“The Conservatives have a tendency to always push forward, even if they are hitting a brick wall. They do not often make a strategic retreat to show that they heard what the public had to say. However, that is what happened in the case of Bill C-30. The Conservatives backtracked because Canadians felt that Bill C-30 violated their privacy and gave some people unrestricted tools. Those people may have good intentions, but once again, the devil is in the details,” said NDP MP Françoise Boivin (Gatineau, Que.).
“We do not want to go through all that again with Bill C-13. I will not say that Bill C-30 caused mass hysteria, because that is not true. However, people were extremely concerned, and it made us wonder exactly what the government was trying to achieve. We are asking ourselves the same thing in this case, where people expect a bill on cyber-bullying and the distribution of images,” said Ms. Boivin.
Former Public Safety minister Vic Toews introduced Bill C-30 in February 2012 to modernize Canada’s lawful access rules. The government quickly came under criticism however because in response to opposition that the bill went too far and allowed police and security agencies to spy on Canadians, Mr. Toews said those who were against the bill were in support of child pornography. This also led to the infamous Twitter account,
@vikileaks30, which tweeted about Mr. Toews’ personal life. Liberal staffer Adam Carroll was subsequently found to be responsible for the account, which Conservatives called “sleazy.”
Bill C-30, which died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued, was originally intended to give police and national security agencies the powers they need to combat online, organized crime. A major part of the bill required telecommunications companies to change their networks and install the technology to comply with this bill, including being able to intercept multiple communications simultaneously and isolate it in real time.
After the public backlash, the government said it would send Bill C-30 to committee before second reading for further study, but never did so. Bill C-30 allowed the minister to order telecom companies to go beyond the requirements of the bill and will compensate them for doing so.
In response to recent news of increased cyber-bullying attacks leading to youth suicides, the Conservative government introduced Bill C-13, Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act. It is a 70-page bill with 47 clauses, of which the opposition noted that only seven clauses relate to cyber bullying and the rest deal with changes to investigative powers that resemble those found in Bill C-30.
Liberal MP Sean Casey (Charlottetown, P.E.I.), his party’s justice critic, called C-13 a “poison pill” and stunt that the Conservatives are using for political reasons.
“We all support modernizing the Criminal Code to deal with the scourge of cyber-bullying. I compliment the minister for bringing legislation forward that does that. The problem is that the poison pill built within it would have dramatic impacts on civil liberty and privacy, the very things that caused them to back away from the e-snooping bill,” Mr. Casey said during debate on the bill last Wednesday.
“I was surprised by this. I actually assumed that the Conservatives would have played this one straight and up front. Bill C-13, we were told, was to address cyber-bullying. It would appear, however, that the Conservative government knowingly used this highly emotional issue as a cover to include legislative measures that have nothing to do with cyber-bullying. Conflating, for example, terrorism with cyber-bullying does not make any sense. Furthermore, using the scourge of cyber-bullying in order to resurrect elements of the infamous Bill C-30, a piece of legislative work wholly rejected because it was in effect an e-snooping bill, is wrong,” Mr. Casey said.
Mr. MacKay (Central Nova, N.S.) said however that the opposition is wrong.
“I find it very unfortunate and troubling that this misleading, inaccurate description is applied, that references are made to a Trojan horse and that this is a bill with a poison pill. It is not,” Mr. MacKay said. “There is prior judicial authorization required in every single clause of the bill. There is no ability for police to act without warrants. There is no ability to seize Canadians’ information.”
Mr. MacKay said the government consulted across the country, including with Canada’s privacy commissioner to make the bill a balanced one.
“What we have done is put assurances here that would balance those concerns, that would put in place proper protections around the unauthorized distribution of information. Let us be clear on what we are trying to do here. We are trying to put police investigative powers in place on the internet, where so much information, and therefore, danger can exist. Unfortunately, technology moved at a much faster pace than the legislation that would enable police to do their job properly,” Mr. MacKay said.
“We have seen many recent cases; for example, in Toronto, where there was information seized online that shut down a child pornography ring. We want to be able to give the police the power to do that, to protect children, protect information, protect finances and protect against terrorism. All of this is about giving police those tools in the modern era,” Mr. MacKay said.
Ms. Boivin, the NDP’s justice critic, moved a motion for unanimous consent to split the bill last Wednesday but did not receive it. She said if the bill were split, the House could pass it almost immediately, but as it stands the NDP could not support it fully.
“The minister of Justice is right to say that the most serious irritants in Bill C-30 are not in the current bill. Yes, this will require warrants. However, we must still ask ourselves some serious questions about what kind of warrant will be needed and what evidence will be necessary to obtain it. Some are even saying that this lowers the threshold,” Ms. Boivin said.
“Ultimately, we are all trying to create a safe environment for our children and youth. However, in doing so, we must be careful not to create legislative monsters that allow some to slip through our fingers while ensnaring others who should have nothing to fear in a free and democratic society,” Ms. Boivin said.
Bill C-13 addresses cyber bullying by creating a new offence under the Criminal Code to distribute “intimate images” without the consent of the person in the image. This includes everything from posting the image or video on websites, sharing through social media and email or in person.
Mr. MacKay said police need modern investigative tools in order to enforce this.
“Many of the sections we are trying to update were enacted during the time of rotary dial phones and telegrams, well in advance of the arrival of the internet. We are modernizing and bringing those sections into the 21st century,” he said.
“They are meant to modernize both offences and investigative powers to make the Criminal Code more responsive to current criminal behaviour, which, as we know, is becoming more and more sophisticated. Organized crime, in particular, and those who prey on children very often use the internet as the means to carry out these nefarious acts,” Mr. MacKay said.
The bill creates a “do-not-delete order” that would allow police time to apply for a warrant and also outlines four specific production orders to help police begin investigations easier.
Mr. MacKay explained the production orders are used to obtain historical information such as transmission data, determining a suspect’s identity, and collecting basic financial information. “It should be noted that police already have the ability to apply to the court for the same type of information in other areas. This bill also proposes to modernize two existing judicial warrant powers: the tracking warrant and the number-recording warrant. These warrants are unique in that they allow police to collect this type of information in real time,” he said. “What is envisioned in this bill are not massive scoops of information, or mega-data, as it is sometimes called.”
University of Victoria political science professor Reg Whitaker told The Hill Times last week that if the government is serious about not making Bill C-13 a poison pill, it must allow sufficient time and debate on it rather than going its usual course of putting time allocation and limiting witnesses at committee.
“The Conservative government has a very bad record as we know of omnibus legislation and of putting all sorts of things under those budget bills that had nothing to do with the budget, and so there’s a deep dark suspicion and a justifiable position I guess on the part of the opposition and on the part of many sections of the public that this could be just another example of the same thing,” he said.
“Certainly, if the government tries to hustle it through and limit debate and limit the time spent on it then those suspicions will certainly be magnified. I think it’s really incumbent on the government to be open to a wide range of scrutiny,” Prof. Whitaker said.
Prof. Whitaker, author of The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance is Becoming a Reality and co-author of Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada From the Fenians to Fortress America, said that the law is indeed out of date and needs modernization but it needs to be done with a “delicate balance” and with careful examination.
“Everybody acknowledges I think that the existing legal framework is not adequate to deal with internet communications. The law is really based for the most part on forms of communications that predate the internet. The internet obviously poses a whole lot of challenges,” he said, noting it’s been more than 12 years since the federal government started thinking about updating the law.
When asked whether the bill could still be useful if split, Prof. Whitaker said he suspected it wouldn’t. “If you split it, you could end up with a bill on cyber bullying that could potentially just be sort of a statement of good intentions but without the teeth to actually do anything about it to enforce it,” he said, noting he was not a lawyer and hesitated to “draw strong conclusions about the [bill’s] impact.”
University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist in a blog post said, however, that the “controversial bill [C-30] returns under the guise of cyber-bullying legislation” and some of its provisions are concerning.
“Bill C-13 includes several provisions designed to target cyber-bullying and dozens of pages of reforms that come straight from prior lawful access bills,” he wrote, noting, however, that it does not include warrantless mandatory disclosure from internet service providers.
“Law enforcement have been asking for some of these provisions for many years and there could be a good debate on the merits of many of the proposed reforms. Some of the provisions raise some serious concerns. Yet the government is signaling that it would prefer to avoid such debates, wrapping up the provisions in the cyber bullying flag and backtracking on a commitment made earlier this year to not bring forward Criminal Code amendments that were contained in Bill C-30,” Prof. Geist wrote.
Mr. Casey agreed, saying that the majority of the bill has nothing to do with cyber-bullying.
“We reject using victims of bullying as a way to bring back the ghost of Vic Toews and his e-snooping bill. This was supposed to be a good day for young people and others who have been the subject of bullying online. This was supposed to be a day when this whole House, all of us, could stand in solidarity with victims of cyber-bullying and support legislation that would help address its prevalence in Canada,” he said. “Instead, we have politics as usual.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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