Industry Committee on April 29th, 2024

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Mark Schaan]

Exactly.

For my mom's Fitbit, each piece of data is a piece of personal information related to her activity. If she was required to provide express consent every time that personal information was provided back to the organization, she'd be on her watch all day clicking “yes” because every single one of those pieces of information requires express consent. That is because the definition is that if information is subject to a fundamental right to privacy, then that's all information. We said in the preamble that the purpose of personal information is that people have a fundamental right to privacy, which means the privacy related to their personal information.

Now, we then mitigate that and enable it through all of the provisions of the rest of the act that say how that plays out in various situations. Sometimes it's through express consent. The act talks about ways in which you can potentially have a legitimate interest and ways in which you can potentially ensure that there are exceptions to consent. However, none of those play out if all information is sensitive because, essentially, you then need to expressly say “yes” every single time.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

That sounds to me like it would defeat this bill in the sense of the intentions of it. It would also be very annoying for almost everybody out there who uses services that require the sharing of personal information, including your mom and myself with my Apple Watch.

I'm sure there are many other examples, if you universalize that across our entire economy, that we probably take for granted to some degree, but I think it would be a major imposition on business functioning in order to offer the value that we normally experience from those services.

[Mark Schaan]

One of the goals of the proposed legislation is to minimize consent fatigue and to maximize consent with regard to where it is truly important and is understood to be important. If you have to expressly consent for every use of the information that you're providing to a corporate entity, then, potentially, we actually significantly raise the bar for consent fatigue. People get tired of saying yes or no, even if it's in plain language.

By trying to actually constrain it to that for which it is most necessary.... We understand the intent of CPC-7, which is to try to say, “Let's put some flesh on the bones of what is actually sensitive and where those cases are.” We have noted that, potentially, the categories might be too broad or might lack some of that context, and that maybe there's a better way of getting it. The construct that there is sensitive information.... It clearly exists. What kinds of contours can we put around it without boxing out the possibility of saying that everything requires consent or that consent is always the case for every single type of information, even though there are different uses of types of information, some of which might be sensitive and some of which might not be?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that.

I don't know whether Mr. Savard-Tremblay intended for that to be the case, but after hearing the clarifications made here, I think it seems that this subamendment is not going to have an overly helpful effect at achieving the policy objectives of this particular bill. I'm wondering whether we can vote on that.

I know my colleague, Mr. Gaheer, was on the list to offer some thoughts on the original motion that the Conservatives put forward, which we hope we can get to today.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

In the meantime, we're still on the subamendment until I've exhausted the list of speakers.

I have on my list Brad Vis and Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

Just so you know, we have a motion by Mr. Williams that he'd like to move towards the end of the meeting, so at about five minutes to 1:00, we could move on to Mr. Williams' motion.

Mr. Vis.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I'll provide a general comment.

I don't believe this subamendment was put forward with ill will, but I would accept some of the rationale about its being overly broad in this context. On the CPC side, we're going to be voting against it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Mr. Savard‑Tremblay is next on my list, but I see that he is currently talking to Mr Williams.

Mr. Savard‑Tremblay, you now have the floor.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thought it was my colleague's turn.

I would have liked to be able to speak about 20 minutes ago to prevent people from talking about my subamendment for nothing, as I finally decided that I wanted to withdraw it and propose something else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Just a moment, Mr. Savard‑Tremblay.

Do I have the committee's unanimous consent for Mr. Savard‑Tremblay to withdraw his subamendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

(Subamendment withdrawn)

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We'll go back to you, Mr. Savard‑Tremblay.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Based on the discussion I've heard, I believe that, rather than adding item (j) to amendment CPC-7, it would be much more accurate for this item to be at the end of amendment NDP-6. I'm just throwing that out there. I'm not sending it to you in writing, since you already have it.

So it would become the end of the wording proposed in amendment NDP-6, replacing “personal information in respect of which, due to the context of its use or disclosure, an individual has a high reasonable expectation of privacy”.

I think that would clarify everything, in addition to addressing all the fears and considerations we heard about the subamendment I had proposed previously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

If I understand correctly, point (j) would become another subamendment that you would propose. Is that correct?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Yes. This subamendment that I would propose would eat into the end of amendment NDP-6.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I invite you to send the text of the subamendment to the clerk so that we can debate it.

There's not much time left in the meeting. I will still let you finish your remarks, Mr. Savard‑Tremblay, if you have something to add. That said, I think we have clearly understood the subamendment you are proposing: It's about replacing the end of amendment NDP-6 with what you had proposed to add as point (j) to amendment CPC-7.

The wording will be sent in writing to the clerk and then sent to the committee members, and we can debate it next time. Since we have only 10 minutes left in the meeting, if it's okay with you, colleagues, I move that we end our clause-by-clause consideration of the bill here.

We'll come back to the subamendment proposed by Mr. Savard-Tremblay when we get back to the next meeting, because I'd like us to have enough time for Mr. Williams' motion.

Mr. Williams, go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have circulated a motion.

Mr. Chair, you'd think for $15 billion of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that Canada would get supply chains for batteries, some manufacturing jobs for car parts or even a steering wheel. In Windsor at Stellantis—and I know we've talked about this before—we have $15 billion going to this plant. We had news from the union, from the CBTU members, this week that at this plant they're still seeing foreign workers employed over Canadian workers. We've made noise before about how we think Canadians should have been offered these jobs. For $15 billion, Canadians should have been put front and centre. We worked with the unions to make sure these were good jobs for Windsorites. This is a plant in Windsor, and we want the good people of Windsor to have these jobs and to be working in this plant, especially for this amount of money. We are still hearing from the union that foreign workers rather than Canadian workers are still working in jobs that were promised to Canadians. At Stellantis they're even asking their Canadian suppliers to sponsor foreign workers and refugees to perform the work when there are more than 180 Canadian ironworkers and millwrights sitting at home unemployed. This is a very concerning problem right now for this government.

What we're asking for in this motion, Mr. Chair, is:

That, in regard to the government's EV battery plant subsidies, the committee invite the CEOs of Stellantis N.V., LG Energy Solutions Ltd. and NextStar Inc., and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to answer questions no later than Friday, May 17, 2024.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Mr. Masse, go ahead.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the motion that's been brought here. I would add an amendment to include Minister Vic Fedeli from the Province of Ontario. There is a fifty-fifty partnership going on with regard to this investment, and to not have the province would be egregious in many respects, because it is also responsible for allowing and following up on who's on site through the labour code.

We've had some allegations with regard to the type of work that's being done there. Why would we leave out the province? It would be, in my opinion, a missed opportunity to understand what's actually taking place and to clear the air. This follows another Conservative motion that's being looked at by the OGGO committee as well. This one's a little more specific to my riding, and I think the more transparency we can have, the better.

I move an amendment to include Minister Vic Fedeli, as well as any other provincial operatives, to enforce the contract. Again, this is a fifty-fifty deal that's being done, and it would be odd to exclude the province from doing this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Masse.

We have an amendment to the motion on the floor to include relevant provincial counterparts for the deal that's pertinent to the motion.

Are there any comments on the amendment proposed by Mr. Masse?

Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I don't particularly have an issue with the amendment to the motion. I'd speak to the motion with the amendment. I think—

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Turnbull, I'm sorry. We have to deal with the amendment before we can get back to discussing the motion.

I have a sense you might disagree with the motion, but do we agree with the amendment that's proposed, and can we get back to the debate on the motion?

Mr. Williams, please go ahead.

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

The main premise of this motion was to get support for getting the CEOs here. We haven't heard from them and we haven't had any reaction. The union is saying it's not heard back from the CEOs on any level.

We've had the minister here. When we have discussions about getting the minister here for other items...we can't ask the minister about those items when the minister's here.

This is primarily to get the CEOs here, in front of the committee. The province can probably talk about the process and what's happened on its end in terms of trying to work with these companies. It's going to see this as an investment. I'm sure it's also going to work on behalf of the unions, so I don't see it as being detrimental to this.

The premise of this was to have the CEOs here. They're the companies that promised that Canadian workers would get Canadian jobs, and they're not.

I'm indifferent to the amendment, but it's not the focus we wanted. We want to focus on the companies that need to answer why, when they are receiving hard-earned tax dollars, they are not putting those hard-earned tax dollars to work for Canadian jobs instead of foreign jobs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Mr. Savard‑Tremblay is next. I remind you that the debate is still on the proposed amendment to the motion.