Debates of May 2nd, 2024

Government Response to Petitions

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8)(a), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 10 petitions. These returns will be tabled in an electronic format.

While I am on my feet, I move:

That the House do now proceed to orders of the day.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we request a recorded vote.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

Call in the members.

Before the Clerk announced the results of the vote:

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask you to verify the photo of the member for Papineau. His face is not visible. I would like you to check with the clerks to see whether his vote counts.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am not sure whether the hon. member for Papineau is online. If not, his vote does not count.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #748

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I declare the motion carried.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

The decision of the government to proceed to the orders of the day prevents the presentation of private members' bills. I have an important private member's bill on Ukraine and munitions. I wonder if there would be unanimous consent to allow members of all parties, if they have private members' bills, to table them now.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I already hear “no”. I am assuming that the member—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order. I just want to remind members that they maybe want to have a conversation with other members ahead of time before asking for unanimous consent. That way they will be more successful in their attempts.

I also want to remind members that the House is in session and that if they wish to have conversations to please take them outside, because I have trouble hearing what is going on.

Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

moved that a ways and means motion to introduce a bill entitled An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 16, 2024, be concurred in.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, we would request a recorded vote.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #749

Ways and Means

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I declare the motion carried.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

moved that Bill C-69, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 16, 2024, be read the first time and printed.

(Motion deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Notification of Members Following Foreign Interference

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question of privilege that was raised by the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan on Monday. He and I, and my hon. colleague here, belong to a group called IPAC. It is an international group, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and it appears we have attracted some unwanted attention.

Last Wednesday, the member and I were on a call with IPAC in London and were advised of this form of cyber-attack. I am at an age and stage when I do not pretend to understand exactly what they were talking about, but I am given to understand that a group called APT31, or Advanced Persistent Threat 31, was conducting cyber-attacks against some colleagues here and indeed around the world.

The only reason we found out about it was that the FBI was conducting a surveillance operation a couple of years ago, and we were caught up in that surveillance operation. That was a couple of years ago, so the question becomes this: Why did we not know about it? IPAC contacted the U.S. Department of Justice and asked why we did not know about it.

The U.S. Department of Justice did notify the relevant nations, sovereignty to sovereignty. IPAC then compared the FBI list with its own list, and the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, myself and my colleague here were on that list. The question becomes this: How come we did not know about it?

Since then, we have been advised that the FBI did notify the Canada Security Establishment, or CSE, and CSE, in turn, notified Parliament, or the IT service that runs Parliament. A security check was run in a timely fashion, and the good news is that the system we have here was not breached. In that respect, it worked.

However, at that point, a decision was made to not notify the affected members of Parliament and the affected senators; I think there are about 13 of us in total. That is a bit more problematic, so this is why I support the member's privilege question because I do think this needs to be investigated.

I am given to understand that there are literally hundreds of thousands of attacks on our IT system on a daily basis, literally a massive volume, and it becomes difficult to know, when attacks are unsuccessful, when and how and if members should be notified because our inboxes could be literally filled on a daily basis with notifications of attacks.

On the other hand, if I, as a member who is interested in security matters and defence matters, have an unusual volume of attacks or if other members, for other reasons, have unusual volumes or patterns of attacks, then that seems to be quite relevant to the interests of those individual members.

The reason I am supporting the hon. member's question of privilege is that we need to start to review these protocols, and do it sooner rather than later. I want to make the point that this is not a government issue; this is a Parliament issue.

The government did its job, so to speak, in that CSE reported it to our security services and the people who run them. However, I believe that PROC needs to look at this. It needs to review the sequence of events to make sure that, as I am describing it to the House, they were correct; to examine the decisions that were made when the information became available to Canadian authorities; and to review whether this is the kind of information that should be shared with members and, if so, in what format, how frequently, etc.

I do not think we can take this very lightly. The analogy I have drawn in the past has been that it is like somebody looking at one's mail in the post office. I think we would all be pretty upset with somebody examining our mail. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that, but it gives the sense in which the emails that are coming into our offices need to have security not only for ourselves but also for our correspondents and our constituents. These are significant volumes of emails.

I just want to raise what I believe is a question of privilege. I hope the Speaker finds it to be a question of privilege and asks the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan to move the relevant motion.

As I said, this is a significant issue. The chamber needs to deal with it in a timely sort of way; I hope PROC ultimately does as well.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, on the same question of privilege, I just want to add my comments to those of both of my colleagues, who are the co-chairs for Canada on the IPAC organization.

I do not believe it ends there. I want to see this go forward. It is great that the firewall held and nothing was penetrated. However, if these attacks are happening, as members of Parliament, we need to be briefed better than we currently are. If there is any overabundance of attacks on my system for some particular reason, I would like to know that.

I appreciate the fact that the firewall held up, but it is a question of where we go from here. If we are getting thousands of attacks every day, all parliamentarians need to be more aware and make sure that we are doing what we need to do to protect ourselves. I also think that the parliamentarians who were under surveillance from various areas need to know that to protect themselves.

I do not think it should change the fact that many of us stand up on files on human rights issues that we care about. I would not want to see intimidation be a factor in stopping us from doing our jobs.

I believe that the more information we have, the better informed we are and the better we are able to protect ourselves and our citizens.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I appreciate the hon. members' interventions. We will certainly take that under consideration as we deliberate on bringing back a statement on this.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Canada—Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (with amendments) from the committee.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There are nine motions in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-49.

Motions Nos. 1 to 9 will not be selected by the Chair because they could have been presented in committee.

There being no motions at report stage, the House will now proceed, without debate, to the putting of the question on the motion to concur in the bill at report stage.