.