Industry Committee on Feb. 5th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

I'll now yield the floor to Mr. Sorbara for our last question.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's been a wonderful panel today.

I want to go to Elissa.

I think you mentioned that there are 140,000 people working in Canada in AI. Obviously, AI has become a huge economic generator, and that's just the industry itself and doesn't include the indirect jobs associated with AI.

Are you aware of any estimates of what AI could become in terms of benefit for the Canadian economy as we go forward?

[Dr. Elissa Strome]

I don't have any real, hard numbers on that, but it's something that we're interested in trying to understand ourselves, so I'll get back to you when we do have that number, for sure.

I think that the benefits, absolutely, are economic for Canada, and we're seeing that in the number of jobs. We're seeing that in the number of start-up companies that are emerging in our Canadian centres, and particularly in the amount of venture capital investment that is going into those start-up companies. About 30% of all venture capital investment in Canada is going directly into companies that are developing AI. That's a really significant benefit to the economy.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

With regard to venture capital, it is usually early-stage venture capital that is being invested there.

I'll go to Elissa first and then to Ignacio and anybody else who wants to jump in at that time.

In terms of the AI regulations, you want them to be.... It's like accounting. You have a principle. You have very prescriptive regulations when it comes to accounting. You want to make sure that the regulations are not so tight that they limit growth and the capacity to evolve and innovate, but you also want to make sure that they are not so loose that there are holes and loopholes in them, if you want to use that word.

Are we striking that right balance in terms of getting it done? That's very difficult to achieve. I've spoken to colleagues in Europe on AI, both at the subnational and the European level. All parliaments are grappling with this issue.

Where are we in striking that right balance?

[Dr. Elissa Strome]

I think we're on the right track. I think that if the bill is passed and we move towards developing regulations, if we take a really flexible approach, we have to literally be watching the opportunities and be changing, pivoting and adapting as the technology advances and as other international players also advance.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you.

If I can just stop you there, I do want to go to Ignacio.

Ignacio, can you chime in on this quickly? I know you talked about harms in your presentation. I'm going to reread your testimony in terms of the harms when I have a chance this week, because that does go to the point about principle and how we regulate principle versus being very prescriptive.

[Ignacio Cofone]

I think we're almost there.

I think, first of all, that it is laudable that this legislation is taking that trade-off seriously and that it's not being too technology-specific. I think it needs some more specificity than it currently has, and it can do that while maintaining its technological neutrality. We could have a bit more precision in the standard for biases. We could have some more precision in the standard for high-impact systems. We could have proportional degrees of due care that go across the categorization. All of those things could be applicable to systems that haven't developed yet while also giving some more guidance to the regulations.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Chair, how much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

You have about a minute.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I'll go to Mr. Bengio as well.

You're one of the leaders in Canada. We have the Vector Institute here at the University of Toronto, I believe. Then we have other institutes in Montreal. Can you comment on the questions I have?

Then I'll go to Ms. Régis if we have time.

[Yoshua Bengio]

I think that we should not make the mistake of trying to put a lot of details into the law. All of us have little things that we would like to see. Because the technology is going to change and because the misuse and the harms are going to evolve, we need to have no choice but to let the regulator adapt quickly. Elissa made that point multiple times, and I did as well. We need to really stick to a principle-based approach. That is the only viable solution to protect the public.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Ms. Régis, what do you think?

[Prof. Catherine Régis]

I would say that the best way, in my opinion, to resolve the tension between innovation and protection is a risk-based approach. This bill is based on that logic. The higher it is, the more you demand. If you follow that path, I think you're on the right track to have this equilibrium that you're looking for.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, everyone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much, MP Sorbara.

Thanks to all of our witnesses today. It was a fascinating discussion.

We have a bit of committee business to attend to. I'll let you all go.

[Some hon. member]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I don't know if you can hear through Zoom, but you're receiving applause from our members here. It was really interesting. Thank you for your work on this and for sharing your insights with us as we go forward on this legislation.

You are free to go, and thanks again.

Colleagues, this brings us to committee business. I know that a few notices of motion have been tabled, including Mr. Williams' notice.

Mr. Williams, you have the floor.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm sorry to be a dog with a bone on this topic, but I think it's really important that we continue to look at cellphone bills on behalf of Canadians. We're not going to stop until we get these cellphone bills down.

We had a motion that we talked about last week, and I want to revisit it. Specifically, what we have changed in this motion to make it a little different is to ensure that we get not only Rogers and Bell to the committee but also Vidéotron. I think it's important that we get CEOs of these companies here to talk about what's happening with cellphone bills for Canadians.

Second, it's that we will have the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry here. I think it's important for him. I know from talking to him in the past that he's always talked about how he wants to come in front of Canadians and talk about lowering cellphone bills.

I'm going to go back to March 5, 2020. The then industry minister, Navdeep Bains, announced that they were going to lower cellphone bills by 25% in the next two years, by 2022. It would save families $690 a year. With the announcements we had last week by Bell—I guess it's three weeks ago now—the average cellphone bill in Canada is $106. Rogers and Bell are going to follow suit with a $9-per-month increase, which will mean those bills are going to $115.

It comes down to one thing, and that's data. That's the question we want to ask the CEOs. Canadians used three times more data in 2022 than they did in 2015. You know that when you go and look at Instagram or you're downloading Reels or you're using YouTube or Netflix, you consume more data. Cellphone bills, if you were consuming only five gigabytes a month, have gone down 25%, but Canadians consume more data, and cellphone bills are going up. These are good questions to ask on behalf of all Canadians.

I move as follows:

That, as Canadians already pay the highest cellphone bills in the world, and Rogers and Bell have indicated an increase to cellphone bills of $9 a month, the committee call for two meetings to be held by February 15, 2024, one with the CEOs of Rogers, Vidéotron and Bell and the second one with the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, to explain why prices are going up; and that this committee also condemn pricing increases and report back to the House.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

I recognize Mr. Masse. He wants to intervene on the motion before the committee.

Go ahead, Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do support the motion, but I would ask that we amend it by adding Telus. Then we'd have the four horsemen of the apocalypse in front us.

To me it's an important motion. We should be reporting this back to House as well to give as much attention as possible to this issue. It's just become outrageous.

I support the motion and I hope we can get this done and have Telus included as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

That's an amendment, Mr. Masse.

As you all know, there's no such thing as a friendly amendment. It is an amendment to add Telus to the list so eloquently described by Mr. Masse.

On the amendment of adding Telus, are there any comments on this, or is there consensus for this amendment to the motion?

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I have no issue adding Telus to the motion, but I have a bit of an issue with the motion in general. Perhaps I'll save my comments if we want to vote on the amendment first.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I think it will be more procedurally elegant if we proceed that way.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

There's always value in procedural elegance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I try, but I don't always succeed.

Looking around the room, I think there is general consensus for this minor tweak to add Telus to the motion.

(Amendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings].

We go back to the main motion as amended. Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.