Hon. Rodger Cuzner: Good to see my friend in good health and good spirits, obviously.

Minister, you have emerged as a bit of a Swiss Army knife for the Prime Minister by taking on a broad scope of responsibilities. One of them is being the President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada. As such, surely Bill C-4 has come across your desk.

We have recently heard in committee from the Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Cathy Hawara, about how Part 4 confirms “. . . Parliament’s long-standing intent respecting its exclusive regulation of federal political parties’ dealings with personal information . . . .”

I realize all members of the other house supported this with their votes, but senators have registered a strong concern about that particular provision because of the scant review —

The Hon. the Speaker: Thank you, senator.

Hon. Dominic LeBlanc, P.C., M.P., President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, Intergovernmental Affairs, Internal Trade and One Canadian Economy: Your Honour, what a tragedy to cut off such an excellent question. Perhaps you’ll allow me to imagine what Senator Cuzner was going to ask in that fantastic question.

Senators, I was the Minister responsible for Democratic Institutions. It used to be part of the King’s Privy Council function, as you know. That particular function now resides with our Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, but for many years, I was the Minister responsible for Democratic Institutions. I was the minister at a time when a privacy commissioner in a province decided to apply the privacy regime of a provincial government to the Canada Elections Act. I do not believe it’s in our national interest to have a patchwork quilt of provincial privacy commissioners or interpretations on something as fundamental as protecting the private data of Canadian electors.

The good news is all of the political parties represented in the House of Commons believe that we have found the way to have a robust national regime while working with political parties to provide that protection. I don’t think it is the proper jurisdiction of a provincial privacy commissioner to opine on the Canada Elections Act. We, as a Parliament, have to take responsibility for the protection of that private information, and I think we have done exactly that in this legislation.