next month's election brings to the polls many issues that affect the daily lives of canadians but one topic of special interest to proponents of information freedom and the right to privacy like librarians is bill c fifty one and antiterrorism bil impacts the way the government collects and shares your online activity we spoke with david christopher from the vancouver based nonprofit nonpartisan group open media about the impact of bill c fifty one on the selection so there's a lot we could talk about today but i kind of wanted to focus things on online privacy digital rights and how that relates to the upcoming election for sure yeah yeah so which it's self i'm sure it's a huge topic but it seems apt that i'm talking to you today on the anniversary of nine eleven because one of the key issues affecting canadians digital rights is this so called antiterrorism and national security bill which was passed earlier this year can you start off by giving our listeners a primer on how bill c fifty one ties into internet surveillance and how it affects canadians information habits and their daily lives in general sure i mean bill fifty one i think is already being a really huge issue in the months running up to the election and it's you know i was actually at a candidate's debate last night in the recenter writing and i think of all the all the topics that came up fifty one was mentioned an awful lot even in the context of other issues that was coming up so it's something a lot of people are talking about and it's not surprising undermines a wide range of canadian democratic freedom specially the right to keep you know basically to use the internet without a clear being spied on by our own government some specific ways in which jesse fifty one undermines privacy rights will be effectively give and other security agencies the power to collect private information held by a wide range will see fifty one actually looks like it gives the fiesta a much broader mandate to operate within canada so i mean that's something where every privacy commissioner in the country all the prevent chill on the  federal privacy commissioner is really sending the alarm on this and you know it think it was only very grudgingly that the government didn't even want the privacy commissioner to testify before the house committee looking at all if it's really worrying you know this is i think something every day canadian toking the balance of power between the that has been and the state in a very worrying direction generally you know in a healthy democracy the state just including i think this is something that's gotten overlooked many grassroots conservative right across the country are also being speaking out against this legislation i think you will be seeing you know big groups like  rights too which i can i can go into if you like absolutely sure go for it and thank you for bringing up that it is a nonpartisan issue and i was reading that approval is dropping like you said even among certain conservative parties so yeah tell us a little more about how this relates to the charter of rights and freedom sure i think one of the the most striking aspect of the spell now member when the bill got published was i was sitting there reading for basically for permission to break the charter and to break the law in a sense that you know it's completely unconstitutional on the face of us and you know the targets of these sort of law breaking activities wouldn't of have any right to representation in that hearing the idea would simply be that the judge kind of rubber stamps and gives them permission to break the constitution and you know any legal expert i've spoken with about this said you know this is clearly unconstitutional in the midst of us but of course the problem is is that you know parliament if it if it's you know when the conservatives basically just use their majority to ram this through pass an unconstitutional law you know the justice system needs to get so the charter of rights and freedom to remind our listeners it declares that everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure and everyone has the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy so how does that expectation and those rights how is bill c fifty one treating online information and online privacy differently from other realms of information and your personal life do need to get a warrant and they need to give a very good reason to a judge as to why they would want to go into a set of home and search that person's specs and that's not a recent development that's actually a safeguard that goes all overbearing the overbearing car monarch or the government of the day where it gets really concerning is that we've seen you know the internet is still really quite young you know twenty years ago i think it was yeah it was twenty years ago almost to the day i think since i first got an e mail address you know it's now it's still pretty young in terms of human history but what really worries me is that we don't seem to be applying that same everyday lives online whether it's on facebook on you know e mails to our friends and family just our online activities the kind of the digital trail that we do relieve behind us it's often quite revealing what's really given no reason you know to be spied on are getting caught up in this dragnet on a massive scale and so i think when you look at the fifty one in that context when you look at the potential that the fifty one  being passed along without our knowledge is data that is kind of masked so meditative that people don't necessarily think about very frequently but it is very important so can you talk a little bit on telephone calls it's not collecting recordings of what people are saying on the calls but it is collecting the information such as who called who the phone numbers that were in both the time of the cal the location by which the call was made and it stores that into a database that would be knology the government you were just looking at the outside of the envelope without actually reading what's in the letter inside but  privacy any and you know analysts have looked at this the problem comes when you're collecting that data on such a massive scale when you're collecting a home like every single phone call being made for example in the united states as or having that information collected on a centralized government databases there are slightly changing the system then there but it will still be easily accessible by by the government and that again the evil of when you combine all this information know it was a huge amount you know you could tell where i worked because you know i'd often be making calls to let my work colleagues on on a very regular basis you could tell that i worked in public massive data breaches by the governments in recent years with you know i think in alberta everyone's medical data was just left on a on a u s b stick and exposed in that way imagine what would happen if if this centralized database  be spying on people to this extent well and the further disturbing thing is that the body that is performing the surveillance is not being overseen to an acceptable extent can you speak a little bit oversight work role that any democracy needs you know to really prioritize the fact is circus just a part time committee this government actually left three vacancies on food on that committee for a long long time it's being systematically starved of funds certainly given the context the funding for safe this and for the c s c has skyrocketed where it's funding for the respective oversight agencies has really stayed flat for ages i think the government re to life any any wrongdoing any breakings of the law investigate and be able to issue a binding recommendations that are available to the public wherever possible the fact of the matter is unfortunately that's simply the government to no parliamentary oversized faces unlike in each of the other five eyes countries candidate allied with one another spying and sir is actually taking an average of three years to complete  incredibly imbalanced piece of legislation and that's and so you mentioned that other countries do have such overseeing bodies in place and correct me if i'm wrong but i read somewhere that canada is the only country that does not have proper oversight of a body like ceases and thinking about canada's international reputation and what's going on with syrian refugee crisis and you know the sad story of the little boy who washed up on the beach and kind of late that shed on canada's acceptance of asylum applications what i'm getting at is what to see fifty one for migrants and refugees bridge pipeline and of the first nation groups involved in that effort and you know when i'm talking about spying it was a ridiculous it was going to ridiculous levels i think they had an agent in a church basement in alberta where you had these you know for elderly people you know creating a protest sign for a totally peaceful democratic protest the following day the point i guess i'm driving at here is we've already seen thesis seemingly  e minority let's say you you know you're recently arrived migrants from a muslim country that that could potentially make you a target of additional surveillance of by sea fifth or by you know other security agencies and that's really where you know the bring the back to the oversight because the so sort of oversized piece of the puzzle is effectively missing there's really no independent proper independent oversight of this because that's missing canadian simply unable to tell unable to even like debate what's appropriate when it comes to pieces overseas because people don't have the full picture as to what's going on you know that to fall is investigative certainly worries me that potentially this could lead to it's already seem to be the case that where the security agencies are disproportionately picking and choosing different sectors of society to subject to  and i'm glad you brought up the pipeline protest because i'm not sure if you're aware but the show that we're being hosted on is the sustainability and environmental show so i'm sure our listeners will be interested to hear that about how dissidents are being watched and potentially impacted by that so i just want to shift to talking about the upcoming election i understand that open media and official platform is nonpartisan but tell me about the report cards that you've been publishing based on a survey that you sent out basically what we have reviewed quite right to say we've we've recently launched our election platform that covers you know privacy things privacy issues across the portable access the range of free expression issues this while we're doing this because you know we are very much a post partisan organization we've got supporters of all the parties within our community so we're not going to be saying vote for a party a return to the y but we will be simply putting the information in front of people making sure people have the information that they need because for many people the fishies are on our web site of one who lives just outside a major city but still has to you dial up internet you know in this day and age so we'll be providing voters canadian in general with the information that they need are planning to do they take power and putting that information in front of the voters and where can people go online to express their rip supports and retrieve this information you're talking about i know  you're talking about the privacy plan i believe that the and the coalition so where else can you direct people to quality information besides open media dot ca of course yeah we've got a centralized sort of elect that they want politicians to care about the internet and they'll be voting based on those issues early next week we'll be launching a new tool that actually let people simply enter their postal code and then message all the candidates  in their writing to encourage them to stand up on the internet issues and then of course in a few weeks time you know what tree weeks before the election we'll be publishing these report cards that are setting out and kind of assessing where the bill see fifty one that website is called kill c fifty one dot ca i believe that absolutely and we're up to nearly three hundred people on there and it's just amazing i mean it's become one of the largest campaigns i think in all of canadian political history you know to treat hundred thousand people signing a petition in a country with a population of candidates is really i think really remarkable i think people coming from right across the political spectrum all walks of life i'm sure many librarians are on there have signed that petition given how much i know librarians care about privacy and how important you know that's been a longstanding principle of life area and you know and privacy rights and we've been working hard to do we can to protect that is well so thank you for all of your hard work as we support you is what i'm trying to say is thank you very much and that's there anything else you want to add for listeners to know any events coming up that they should be aware of the one thing i would save do check back on our articles on cheese by tuesday morning i'm not sure when they're going  check out the candidate to lead to message all the candidates in your writing you know we've put quite a bit of time into this because we think it's really important to give people a way that they can actually impact the race in their own local community and we think you know that's super important especially other time when you know politicians the conservatives for example a percentage a directive to all their candidates to avoid the media and avoid and they're really trying to hide their own much if you'd like to learn more about open media and canadian privacy rights check out their website at open media dot ca there crowd sorts privacy plan is that privacy plan dot ca and the bill c fifty one petition is that