TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2011
Second Reading of Bills
Bill 3 — Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2011
M. Sather: I rise today to join the debate on Bill 3, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2011. I think we have to look a bit here at what I would describe as first principles. One needs to look at what a government does more than at what the government says they’re doing. I think that’s probably the case with scrutiny that is deserved on any government, but it’s really apparent with this government. After watching this government in operation for ten years, I’m completely convinced that often what they say they’re doing is at complete odds with what they are in fact doing.
The Premier says that she is committed to open government and open data. I guess I’ll have a chance later on to talk about open data, whatever that may be. But what evidence do we have about this government being an open government that should give residents of British Columbia confidence that this bill is actually designed to make government more open?
Well, one of the tenets of democracy is open elections, and yet what is part of an open election? An open election is where you put yourself out there before the public, willing to discuss the issues of the day. That’s what we’ve always done, traditionally, in elections in British Columbia, but that’s not where this government has gone, not under Gordon Campbell and not under the current Premier.
When she had the opportunity, during the by-election last spring, to put herself out in the public in an open and transparent manner, to discuss the important issues around her election or the election of her opponent, she said no. She said: “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to submit myself to the scrutiny of the great unwashed. I’m, you know, above that.”
It’s this same Premier that we’re supposed to trust, that the public of British Columbia is supposed to trust, that’s bringing forth a bill that’s going to lead to more openness in government. We have to take it, unfortunately, with a great grain of salt.
This culture of lack of openness…. I think Paul Fraser talked about that, about there being a lack of a culture of privacy in the government. It’s not just a random phrase from an uneducated person. It’s a person who has, I would submit, watched this government in action very carefully and said that there isn’t a culture there of protecting privacy — not to the degree, certainly, that we should have in a free and democratic society.
When I ran in 2005, the first time, my opponent refused to join some of the debates, and this has happened in many constituencies throughout the province where the Liberals have asked the public to support them. Yet they won’t follow that very basic tenet of open government of putting yourself out there in person before the public who, Lord knows, have little opportunity otherwise to engage with this government.
Whenever Gordon Campbell came to Maple Ridge or Pitt Meadows, nobody knew about it except Liberal insiders, and when this Premier came to Maple Ridge recently and went to the shindig at Gordy Robson’s place, nobody else knew about it either. Sounds awfully familiar to the same pattern that I’ve seen before.
This is not open government. So when that government brings a bill before this House and extolls the virtues of it and wants us to believe and wants us to trust that we’re looking at not only open government but enhancement of open government, you really have to wonder how believable it is.
I’ll talk a little bit later about the nature of the bill itself, insofar as it’s difficult to determine what it’s actually about.
This government, I submit, unfortunately is not on an agenda, is not on a mission of openness. It’s on a mission of secrecy. They’re following a formula, a formula that corporate-first governments are using throughout North America and the developed world.
It’s the formula that people are rising up against and saying: “Wait a minute. This is not in my best interests. You’re not representing me. What you are doing is promulgating an extremely
sophisticated….” I’ll give them this. The spin that they do is good. It’s good. It may be Machiavellian, but it’s pretty darned effective. This is one of the things that they do. If they’re doing something that in fact is secretive, they make a great cry that they’re doing just the opposite. And we’ve seen it in a number of venues.
Of course, Stephen Harper has sharpened it up even more. I mean, reporters are lucky to be even invited to some of his openings. Or you hold an all-candidates meeting where you have to be a member of the party to attend. I hope it isn’t going to become that bad here. I don’t know how much more opportunity…. There’s certainly going to be one more election, and we’ll see how the government fares in terms of being open, in willingness to put themselves before the people.
But I submit that this bill is not about openness and transparency. It’s about issues management. It’s all about issues management. Like I say, the formula that corporate-friendly governments like this one use are privatization, deregulation and contracting out. Those are the standards. Those are the posts that support the way they do business. It’s making it increasingly difficult for the public to get any information about the goings-on of government. Just as my colleague from Columbia River–Revelstoke pointed out, it’s exceedingly difficult.
The privatization agenda that this government follows is a win-win. It’s a win-win for this government. On the one hand, they turn over as much of the business of the people as they can to private interests, and then when the people go and say, “But wait, this is in my public interest; I want to know about this,” they say: “Whoa. Sorry, that’s private information. It’s a private company that’s handling that business. You don’t have the right.”
That’s not openness, Madam Speaker. That’s not transparency. That’s secrecy. That’s keeping the people’s business from them. You know, as much as I can determine what this inscrutable bill actually means, I’m concerned that that’s where we are going with this one as well. We’ve seen so many slogans over the years, a ten-year history of this government of saying one thing and doing another.
“The best fisheries management in the world, bar none” — we all remember that one. Look at what the government actually does. They send a lawyer, acting in a very hostile manner, to the Cohen Commission to do everything they can to keep the release of fish health data from the public. For those that attended, and I attended many of them, you would watch that lawyer aggressively attack anybody that stood up to protect wild salmon. So say one thing; do another.
“Build the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities and special needs.” Well, we’re seeing how that one’s going.
B. Ralston: How’s that going?
M. Sather: It’s a disaster, because again the government says one thing, and they do another. They say that people are wilfully going to homestays that might have come off Craigslist — you know, “free rent,” “mortgage helper,” whatever. Some of them are good, but I mean, it’s a free-for-all.
The member for Abbotsford-Mission has spoken to that. And it’s exactly not what they’re doing. There’s no choice for people. People are thrown out of their homes, the homes they’ve had for many years. But saying one thing and doing another is the stock-in-trade of this government.
I’ll look at some of the contents of the bill. The government wants us to have on-line government identification. It’s one of the things they’re looking at. Madam Speaker, I don’t want that. Quite frankly, I don’t trust it.
Technology today, obviously, is a very useful tool. It can do many wonderful things, but one thing that is, I think, becoming pretty clear, more clear every year, is that this it is not capable of
protecting our privacy. There are more and more breaches of privacy all the time with data that’s held electronically. Will I have the right to say: “No, I don’t want my private information held on line”? I don’t think I will. I can bet I won’t.
The member for Vancouver-Quilchena talked yesterday about the virtues of computerization of personal data, and there are many. I mean, I remember when I worked as a mental health therapist for Fraser Health. It was frustrating.
I was working in Burnaby. We needed information about our clients, which they had given us permission to access in order to serve their mental health needs as well as possible, and a stone’s throw away was the boundary with Vancouver and another health authority who wouldn’t give us that information. Now, that is the kind of barrier that is not helpful to meeting the needs of individuals.
So there are benefits, certainly, of electronic data transfer. There can be, but there are also great pitfalls. The member, the former Minister of Health, talked about…. You know, you go around to offices and see all this data in file folders and how at-risk it was.
It’s true. I mean, there is some risk, particularly and usually if it wasn’t stored properly. But I would submit that that data that got into the wrong hands — and sometimes it did — was more through carelessness, not that that’s forgivable, and that it was somewhat limited in amount. Whereas data that’s stored electronically can be accessed by those that have the means of doing so and in large amounts, in very large amounts of data.
It’s a very risky business that we’re engaged in, and I don’t know what kind of safeguards there really are. I mean, the government says there are going to be safeguards. They haven’t really, I don’t think, fully elucidated just what they are. I’m not convinced at this point.
That’s what the minister said when she introduced: “…one of the special committee recommendations is to allow citizens, by choice, to consent to the collection of personal information in limited circumstances that are set in law.” So is the government going to phone up citizens and ask them if they consent to the transfer of their data? I don’t think so.
There’s going to be, I would predict, some protocol in place that will facilitate the transfer of this data. I bet it will be largely outside of the consent of citizens of British Columbia, but there may
be some sort of deemed consent or something of that nature.
I read that an individual lawyer, actually, who specializes in protection of information and privacy found this bill pretty inscrutable. What does it really mean? How is it going to unfold in reality? The government needs to explain exactly what the mechanisms will be by which citizens will give their consent for the transfer of their personal information.
This bill is a rush to facilitate data transfer but without the attendant concern about the protection of privacy rights of those whose data is being transferred now.
It’s surprising, you know, to find out where your personal information goes and how difficult it can be to retrieve it at times. My wife and I had an incident a little while ago. It was actually the summer of 2010. Our Visa company phoned us up and said: “Oh, your cards have been compromised. You have to have them replaced.” “Oh,” I asked, “how has my card been compromised?” because there was nothing on my bill that suggested that somebody else had been using it.
Well, it could happen in many ways. They were very vague about that. But I’m not told how that happened. Was it that somebody hacked into Visa’s information or my information on Visa? I don’t know. Then we were told: “By the way, you don’t need to do this, but you just might want to phone a couple of these companies in case something should happen in the future, and you would be protected.”
Well, that sounds good. You want to protect yourself if something happens in the future. The companies — one is called Equifax, and one is called TransUnion, I believe it is, both of which get your information. I don’t think Canadians know this. Any time you go and apply for a loan or get any kind of credit, they have a record of everything that you have done. So I said: “Fine, sign me up. I want to be protected.”
Nothing happened, and I didn’t notice anything till the spring of this year. We went to buy a couch at Sears, and they said: “Oh, if you want to get us to deliver it free, you can get a Sears card.
Have you got a Sears card?” No. Okay. Well, I guess so. I don’t really like having a lot much more plastic, but $60 off sounds all right to me. “Sign me up.” They try to sign me up, and: “Oh, there’s some problem here. You have to phone this number.”
So I phoned Visa and said: “What’s going on?” Without going into the specifics of our personal situation…
Interjection.
M. Sather: I need a lawyer maybe.
…I can tell you that there was no reason that such a thing should have happened. However, I was then directed to phone these two companies who told me: “Oh, there’s a fraud alert on your account.”
What it meant.…
An Hon. Member: You’re not even a Liberal.
M. Sather: And I’m not even a Liberal. There’s no excuse for it. I agree with the member.
So there it stands to this day. I tried to get it off. I talked to them, and as far as I know, I guess I’ve got to go and apply for another credit card.
There’s a lot of problems with data transfer and the holding of our personal information. I think we as a society are pretty enthralled with technology, and I guess for many good reasons. But I don’t know. I’m not so much. I guess I’m old school. I’m much more cautious about my personal information. I don’t tweet either, actually. I mean, the only tweets I’m interested in are the ones out in nature. I’m really a bad performer on Facebook too. So there, I confess.
But this is serious stuff that we’re looking at. We have to be sure that the government…. We have to in fact, I think, trust the government. We don’t have anything else to go by. We the opposition can get up here and we can talk about our concerns, but in a democracy, and in the end, it’s the governing party that has the say.
I think the member for Revelstoke made a good point earlier, that it’s setting up the future in terms of freedom of information and protection of privacy and that we have to hope and try to hold the government to account. Apparently, a lot of these transformational things that are going to happen are going to come in through regulation. I always hate that when things come in through regulation, because they don’t get the scrutiny of the House.
So, you know, there are a lot of potentialities that the government has talked about with regard to this information, this legislation, but what it’s going to really look like I don’t know.
Bill 3 changes consent provisions in the act so that the government can now ask citizens to consent to have their information collected, used and disclosed, if the government thinks it will result in improved service delivery.
Another thing that concerns me is that, you know, the government is talking…. Among the other points in favour of the bill, they talk oftentimes about the commercial transactions. It seems to me, with this government, in any legislation they bring in, in any acts they do, there’s always an eye to business opportunities.
I don’t want business opportunities to be first and foremost with my personal information, and I don’t think most British Columbians do either. But it seems to me that that’s the standard by which this government operates — that, you know, there’s all kinds of things in government that have commercial interest, and so let’s facilitate their ability to do that.
In fact, data sales is a big deal these days. I mean, you all get the calls. We all get the calls every day from marketers wanting to interview us about this, wanting to interview us about that. There’s a card for everything. You have a card at Save-On. You have a card at Safeway. It’s all about collecting information about you and your habits, because it has value. They don’t do all this for nothing. They do it because it has value.
The information that’s going to be stored somewhere has value too. It has commercial value. That’s something else that I worry about. Because is it a culture of secrecy, or is it a culture of privacy? And the former acting commissioner expressed concerns that there isn’t yet a culture of privacy with this government, and that’s a concern to me when he says that.
I spoke to the man, as you all have, and he seems like a very open individual, a very forthright individual. We can’t take these things lightly. It seems to me that government wants us…. It’s almost like buying a pig in a poke. We don’t know what this is really all about. And the residents of British Columbia will only find out later, and then they may say: “Well, wait a minute. I didn’t agree to that. I didn’t even know what you were doing.” Some would say that the government doesn’t know what they’re doing generally, but that’s a concern that they have.
A few years ago the company EDS, a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary, has…. I think they got the contract and still have it for all the servers for all government information. That’s a lot of information that they hold and that we entrust to them, and that, of course, is a private company. There’s limited access to what they’re doing with our information. Does information get zapped to the home base sometimes in the United States? Who knows? We’ll never know, I don’t think.
You couldn’t ask and find out through freedom of information. Certainly, you wouldn’t get that, or it would cost you $100,000 or something. Then, of course, if that does happen, everybody knows about the Patriot Act in the United States, whereby the government can access your information, and they don’t have to tell you. We don’t want that in Canada, I don’t think. I think that we need to be more vigilant about our privacy, not less, because there are so many more opportunities now for breaches of privacy than there were before.
The minister says: “Make no mistake. Open government is here to stay.” Well, I want to see the evidence that open government is here at all, in the first place, before I’m willing to accept
that it’s here to stay. Let’s start with first principles, as I say. Let’s see the evidence in actions that this government takes — that they’re open and accountable.
You know, that whole fiasco with CLBC. My experience is that it was obfuscation, not openness, that was the rule of the day — giving all kinds of bizarre reasons for cancelling the program in my community, or threatening to cancel, the Ridge Meadows recycling program, a supported work program for folks with developmental disabilities.
Some very bizarre reasons were given, not about openness at all, which actually kind of smacked of business interests. It really did.
I was told: “You know that program that you have over there in Maple Ridge? Most of those have been gotten rid of long ago.” That’s what the CEO for CLBC told me. I looked at him and thought: “Hmm. Wow.” So a non-profit agency with a stellar track record in the community for 20 years — that’s one of those things that have been gotten rid of, most of them, a long time ago, and you know, this one ought to be going down the same road. That was the pretty clear inference that I was given.
If that non-profit agency serving our community so well were to go, what would it be replaced by? Wastech? Probably. Another business opportunity. They’re always there in what this government does, but it’s often, unfortunately, not in the best interest, not in the public interest.
The minister says that the foundation is really about being able to identify who you are on line in a secure way that is not possible today. I agree. It’s not possible today. It’s not happening today. Oh yes, my wife’s credit card was compromised again a second time. This time the people were out there buying gas on her credit card. Watch out for that. That’s what they do. They buy gas in your local area so that you don’t notice it, because everybody buys gas in their local area, pretty much, if you drive a car.
The act needs to be modernized, said the minister. There’s another buzzword we hear a lot of from this government — modernization. Who doesn’t want to be modern? You know, the Water Act needs to be modernized. Yet, you know…. Gee, certainly the Water Act is very, very old and needs improvement. But modernization? What does it mean to this government?
Well now, we hear talk about trading water rights. Is that what modernization means? What does modernization of privacy rights mean to this government? I really want to know.
So the government wants to move in the future on electronic voting. I really have concerns about that one. I think the way we vote now — you go down, and you cast your ballot — is as secure as you’re going to get. Electronic voting? I’m not so sure, because everybody gets a PIN number, and where do those PIN numbers end up?
There have already been problems with the use of this kind of system. We know that. Yet the government is talking about doing that. Well, I guess it’s the rationale that more young people will vote. Maybe that’s true; maybe it isn’t. But if it’s going to be a system that is less than democratic instead of more democratic, that’s not what I want to see.
I want to see a system that we know is free from any manipulation, as free as possible, and I think the voting system we have now is that way. I trust it. We have lots of backups to it, so I’m not too excited about the future of electronic voting.
Paul Fraser talked a lot about expediency has consistently trumped privacy. Expediency or opportunity, whatever it is. It seems to be the case.
