Bill C-11 (Historical)

Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2020

An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts

Part 1 enacts the Consumer Privacy Protection Act to protect the personal information of individuals while recognizing the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities. In consequence, it repeals Part 1 of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and changes the short title of that Act to the Electronic Documents Act. It also makes consequential and related amendments to other Acts.
Part 2 enacts the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, which establishes an administrative tribunal to hear appeals of certain decisions made by the Privacy Commissioner under the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and to impose penalties for the contravention of certain provisions of that Act. It also makes a related amendment to the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada Act.

Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill after my colleague from Rivière‑des‑Mille‑Îles, whom I would like to congratulate. I am also pleased to be following my colleague from Trois‑Rivières, an ethics expert who enlightened us on the potential impact of this bill and the dangers involved.

Unfortunately, very few people are interested in this type of bill, and yet, in the digital age, we cannot afford not to regulate the use of personal information. We cannot deny the fact that the digital shift has exploded in Quebec and elsewhere over the last decade, and it has greatly changed our lifestyles.

It is impressive to see which path companies have chosen during the pandemic, and I think it is a timely discussion to have today. However, I would like to draw attention to the new part of the bill that deals with artificial intelligence. I think it deserves serious consideration.

Part 3 of the bill raises many questions, and opinions from experts in the field of artificial intelligence are mixed. The use of artificial intelligence is a rapidly growing field that risks expanding beyond our control and jurisdiction if we do not begin to regulate the practice and define certain concepts.

Recent developments in AI in general and deep learning in particular have led to the creation of autonomous intelligent agents, which are essentially robots capable of deciding what to do without third-party intervention. These agents' autonomy raises new questions about civil liability, so we have to think about criminal provisions that would apply if someone were put in a dangerous situation, for example.

How should we approach this, and what legal status are we granting them? What legislative framework is the best fit for these autonomous agents?

At this point, we think some important definitions are missing. The law clerks who are examining the bill's provisions from a legal standpoint told us that again today. What is a high-risk intelligence system? What is a high-impact system?

The algorithms produced in applications that use artificial intelligence enable artificial beings to create goods or services or to generate predictions or results. If we compare them to human beings and use the existing framework, how will we interpret the notions of independence and unpredictability attributable to these artificial beings? The experts will help us understand all that.

Quite a few goods already exist that have a layer of artificial intelligence built into them, and 90% of those goods should not pose a problem. Experts at Meta have even said that this technology has reached its limits, because the data to train an algorithm is insufficient in quantity and lacks depth.

Let us get back to the main problem we have with Bill C‑27. Until the department clarifies its thinking on what constitutes a high-impact system, it will be difficult to assess the scope of part 3. Let us assume that everything can be considered high risk. This would mean that many companies would be accountable. If we had greater accountability, the Googles of this world might be the only ones that could risk using artificial intelligence.

The bill does not need to cover everything a machine can do for us or everything software can do once it is developed and generates predictions and results like a calculator.

If we compare it to the European legislation, we note that the latter is currently targeting employment discrimination systems, systems that would determine whether or not a permit to study there can be granted. That is essentially the limit of what the machine can do in our place.

Although the law in this document concerning artificial intelligence is far from being exhaustive, I believe it is important that we start somewhere. By starting here, with a framework, we can lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive law.

My speech this evening will help my colleagues better understand what needs to be clarified as soon as possible so we can have an important discussion about how to regulate the applications that use artificial intelligence and how to process these systems' data.

First, we will have to implement regulations for international and interprovincial exchanges for artificial intelligence systems by establishing Canada-wide requirements for the design, development and use of AI systems. Next, we must prohibit certain uses of AI that may adversely affect individuals.

The legislation is very clear on many other aspects, including on the fact that there would be a requirement to name a person responsible for artificial intelligence within organizations that use this technology. The responsibilities are fairly extensive.

In addition to the artificial intelligence and data act, which is in part 3, Bill C‑27 also includes, in part 1, the consumer privacy protection act, as well as the amendments to the former legislation. Part 2 of the bill enacts the personal information and data protection tribunal act, while part 4 includes the coming into force provisions of the bill.

As my colleagues explained, the other sections of the bill contain a lot of useful elements, such as the creation of a tribunal and penalties. One of the acts enacted by Bill C‑27 establishes a tribunal to process complaints under litigation when it comes to the use of private data. In case of non-compliance, the legislation provides for heavy penalties of up to 3% of a multinational's gross global revenue. There are provisions that are more in favour of citizens when a company misuses digital data.

Yes, this bill does have its weaknesses. I believe those weaknesses can be addressed in committee, but they may require the introduction of new legislative measures. Public services, however, are not covered by this bill. Data in the public sector requires a greater degree of protection; this bill covers only the private sector. Take, for example, CERB fraud and the CRA. In 2020, hackers fraudulently claimed $2,000 monthly payments and altered the direct deposit information for nearly 13,000 accounts.

The government can do more to tackle fraud. Unfortunately, this bill offers no relief or recourse to those whose information has already been compromised. There are digital records of nearly every important detail about our lives—financial, medical and education information, for example—all of which are easy targets for those who want to take advantage. It has been this way for a while, and it is only going to get worse when quantum computers arrive in the very near future.

This means that we must find and develop better means of online identity verification. We must have more rigorous methods, whether we are changing our requirements for passwords, for biometrics or for voice recognition.

Recently, at the sectoral committee, we heard about how easy it is for fraudsters to call telecommunication centres and pass themselves off as someone else to access their information. We must improve identity verification methods, and we must find a way to help those who are already victims of fraud. We must do so by amending Bill C-27 or introducing an additional legislative measure.

Since this is a fairly complex bill, it will be referred to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, where we will have the opportunity to hear from experts in the field. At this step, I would like to recognize the leadership of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and his team. We have been reassured by the answers we have received.

Since Quebec already has data protection legislation—Bill 64, which became law 25—we want to understand when the federal act will apply and whether the changes we requested to Bill C-11, introduced in the previous Parliament, were incorporated into this bill. I want to say that we are satisfied with the answers we have received so far.

We will do our due diligence because this bill includes a number of amendments. Obviously, the devil is in the details. During the technical briefings held by the department since Bill C-27 was published, we asked how much time businesses would have to adjust their ways of doing things and comply with the legislation.

We expect that there will be a significant transition period between the time when Bill C-27 is passed and when it comes into force. Since the bill provides for a lot more penalties, the government will likely hold consultations and hearings to get input from stakeholders.

In closing, I would like to say that I have just come back from Tokyo, where I accompanied the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry to the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence Summit, where Quebec and France took the lead. The first summit was held in 2020. I would like to list some important values that were mentioned at this summit that deserve consideration and action: responsible development, ethics, the fight against misinformation and propaganda, trust, education, control, consent, transparency, portability, interoperability, strict enforcement and accountability. These are all values that must accompany open data and ecosystems.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I acknowledge that I am standing today, as any day that I am on Parliament Hill, on the Algonquin land of the Anishinabe peoples. I say a large meegwetch to them.

I am speaking today, as we all are, to Bill C-27, which is really three bills in one. My other parliamentary colleagues have already canvassed the bare outline of this, in that we are looking at three bills: an act to create a consumer privacy protection act; a personal information and data protection tribunal act, which largely replaces some of what there was already in PIPEDA in the past; and a brand new artificial intelligence and data act.

I want to start with the artificial intelligence and data act because it is the part with which all of us are least familiar. Much of what we see in this bill was previously before Parliament in last session's Bill C-11. There is a lot to dig into and understand here.

As I was reading through the whole concept of what kinds of harms are done by artificial intelligence, I found myself thinking back to a novel that came out in 1949. The kind of technology described in George Orwell's book, famously called 1984, was unthinkable then. The dystopian visions of great writers like George Orwell or Margaret Atwood are hard to imagine. I will never forget the scene in the opening of The Handmaid's Tale, where a woman goes into a store and her debit card is taken from her. At that moment, we did not have debit cards. Margaret Atwood had to describe this futuristic concept of a piece of plastic that gave us access to our banks without using cash. No one had heard of it then.

There are words from George Orwell, written in 1949, about the ways in which artificial intelligence and new technologies could really cause harm in a dystopian sense. In 1984, he writes, “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away.”

More recently, there is the song by The Police and written by Sting and others. I will never forget that once I went to a session on rights to privacy being under assault and a British jurist brought with him for his opening of the speech, “Every breath you take, And every move you make, Every bond you break, Every step you take, I'll be watching you.”

We live in a time when artificial intelligence can be enormously invasive of our privacy with things like visual recognition systems, as the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman was just speaking to. These are things that, for someone like me born in 1954, are all rather new, but they are new for people born in 1990 too. It is very new technology and bringing in legislation to control it is equally new and challenging for us as parliamentarians. The whole notion that we are going to be able to spot the ways in which artificial intelligence can affect our democracy is something that will take time.

We talk about harms from this kind of technology, from capturing algorithms, from invading our spaces. We do not have to look any farther than the way Cambridge Analytica was used by the Brexit forces in the U.K. to harness a public outrage against something based on a pile of disinformation, by targeting individuals and collecting their data. That kind of Cambridge Analytica concern also gets into part 1 and part 2 of this bill. We really do need to figure out how to control the digital tech giants harvesting our information.

As an example used earlier today in debate, there is the idea that big digital giants and large corporations can profit from data without the consent of Canadians who may have put a family photo on social media, never knowing that their privacy has been invaded and their personal information and photos have been used for profit without their permission. In this sense, I am going to flag that in the context of the artificial intelligence and data act, I hope we will be taking the time necessary to hear witnesses specifically on this.

We have developed a pattern in recent years, which is to say the last decade or so, of having three or four witnesses appear on panels. All of us in this place know that committees are trying to hear from a lot of people and receive a lot of evidence. It will do us a disservice in our dive into the artificial intelligence and data act if we combine panels of people who are experts on PIPEDA and people who are experts on other aspects of this bill, with panels on artificial intelligence and data.

The committees that study this bill will control their own process. Committees are the masters of their own process, but I would urge the government, the Liberal legislative managers of this piece of legislation, Bill C-27, to follow the lead of the Speaker's ruling earlier today. If we are going to vote on the artificial intelligence act as a separate piece when we come to vote, we could at least make an effort to ensure that the concentrated effort of committee members and hearing witness testimony is not diluted through several different pieces of legislation and panels with three or four witnesses.

Members' questions will inevitably and invariably go to one or two. In this format of panels and pushing witnesses through quickly, we lose a lot of content. Compared with when I worked in government back in the 1980s, which I know seems like the dark ages and no one in this room was on committees in those days, committees would hear from a witness who could speak for 15 minutes and then we would have the rest of an hour to ask that one witness questions. Now that we are into something as complicated as this area, I would urge the committee to give it that kind of attention or to ask the government to send part 3, the artificial intelligence and data act, to a different committee, so that the study can be thorough and we can educate ourselves as to the unintended consequences that will inevitably occur if we go too fast.

Turning to the parts of the bill that deal with privacy, I want to put on the record again a question that was raised just moments ago about whether privacy legislation should apply to political parties in Canada. At the moment, it does not. Political parties are exempted from the kinds of privacy protections that other organizations, NGOs and corporations must use to protect the privacy information of their customers, consumers and citizens.

The Green Party of Canada believes it is essential that political parties be added to the list of organizations that have an obligation to protect the privacy of Canadians.

I will say quickly that I tend to agree with the first analysis of one of the NGOs that are very concerned with privacy information. OpenMedia, in an article by Brian Stewart, says very clearly that this legislation could actually make things worse for some privacy protections. They give the efforts of Bill C-27's consumer privacy protection act and its personal information and data protection tribunal act a grade of D. In other words, it passes but just barely. There will be many witnesses.

I can certainly confirm that, as a Green Party member of Parliament in this place, I will be bringing amendments forward, assuming this bill gets through second reading, which I think we can assume, and ends up at committee.

In the time remaining, I want to emphasize that Canada is aware that privacy is a fundamental human right. It is part of the UN declaration on the rights of individuals. I echo some of the sentiments from the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman in asking why we are looking at consumer privacy. Maybe we should change that word to Canadians' rights and privacy.

I also agree with many members who have spoken today about the problems of subclause 18(3) and the number of exemptions along with the question of what is a “legitimate” reason that people's privacy can be invaded. That should be further clarified. I find “a reasonable person would expect the collection or use for such an activity” to be fine, but the exemptions seem overly broad.

If I dive into anything else I will go over my allotted time.

This is important legislation. We must protect the privacy of Canadians. I think we will call on all parties in this place to set aside partisanship and make an honest effort to review it. That is not to delay it but to make an honest effort to review the bill before it leaves this place.

Division of Bill C‑27 for the Purpose of Voting—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised on November 22, 2022, by the member for New Westminster—Burnaby concerning the application of Standing Order 69.1 to Bill C-27, an act to enact the consumer privacy protection act, the personal information and data protection tribunal act and the artificial intelligence and data act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

The member for New Westminster—Burnaby stated that there is a clear link between the first two parts of Bill C‑27, which respectively enact the consumer privacy protection act and the personal information and data protection tribunal act. He further noted that these elements were both part of the previous Bill C-11, which was introduced in the House during the 43rd Parliament.

However, the member argued that part 3, which enacts the artificial intelligence and data act, should be considered separately, because it does not directly concern privacy protection or the analysis, circulation and exchange of personal information. Accordingly, he asked the Chair to divide Bill C‑27 for the purposes of voting, as Standing Order 69.1 permits.

The official opposition House leader concurred. He added that, outside of clause 39 of the bill, which mentions the new consumer privacy protection act in the definition of the term “personal information”, part 3 of Bill C-27 does not refer to parts 1 or 2. Furthermore, the member for South Shore—St. Margarets stated that parts 1 and 2 of Bill C-27 deal with privacy protection, which has nothing to do with the subject of part 3, the regulation of the new industry of artificial intelligence.

On November 23, the parliamentary secretary to the government House Leader pointed out that privacy protection is the common theme that links every part of Bill C-27. In his view, the bill’s three parts constitute a framework for protecting the privacy of Canadians from the risks posed by artificial intelligence systems. He argued that dividing the bill would prevent members from considering all the risks and impacts that new artificial intelligence technologies may create for the security of personal information. He also noted that privacy laws do not adequately protect the public from new artificial intelligence systems and that, as a result, Bill C-27 should be considered as a whole.

Standing Order 69.1 gives the Chair the authority to divide the questions, for the purposes of voting, on the motions for second or third reading of a bill. The objective here is not to divide the bill for consideration purposes, but to enable the House to decide questions that are not closely related separately.

The Chair has carefully reviewed the provisions of Bill C‑27 and taken into account members' statements on the issue of dividing it for voting purposes. The Chair agrees that the bill's three parts are connected by a broad theme, namely, the use and protection of personal information. While parts 1 and 2 of the bill are closely related, this is not true of part 3.

The Chair is of the view that, given the lack of cross-references between part 3 and the preceding parts of the bill, with the sole exception being one reference to the new consumer privacy protection act—which serves to propose a common definition of the term “personal information”—dividing the bill for voting at second reading is justified.

In his intervention, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader emphasized the common theme that links the three acts enacted by Bill C-27. In a decision on a similar matter, delivered on March 1, 2018, which can be found at pages 17550 to 17552 of the Debates, Speaker Regan said the following, at page 17551:

…the question the Chair must ask itself is whether the purpose of the standing order was to deal only with matters that were obviously unrelated or whether it was to provide members with the opportunity to pronounce themselves on specific initiatives when a bill contains a variety of different measures.

In the absence of a clear link between the three parts of Bill C-27, other than the theme of privacy protection, the Chair is willing to divide the question. Accordingly, two votes will take place at the second reading stage for Bill C-27. The first will be on parts 1 and 2, including the schedule to clause 2. The second will deal with part 3 of the bill. The Chair will remind members of this division before the voting begins.

If any part of this bill is negatived, the Chair will order the bill reprinted for reconsideration at committee.

I thank the hon. members for their attention.

Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, for the average citizen in the digital age, we have entered uncertain times. To almost everyone, at face value, the convenience of our time is remarkable. Access to any piece of information is available at our fingertips. Any item imaginable can seamlessly be ordered and delivered to our doors. Many government services can be processed online instead of in person. Canadians have taken these conveniences for granted for many years now.

The pandemic accelerated our ascent, or descent, depending on who you ask, into the digital age. The inability to leave our homes and the necessity to maintain some rhythm of everyday life played a significant part in that, but around the world, we saw governments taking advantage of the plight of their citizens. Public health was used as a catalyst for implementing methods of tracking and control, and social media platforms, which have been putting a friendly face on exploiting our likes, dislikes and movements for years, continue to develop and implement that technology with little input or say from their millions of users.

Canadians no longer can be sure that their personal information will not be outed, or doxed, to the public if doing so would achieve some certain political objective. We saw that unfold earlier this year with the users of the GiveSendGo platform.

The long-term ramifications of our relationship with the digital economy is something Canadians are beginning to understand. They are now alert to the fact that organizations, companies and government departments operating in Canada today do not face notable consequences for breaking our privacy laws. As lawmakers, it is our responsibility to ensure that Canadians’ privacy is protected and that this protection continues to evolve as threats to our information and anonymity as consumers unrelentingly expands both within and beyond our borders.

That brings me to the bill we are discussing today, Bill C-27. It is another attempt to introduce a digital charter after the previous iteration of the bill, Bill C-11, died on the Order Paper in the last Parliament. My colleagues and I believe that striking the right balance is at the core of the debate on this bill. On the one hand, it seeks to update privacy laws and regulations that have not been modernized since the year 2000 and implemented in 2005. It would be hard to describe the scale of expansion in the digital world over the last 22-year period in a mere 20-minute speech. It is therefore appropriate that a bill in any form, particularly one as long-awaited as Bill C-27, is considered by Parliament to fill the privacy gaps we see in Canada’s modern-day digital economy.

Parliament must also balance the need for modernization of privacy protection with the imperative that our small and medium-sized businesses remain competitive. Many of these businesses sustain themselves through the hard work of two or three employees, or perhaps even just a sole proprietor. We must be sensitive to their concerns, as Canada improves its image as a friendly destination for technology, data and innovation. This is especially true as our economic growth continues to recover from the damaging impact of pandemic lockdowns, crippling taxes that continue to rise and ever-increasing red tape.

That extra layer of red tape may very well be the catalyst for many small businesses to close their operations. No one in the House would like to see a further consolidation of Canadians’ purchasing power in big players such as Amazon and Walmart, which have the infrastructure already in place for these new privacy requirements.

In a digital age, Canadians expect businesses to operate online and invest a certain amount of trust in the receiving end of a transaction to protect their personal information. They expect that it will be used only in ways that are necessary for a transaction to be completed, and nothing more.

In exchange for convenience and expediency, consumers have been willing to compromise their anonymity to a degree, but they expect their government and businesses to match this free flow of information with appropriate safeguards. This is why Bill C-27, and every other bill similar to it, must be carefully scrutinized.

As many of my colleagues have already indicated, this is a large and complex bill, and we believe that its individual components are too important for them to be considered as one part of an omnibus bill.

There are three—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague. I sat with her on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics for a few months.

We had concerns about privacy. Several recommendations were made, and that is why Bill C‑11 became Bill C‑27. I acknowledge that the bill has been improved. That being said, I wonder about two things.

First, in 2022, I do not think it is right that banking institutions are taking the lead on showing us how important it is to protect privacy. Second, this bill is important, but I would like to know if we should refer it to a committee to study it properly because it is really two bills in one. The first is on artificial intelligence, and the second is on privacy protection. What does the member think?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for York Centre.

I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the digital charter implementation act, 2022, in particular the aspect on the consumer privacy protection act. If I have time, I will also discuss the artificial intelligence and data act.

I am very proud to speak to these two pieces of legislation that introduce a regime that seeks to not only support the technological transformation, but also help Canadians safely navigate this new digital world with confidence. These past few years, Canadians have witnessed these technological shifts take place. They have taken advantage of new technologies like never before. In 2021, more than 72.5% of Canadians used e-commerce services, a trend that is expected to grow to 77.6% by 2025.

According to TECHNATION, a 10% increase in digitalization can create close to a 1% drop in the unemployment rate. What is more, every 1% increase in digitalization can add $8.7 billion to Canada's GDP. In order to take advantage of those major benefits for our economy, we must ensure that consumers continue to have confidence in the digital marketplace.

Technology is clearly an intrinsic part of our lives, and Canadians have growing expectations regarding the digital economy. It is absolutely essential that the Government of Canada be able to meet those expectations.

With this bill, the government is putting forward a regime that gives Canadians the protection they deserve. First, as stated in the preamble of the digital charter implementation act, 2022, Canada recognizes the importance of protecting Canadians' privacy rights. Similarly, the 2022 consumer privacy protection act also provides important protections for Canadians.

That said, our government has listened to the input of various stakeholders, and we have made changes to improve this bill. I was on the committee in the last Parliament, and there was a lot of discussion about the previous bill, Bill C‑11. I am very pleased to be able to speak to Bill C-27, so that we can get all that work done in this Parliament.

One of the most important changes we have made is enhancing protection for minors. Some stakeholders felt that the previous legislation did not go far enough to protect children's privacy. I agree. Consequently, the bill was amended to define minors' information as sensitive by default. This means that organizations subject to the law will have to adhere to higher standards of protection for that information. The legislation also provides minors with a more direct route to delete their personal information. This will make it easier for them to manage their online reputation. I think this is a really important change, because we know that young people are very aware and very capable of using all types of digital platforms, but at the same time, we need to make sure that they are able to protect their reputation.

In addition to protections for minors, we also made changes to the concept of de-identification of personal information. According to many stakeholders, the definitions in the old bill were confusing. We recognize that having well-defined terms helps ensure compliance with the act and provides more effective protection of consumers' information. In that regard, I understand that, because we are talking about new technologies and an evolving industry, it is important for all members to share their expertise, since that will help us develop a better piece of legislation.

The difference, then, between anonymous information and de-identified information needs to be clarified because, clearly, if information is de-identified but an organization or company is able to reidentify it, that does not serve the purpose of having anonymous information.

Data-based innovation offers many benefits for Canadians. These changes contribute to appropriate safeguards to prevent unauthorized reidentification of this information, while offering greater flexibility in the use of de-identified information.

The new law also maintains the emphasis on controlling the use of their personal information by individuals. That remains a foundation of the law, namely that individuals must be able to fully understand the purpose for which information will be used and consent to that purpose in the most important circumstances.

However, the modern economy must also have flexible tools to accommodate situations that are beneficial but that may not require consent if the organization respects certain limits and takes steps to protect individuals.

The approach advocated here continues to be based on the concept of individual control, but proposes a new exception to consent to resolve these gaps as a tool for safeguarding privacy. The new provisions propose a general exception to cover situations in which organizations could use personal information without obtaining consent, provided that they can justify their legitimate interest in its use for circumstances in which the individual expects the information to be used.

In addition, to prevent abuse, the exception is subject to a requirement that the organization mitigate the risk. For example, digital mapping applications that take photos of every street and that we use to view them, particularly to help with navigation, are widely accepted as being beneficial. However, obtaining individual consent from every resident of the city is impossible.

I believe that everyone in the House will agree that it is hard to imagine how we managed before we had access to those navigation applications. Last evening, I had a visit with a family member in Ottawa and was very happy to have my mapping application to find my destination.

The presence of an exception, combined with a mitigation requirement, therefore allows individuals to take advantage of a beneficial service while safeguarding personal information. The example shows another key aspect for building trust and transparency. Digital mapping technology presents a certain level of transparency. The vehicles equipped with cameras can be seen on our streets and the results can also be seen posted and available online.

However, there are some technologies or aspects thereof that are more difficult to see and understand. That is why the bill continues granting individuals the right to ask organizations for an explanation regarding any prediction, recommendation or decision made in their regard by an automated decision-making system.

What is more, these explanations must be provided in plain language that the individual can understand. These provisions also support the proposed new artificial intelligence act. However, I do not think that I have time to get into that, so I will end there.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I applaud the minister for bringing the issue forward to Parliament. Again, I want to exercise some caution that the first two pieces of the legislation are much easier to deal with, because at least there was some discussion on those with Bill C-11. It is a bit different in this one, and the tribunal is an issue, but I am open to looking at it. I just have concerns about that. However, the artificial intelligence part of it is critical. I am glad it is in front of us, but it is going to require much more extensive debate and care, and that is why it should be entirely separate.

We in the NDP have proposed a fairly reasonable compromise, and the Speaker will rule on it. The proposed compromise is that there would be a separate vote for that particular part of the bill. The reason is that perhaps the first two parts could lead to a decision that might be different from the decision on the last part, just to ensure that we get enough testimony and time in committee for it.

I am looking forward to all perspectives in the House on this. It is time for us to look at that. It is a reasonable position, and I am glad it is in front of us. I do not like the way it is in front of us, but we will deal with that.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to start this week by speaking to Bill C-27. It is quite an extensive bill at over 140 pages in length. It would amend several acts and the most consequential are three of them in particular, as it is an act to enact the consumer privacy protection act, the personal information and data protection tribunal act and the artificial intelligence and data act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

I should start by saying that this is really three pieces of legislation that have been bundled up into one. As New Democrats, we have called for different voting for the third and final part of this act.

The first two parts of the act, concerning the consumer privacy protection act and the personal information and data protection tribunal act, do have enough common themes running through them to be put together into one piece of legislation. I still think, for these issues, that they would have been better as two separate pieces of legislation because one of them is brand new and the first one, the consumer privacy protection act, is the former Bill C-11, which was highly controversial in the previous Parliament.

When we had an unnecessary election called by the Prime Minister, that bill died, along with all of the work from Parliament, which was not concluded, despite extensive lobbying and consultation going, particularly, through the ethics committee at that time. This has now been bundled with some other legislation to go through the industry committee, which is fine.

The personal information and data protection tribunal act is a new component of this legislation. I have some concerns about that element of it, but it does have a common theme, which is worthwhile, and at least it has the potential to be put together and bundled. Although, again, it is extensive, it is a bundling that we can accept.

We have called for a Speaker's ruling with regard to the artificial intelligence and data act, as this is brand new legislation as well, but it does not have the same connections as the previous two pieces, which are bundled together, in the way that one could argue for them. We want a separate vote on the second part of this because the legislation would be studied at committee together.

There will be a high degree of interest in this legislation, since Bill C-11 had that in the past. The new bill changes position from Bill C-11 significantly, and I expect that this in itself will garner a lot of chatter, as well as review and interest, from a number of organizations, many of whom we have already heard from as of now.

The other part, with the tribunal, would be another important aspect, because it is a divergence from our traditional way of enforcement and creates another bureaucratic arm. Again, I would like to see more on this, and I am open to considering the idea, but it is certainly different from our traditional private right of law for dispute settlements about data breaches and other types of corporate malfeasance, that actually have to deal with the types of laws that are necessary to bring compliance among people.

This goes to the heart of, really, where a political party resides in their expectations of companies and their use of data, information and algorithms. For New Democrats, we fall very much in line with something I have tabled before, several years ago, which is a digital bill of rights, so that one's personal rights online are consistent with that of our physical rights, where one is expected to be properly treated in a physical world and in the digital format world. That includes one's right to privacy, right to the expectation of proper behaviour conducted toward oneself and right to not be abused. It also includes significant penalties to those who do those abuses, especially when we are looking at the corporate world.

Where this legislation really becomes highly complicated is the emergence of artificial intelligence, which has taken place over the last decade and will be significantly ramped up in the years to come. That is why the European Union and others have advanced on this, as well as the United States.

Our concern is that this bill tries to split both worlds. We all know that the industries of Google and other web giants have conducted significant lobbying efforts over the last number of years. In fact, they have tripled their efforts since this administration has come into place and have had a direct line of correspondence about their lobbying, which is fine to some degree, but the expectation among people that it would be balanced does not seem to be being met.

I want to bring into the discussion the impact on people before I get into the technical aspects of the bill, as well as the data breaches that remind us of the need for protection among our citizens and other companies as well. One of the things that is often forgotten is other SMEs, and others can be compromised quite significantly from this, so protecting people individually is just as important for our economy, especially when we have the emergence of new industries. If they are behaviours that are hampered, manipulated or streamed, they can become significant issues.

I want to remind people that some of the data breaches we have had with Yahoo, Marriott, the Desjardins group and Facebook, among others, have demonstrated significant differences in the regulatory system between Canada and the United States and how they treat their victims. A good example is a settlement in the U.S. from 2009 with the Equifax data breach, where Equifax agreed to pay $700 million to settle lawsuits over the breach in agreement with the U.S. authorities, and that included $425 million in monetary relief to consumers. We have not had the same type of treatment here in Canada.

This is similar to the work I have done in the past with the auto industry and the fact that our Competition Bureau and our reimbursement systems are not up to date. We have been treated basically as a colony by many of the industries when it comes to consumer and retail accountability.

We can look at the example of Toyota and the data software issue, where the car pedal was blamed for the cars going out of control. It turned out this was not the case. It was actually a data issue. In the U.S., this resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into safety procedures. We received zero for that. Also, consumers received better treatment, where their vehicles were towed back to different dealerships to be fixed. In Canada, consumers did not receive any of that.

The same could be said with Volkswagen, another situation that took place with emissions. Not only did we not receive compensation similar to that of the United States, we actually imported a lot of the used Volkswagen vehicles from Europe. However, that was of our own accord and time frame when those vehicles were being sunsetted in those countries because of emissions.

In the case of Facebook, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission was able to impose a $5-billion fine for the company's violation, while the Privacy Commissioner's office was forced to take the company to federal court here in Canada. One of the things I would like to point out is that our Privacy Commissioner has stood up for the needs of Canadians, and one of the concerns with this bill would be the erosion of the Privacy Commissioner's capabilities in dealing with these bills and legislation.

The Privacy Commissioner has made some significant points on how to amend the bill and actually balance it, but they have not all been taken into account. One of the strong points we will be looking to is to see whether there are necessary amendments from our Privacy Commissioner on this.

One of the big distinctions between Canada and the United States, which is to our benefit and to Canada's credit, is the office of the Privacy Commissioner. Where we do not have some of the teeth necessary for dealing with these companies, we do have the independent Privacy Commissioner, who is able to investigate and follow through at least with bringing things to a formal process in the legal system. It is very laborious and difficult, but at the same time, it is independent, which is one of the strengths of the system we have.

If the government proceeds, we will see the bill go to committee, which we are agreeing to do. However, we do want to see separate voting. Before I get into more of the bill, I will explain that we want to see separate voting because we really distinguish that this is inappropriate. The artificial intelligence act is the first time we have even dealt with this topic in the House of Commons, and it should be done differently.

We will be looking for amendments for this, and big corporate data privacy breaches are becoming quite an issue. Some of these privacy breaches get highly complicated to deal with. There have been cases with cybersecurity and even extortion. The University of Calgary is one that was well noted, and there have been others.

We need some of these things brought together. The bill does include some important fixes that we have been calling for, such as stronger enforcement of privacy rights, tough new fines, transparency in corporate decisions made by algorithms.

I have pointed out a lot of the concerns that we have about the bill going forward because of its serious nature. However, we are glad this is happening, albeit with the caveat that we feel the bill should be separate legislation. The minister does deserve credit for bringing the bill forward for debate in the House of Commons.

Bill C-11 should have been passed in the last Parliament, but here we are again dealing with it. The new tribunal is the concern that we have. It could actually weaken existing content rules, and we will study and look at the new tribunal.

The tribunal itself is going to be interesting because it would be an appointment process. There is always a concern when we have a government appointment process. There is a concern that there could be complications setting up the tribunal, such as who gets to go there, what their background is, what their profession is and whether there will be enough support.

One of the things that gives me trouble is that the CRTC, for example, takes so long to make a decision. It is so laborious to go through and it has not always acted, most recently, in the best interest of Canadians when it comes to consumer protection and individual rights. It gives me concern that having another tribunal to act as a referee instead of the court system could delay things.

Some testimony has been provided already, some analysis, that suggests the tribunal might end up with lawsuits anyway, so we could potentially be back to square one after that. The time duration, funding, the ability to investigate and all these different things are very good issues to look at to find out whether we will have the proper supports for a new measure being brought in.

Another government resource for this is key. At the end of the day, if it is a tribunal system that is not supportive of protecting Canadians' privacy and rights, then we will weaken the entire legislation. That is a big concern because that would be outside Parliament. The way that some of the amendments are written, it could be coming through more regulatory means and less parliamentary oversight.

Who is going to be on the tribunal? How will it be consistent? How will it be regulated? I would point to the minister providing the CRTC with a mandate letter, which is supposed to emphasize the public policy direction it should be going. In my assessment, the CRTC, over the last number of years, has not taken the consumer protection steps that New Democrats would like to see.

When it comes to modernizing this law, we do know that this will be important to address because there are issues regarding the data ownership, which is really at the heart of some of the challenges we face. There is algorithmic abuse and also areas related to compensation, enforcement, data ownership and control, and a number of things that are necessary to ensure the protection of people.

We can look at an area where I have done a fair amount of work related to my riding, which is automobile production. There has been the production of the car and the value there, but there will also be the data collection. The use of that data collection can actually influence not only one's individual behaviour, but also that of society. That is a significant economic resource for some of these companies.

It is one of the reasons I have tabled an update to my bill on the right to repair. The right to repair is a person's ability to have their vehicle fixed at an auto shop of their choice in the aftermarket. The OEMs, the original manufacturers, have at times resisted this. There have been examples. Tesla, for example, is not even part of what is called the voluntary agreement, but we still do not have an update with regard to the use of data and how one actually goes about the process of fixing the vehicle.

It also creates issues related to ownership of the vehicle, as well as insurance and liability. These could become highly complicated issues related to the use of data and the rules around it. If these types of things are not clear with regard to the process of rights for people, expectations by those who are using the data, and protection for people, then it could create a real, significant issue, not only for individuals but for our economy.

Therefore, dealing with this issue in the bill is paramount. A lot of this has come about by looking at what the GDPR, the general data protection regulation, did in European law. Europe was one of the first jurisdictions to bring forth this type of an issue, and it has provided an adequate level of protection, which is one of the things Europe stands by with regard to protection of privacy. There have been some on the side over here in North America who have pushed back against the GDPR, and even though this landmark legislation has created a path forward, there still is a need for transparency and to understand what the monetary penalties for abuse are going to be, which are also very important in terms of what we expect in the legislation.

Erosion of content rights is one of the things we are worried about in this bill. Under Bill C-27 individuals would have significantly diminished control over the collection, use and disclosure of their personal data, even less than in Bill C-11. The new consent provisions ask the public to install an exemplary amount of trust to businesses to keep them accountable, as the bill's exceptions to content allow organizations to conduct many types of activities without any knowledge of the individuals. The flexibility under Bill C-27 allows organizations to state the scope not only of legitimate interests but also of what is reasonable, necessary and socially beneficial, thus modelling their practices in a way that maximizes the value derived from the personal information.

What we have there is that the actors are setting some of the rules. That is one of the clearer things that we need through the discussion that would take place at committee, but also from the testimony that we will hear, because if we are letting those who use and manage the data make the decision about what consent is and how it is used, then it is going to create a system that could really lead to abuse.

There is also the issue or danger of de-identification. Witnesses, artificial intelligence and people being able to scrub much of their data when they want and how they want is one of the things we are concerned about. There is not enough acknowledgement of the risk that is available in this. That includes for young people. We believe this bill is a bit lopsided towards the business sector at the moment, and we want to propose amendments that would lead to better protection of individual rights and ensure informed consent as to what people want to do with their data and how they want it to be exercised as a benefit to them and their family, versus people being accidentally or wilfully brought into exposure they have not consented to.

As I wrap up, I just want to say that we have a number of different issues with this bill. Again, we believe there should be a separate vote for the second part of this bill, being the third piece of it. It is very ambitious legislation. It is as large as the budget bill. That should say enough with regard to the type of content we have. I thank the members who have debated this bill already. It is going to be interesting to get all perspectives. I look forward to the work that comes at committee. It will be one that requires extensive consultation with Canadians.

Division of Bill C-27 for the Purpose of Voting

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a point of order regarding government Bill C-27, an act to enact the consumer privacy protection act, the personal information and data protection tribunal act and the artificial intelligence and data act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

Standing Order 69.1 states the following:

(1) In the case where a government bill seeks to repeal, amend or enact more than one act, and where there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked, the Speaker shall have the power to divide the questions, for the purposes of voting, on the motion for second reading and reference to a committee and the motion for third reading and passage of the bill. The Speaker shall have the power to combine clauses of the bill thematically and to put the aforementioned questions on each of these groups of clauses separately, provided that there will be a single debate at each stage.

You will find that, in the case of Bill C-27, the bill enacts three new laws and amends several other existing laws.

Bill C-27 enacts the consumer privacy protection act and the personal information and data protection tribunal act.

These two acts were at the core of the former Bill C-11 in the 43rd Parliament, a bill that was introduced in November 2020 and died on the Order Paper a year later, without ever having been voted on at second reading.

Here is the purpose of part 1 of Bill C-27, as described in the text of the bill:

The purpose of this Act is to establish — in an era in which data is constantly flowing across borders and geographical boundaries and significant economic activity relies on the analysis, circulation and exchange of personal information — rules to govern the protection of personal information in a manner that recognizes the right of privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information and the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances.

Part 2 of the bill sets up the personal information and data protection tribunal, which would have jurisdiction with respect to appeals made under different sections of the consumer privacy protection act. The link between part 1 and part 2 of Bill C-27 is clear, and I am not putting it into question in this appeal at all.

Where we have an issue, however, is with the third part of the bill.

Bill C‑27 also enacts the artificial intelligence and data act, which was not part of Bill C‑11, the previous version of this bill.

The purpose of part 3 of Bill C‑27, which enacts the artificial intelligence and data act, is as follows:

The purposes of this Act are:

(a) to regulate international and interprovincial trade and commerce in artificial intelligence systems by establishing common requirements, applicable across Canada, for the design, development and use of those systems; and

(b) to prohibit certain conduct in relation to artificial intelligence systems that may result in serious harm to individuals or harm to their interests.

During his second reading speech on Bill C‑27, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry said that the new artificial intelligence act would “set a foundation for regulating the design, development, deployment and operations of AI systems”.

The development of artificial intelligence systems in the past decade has led to profound changes in the way we do things. Regulating AI systems is something we believe must be done. However, it seems odd to add these regulations to a bill that has to do with privacy protection and with the analysis, circulation and exchange of personal information. Artificial intelligence is its own beast in a way, and it should be studied and treated separately.

In a ruling by Speaker Regan on March 1, 2018, he said the following.

The principle or principles contained in a bill must not be confused with the field it concerns. To frame the concept of principle in that way would prevent the division of most bills, because they each apply to a specific field.

The House leader of the Bloc Québécois and member for La Prairie will remember this, since it is from page 400 of Parliamentary Procedure in Québec.

The Speaker continued as follows:

While their procedure for dividing bills is quite different from ours, the idea of distinguishing the principles of a bill from its field has stayed with me. While each bill is different and so too each case, I believe that Standing Order 69.1 can indeed be applied to a bill where all of the initiatives relate to a specific policy area, if those initiatives are sufficiently distinct to warrant a separate decision of the House.

We find ourselves in a similar situation here. While some of the measures in Bill C-27 relate to digital technology, part 1 and part 2 have nothing in common with part 3.

Therefore, it would certainly be appropriate to divide this bill for the vote. The Speaker has that authority, and that would make it possible for members to thoroughly study this legislative measure and better represent their constituents by voting separately on these bills, which are quite different from one another.

Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by giving a shout out to my constituents in Trois-Rivières, whom I will be visiting all next week in my riding.

When I talk to people on the street, privacy is a topic that comes up a lot. They know that I sit on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, and privacy comes up often. People tell me that it is important, that we must do our best to rise to the challenge. Today, we have the opportunity to debate that very subject.

Society is a human construct. It is a reflection of how we organize our lives together. It reflects our vision of the world, the role of a citizen, the role of the state. In a democratic society where elected officials are chosen by the people to represent them, our laws must reflect our desires and the desires of our fellow citizens, as well as the way in which their visions can be realized. In other words, a society and its laws are eminently cultural constructs.

When we compare the legislation passed in the House of Commons with that of the Quebec National Assembly, the difference is striking. Ottawa tends to emphasize the enforcement mechanism, whereas in Quebec, the emphasis is on the legislator's intent. Ottawa wants to arbitrate, while Quebec wants to prescribe and guide.

When it comes to privacy, this is especially true in the digital age: the difference is dramatic.

At one end of the spectrum, so to speak, is the United States. In the United States, laws are primarily intended to arbitrate disputes rather than to shape how the digital economy operates. Laws are based on the good faith of the players and on voluntary codes. As one might imagine, this has its limits. Ultimately, if someone is wronged, they can get redress through the common law.

At the other end of the spectrum is the European Union. The legislation there prescribes clear obligations. I am referring to the General Data Protection Regulation, better known by the acronym GDPR.

In between is Canada, a hybrid creature whose intentions on privacy oscillate between the European and American extremes. This may seem like an academic debate, but there are practical implications that bring us to Bill C-27.

When it comes to privacy, European law is the most prescriptive in the world. It is based on a clear principle, namely that our personal information belongs to us and us alone, and no one can use it or benefit from it without our free, informed and explicit consent.

Once the government set out that principle or objective, it then provided a mechanism for achieving it. That mechanism is the GDPR. The GDPR is becoming the standard to follow when it comes to privacy, because it is the legal standard with the clearest objectives and the most binding application. Simply put, the GDPR does a good job of protecting privacy. That is one reason why it is the standard we should be emulating; the other is that the EU is projecting its standard-making power beyond its borders.

In order to protect the personal information of European citizens, the European Union will soon prohibit European businesses from sharing this information with foreign businesses that do not offer comparable protection. This does not affect us yet, but next year, the EU will be reviewing Canada's laws to see if they offer sufficient protection.

The existing legislation on personal electronic information protection dates back to 2000. That was 22 years ago. We were in the dinosaur era, the pre-digital era, an era we barely remember now. Also, it is far from clear whether Canada passes the comparable protection test required under the GDPR.

Information exchanges between Canadian businesses and their European partners could become more complicated. This is particularly true in areas that deal with more sensitive information, such as the financial sector. It is therefore absolutely necessary to redraft the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which is completely outdated. It has not kept pace with technological change and the data economy, where we are both the consumer and the product. It has not kept pace with the legal environment, where Canada is a dinosaur compared to Europe, as I was just saying.

Nevertheless, my colleagues will have figured out that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of Bill C‑27. Nevertheless, I would like to make a general comment about Bill C‑27. For some reason, the government has put into one bill two laws with completely different objectives. The bill would enact the consumer privacy protection act and also the artificial intelligence and data act. Although there is a logical link between these two acts, they could be stand-alone bills. Their objectives are different, their logic is different and they could be studied separately.

I have a suggestion for the government. It should split Bill C‑27 into two bills. We could create what I would call the traditional Bill C‑27, which would deal with personal information and the tribunal. Then, what I would call Bill C‑27 B would address artificial intelligence. As I was saying, there are logical reasons for that, but there are also practical reasons. Let me be frank and say that the artificial intelligence act being proposed is more of a draft than a law. The government has a clear idea about the mechanism for applying it, but, clearly, it has not yet wrapped its head around the objectives to be achieved and the requirements to be codified.

The mechanism is there, the bureaucratic framework is there, but the requirements to be complied with are not. Apart from a few generalities, the law relies essentially on self-regulation and the good faith of the industry. I have often faced these situations, and I can say that the industry's good faith is not the first thing I would count on.

Apart from a few generalities, this relies on good faith, but that is not a good way to protect rights. I am not convinced that this bill should be passed as written; I think it needs to be amended. Bill C‑27 probably deserves the same fate that Bill C‑11, its predecessor, encountered in the last Parliament. The government introduced it, debate got under way, criticism was fierce, and the government let it die on the Order Paper so it could keep working on it and come back with a better version. I think that is exactly what should happen to the artificial intelligence act.

The government has launched a healthy discussion, but this is not a finished product. If we decide that the government needs to keep working on it and come back with a new version, we will also be delaying the modernization of privacy and personal information legislation. Given the European legislation, which I talked about earlier, that is not what the government wants to do. That is why I would cordially advise the government to split Bill C‑27.

I am going to focus primarily on personal information protection because that is the part of Bill C‑27 that is ready to go and has the most practical applications. As I said before, Bill C‑27 is an improved version of Bill C‑11, which was introduced in the fall of 2020.

However, Bill C-27 still does not establish privacy as a fundamental right. Bill C-11 was strong on mechanics, but weak on protection. The principles were also weak and consent was unclear. It was tough on large corporations and much less so on small businesses. When it comes to privacy, however, it is the sensitivity of the data that should dictate the level of protection, not the size of the company.

A new start-up that develops an app that aggregates all of our banking data, for example, may have only two employees, but it still possesses and handles extraordinarily sensitive information that must be protected as much as possible. I cannot help but think of the ArriveCAN app, which was developed by just a few people but has a large impact on the data that is stored.

Finally, Bill C-11 did not provide for any harmonization with provincial legislation, such as Quebec's privacy legislation. The Bloc Québécois was quite insistent on that. A Quebec company subject to Quebec law would also have been subject to federal law as soon as the data left Quebec. It would have been subject to two laws that do not say the same thing and have two different rationales. This would mean duplication and uncertainty. It was quite a mess. Passing Bill C-11 would have diminished, in Quebec at least, the legal clarity that is needed to ensure that personal information is protected.

Here is what Daniel Therrien, the then privacy commissioner, told the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, of which I am honoured to be a member. He said, and I quote, “I believe that C-11 represents a step back overall from our current law and needs significant changes if confidence in the digital economy is to be restored.”

He proposed a series of amendments that would make major changes to the bill. I want to commend the government here. It listened to the criticism. It is rare for this government to listen, but it did so in this case. It buried Bill C-11. We never debated it again in the House and it died on the Order Paper. It reappeared only after being improved.

Bill C-27 shows more respect for the various jurisdictions and avoids the legal mess I was talking about earlier.

Our personal information is private and it belongs to us. However, property and civil rights fall exclusively under provincial jurisdiction under subsection 92(13) of the Constitution of 1867.

What is more, privacy basically falls under provincial jurisdiction. That is particularly important in the case of Quebec, where our civil law tradition leads us to pass laws that are much more prescriptive.

Last spring, Quebec's National Assembly passed Bill 25, an in-depth reform of Quebec's privacy legislation. Our law, largely inspired by European laws, given that we share a legal tradition, is the most advanced in North America. As we speak, it is clear that Quebec has exceeded the European requirements and that our companies are protected from any hiccups in data circulation.

Our principles are clear: Our personal information belongs to us. It does not belong to the party who collected it or the party who stores it. The implication is clear. No one can dispose of, use, disclose or resell our personal information without our free, informed and express consent. Bill C-11 challenged this legal clarity but Bill C-27, at the very least, corrects that.

Under clause 122(2) of Bill C‑27, the government may, by order, “if satisfied that legislation of a province that is substantially similar to this Act applies to an organization, a class of organizations, an activity or a class of activities, exempt the organization, activity or class from the application of this Act in respect of the collection, use or disclosure of personal information that occurs within that province;”.

In other words, if Quebec's legislation is superior, then Quebec's legislation will apply in Quebec.

When I met with the minister's office earlier this week, I asked for some clarification just in case. Will a Quebec business be fully exempt from Bill C‑27, even if the information leaves Quebec? The answer is yes. Will it be exempt for all of its activities? The answer is yes.

There is still some grey area, though. I am thinking about businesses outside Quebec that collect personal information in Quebec. In Europe, it is clear. It is the citizen's place of residence that determines the applicable legislation. The same is true under Quebec's legislation.

It is not as clear in Bill C‑27. Since the bill relies on the general regulation powers for trade and commerce as granted by the Constitution, it focuses more on overseeing the industry than on protecting citizens. That is the sort of thing we will have to examine and fix in committee. I look forward to Bill C‑27 being studied in committee so we can debate the substance of the bill.

I have to say that I sense the openness and good faith of the government. In that regard, I would like to tell the member for Kingston and the Islands to take note that, for once, I feel he is working in good faith.

Bill C‑27 will have a much greater impact outside Quebec than within it, because it is better drafted than Bill C-11. That is not the only aspect that was improved. The fundamental principles of the bill are clearer. Consent is more clearly stated. The more sensitive data must be handled in a more rigorous manner, no matter the size of the entity holding them. That is also more clear.

If the principles are clear, the act will better stand the test of time and adjust to the evolving technologies without becoming meaningless.

We will support it at second reading after a serious debate, but without unnecessary delays. However, we believe and insist that the real work must be done in committee. Bill C-27 is complex. Good principles do not necessarily make good laws. Before we can judge whether Bill C-27 is indeed a good law, we will need to hear from witnesses from all walks of life.

When it comes to privacy, it only takes one tiny flaw to bring down the whole structure. This requires attention to detail and surgical precision. The stakes are high and involve the most intimate part of our lives: our privacy.

For a long time, all we had to do to maintain our privacy was buy curtains. That is how it used to be. It kept us safe from swindlers. Then organizations started collecting data for their records. Bankers collected financial information, the government collected tax information and doctors collected medical records. This sensitive information had to be protected, but it was fairly simple, since it was written on paper.

Today, we live in a different world. Whereas personal information used to be a prerequisite for another activity, such as caring for a patient or getting a loan from a bank, it has become the core business of many companies. Information has become the core business of many companies, which are also large companies.

Computerization enables the storage and processing of astronomical volumes of data, also known as big data. Networking that data on the Internet increases the amount of available data exponentially and circulates it around the globe constantly, sometimes in perpetuity, unfortunately.

For many corporations, including web giants, personal data is crucial to the business model. Citizen-consumers are now the product they are marketing. To quote Daniel Therrien once again, we are now in the era of surveillance capitalism. Speaking of which, The Great Hack on Netflix is worth seeing. This is troubling.

Furthermore, for our youngest citizens, the virtual world and the real world have merged. Their lives are an open book on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. They think they are communicating with the people who matter to them, but they are in fact feeding the databases that transform them into a marketable, marketed product. We absolutely have to protect them. We need to give them back control over their personal information, which is why it is so important to amend and modernize our laws.

I would like to close my speech with an appeal to the government. Bill C‑27 does a lot, but there are also many things it does not do, or does not do properly. Consent is all well and good, but what happens when our data is compromised, when it has been stolen, when it is in the hands of criminals? These people operate outside the law and therefore are not governed by the law. All the consent-related protocols we can think of go out the window. To avoid fraud and identity theft, we will have to clarify the measures to be taken to ensure that anyone requesting a transaction is who they say they are. This really is a new dynamic. In that respect, we are somewhat in the dark, even though, curiously, this is a growing problem.

There is another gap to fill. Bill C‑27 provides a framework for the handling of personal information in the private sector, but not in the public sector. The government is still governed by the same old legislation, which dates back to the pre-digital era. The legislation is outdated, as we saw with the fraud related to the Canada emergency response benefit. The controls are also outdated. I therefore call on the government to get to work and to do so quickly. We will collaborate.

Finally, there is another thing the government needs to work on and fast. We addressed this issue in committee when we were looking at the geolocation of data. Bill C‑27 indicates what we need to do with personal data, nominative data. However, with artificial intelligence and cross-tabulation of data, it is possible to recreate an individual based on anonymous information. As no personal information was collected at the outset, Bill C‑27 is ineffective in these cases. However, we started by recreating the profile of a person with all their personal information. It is not science fiction. It is already happening. Nevertheless, this is missing from Bill C‑27, both in the part on information and the part on artificial intelligence.

I am not bringing this up as a way of opposing Bill C‑27. As I said, we will support it. However, we have to be aware of the fact that it is incomplete. As legislators, we still have some work to do. The time has come to treat privacy as a fundamental right.

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

Mr. Speaker, once again, I am disappointed. I guess the Liberals and NDP do not really care about privacy rights for children, which we are talking about today. This is fundamental to the bill.

The minister did a lot of hard work putting this bill together and there have been a lot of consultations. This is the second iteration. Bill C-11 died only because there was an election called. Now we have Bill C-27, which is very serious. It talks about the rights of our children and Canadians that have been trampled on. I gave a lot of different examples where we just have not gotten it right in protecting children.

I am surprised that the NDP also does not seem to think that privacy is a fundamental right and something that we should protect. The Conservatives will certainly protect it. We are the only ones speaking about it today.

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

Mr. Speaker, 34 years ago, the Supreme Court said that “privacy is at the heart of liberty in a modern state”. In the words of Justice Gérard La Forest of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988, it is worthy of an individual and “it is worthy of constitutional protection”. All Canadians are worthy of having their privacy respected.

It is our duty as parliamentarians to do our best to protect Canadians' privacy rights, especially as we struggle so much for it today.

Bill C-27, formerly Bill C-11, is designed to update Canada’s federal private sector privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act, or PIPEDA, to create a new tribunal and to propose new rules for artificial intelligence systems. It is a reworking of Bill C-11, and it has three components: the consumer privacy protection act; the personal information and data protection tribunal act, creating a new tribunal; and the artificial intelligence and data act.

The bill applies to Canadians' private rights. It does not apply to CSIS, RCMP or CSE. That and other government-held data is governed by the Privacy Act. Privacy laws for Canadians have not been updated in 22 years, and Europe updated the General Data Protection Regulation in 2016.

When we last updated this act, 22 years ago, the member for South Shore—St. Margarets was turning 21 years old, and society was going through big changes. The world had just gotten past the Y2K scare. We were looking at what was going to happen to computers when the clock changed from 1999 to 2000. In certain areas, we did not know if the power would go out or what would happen.

People listened to music on CD Walkmans. Apple was over a year away from launching a cutting-edge new technology called the iPod. Less than 30% of Canadians actually owned a cellphone. The most popular cellphones were the Motorola Razr, which was a flip phone, and the Nokia brick phone, with texting that used the number pad and almost no web browsing capabilities. The most sophisticated app was called Snake. A fledgling Canadian telecommunications company was just starting, and it was called BlackBerry.

That is how long it has been since we updated our laws. Today, 22 years later, data collection is getting more sophisticated, and surveillance is more of the norm than the exception.

Apple Watch announced a few weeks ago that it can track and tell when a woman is ovulating. What is concerning, and we are going to talk a lot about data for good and data for wrong, is that this technology can tell if a woman skips a cycle, and then can identify if there has been a miscarriage or an abortion. This is very concerning.

Our Fitbits, our web history and our Apple phones can tell us how many steps we did in a day. Sometimes when we are in Parliament it is about 10, and if we are door knocking it is about 25,000. That does not sound important, but that information is also letting those regulators know where we have been, where we are going and where we live.

Facial recognition technology can identify a face like a fingerprint. Sometimes that is good. We have heard from law enforcement that it can be used for human trafficking. Sometimes that is wrong, when people are identified in a street and when people are identified with their names, their data and where they have been. Let us think of Minority Report, where everywhere someone goes, they are identified. It did not matter where they where going or where they had been. That is something that could happen with facial recognition technology.

Google and Amazon listen and collect our data in our bathrooms, living rooms, kitchens and cars. How many times have we been in conversations and Siri asks, “What was that?” Siri is always listening. Amazon is always listening. Speaking of cars, they are cellphones on wheels. When we connect to a rental car, and a lot of us rent cars, we see five or six other phones in the history. That car has downloaded all the data from our phone into that car. A lot of times, if we see that in the rental car, that car holds our information. It is very concerning.

There are many examples where it has hurt Canadians in the last several years. Two summers ago, Tim Hortons had a data breach, where every time someone rolled up the rim, it told Tim Hortons where they went afterwards, if they went home or where they were staying. It collected all that data, and it was a big problem.

In the ethics committee, we studied facial recognition technology. There was a company called Clearview AI, which took two billion images off the Internet, including a lot of ours, and just gave them to the police. There was no consent. The information just went and ended up in the hands of law enforcement.

There is Telus's “data for good”. During the pandemic, Telus collected our data. It knew where we went and if we went to the grocery store or the pharmacy, or if we stayed home. It just gave that to the government. It was called “data for good”. They called it de-identification. I am going to talk about how that hurt everyone later.

Lastly is doxing or using personal information to try to out people. GiveSendGo is a big one. It gave a U.S. company the information of people who donated to different causes or events. At one point, Google identified all those donors on a website showing exactly where they lived. Everyone's information, when they donated to a company, was identified and outed. That was terrible.

Surveillance has not just resulted in a wholesale destruction of privacy but a mental health crisis in children and youth as well. I am glad to hear the minister speak about children and youth because data has certainly affected them and continues to.

Canada’s federal government has repeatedly failed to take privacy seriously and construct a legal framework that protects the rights of Canadians in the digital age. This bill normalizes surveillance and treats privacy not as a fundamental human right and not even as a right to consumer protection. To make this point very clear, nowhere in the document for Bill C-27 does it state that privacy is a fundamental human right. However, this should be the crux of new legislation to update privacy laws, if not the outward premise, with the statement hammered from the preface until the end of Bill C-27 and following through the entire document. However, it is not there. It is nowhere and, therefore, holds no value.

This bill does not use that statement from the onset. It should be the pillar by which the bill is designed and led. Only a strong bill will ensure that Canadians' privacy rights are protected. Because of its omission, the bill is very weak, making it easier for industry players to be irresponsible with people's personal data. This is ironic as Canada has signed on to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That is where the bill starts and ends, with its failure to properly address privacy for Canadians.

Conservatives believe that Canadians’ digital privacy and data need to be properly protected. This protection must be a balance that ensures Canadians’ digital data is safe and that their information is properly protected and used only with their consent, while not being too onerous to be detrimental to private sector business. It is a balance.

Let us be clear. We need new privacy laws. In fact, it is essential to Canadians in this new digital era and to a growing digital future, but Bill C-27 needs massive rewrites and amendments to properly protect privacy, which should be a fundamental right of Canadians. The bill needs to be a balance between the fundamental right to privacy and privacy protection and the ability of business to responsibly collect and use data.

It also needs more nuance, but parts of this bill are far too vague. The definition of tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance, so to create more equality or fairness on those privacy rights and to ensure businesses and AI use data for good, we need more nuance with more detail and more explanation, not less. There was a saying I used to love that my grandfather would say: “If you're going to do something, make sure you do it right or don't do it at all.”

Besides the omission of privacy rights as a fundamental right, the bill needs a massive rewrite. First, the bill doubles down on a flawed approach to privacy using a notice and consent model as its legal framework. The legal framework of Bill C-27 remains designed around a requirement that consent be obtained for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information, unless one of the listed exceptions to consent applies. Those exceptions are called “legitimate interest”.

What is scary about legitimate interest is that the businesses themselves will determine what legitimate interest means and what will be exempt. A quote on this from Canada’s leading privacy and data-governing expert, Teresa Scassa, says that this provision alone in the bill “trivializes the human and social value of privacy.” The legitimate interest provision allows Facebook, for instance, to build shadow profiles of individuals from information gathered from their contacts, even those with no Facebook access or accounts, without asking for their permission.

Have colleagues ever seen the “people you may know” feature on Facebook? Sometimes people turn up there, although one might not know where they had ever met and even though neither party is actually on Facebook. That is because Facebook builds profiles and shadow profiles from other members' contacts. Facebook has a feature that will suggest that one share their contacts: It will be great. People will give all their friends' information to Facebook: their emails, addresses and sometimes their private phone numbers. The U.S. found that information was turning up in Facebook. Here are a couple of examples. An attorney had a man recommended as a friend he might know who was a defence counsel on one of his cases, when they had only communicated though a work email. Another time, a man who donated sperm to a couple, secretly, had Facebook recommend their child as a person he should know, despite not having the couple, whom he once knew, on Facebook.

Legitimate interests needs more nuance. It needs to be more defined, or it is useless. Legitimate interests allow for too much interpretation. In other words, it allows something to be something unless it is not. It is far too broad.

Additionally, consent is listed as having to be “in plain language that an individual to whom the organization’s activities are directed would reasonably be expected to understand.” Bill C-27 makes it hard to determine what legitimate interests are, and that goes back to privacy as a Human Rights Commission complaint.

If we compare this section to the European Union's privacy law, the GDPR, which is, as the minister stated, the gold standard, the legitimate interest exemption is available unless there is an adverse effect on the individual that is not outweighed by the organization's legitimate interest, as opposed to the interest or fundamental freedom to the individual under the GDPR. If adverse effects on the individual can be data breaches, which are shocking and distressing to those impacted, and some courts have found that the ordinary stress and inconvenience of a data breach is not a compensable harm since it has been a routine part of life, probably for the last two years at least, then the legitimate interest exemption will be far too broad.

However, Bill C-27 would take something that was meant to be quite exceptional for consent in the European Union's privacy laws and make it a potentially more mainstream basis for the use of data without acknowledging consent. Why would it do this? It is because Bill C-27 places privacy on par with commercial interests in using personal data, something that would not happen if privacy was noted in the bill as a fundamental right for Canadians.

Additionally, we need to be wary of consent. As a mandatory, consent should be made easier. Has anyone ever looked at their iPhone when agreeing to consent and scrolled down? Has anyone actually read all that? Has anyone read Google's 38 pages of consent every time they sign up or use Google?

Consent is not easy. It is not simple, and certainly this proposed law would not make it any simpler. We need to be wary of consent, and we need to ensure that consent is consensual, both in language and intent, and that we all know exactly what we are signing up to do, to give and to receive.

There is another term I want to explain as well called “de-identification”. The bill talks a lot about de-identification, and its definition is that it “means to modify personal information so that an individual cannot be directly identified from it,” and then goes on to say, “a risk of the individual being identified remains.” Therefore, an individual would lose all their information, but a risk of identifying an individual would remain.

Members will remember my Telus data for good example. Telus gave this information to the government during COVID, even though a risk of the individual being identified remained. It should be scrapped, and instead we should be using the word “anonymize”, which is also in the bill. This is what the GDPR does. In the bill, it “means to irreversibly and permanently modify personal information, in accordance with generally accepted best practices, to ensure that no individual can be identified from the information, whether directly or indirectly, by any means.”

I would ask members which one they would prefer. Would they like to be re-identified, as there is a possibility, or would they like no identification by any means?

Another major flaw in Bill C-27 is the creation of a bureaucratic tribunal instead of giving the Privacy Commissioner more bite. The creation of a tribunal is a time-waster, and the Privacy Commissioner should be allowed to levy fines. The Privacy Commissioner should be given more power and more bite. This is unclear because the EU, the U.K., New Zealand and Australia do not have tribunals that mediate their fines for privacy violations. Furthermore, it would no doubt cause those who have had their privacy violated to have to wait for years for the right of action.

I will put this straight. First we would have the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, or OPC, make a ruling. Then the government said that it would have a tribunal, which could then reverse the ruling of the Privacy Commissioner, and then we would have the Supreme Court, which would be allowed to rule on the tribunal's ruling. We would have a decision, another decision and a third decision, and each one of them could be countered.

Let me guess how long it would take. What do members think it would take? Would it take 48 hours or six months? Right now, the average is one year for the Privacy Commissioner, and we could add another year for the tribunal plus another year for appeals.

I ask this: Is it fair to have the average Canadian who has had their data breached, with their limited resources, have to go up against Facebook and Amazon and then spend three years in court? Does this protect fundamental privacy rights? Is this not just adding another layer of government that we certainly do not need?

The absence of rights-based language in the bill might tip the scale away from people in Canada, and the OPC and the tribunal weigh the privacy interest of people against the commercial interests of companies. Again, what does this come back to? Privacy was not listed as a fundamental right of Canadians.

Lastly, the AI portion of this bill is a complete rewrite. It needs to be split into its own bill.

I want to commend the minister for bringing this forward. He wants to be the first one in the land to bring this part of the bill forward, but to be honest, consultations only started in June. We have met with many individuals who certainly have not had any input into this deal, and although AI is there, there are many parts missing.

First of all, its findings conclude that there will be no independent and expert regulator for automated decision systems, nor does it have a shell of a framework for responsive artificial intelligence regulation and oversight. Instead, it says that the regulations will be determined at some future date and decisions will come from the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development or a designated official.

Again, part of this includes a new tribunal and puts decisions where they should not be, onto the government, with enforcement and decision-making by the minister or the minister's designated ISED official. This would be political decisions on privacy. Does everyone feel comfortable that we are now shifting from a tribunal to the government?

This part of the bill will shift all of that to the government, to the minister or his designate. It reminds me of the proclamation, “I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.”

There is no mention of facial recognition technology, also, in this part of the bill, despite reports that have come from the ethics committee, the examples I gave from before on FRT. Certainly, that is worth more study.

There are some parts of the bill that have good aspects and certainly ones we can get behind, including the protection of children's privacy. As a father, I know it is so very important. Our children now have access to all kinds of different applications on their phones, iPads and Amazon Fires.

Our children are being listened to and they are being surveilled. There is no question that businesses are taking advantage of those children and that is something that we definitely need to talk about.

The attempt to regulate AI, though, as I have stated, needs major revisions. Without a proper privacy statement, it does not have a balanced purpose statement establishing that the purpose of the CPPA is to establish rules for governing the protection of personal information in a manner that balances the right to privacy and the need for organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information.

We should be shooting beyond the European Union's privacy act, shooting to be the world leader in the balance of ensuring privacy protection and that businesses and industries use data for good. In doing so, they would attract investment and technology, all the while protecting Canadians' fundamental right to privacy.

Canada needs privacy protection that builds trust in the digital economy, where Canadians can use new technologies for good while protecting them from the bad, profiling, surveillance and discrimination. The minister said that he wants to seize the moment, that we need leadership in a constantly changing world. Most importantly, the minister said that trust has never been more important.

If we do not get this right, and if we do not make sure that privacy is a fundamental human right, and declare that in the document and build the document around that right, we are doing two things: We are not prioritizing Canadians' privacy, as we are certainly not putting privacy at the forefront of the bill, and we are certainly not showing leadership in an ever-changing world.

As I noted at the onset, the technologies of 22 years ago have changed so significantly. The technologies now are changing more significantly. In the next 22 years, we are going to have technologies that are more embedded, not less, in our lives. We will have AI that do good.

One of the stakeholders that we met with actually talked about AI for good. They talked about embedding AI into the government's system of passports. That might actually mean that we could get passports within 48 hours. Could we imagine that? Could we imagine imbedding technology for good into a system that would allow Canadians to get the things that they need more often?

We love technology. We want to embrace it. We just want to make sure that, number one, privacy is protected. We want to make sure that we do the hard work of building frameworks alongside Canadians' fundamental human right to privacy and being protected in equal balance with the economy, democracy and the rule of law. This bill does not do that, not yet.

Let us work to make sure we come back with a bill that does that.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to see you in the big chair.

The answer to my hon. colleague's question is absolutely.

There are parents listening to us at home today. The greatest gift we could give children is to refer Bill C-27 to a committee so that the questions my colleague raised can be properly studied. What she said in her introduction is correct. There are three simple things behind Bill C‑27. First, we want to give individuals more control and power over their online information. Next, as a parent, I feel it is fundamental that there be better protection for our children in the digital age. Finally, it will regulate artificial intelligence so that it is used responsibly and serves the public.

I believe it is time to bring our 20-year-old legislation into the 21st century. That is a good thing, and it is what Canadians want. It may reassure my colleague to know that during the study of Bill C‑11, we listened to many experts and collected comments to ensure not only that we have a good law, but that we are among the best in the world and that we set an example on the international stage.

I am pleased to hear that, like me, my colleague thinks that the best gift we can give our young people before Christmas is to send Bill C‑27 to committee to get it passed as quickly as possible.

Online Streaming Act

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am very proud, as always, to rise in the House to speak for the incredible people of Timmins—James Bay.

We are here to talk about Bill C-11. We have to step back into the last Parliament where we had Bill C-10, which this is the update of, and what was then Bill C-11, which was supposed to be about addressing the long outstanding need to bring Canada's laws up to standard in dealing with the tech giants.

This Bill C-11 was the old Bill C-10, which should have been pretty straightforward. Who does not want Facebook to finally start paying tax? This is a company that made $117 billion in profit last year, up $31 billion in a single year, and it is not paying tax. That is what Bill C-10 was supposed to do, but then it was our modern Minister of Environment who was then the minister of heritage who turned it into a total political dumpster fire. It was so bad the Liberals had to call an election, just to get that thing off the table.

Now the Liberals have brought it back. At the time, then Bill C-11 was supposed to be the privacy bill, a pretty straightforward thing. However, that was another dumpster fire, because the Privacy Commissioner had to come out and say that the Liberal plan to update privacy rights would actually undermine basic Canadian privacy in the realm of digital technology. Particularly, the Privacy Commissioner found this American company, Clearview AI, broke Canadian law for their illegal use of images in facial recognition technology. In response, the Liberals were going to rewrite the rules so it would be easier for Clearview AI to break the law, rather than for the Privacy Commissioner to protect Canadians.

The Liberals had to call an election to erase all of that. Now the Liberals have been given, as they have so many times in the past, one more chance. The deus ex machina comes down and gives them a chance to do things all over again.

Now we are looking at this Bill C-11. I can say one thing about this Bill C-11 is that it fixed a lot of the problems with the previous dumpster fire, maybe by moving the minister, although God help the planet now that he is looking after the environment. That is just my own personal thoughts from having read his ridiculous environment plan today. What he was going to do for culture, he is now doing to our environment.

Having said that, I would say that there is a couple of key issues we need to be looking at. We need to be looking at the need for Canada's legislation to actually address the right of artists to get paid in the digital realm. For too long in Canada we sort of pat our artists on the head. We all talked about the favourite TV shows we had growing up. One of the Liberals was talking about the Polkaroo.

Arts policy should not be that we just pat our artists on the head. This is an industry. It is one of our greatest exports. We are not promoting arts as an export or promoting our artists to do the work they need to do. We saw from COVID the devastating impacts on Canada's arts industry, on theatre, on musicians and on the tech people, the highly skilled tech people who went over two years without working. We really need to address this. One of the areas where they have been so undermined is online.

Let us talk about Spotify. It is basically a criminal network in terms of robbing artists blind. The number of sales one needs to have on Spotify to pay a single bill is so ridiculous that no Canadian artist could meet it.

We have streaming services that are making record fortunes. Therefore, it is a reasonable proposition to say that they are making an enormous amount of profit and they have a market where they do not have any real competition, so some of that money, and this was always the Canadian compromise, needs to go back into the development of the arts so that we can continue to build the industry.

The one thing I have also come to realize is that what the digital realm gives us and what streaming services give us is the ability to compete with our arts internationally on a scale that we never had before, if we are actually investing. Let us not look at it in a parochial manner, like what was done with the old broadcasters, where it was one hour on prime time a week they had to have a Canadian show on. Let us actually invest so that we can do the foreign deals. Why is it I can watch an incredible detective show from Iceland on Netflix, yet people in Iceland are not seeing an incredible detective show from Canada?

This is what we need to be doing. This is a reasonable position to take. With the profits that Facebook and Google are making, they can pay into the system. That is simple. They have unprecedented market share.

I will go to the second point, which is dealing with the tech giants. It is something I worked on in 2018. Our all-party parliamentary committee came up with numerous recommendations. I have to speak as a recovering digital utopian because there was a time when I believed that when we let all these platforms come, if we stood back and did not put any regulations on them, they would create some kind of new market promised land, but what we saw was that those dudes from Silicon Valley who were making YouTube in their parents' garage morphed into an industrial power that is bigger than anything we have ever seen.

There is a term, “kill zone of innovation”, where these companies have become so rich, so powerful and have such unprecedented corporate strength that it dwarfs anything we have ever seen in the history of capitalism, companies like Facebook. When Facebook gets a $5-billion fine, it does not even blink. It does not bother it. When the Rohingya are launching 150-billion U.K. pound lawsuit for the mass murder caused because of the exploitation of Facebook's platform, we realize we are dealing with companies that are so much beyond that they do not believe that domestic law applies to them. There has to be some level of obligation. I have worked with international parliamentarians in London, and there were meetings in Washington, trying to see how we can address the unprecedented power.

There is one thing that changed fundamentally when we saw the growth of this power. There used to be a principle that the telecoms would always tell parliamentarians, which was that we should not be blamed for what is in the content because, as they say, the pipes are dumb. We just send out the content and people choose, but people do not choose the content on Facebook and YouTube because of the algorithms. It is the algorithms that make them culpable and responsible.

I refer everyone to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who demanded Facebook explain how many of these stolen bot pages were driving misinformation during the convoy crisis here in Ottawa. Congresswoman Maloney wrote, “Facebook’s history of amplifying toxic content, extremism, and disinformation, including from Russia and other foreign actors” is well known. It is no wonder that some members on the Conservative backbench are so defensive about this bill. My God, this is their main source of news. What are they going to do if we start dealing with bot pages that they think is something that came down from the promised land?

As parliamentarians, we have an obligation to address bot accounts. We have an obligation to hold these companies to account. What does that mean? Number one, it is about algorithm accountability. I do not care what someone watches on Facebook or YouTube, that is their business, but if the algorithm is tweaked to show people what they would not otherwise see, Facebook is making decisions for them.

I would refer my colleagues to Tristan Harris, the great thinker on digital technology. He spoke to the committee in 2018 and said, “Technology is overwriting the limits of the human animal. We have a limited ability to hold a certain amount of information in our head at the same time. We have a limited ability to discern the truth. We rely on shortcuts” like thinking what that person says is true and what that person says is false. However, what he says about the algorithm is that the algorithm has seen two billion other people do the same thing, and it anticipates what they are going to do so it starts to show people content. What they have learned from the business model of Facebook and YouTube is that extremist content causes people to spend more time online. They are not watching cat videos. They are watching more and more extremist content. There is actually an effect on social interaction and on democracy. That is not part of this bill.

What the all-party committee recommended was that we needed to address the issue of algorithmic accountability and we needed to address the issue of the privacy rights of citizens to use online networks without being tracked by surveillance capitalism. With this bill, we need to ensure that these tech giants, which are making unprecedented amounts of money, actually put some money back into the system so that we can create an arts sector that can compete worldwide.

Extension of Sitting Hours in June

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the chief whip of the official opposition in the House of Commons.

Let us be clear from the start. We have no problem with extending work hours at this time of the year, as in fact our standing orders provide.

However, we are extremely concerned about the motion introduced by the government and voted on a few moments ago, because we know that facilities are limited, given the current pandemic situation. A lot of technical efforts are being made and government officials have made generous offers to co-operate with us, and we greatly appreciate that. However, when we get to this time of year, there is a kind of bottleneck. That is why we have to strike a very fair and reasonable balance between extending the work hours in the House of Commons and keeping parliamentary committees running. That is where there is a disconnect with the motion put forward by the government.

I would remind members that the House of Commons is part of Parliament, and as its very name suggests, Parliament is a place for parley, in other words, for discussion. We in the official opposition discuss things with our counterparts on the government side and with the other opposition parties. I would never, ever go into the details of those discussions. However, one thing is certain and indisputable, that is, that we had honest, good-faith discussions with our counterparts and could not come to an agreement. That is the point.

As we saw, when my colleague, the chief whip of the official opposition, asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons a very specific question, that good man, whom I like and respect a great deal, was unable to give anything even remotely resembling the merest hint of an answer. As parliamentarians, we cannot give carte blanche in terms of which committees will survive this proposal and which will not.

It should be immediately obvious why we have some very serious concerns about the lack of clarity on the parliamentary committees. We need only look at this government's track record over the past few months in terms of parliamentary work.

However, it was funny to hear my Liberal colleague for Winnipeg North talk about everything being in limbo because of Conservative opposition members, that their tactic on a daily basis is to delay, delay, delay, and that there is a filibuster each and every step of the way on each and every bill. This is anything but true.

When we talk about filibustering, I think that the king of filibustering is the Liberal Party of Canada, especially in this session, and there is a record of that. I do not think that the member for Winnipeg North and his colleagues would be very proud of what they have done in committee.

Let us look at what the Liberals have been doing in parliamentary committees over the past few months. They were the ones who accused us earlier of filibustering, as in talking for hours and hours in order to waste time rather than get to the bottom of things.

We can look at the Standing Committee of Procedure and House Affairs where the Liberals had filibustered for 73 hours.

The Liberals filibustered for 73 hours, preventing the committee from doing its work. Why?

It is because we wanted to get to the bottom of things and allow witnesses to appear and explain why the government prorogued Parliament. The Liberals filibustered for 73 hours to prevent witnesses from testifying. Now they are the ones accusing us of being the bad guys holding up the works. It is ludicrous.

However, it does not end there.

We can look at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics where the Liberals filibustered for 43 hours. Why? It was to block getting to the truth about the WE Charity scandal.

There is a common thread in all this, however. When we want to get accurate information on Liberal scandals, they filibuster. They are very unhappy about that and accuse us of wanting to delay parliamentary work, when we are just doing our job.

These are concrete examples, but it does not end there. At the Standing Committee on Finance, the Liberals filibustered for 35 hours, once again to prevent parliamentarians from getting to the bottom of the WE Charity scandal.

At the Standing Committee on National Defence, the Liberals filibustered for over 16 hours. The committee chair, who is a member of the government party, unilaterally suspended the meetings 23 times.

This is starting to really add up: 63 hours at one committee, 43 hours at another, 35 hours at a third, 16 hours at a fourth. I have not even mentioned the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, where the Liberals filibustered for 10 hours, between February and April, on the study we wanted to conduct on the COVAX facility, which was created by rich countries to provide poor countries with access to vaccines. Sadly, members will recall that Canada, a rich country, helped itself to the supply for poor countries because it did not have the vaccines that the Prime Minister had announced at his December dog and pony show. That is the reality.

I hear government members accusing us of being the bad guys and filibustering, when they are the ones who filibustered for 63 hours at one committee, 43 hours at another, 35 hours at the Standing Committee on Finance, 16 hours at the Standing Committee on National Defence, and 10 hours at the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In light of the Liberals' dismal parliamentary record, we feel it is perfectly valid to want to be sure of what is planned for the committees before we give the government carte blanche to extend the committee and House sittings. However, the government refuses to tell us its plans and instead demands a free hand. We think this is unacceptable.

I heard my colleague from Winnipeg North explaining the status of some bills, so we will take a look at that assessment.

He talked about Bill C-3, regarding judges, which is modelled on a bill originally introduced by the Hon. Rona Ambrose. We are very proud of that legislation, but the Liberal government used the strongest weapon in its arsenal to delay its passage or concurrence, namely prorogation.

Let us not forget that last summer, when the Liberal government was in a real jam over the WE scandal, the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics met day after day in July and again in August. The official opposition members strenuously challenged the government's moral authority, because it had adopted a despicable strategy for dealing with this scandal.

What did the government do when it was in trouble? It prorogued Parliament. This was the worst thing it could do to slow down the work of parliamentarians. Once Parliament is prorogued, everything goes back to square one. That is what happened with Bill C-3.

What about Bill C-11? I heard the member for Winnipeg North say how important this legislation is, and he is absolutely right. I even remember the member and Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry calling out the Conservatives on Twitter in February, accusing us of delaying Bill C-11 and saying that it was awful.

I quite like the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, who is the minister responsible. I have a lot of respect and regard for him, but when I saw that on Twitter, I found myself thinking that I had not seen Bill C-11 in a long time. When I checked, I saw that the last time the government had brought Bill C-11 forward in the House was on November 24, 2020. The bill then sat around for three months, through November, December, January and February, before the government brought it forward again. However, the government went after us in February, claiming that we were delaying it. That is completely absurd.

The member also mentioned Bill C-14, on the economic statement, since there was no budget. The government accused us and is still accusing us of filibustering it, when two-thirds of the official opposition members did not even speak on it.

I am proud to be the House Leader of the Official Opposition. Our caucus has 120 members who duly represent eight Canadian provinces and regions in the House of Commons. We are the only truly national party. I am very proud of the calibre of people I work with, and that is why, when they ask to speak, I am happy to add them to the political debate. However, it is utterly ludicrous to accuse us of filibustering when two-thirds of our caucus did not even speak.

That is why the motion, as currently presented, is unacceptable to us. We are ready and willing to work longer hours as long as the parliamentary work in the House of Commons can be done without compromising the work of the committees, but that is absolutely not the case with this motion.