Matthew Kellway

[Digital Privacy Act, October 20th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to explain what I can about these matters. I am not a lawyer, but I did take the time to read through that decision and get a grasp for the Supreme Court's view of the importance of the anonymity of subscriber information, the importance of protecting subscriber information, and the importance of understanding that Canadians have a reasonable expectation that that subscriber information is going to remain private. If it is to be given away, it should be given away lawfully and under warrant for very particular reasons that would be approved by the courts, and that is not the case.

It is interesting that in the Spencer decision, in spite of the court's findings about the privacy information and all the rest of it, it is not the case that such protection of privacy obviously inhibits police for doing their job in protecting the safety and security of all Canadians.

[Digital Privacy Act, October 20th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that question. She has done a wonderful job as our critic on digital issues.

With respect to the first part of the question, indeed, constituents have talked to me about privacy concerns. When I read through the results of the survey during my speech, those numbers seem to reflect the kinds of responses I hear from my constituents about their concerns for the privacy of their information.

It is understandable because people understand and recognize what the Supreme Court said, that subscriber information is not just about a name and address. It takes one into all sorts of information. So that if that information is available to private companies, then those private companies are able to delve very deeply into the personal habits, conducts, and information of Canadians. I certainly am concerned about the constitutionality.

My read of the Spencer decision suggests that this bill would fail that test and that is one of the reasons that I support the bill going to committee before second reading in this House.

[Digital Privacy Act, October 20th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise in the House today to speak to Bill S-4, An Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act. As members know, today's debate turns not precisely on Bill S-4 but on a motion to refer the bill to committee before second reading.

The concerns that I will raise with respect to the bill itself, which go as far as to challenge the constitutionality of the bill, would likely be fatal to the bill at second reading, but we need not concern ourselves with that today. We need not arrive at a conclusion about how fatal these flaws are or how injurious they are to the bill.

The motion before us today would allow us to visit the scope and principle of the bill at committee and make, as required, amendments to those very principles and scope of the bill.

Today, I would argue that this motion warrants support, so that we have the flexibility to properly study, examine and propose amendments to the bill at committee before the principle and scope are set.

Let me set out a few reasons why this is particularly important in these circumstances and relating to this particular legislation.

First, let me address the issue of public opinion that sets the context in which this bill and more broadly the issue of privacy concerns exist.

According to a survey of Canadians on issues related to privacy protection conducted last year, 70% of Canadians feel less protected than they did 10 years ago; only 13% of Canadians believe that companies take their privacy seriously; 97% of Canadians say they would like organizations to let them know when breaches of personal information actually occur; 80% of Canadians say they would like the stiffest possible penalties to protect their personal information; and 91% of Canadian respondents were very or extremely concerned about the protection of privacy.

The current government cannot absolve itself from contributing to this level of public concern about privacy issues. It is not just a matter of legislative lethargy; that is, it is not just about the fact that we are well past the five year mark for the conduct of a mandatory review of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, an act that is by now well behind international standards and has failed to keep up with technological advancements in this digital age.

Part of the issue here is that the current government has itself repeatedly demonstrated insufficient care for the personal privacy of Canadians through its own conduct. I would point to the fact that in one year alone, under the current Prime Minister's watch, government agencies secretly made more than 1.2 million requests to telecommunications companies for personal information, without warrant or proper oversight.

It is a government with a seemingly insatiable appetite and perhaps an addiction to Canadians' personal information. It is a government that needs to be constrained by effective legislation that protects the privacy and personal information of Canadians. It is a government that has no credibility on this subject matter.

This is evident in the legislation that the Conservatives have defeated in this House. In 2012, our NDP digital issues critic, my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville, put forward Bill C-475, a bill to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It would have applied similar online data protection standards that exist in Quebec's personal information protection act. For example, Bill C-475 would have given the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada the power to issue orders following an investigation. The Conservatives defeated that bill at second reading. They also defeated our NDP opposition day motion on May 5 last year. That motion simply called on the government to close loopholes in existing legislation that currently allowed the sharing of personal information without warrant.

The current government's disregard for private and personal information is also evident by the legislation that it has brought forward.

Bill C-13, the government's cyberbullying law, includes lawful access provisions that would expand warrantless disclosure of information to law enforcement by giving immunity from any liability for companies that hold the information of Canadians to disclose it without a warrant. This makes it more likely that companies would hand over information without a warrant as there are no risks that they would face criminal or civil penalties for such conduct.

There is a thread here that runs through the government's own efforts to access the personal and private information of Canadians through to their conduct and voting record in this place. It goes against the interests and concerns of Canadians and denies the wishes of Canadians for greater protection of their personal and private information.

In other words, the issue before us goes to the principles underlying this bill. They need to be examined and amended at committee. For example, while Bill S-4 would make it mandatory to declare the loss or breach of personal information for the organizations in the private sector and penalize organizations that do not fulfill this obligation, the proposed criteria for mandatory disclosure remains subjective. It would allow the organizations themselves to assess whether “it is reasonable in the circumstances to believe that the breach creates a real risk of significant harm to an individual”.

More and most problematically still, Bill S-4 would add exceptions under which personal information may be collected, used or disclosed without an individual's consent. The bill would make it easier for organizations to share personal information with each other without the consent of individuals if the organizations are engaged in a process leading to a “prospective” business transaction. In other words, under certain circumstances, the bill allows personal information of one organization's clients to be shared with another organization without the consent or knowledge of those individuals.

Here we run into some significant problems with this bill. The amendments proposed contradict the very foundation of the act they seek to amend and serve to defeat what the Supreme Court called in R. v. Spencer the act's “general prohibition on the disclosure of personal information without consent”. As the Supreme Court said in that recent decision, “PIPEDA is a statute whose purpose is to increase the protection of personal information”.

The Supreme Court, in R. v. Spencer, got to the heart of the issue here, understanding what the government has failed to understand about the issue of informational privacy in the digital age. It is worth quoting at length here. It stated:

Informational privacy is often equated with secrecy or confidentiality, and also includes the related but wider notion of control over, access to and use of information. However, particularly important in the context of Internet usage is the understanding of privacy as anonymity. The identity of a person linked to their use of the Internet must be recognized as giving rise to a privacy interest beyond that inherent in the person’s name, address and telephone number found in the subscriber information. Subscriber information, by tending to link particular kinds of information to identifiable individuals may implicate privacy interests relating to an individual’s identity as the source, possessor or user of that information. Some degree of anonymity is a feature of much Internet activity and depending on the totality of the circumstances, anonymity may be the foundation of a privacy interest that engages constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

So, from subscriber information, the Supreme Court has connected that information through to search and seizure.

We have at least before us a major concern with the principles of this act, but seemingly too a bill that is simply unconstitutional. Leaving aside for the moment this latter issue, let me suggest by way of conclusion that if there is something in Bill S-4 that is salvageable, it can only be so if this bill moves to committee before this House sets in concrete the principles and scope of this bill, and limits the kinds of amendments that can arise out of committee post second reading.

[Digital Privacy Act, October 20th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member justify the bill on the grounds that it would prevent fraud, but let me quote the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications:

Allowing such disclosures to prevent potential fraud may open the door to widespread disclosures and routine sharing of personal information among organizations on the grounds that this information might be useful to prevent future fraud.

That seems to blow a hole in the rationale that the member provided to us for the bill. I am wondering if he could respond to that.

[Infrastructure, October 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the negligence of successive Liberal and Conservative governments has left Toronto with a congestion crisis, according to the Toronto's Vital Signs report. In a city growing by leaps and bounds, less than a kilometre of rapid transit has been built per year over the last two decades. The report confirms what Toronto already knows: congestion is crippling our economy and undermining our quality of life.

When will the Conservatives recognize the economic, social, and environmental sense of investing in public transit?

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Quite simply, Mr. Speaker, the language of the bill does not require it to happen.

I appreciate the member's point that this is a qualitatively different park than the remote parks under the stewardship of Parks Canada. However, my point is, given, as per the UN's department of economic and social affairs, that all population growth on this planet will be urban for the next four decades, we need to find a way to make sense of applying the principle and priority of ecological integrity to our cities, how we build them and grow them. Having Canada's first national urban park is a great way to start down that road.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, have presented petitions with respect to the Don River, which borders against my riding in Toronto, Beaches—East York.

As I commented in my speech, many people over many long years have put in a lot of effort to ensure that the Don River has been revitalized and that it comes closer to the principle of ecological integrity, as it flows through the city.

This is the great opportunity we have with the Rouge park, that under the protection of an appropriately worded bill, that river, too, can be protected and live up to the principles and priority that exists under the National Parks Act of ecological integrity.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the member's assurances, I take cold comfort in that.

One of the issues is that the management of the provincial parks is happening at a lower standard than the principles and priorities set out in this federal legislation. This bill explicitly stands in contradiction of the priorities as set out in the prevailing legislation for national parks.

What we are seeking and asking is that the bill be amended in order to retain the priority of ecological integrity for the management of the Rouge national urban park.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to stand in the House today to participate in the debate on Bill C-40, an act respecting the Rouge national urban park.

While I stand in support of this bill at this stage of the legislative process, my remarks today are by no means free of criticism of the bill. In fact, this speech, as with all the speeches from the NDP caucus, is intended to send a clear message that significant amendments need to be made to the bill in order to garner support through to the end of the legislative process.

Of course, the criticism herein is intended to be constructive. It is a plea to the government to raise its sights, its ambitions, and to do three things: realize the great potential of this project; realize the dreams of a whole lot of hard-working citizens who always had before them a clear sense of the great potential of this project; and set a precedent for a new kind of Canadian park, a national urban park.

There is an existing Rouge Park. At 47 square kilometres, it is one of North America's largest and sits amidst about 20% of Canada's total population.

The park is rich in its diversity of nature and culture. It includes a rare Carolinian forest, numerous species at risk, internationally significant geological outcroppings from the interglacial age, and evidence of human history dating back 10,000 years, including some of Canada's oldest known aboriginal historic sites and villages.

For many years, these resources have been under the stewardship of the Rouge Park Alliance, an alliance of many groups, including dedicated citizen groups, but there is now before us the opportunity to move this park and add other resources to it under the stewardship of Parks Canada and its commitment to ecological integrity.

The proposed Rouge national urban park should provide protection and restoration of forests and wetland areas to soften the impacts of urban growth, improve the quality of water entering Lake Ontario, reduce the risks of climate change-related flooding, erosion, and property damage, and improve habitat for rare and endangered species. This is important.

We have built our cities and continue to build our cities with insufficient care and respect for the ecological integrity of the nature that runs through them and borders them, and more than that, with insufficient care and attention to the application of the notion of ecological integrity to how we build and grow cities themselves. There is a certain bitter irony in this.

As pointed out in a report by Ontario Nature and the Suzuki Foundation, entitled “Biodiversity in Ontario's Greenbelt”:

Humans chose to settle in this part of Ontario in large part because of the rich diversity and fertility of the land. Millions now make their home in this region, as do a large number of our most enchanting species at risk....

Evidence of that once beautiful natural landscape remains in Toronto. A recent Toronto Star article put it this way:

The city of Toronto was built on the backs of its rivers. Nine rivers and creeks flow through its rich valleys and pour into Lake Ontario, making rivers as essential a part of Toronto's landscape as the CN Tower or Queen's Park.

Said Robert Fulford in his book Accidental City, “The ravines are to Toronto what canals are to Venice and hills are to San Francisco”.

Some of those rivers were lost but have since been found. Groups such as the Toronto Green Community and the Toronto Field Naturalists actually provide Lost River Walks in the city. Some rivers, such as the Humber, the Don, and the Rouge, their various branches and tributaries, remain essential to what Toronto is and more important, remain essential to visions of what Toronto could actually be if we took care to restore and preserve their ecological integrity.

There are innumerable groups on the ground in our urban communities animated by a vision of preserving and restoring the natural and cultural heritage of these rivers, preserving and restoring that which brought people to settle there and live off that part of the land in the first place.

In my riding, for example, the Taylor Massey project was developed by a group of volunteers a decade ago for the purpose of increasing community awareness of this 16 kilometre watercourse and for the purpose of restoring the natural heritage of the creek's valley lands and to improve the water quality and aquatic habitats of this urban creek.

The Taylor Massey creek flows into the Don River. By 1969, the Don River was reportedly not much more than a city sewer. That prompted some to call it dead. Therefore, on November 16 of that year, 200 mourners paraded from the University of Toronto campus down to the banks of the Don River in a mock funeral procession complete with hearse.

If it was indeed dead, then it has risen from the dead, thanks to the efforts of countless citizens, but not yet fully recovered because much more effort is required. I am thankful for those people who commit their free time and energy to its revitalization and to realize, for their own projects, for their own communities, for the benefit of all of us, what we have now the opportunity to do for the Rouge River.

What we have in this legislation is a great opportunity. With respect to the Rouge, so many people have brought us to this point where this land can be brought under the stewardship of Parks Canada. As stated on its website:

Parks Canada's objective is to allow people to enjoy national parks as special places without damaging their integrity. In other words, ecological integrity is our endpoint for park management...

However, rather than bringing to the urban park the same commitment, indeed legislatively set out priority, to ecological integrity that is applied to its other parks, the legislation would shed that commitment and shake loose that priority. Bill C-40, in fact, would require only that the minister “take into consideration the protection of its natural ecosystems and cultural landscapes and the maintenance of its native wildlife and of the health of those ecosystems”. This flies in the face of Parks Canada's own governing legislation and policies that specify the maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity through the protection of natural resources and natural processes and the fact that this should be the first priority of the minister when considering all aspects of the management of its parks.

What is more, this language affords, according to a recent legal review by Ecojustice, significantly less protection than Ontario's Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act. In failing to do so, it would appear to be an obvious breach of the memorandum of agreement between Parks Canada and the Ontario government, which requires that the policies that govern the Rouge national urban park meet or exceed provincial policies.

This is how we end up in this position, with the Ontario government withholding the transfer of lands to Parks Canada until the federal government commits in effect, and really quite perversely, to live up to its own legislative priorities and commitments.

The bill needs to change so it is consistent with the Canada National Parks Act and lives up to commitments made to the Government of Ontario so we can get on with the great opportunity of creating a first and great national urban park along the Rouge River watershed.

Let me conclude by saying, with respect to the many people who are putting their minds and energy to this issue, that we have not really arrived at a clear understanding of what the ecological integrity of the urban actually looks like. However, I approach that issue with the same optimism and the same ambition as I do this legislation. The urban and the concept of ecological integrity ought not to stand in contradistinction. Indeed, in light of the incredible rate of urbanization globally, we have to make meaningful the notion of “urban ecological integrity”. A first national urban park is the first good step along that path.

[Petitions, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to present a petition today with respect to the federal lands in Durham region.

The signatories to this petition point out that these lands encompass class one farmland and vital watersheds of the Oak Ridges Moraine.

The petitioners call upon the House to rescind all plans for an airport and non-agricultural uses on these federal lands in Durham region and to act instead to preserve the watersheds and the agricultural land of this irreplaceable natural resource for the long-term benefits of all Canadians.