44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 7, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to Bill C-27 in the House today, a bill that deals with issues related to privacy, as well as the way that the government interacts with large corporations to protect, or not, the privacy of Canadians.
I want to say at the outset that I am deeply concerned by the fact that the government has clearly been captured by certain corporate interests. It is important to distinguish in this discussion between corporate interests and the idea of a free market. As Conservatives, we believe very much in the importance and value of a free market and a competitive market, a market that is legitimately a challenging and competitive place for businesses that have to compete with each other to have the best products, where some businesses come in to challenge and steal market share away from other businesses and so forth, where there are not gatekeepers preventing new entrants coming into business. We celebrate free markets and the competitive aspect of free markets rather than a situation in which a small group of large corporations is able to dominate and exercise undue and inappropriate power.
In this House, different parties have different dispositions when it comes to corporations. We have the NDP that generally takes kind of an anti-business approach in general, we have my party that champions the free competitive market and we have a government that is, sadly, captured by specific corporate interests, often at the expense of the free market, as well as at the expense of individual well-being. Paradoxically, the NDP, while it criticizes the government for that, is fundamentally complicit with the government in, on the one hand, criticizing its agenda as it relates to defending corporate interests, but, on the other hand, supporting the government and providing it with the supply it needs to continue in its misguided approach.
What we see in terms of the government's relationship with large corporate interests at the expense of the free market and individual well-being is clear across a broad range of cases. We could talk, for instance, about the government's fondness for specific companies in terms of outsourcing and procurement, how it has repeatedly gone back to McKinsey to do work that in fact could have and should have been done within the public service, despite McKinsey's track record in so many different areas. We can talk about the fact that while the public service has grown, outsourcing under the government has expanded dramatically. We can talk about how it has pushed companies to implement forms of political discrimination, such as freezing people's bank accounts. We can talk about a number of the violations of individual privacy and liberty that happen through the government's close relationship with corporations.
I will say, in general, there is this emerging concept of woke capitalism or stakeholder capitalism that I think we need to be thoughtfully critical of, this idea that large corporations should be making definitive determinations and forcing those implementations on the country using their power and that governments can push corporations to push woke ideas or particular views of the common good that arise not through free democratic deliberation, but that come about because of pressure from corporate interests. We see the government's fondness for this kind of woke corporatism approach, where it tries to pressure companies to align with and push its views on various issues.
Again, Conservatives are very supportive of competitive marketplaces where businesses are doing business, not assuming a preferential position in social values debates, where businesses have to compete to survive, where new businesses are able to compete with old businesses and where we support the development of new small businesses so that we do not have a concentration of corporate power, but, rather, a well-functioning, effective market economy. That is the vision that Conservatives are defending.
Let me talk specifically about the issue of privacy and how we see the working out of the government's kind of approach to and relationship with big corporations in terms of their approach to privacy.
I am very pleased the Conservative Party uses and has a member-driven policy document. On issues like this, if one would like to know where Conservatives stand, it is not just a matter of Conservative caucus discussion but it is also a matter of drawing from the work that hundreds of thousands of Conservative Party members do, deliberating at the riding level, having discussions, proposing ideas and bringing those to a convention that then leads to a standing policy document that helps to define and frame the values that Conservatives stand for. I know our Conservative Party is deeply committed to the idea of grassroots democracy and the role our members play in all aspects of decision-making.
That is very important, and in this particular context, we see that playing out in the area of the policy declaration. Our policy declaration recognizes the fundamental right people have to privacy. As a Conservative caucus, we are supportive in advancing and bringing to the House that view about fundamental rights, a fundamental right to data privacy that has come to us through the involvement of our members but that also reflects the widely held perspectives of Canadians beyond our membership, a fundamental right around the protection of data.
This bill, Bill C-27, could have mirrored the language from the Conservative Party policy declaration. It does not. It does not recognize the fundamental nature of rights around data privacy. Rather, it talks about kind of striking a balance between people wanting to have their privacy protected but also the fact there are certain corporate interests. There are interests of corporations the government is close to that might be negatively affected if we recognize the fundamental right to privacy of Canadians, so it effectively seeks to say there should be some balance between the idea of protecting people's rights and the fact there may be certain large corporations whose interests would be negatively affected by recognizing the privacy rights of Canadians.
In particular, although the bill speaks about a balance at a general level, it is so, to borrow a word from the member opposite, “flexible” that it creates space one could effectively drive a truck through, with so many different exceptions and exemptions that it is not really effectively protecting the privacy rights of Canadians.
A member opposite, in a speech just given, said that this is a flexible framework, that the bill is flexible. Well, flexibility is not always a virtue. In particular, it is flexible for who? Who is doing the flexing? Who is the one who is able to bend the bill back and forth to their own will and interests? I would suggest the flexing is not being done by the individual who is supposed to own their own data, the flexing is being done by these corporate interests the government is close to.
Even if one believes this should be a balanced approach, it is not a balanced approach. It is a highly “flexible” approach in which the bending and twisting is done by the particular interests the government has been and always I suspect will be close to until we are able to have a new government in this country that respects fundamental rights, respects privacy and believes in a free competitive market in which businesses compete instead of where particular corporate friends of the government are protected.
I want to draw the attention of members to specific sections in here that identify broad exceptions in the legislation. Subclause 18(3) would allow the organization or business to use a person's information if they have a legitimate reason for doing so. That is pretty flexible. If one wants flexible, we are going to say this data cannot be used in a certain way unless there is a reason to do so. I would submit most people who do things think they have a legitimate reason for them. Others might not think they have a legitimate reason, but to say people's data can be used as an exception if there is a legitimate reason, there likely could be no broader conceivable exception than that one.
However, there are more exceptions even, if that one were not enough. The legislation, for instance, in subclause 15(5), refers to “implied consent”, so apparently in the case of privacy legislation, consent is not so sacrosanct, because companies can interpret an implied consent in this context.
There are clear problems with this legislation in terms of the particulars, but we can understand broader than the particulars the motivation or the value set that is behind this bill, which is that the government is once again trying to defend corporate interests instead of defending privacy and a genuinely competitive free market.
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Madam Speaker, it is quite a thing to be accused of ranting by the member for Winnipeg North. I am so sorry to have disappointed him with my speech. I recall in an earlier exchange he referred to me as a “mischievous little guy”. I framed that and put it on my wall. That is truly having a ride. The goal I set out from the beginning was to be thus recognized by the member.
He asks what changes to the bill I would like. I suggest he support changes that reflect what Conservative members, in their wisdom, have put forward through our policy declaration, which we, as a caucus, are strongly supporting. This is the idea that there is a right to digital privacy that comes before the corporate friends of that member and the government.
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Madam Speaker, some members will recall that way back in 2015, eight long years ago, in the lead-up to that election, the Liberal platform spoke about how the Liberals would end omnibus bills. That went the way of the dodo bird, as did many of their other election commitments.
It was such a sunny time, in the rhetoric of the Liberal caucus, and we see the government's management of its legislative calendar. It puts forward bills, then it prorogues Parliament; it puts forward bills again and calls an early election. Now it is putting forward bills again.
In contrast, my constituents are certainly hoping for an opportunity to weigh in on the government at some point soon, but I think the member's point is quite correct. We have seen immense hypocrisy from the government around omnibus bills, and I wonder if we are getting to a point where it will just try to put all aspects of its legislative agenda together at once. I think that is probably the direction some of the members want to go.
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Madam Speaker, my short answer would be that, no, we should not trust the government.
My slightly longer answer would be that over the last few years, we have seen various actions through COVID and various other actions contemplated by the government. In all of these actions, there is a great deal of concern about people's privacy. Because of the way the government has acted in the past, there is concern and distrust any time the government says not to worry, that it is going to protect our information and that it will not use systems in such a way. The current government has undermined trust in government and institutions because it has not been worthy of that trust.
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