Bill C-27 (Historical)

Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022

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

Part 1 enacts the Consumer Privacy Protection Act to govern the protection of personal information of individuals while taking into account 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 .
Part 3 enacts the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act to regulate international and interprovincial trade and commerce in artificial intelligence systems by requiring that certain persons adopt measures to mitigate risks of harm and biased output related to high-impact artificial intelligence systems. That Act provides for public reporting and authorizes the Minister to order the production of records related to artificial intelligence systems. That Act also establishes prohibitions related to the possession or use of illegally obtained personal information for the purpose of designing, developing, using or making available for use an artificial intelligence system and to the making available for use of an artificial intelligence system if its use causes serious harm to individuals.

Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

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

Madam Speaker, with privacy as a fundamental human right baked into Bill C-27 and our privacy laws, this is where it is supposed to reside, and I know my colleague and the NDP have supported that at committee.

More importantly, what I am really concerned about is that in this report on facial recognition technology, which his party supported, a moratorium was supposed to be levied on the use of this technology until we get the Privacy Act finalized. The government has not done that. Maybe of all the other reasons to bring down the government, this is the reason we bring down this government.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for giving a great speech. It seems like nine years ago that we sat on the ethics committee, but I think it was only three years ago. We use the number nine a lot in the House.

Today, I want to speak about why nations fail. To quote Acemoglu and Robinson, “Nations fail today because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate.” As a whole, that also includes privacy: the right of businesses to operate and the freedom of citizens to operate.

We can go all the way back to something I am very fascinated with. North America and South America were founded around the same time, but how did North America end up becoming so rich and wealthy and South America did not? It comes down to those same pillars. We allowed freedom to operate. We allowed freedom for patents to be developed, especially in the Industrial Revolution. We allowed people the freedom to have their own land, to have privacy on their own land and to own businesses with patents, allowing privacy for those businesses to operate, to get investments and capital and to grow.

What we saw from that was a tremendous amount of wealth, more wealth than the world had ever seen. It formed a capitalist society that allowed wealth to be owned by individuals. People who used to be poor became wealthy, and that allowed a nation like Canada to have socialist capitalism. With this tremendous amount of wealth, there was the ability to have socialist programs like a universal health care system.

When we do not follow the narrow corridor, and it is a very narrow corridor, not only with liberty but also with capitalism and socialism, and we stick with the fundamentals of privacy, investment, free capital and patents, we lose the wealth of the nation. With that, the citizens suffer.

After nine years, we are seeing that reality here in Canada. We have the worst housing crisis this country has ever faced. Rents have doubled. Mortgage payments have doubled. The amount needed for a down payment has doubled. Nine million Canadians are now food insecure. That is one-third of Canadians, and that number in the U.S. is barely 13%.

We see the problem with businesses fleeing this country. We talk a lot about what that means for AI and having great ideas. We also talk about IP, the currency of innovation. When we look at what happens in Canada, the numbers are startling. Canada files 40,000 patents annually compared to the 374,000 the U.S. files, and only 13 out of 100 patents are owned by Canadians. That means we give away over 87% of our patents to foreign nations; we give that data away.

When we look at what that means for the Americans, we see they generate 12 million jobs and $2 trillion from patents and IP. Of course, AI is among that. In Canada, that number is less. The best way to look at it is by using GDP per capita or income per capita. The GDP per capita for Canada is $53,000, compared to $80,000 for the U.S., more than a 36% difference. We have seen less capital and less ability to invest, save and innovate.

We can couple that with the problems with the business investment and productivity we have seen in Canada and the lack of privacy. Of course, the government has tried, but as with a lot of things, it has tried and failed. It presented Bill C-11 before the last Parliament and could not get it through. In this Parliament, it submitted Bill C-27, and at the last minute, it threw AI legislation in it called the AIDA. What happened at committee? I know the Conservatives get blamed for this, but at committee, the Conservatives, the Bloc and the NDP all came together to say this bill was terrible in the way it was presented. Even the Liberals were filibustering it in committee at one point.

We need these bills to work. The Conservatives have been steadfast that privacy is a fundamental human right, and not only privacy for individuals in Canada but privacy for our children. We know the results of not having the right legislation come forward and not having privacy protection in Canada. We saw it at the ethics committee two years ago when we faced the daunting speculation of privacy in facial recognition technology.

This technology was misused. A company called Clearview AI scraped images off the Internet, and we know how many images are on the Internet. It scraped everyone's face off the Internet and sold those images, which should not be owned by anyone.

Privacy is a fundamental right. However, the thing we have come to also understand about AI, which was discussed at committee but was not in the legislation, is that it should never be able to use someone's face or likeness without their permission. Those are the biggest problems we are having. The biggest thumbprint we have, the most unique thing about us, is our face. Our colleague from the NDP brought this up, but the main point that came up at committee about facial recognition technology was this: When this technology was used by the RCMP and our police forces in Canada in terms of marginalized and minority groups in Canada, Black women and Black men, the technology misread their face and misidentified them 30% of the time. That is terrible.

Technology is supposed to make things better, and we could not believe what we were hearing. Police representatives were at this committee multiple times and testified that it misidentified these groups 30% of the time. That is a failure; it is ridiculous. This is something that should not be used. We went through all the reports on ethics and brought the final report to Parliament two years ago, in October 2022, with the recommendation to outlaw this technology until it gets better.

Here we are today, two years later, and this technology has not been outlawed. It has been in place for two years since the ethics committee found that there were these breaches. It is terrible that these breaches have been happening for so long. Today, as we stand in Parliament, facial recognition technology, which we call digital racism, is still allowed to be used in this country.

Again, it follows the bigger problems we have with the government, and not only with the recommendations that come from committee. The government always talks about filibustering. These are recommendations in a report that could have been done without Parliament's consent, because it was enacted by Parliament and came to the House to begin with. Here we are two years later, and that has not happened.

Let us talk about all the other things that have not happened either. With respect to privacy, Bill C-27 is still in committee based on, again, the fact that the Liberals are filibustering their own bill. It is just terrible and needs to be redone. I think we all agree on the first part of PIPEDA and how that is going to be done. The Liberals do not, but we agree that the tribunal should be eliminated and that more power should go to the Privacy Commissioner. Again, those privacy breaches and the rights should be governed by the Privacy Commissioner as a whole.

We looked at the proposed AIDA as a whole. AIDA was riddled with delays and inefficient guidance. It failed to provide the necessary oversight, allowing technologies such as facial recognition to remain largely unregulated. It was supposed to be prioritized legislation, yet it was wrong. The industry minister brought the legislation to the committee, and three months later, he brought 60 different amendments to his own bill. We had never even heard of that before, and it certainly was not a good bill.

I want to talk briefly about what is happening because we do not get privacy investment right in Canada. This is going to have long-term impacts. The capital gains tax hike is expected to reduce Canada's capital stock by $127 billion, resulting in 414,000 fewer jobs and a $90-billion drop in GDP. We cannot afford to lose control of our most valuable ideas or allow unchecked technologies to undermine our freedoms. Nations fail today because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, to invest and to innovate.

The consequences are already visible. Nine million Canadians are food insecure. Two million Canadians are visiting food banks, and this rate is 36% higher than that in the United States. It is time to reverse course. Let us regain control over our privacy. Let us make sure we give those fundamentals back to save, innovate and invest back into Canadian businesses. Let us bring home capitalism once again, where people can make a good wage, have a good job and bring home savings for them and their families.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise to speak in the House. I should note that I will be splitting my time with the great member for Bay of Quinte.

A couple of years ago, when I was on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, we tabled this great report on facial recognition technology and the growing power of artificial intelligence. The concurrence motion on this was brought forward a couple of weeks ago by my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill, and she articulated very well why we needed to do the study in the first place because of the problems that we have in Canada with the unregulated use of facial recognition technology.

We have a situation where policy has lagged behind and technology is moving at lightning speed. The government's answer to this is Bill C-27, which is a broken piece of legislation, which has already been admitted by the Ministry of Industry. The minister has said that we need to improve upon it through amendments at committee, but when it is this broken, in three parts, it really makes it more difficult to modify and manage. We need to go back to the drawing board. I just want to point out some of the problems that we studied at committee. We heard about how Tim Hortons' app, for example, was actually tracking the movement of customers who were using the Tim Hortons app to buy their food and then tracking their movements for the first 10 minutes after they left a Tim Hortons store. Tim Hortons then sold that information to other stores so that they could harvest that data and then determine how best to access those customers.

It was a complete violation of privacy but an ingenious way of making use of an app and GPS, and using that technology to be able to track people. If Tim Hortons could do that, imagine what nefarious actors could do here in Canada or around the world.

We also heard, from a security perspective, how the RCMP and other police agencies across this country made use of facial recognition technology that came out of the Clearview AI database. The disturbing part of Clearview AI is that it scraped all of its images from social media to train its artificial intelligence. It accessed Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. When the company then programmed it, whether knowingly or unknowingly, it created a racial algorithm that was biased, especially with regard to men of darker complexions. Whether they were Middle Eastern, whether they were African, Black or brown, they were definitely discriminated against in the technology. They were wrongfully accused through facial recognition that was being used en masse by the RCMP and other police agencies here in Canada as well as in the United States, causing discrimination in arrests that were ultimately wrong at the end of the day.

The same was happening with our indigenous Canadians, who were also being wrongfully accused through the use of Clearview AI technology by the RCMP. We also had TELUS providing data and giving locations of people, for tracking, for things like COVID, to the Public Health Agency of Canada, again, a complete violation of the privacy rights of Canadians.

We cannot forget how we had, of course, the trucker convoy up here and we had the public doxing of those that were part of the trucker convoy. They were located using GPS and then someone was able to go into the system and map them out on Google Maps and publicly disclose their banking information as well as their home addresses, a complete violation of Canadian privacy. We dug in on this when we were part of the committee on ethics and privacy and protection of information.

We want to make sure that individuals are aware of it. Public education needs to keep up. At the end of the day, we need to make sure that there is the right to know that our data has been collected through facial recognition, with all of the cameras that we have around here on the Hill, never mind what is happening in other public spaces, like airports, train stations and stores. There needs to be a public disclosure of that, so that people know, when they are entering, that there is proper signage. We get into all of this in the recommendations.

People have the right to have that information disposed of, including images that may be left up on social media platforms and images that have been collected by government agencies and corporations. Employees are exposed to this at work, because there are cameras all over the place monitoring. When they leave that platform or they leave that employment, or they are no longer, supposedly, on a watch-list, their data should be disposed of. That right to disposal is paramount.

Of course the government's answer to this was Bill C-27. It did answer the report, too. If I have time, I will get into their response to the report.

I should just point out that as Conservatives, we believe that digital data privacy is a fundamental right of all Canadians. It urgently requires us to have the legislation, protections and enforcement to guarantee the privacy of all Canadians. We also believe that Canada's digital policy framework is in dire need of modernization. It is outdated, it is stale and the technology is moving much too fast. We are lagging behind our international counterparts. When we were at the committee, we heard about best practices, particularly from the European Union, and how we need to institute some of their ideas and their policies so that we can have the flexibility to adjust to data as it is being modernized and the technology is advancing, but also to ensure that Canada's privacy protections are in place.

Now, as I mentioned, we have serious concerns about Bill C-27 and so we are going to be looking at ways to redraft that bill, making sure that we bring forward the proper legislation, not burdensome red tape on small businesses, Canadians and sole proprietors. We are going to put forward a lot of common-sense amendments, as Bill C-27 is currently being studied by the industry committee, I believe. There needs to be lots of consultation and input from stakeholders, Canadians, security agencies and the government on what is needed and what plans there are.

Bill C-27 is an omnibus bill. It has three chunks of legislation in it.

Some of the key problems in Bill C-27 have to do with part 1, which deals with the consumer privacy protection act. We believe that it is the right of businesses to collect and use some personal information, but we also want to bring home greater privacy protections for individuals and charities, and bring clarity for organizations, which is right now missing in that part of the bill.

Then the government also set up, in part 2, the personal information and data protection tribunal act. Putting in place a privacy tribunal appointed by the government to put Liberals in place to oversee the privacy protection of Canadians is a concern. As we have been debating here, the Liberals who were appointed to the green slush fund, SDTC, ultimately ended in corruption. We want to make sure that we do not have another layer of bureaucracy. We do not need to overburden this and slow down the prosecutions for those who misuse and violate the privacy laws of Canada. We need to work more closely with the Privacy Commissioner and advocate for the removal of this tribunal. As the Privacy Commissioner has also said, it is completely unnecessary. We want to have quicker prosecutions and quicker turnarounds, and remove the gatekeepers that the government is proposing.

Then the final part of this bill is part 3, dealing with the artificial intelligence and data act, which I can tell colleagues right now is outdated and broken even though it is not even legislation yet. It was introduced in June 2022 and things have moved so quickly with things like ChatGPT, new generative AI systems and new facial recognition systems that the act that is prescribed in there does not work. We are concerned about giving too much regulatory power to the government on a legislative and policy framework that is already outdated when Canadians need protection today on the technology of tomorrow.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague and I thank him for his really good work with regard to this report, which was issued in October 2022.

It is sad that we have not seen the government use this report for what it should have been used for. It is a call for action to deal with many of the issues of artificial intelligence, and it puts due light and justice not only to areas of concern but also to some of the good that AI can do, as my colleague referenced, when it is applied to conditions that have oversight and due diligence related to knowledge and awareness. It also looks at the vulnerabilities of AI as it is being built out.

I have had the opportunity to attend several conferences across the United States and Canada on artificial intelligence, and I can say that we are missing the opportunity to act in a responsible fashion. My colleague mentioned some practical examples, and I will return to those in a few minutes. I want to start by identifying that at the industry committee, Bill C-27, to deal with artificial intelligence, has been languishing since the start of this Parliament. That bill was tabled by the government and not a single thing took place with respect to it for a full year. We had a series of hearings and discussions with testimony that lasted weeks upon weeks to get to the bill, and at that time, we identified several problems.

There are two key components the New Democrats have been pushing for with regard to this bill that are important right now. The issues over privacy, which there seems to be a path forward to resolve, were part of the bill. Then the government decided to put artificial intelligence in the bill as well, which complicated the bill's sense. The government tried to sneak one past everybody by combining these pieces of legislation, which was not necessary. In fact, it was the member for New Westminster—Burnaby who got the bill separated for votes in this chamber, which we can still have, but the bill should never have been put together like this. The protection of Canadians' privacy should have been, foremost, the part of the bill we did first, before even going to testimony on artificial intelligence, instead of trying to sneak one by the Canadian public.

My colleague from Hamilton has outlined some of the deficiencies of artificial intelligence related to facial recognition, which this report speaks to. However, artificial intelligence, given some of the models that have been developed to date that people use, also already shows biases with regard to race, religion and the inputs it has. I have heard from the Amazons and the Googles at different conferences, and they admit to their failures in creating algorithms. They have biases for race and different genders built and baked into their systems because the people generating AI are not diverse and do not have to deal with the consequences of people being identified and misidentified mostly based on not being white and male. That is a known fact in the entire universe of AI.

In fact, at the time the government tabled the bill, a number of AI scientists broke from the major conglomerates to warn humanity about that. However, we have seen what has taken place from how badly the bill was manufactured, as we have over 200 amendments on this bill alone. As referenced here in the chamber by one of my colleagues on the committee, over 50 amendments were from the government, which tells us how badly it was crafted.

Those are very important factors to identify, because we are passing on protecting Canadian privacy and on updating the Privacy Commissioner. That is identified through several excellent recommendations in this report, which call for action. Despite that, not only have the Liberals done nothing, but on top of that, they filibustered their own bill. Even in the past week, when the minister was in Montreal, the Liberals blamed the committee and the opposition for holding up the bill. His own members filibustered their own bill before we broke at the end of the last session. That is what took place in committee and they blamed us publicly.

I asked the minister at committee just last week whether he regretted his comments or at least wanted to clarify them, but he doubled down. We have been requesting amendments to deal with the Privacy Commissioner and to protect Canadians, which they know of, but the Liberals are hanging onto the idea that we want to be complicit in an AI strategy that is not fundamentally vetted and has the not-for-profit community, the public and the academic community all concerned.

The Googles, the Amazons and all the others that are going to benefit from this are not concerned, and that is why they are clinging on to keeping the bill together. What I want to talk about, in terms of how we can move forward, the NDP's proposition to deal with the one carrying point that has a problem. This has united the other members on the committee, the Conservatives, the Bloc and the NDP, who are concerned about a tribunal system set up regarding the Privacy Commissioner.

We have concerns about that because the Competition Bureau has a tribunal over top of it. As New Democrats called for stopping the takeover of Shaw by Rogers, the government allowed the Competition Bureau to be sued for $5 million for doing its job by Rogers itself. The New Democrats defended the Canadian public. They defended the position that should have been there, which was not to let this takeover take place. On top of that, the public was punished by not even having their representation be able to carry the case without repercussions that were allowed from Rogers and Telus.

To wrap up quickly, the real repercussions are as follows: We have seen the Lavender project used by the Israel Defense Forces, using artificial intelligence, as a practical situation that has cost human lives. Today, this has consequences for thousands of families in Gaza. It is a real situation that has come to take place since this report was published. It is a real situation in which artificial intelligence in the military needs oversight and control.

I agree with my colleague and the rest of the committee in their call for halting artificial intelligence face recognition right now until we get some controls. It is about time the Liberals actually came to the table with solutions instead of putting up problems and other problems in the future.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, as I explained earlier in my speech, the government introduced Bill C‑27 and then it consulted 300 groups. Ideally, it should have consulted those groups before introducing the bill. That would have been the right thing to do. This government is always introducing bills and then proposing a pile of amendments in committee. That is what we call doing things backward, or not doing them right. Unfortunately, that is what has been happening for the past nine years.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his excellent presentation on Bill C-27. He mentioned that the government brought forward 55 amendments to its own bill. We just saw a response from the government of some incorrect news regarding amendments Conservatives put forward and how they were put forward.

Could you comment on how ill-prepared the government was when it had to make 55 amendments to its own bill?

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, in fact, we are waiting for the minister. He asked us to tell him what needs to be done. We quickly sent him our response so that we could settle Bill C‑27. We are waiting for his reply. Unfortunately, we still have not received it. He travels all over the world. He is a good salesman. However, when it comes to fixing things, it just is not happening.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague spoke about Bill C‑27. He pointed out that it is not a mammoth bill, but that it should be split in two. That way, we could actually take a comprehensive look at AI and make the necessary amendments, since our country currently has no legislation related to AI.

We are in the most democratic minority government, where everyone can sit around the table to negotiate and discuss. What does my colleague think of the Liberal government's refusal to negotiate and split Bill C‑27?

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak today.

I thank my colleague for pronouncing my riding name so well. She did a very good job. Above all, she has a wealth of experience, having been a minister in a previous government, which did a great deal for technology, among other things.

We are talking about a report on facial recognition technology that was tabled two years ago. The reality is that the government has had two years to act on the report's recommendations. Unfortunately, it has done nothing.

Many of our colleagues here have talked about Bill C-27. I have the pleasure of serving on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, which is responsible for Bill C-27. It is important to understand that facial recognition is nowhere to be found in Bill C-27. It is a bill on artificial intelligence and privacy, but there is not a single line in that bill that talks about facial recognition.

I would like to review the chronology of events surrounding Bill C‑27. This is important, because it gives us one more opportunity to consider how the government operated. Earlier on, my colleague from Winnipeg North said it was transparent and proactive, that it was doing lots of things, that it had introduced bills, and that it was holding consultations. I have news for him: On June 16, 2022, two and a half years ago, Bill C‑27 was introduced for first reading here in the House. On November 4, 2022, six months later, we debated it at second reading. The bill reached the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology on April 24, 2023, another six months later. However, Bill C‑27 was delayed when other government legislation was given extended consideration, including Bill C‑34 and Bill C‑42. Therefore, to some degree, the government deliberately delayed consideration of the bill.

During the study of Bill C‑27, we heard from numerous witnesses. We learned that 300 groups had been consulted. The problem is that they were consulted after the bill was introduced, not before. Surely, if the minister had consulted the organizations beforehand, he might have been able to include something about facial recognition in his bill. It is good to hold consultations, and we have absolutely nothing against that. It is an important thing to do, but ideally, it should be done before the bill is introduced, to avoid situations like the one we are in now, namely that we are still debating Bill C‑27 at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. I think there are roughly 250 amendments, including 55 amendments that the government moved to its own bill. How can such a thing happen? How can the government introduce a bill and then move 55 amendments a year and a half or nearly two years later? Someone somewhere must have done a bad job drafting the bill if, after introducing it, the government ended up consulting 300 groups and moving 55 amendments. We call that working backwards.

On September 26, 2023, we began studying Bill C-27, and we heard from the industry minister, who, we know, is an excellent salesman. I will give him that. Since the member for Winnipeg North told us to try to say nice things about what the government is doing, I will do just that. The government has an excellent Minister of Industry. He is a good salesman. I have no doubt he could “sell fridges to the Eskimos”. It is incredible. That said, I think that as the bill progressed, the minister was put in a position where he should have backed down, in a sense.

Contrary to what my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou said earlier, Bill C-27 does not cover a whole slew of topics. It covers two: artificial intelligence and privacy. The part of the bill on privacy is what we are debating right now. The progress of Bill C‑27 has been hampered because the Liberals want to establish a tribunal, even though no other country in the world has done that. We do not want this bill to establish a tribunal. There are already other authorities that could do this work, such as the Privacy Commissioner. We do not want to create an additional authority because that would require additional funds.

We also want Bill C-27 to move forward. The minister keeps telling us that Mr. Bengio from the University of Montreal is the father of AI in Canada and basically in the world. When Mr. Bengio appeared before the committee, he said that we needed to act quickly. We want to, but the reality is that the bill is ill-conceived. The very first witnesses who appeared before the committee told us that this bill is poorly designed.

First, artificial intelligence should have been addressed in a separate bill rather than bundled together with privacy, even though we agree that these two topics have elements in common. That does not necessarily mean that the two topics needed to be addressed in the same bill.

We moved several amendments to this bill. I must say that the committee is working collaboratively. In some committees, there are attacks, it is very politicized, it is very political and it is very partisan. I must say that at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, we all work very collaboratively. We try to move bills through as quickly as possible, but in the case of Bill C‑27, that was unfortunately not possible.

Other events took place in 2023 and 2024. I think we have done an amazing job. At committee, many witnesses came to talk about artificial intelligence itself, and their testimony was very interesting. One witness in particular surprised us a bit. They practically said that we are facing a third world war, a technological war that will be fought not with weapons, but with AI. We were a bit shaken when the witness told us that. We thought they were being a bit alarmist, but the reality is that we heard very solid arguments from the experts from across Canada who also appeared at committee on this topic, at the invitation of the various political parties.

Europe has just passed legislation on artificial intelligence. Here in Canada, if the government had been willing, this bill could have been split up to separate the two subjects. We could still do that. Right now, we could limit ourselves to resolving the issue of AI, in line with what just passed in Europe and what is about to pass in the United States. Their bills have been studied extensively. Quebec already has a law in effect, Bill 25. It is not fully aligned with the legislation that will be created in Canada. A number of legal experts told us that all the provinces' laws absolutely must be consistent with the federal legislation. All of these things come into play.

Facial recognition is a fundamental point when it comes to Canadians' quality of life. We have to make sure that people will not be identified by technology that will allow racial profiling, for example. Obviously, we do not want that anywhere. Just two weeks ago, a former Montreal police chief said that there was racial profiling in Montreal. The City of Montreal will probably be charged for that. Things would be even worse if we had tools to facilitate racial profiling.

I see that my time is up. I am happy to answer questions.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.

What we are doing here today is something called a concurrence debate. It relates to a report that was actually submitted to the House in October 2022, two years ago, on the topic of facial recognition software. This might seem like a very niche topic, but it is really not. Facial recognition software has become pervasive in use, especially here in Canada, and the report provided a set of recommendations on safeguards that could be used to protect Canadians' privacy and their data, as well as to prevent negative social impacts such as the use of facial recognition software to do things like racially profile people from marginalized groups.

The report had some pretty clear recommendations. It was issued in October 2022, and the government abjectly has failed. It has let two years go by without implementing a single one of the recommendations to protect the health, safety and privacy of Canadians. I want to talk about what the government is going to say that it did in response to the report, and then debunk it.

The government tabled a bill, Bill C-27, which has two components. It has some content with regard to privacy and some content with regard to artificial intelligence. The problem with the bill is that virtually every type of civil society group, as well as academics and businesses, has panned both components of the bill for a variety of reasons. Many members of the House have asked for the bill to be split so that the two very disparate topics could be studied separately. The government has refused to do that. Most importantly, the bill contains absolutely nothing on facial recognition, absolutely nothing that materially addresses the recommendations in the report.

That is why when the Liberals stand up and talk about this, they have to dance around the issue. My colleague from the NDP rightly asked how many of the recommendations had been put in place. The answer is zero.

I am going to outline what the key failures of the bill are and then what the impacts of that are on Canadians. This is not necessarily a front-burner issue, but I think it was really important that the report was brought forward today, because it is something Canadians should be concerned about.

There are problems with unregulated use of facial recognition. I know this can sound really technical for some people, but I have to explain how pervasive it is. If someone were to walk into a shopping centre today, there is absolutely nothing stopping that shopping centre from using high-definition cameras to capture their every move, capture their biometric data, attach it to other profiles that the person might have with other companies and then use that information to make a profile on them about what they can afford and how they could be targeted for advertising. In really bad cases, they could be targeted for negative security experiences.

This is a very pervasive technology. Basically, anywhere there is a camera, facial recognition software can be and is likely being used. It is being used not just by the private sector; it is also being used by governments, and there are almost no limits on what the Liberal government can do with facial recognition software in Canada today. That is highly problematic for several reasons.

First of all, it is a massive invasion of Canadians' privacy; many times, they do not even know it is happening. That is because of the lack of regulation. The failure of the government to address the recommendations and put regulations into Bill C-27 means that Canadians' privacy is at risk. They do not have the ability to consent to when and how facial recognition software can apply to them. The second thing is that this opens them up to big-time data misuse.

As I said in the shopping centre example, there is really nothing preventing a shopping centre from selling biometric data and putting together a broader profile on somebody to be used for any purpose, without that person's ability to reject it on moral grounds. Under the fundamentals of privacy in Canada, we should have the right to reject it. I would almost argue that it is a human right.

The other problem is that it can lead to discrimination and bias. Many studies have shown that facial recognition software actually treats people of colour differently, for a wide variety of reasons. Of course that is going to lead to discrimination and bias in how it is being used. There should be restrictions on that to maintain Canada's pluralism, to ensure equality of opportunity and to ensure that people of colour are not discriminated against because of a lack of regulation. To reiterate, none of these things are in Bill C-27.

The unregulated use of facial recognition software, because the government failed to regulate it in Bill C-27, can also lead to suppression of speech. Let us say that a government wanted to use facial recognition software to monitor people on the street. There would then be, within different government departments, some sort of profiles on who people are, what they do or what their political beliefs are. If government officials see them and maybe a few of their friends coming from different areas and walking to a gathering spot, that could, in theory, be used to disrupt somebody's right to protest. There are absolutely no restrictions on that type of use by government in Bill C-27.

We can also see how facial recognition could be used by the government for extensive overreach. Many members of this place will talk about wrongful convictions with respect to facial recognition software. There have been cases where facial recognition software was used to lead toward an arrest or a warrant. Because there are not clearly defined limits or burdens of proof for the use of the technology, it can lead to wrongful arrests and convictions as well.

It leads to a loss of anonymity. I think we have the right to be anonymous, certainly in this country, but that right has been breached without even any sort of debate in this place, because the government has failed to put the regulations into Bill C-27.

Frankly, the lack of regulations, particularly on government use of facial recognition technology, also means that there is a lack of our ability as legislators to hold the government to account on whether or not it is overreaching. Because we do not have the requirement in law for governments to be transparent about how they are using facial recognition software, we cannot in this place say whether there has been an overreach or not. It is very difficult to get that information.

To be clear, Bill C-27 has been panned at committee by civil liberties groups and civil society groups because of three things: It fails to define “biometric function” as sensitive data, fails to provide clear restrictions on when and how businesses and government can use facial recognition technology, and fails to provide adequate safeguards for individuals, especially regarding consent and the potential for discriminatory outcomes. The bill is a failure. It should have long been split, as has been the request of multiple parties of this place.

Furthermore, the reality is that we have not had the debate in the House of Commons on what the guidelines should be for facial recognition technology. What the government has proposed to do in Bill C-27 is to take that out of this place, this vital debate, and put it in the hands of some Liberal-controlled regulator to be determined behind closed doors, with big tech companies, not us, setting the boundaries on that. That is wrong.

I want to talk about what the government has done. First of all, it has put unfettered use of facial recognition software out into the public. It has failed to define it in Bill C-27. Then it went one step further. Bill C-63, the government's massive draconian censorship bill, would go one step further in putting a chill on Canadian speech. It is another layer of Canada's loss of privacy, Canada's loss of speech and Canadians' loss of rights.

When the government stands up and talks about Bill C-63, the draconian censorship bill, as somehow being a response to facial recognition technology, this is not only laughable; it should strike fear into the heart of every Canadian. All of these factors combine to really put a chill on Canadians' privacy, their right to assembly, their right to freedom of speech and their right to live their life without government intrusion or the intrusion of merchants who might be using their biometric data to sell it to other companies.

It is just insane that Canada has not acted on this. We know that the Liberal government has not acted on it because it is in chaos right now. It has so many scandals, spending crises and ethical breakdowns. However, the one thing it has been focused on is censorship. That is because it does not want Canadians to hold it to account.

I am very glad that the report is being concurred in in the House. I find it an abject failure of the Liberal government that it has not acted on the recommendations, which, frankly, are non-partisan and should have been put into law a long time ago.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague has been talking about Bill C-27 for a while now.

I have a simple question. This bill is not just about AI. It is also about a whole host of other things. However, the subject of AI is important enough to be examined on its own, in its entirety, seriously and without the distraction of other equally important subjects. Perhaps we should focus on one topic in particular and explore it in depth rather than just superficially. That would be a nice change.

Is the government prepared to implement a bill that would seriously consider artificial intelligence in terms of its current importance?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the member to the extent that it is the responsibility of government. At the end of the day, what we have seen is a responsible government that has brought a number of legislative measures to the floor of the House of Commons. Once we bring them to the floor of the House of Commons, there is a responsibility of all members to recognize them.

The member says that we should have a framework. Bill C-27 is in part a framework that would allow for regulations. Those are the types of things we should be trying to get through the House of Commons so Canada, which does an incredible job on the responsible advancement of AI and facial recognition, would be allowed to continue to do so and so the government would be able to keep up with the advancement in a very responsible way.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question and especially that it is coming from a Conservative member.

He is asking us what thoughts we have in regard to legislation. I made reference in my comments to Bill C-63, the online harms act. I made reference to Bill C-26, which deals with cybersecurity. I made reference to Bill C-27, which deals with updating a framework so that we have regulations that address many aspects of the report.

The biggest barrier is not a lack of ideas or legislation. The biggest barrier is, in fact, the Conservative Party of Canada, which continues to prevent legislation from ultimately becoming law. On the one hand, the Conservatives talk about the importance of privacy for Canadians and the importance of cyber-related issues, but when it comes time to advance legislation, they are found wanting. If my colleague believes that we should have legislation, I would encourage him to allow legislation to get through.

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak on an issue that I know is very important to all Canadians. I wanted to make note of a couple of things before I really get under way. When we think of the Internet, I think that we need to put it into the perspective of how things have changed over time in a very significant way. I would suggest that applies more to the industry of technological changes related to the Internet and computers: it is virtually second to none, and it is something we all need to be much aware of. It is an issue our constituents are very concerned with. I think, at the end of the day, we need to recognize just how much things have changed and the importance of governments to show that not only do they understand the issue, but they also have taken tangible actions in order to address the many different concerns out there.

I will start off by saying there are a number of pieces of legislation that are all related to that technological change. If we canvass Canadians, we will find that there is a wide spectrum of ways they use the internet. There are many benefits to it, and there are many drawbacks.

The legislative agenda that we have put forward and advanced over the last number of years deals with both sides: How important it is to have a framework that enables us to protect, for example, the marketplace; and how important it is that we have laws that protect the victims of the abuse that takes place over the Internet.

I would like to cite three pieces of legislation and where they are at today. It is not necessarily because of the government's will to constantly push opposition members in trying to get through the legislation, but I believe that these are the types of legislation that a vast majority of Canadians would ultimately support. I can make reference to the issue of protection, for example. I think there have been four concurrence reports from the Conservative Party, this is either the second or third from the Bloc and I know the New Democrats have done a concurrence report. This is all during government business. Then we have had the issue of the matters of privilege. No Conservative is standing up saying, “Why are we doing these concurrence reports when we should be dealing with the privilege?” This is because the privilege is actually being used as a tool to prevent the discussion of legislation.

Why is that important to highlight right now? It is because one of the pieces of legislation we have been trying to push out of second reading is Bill C-63, the online harms act. That is a piece of legislation that ultimately protects individuals and our communities from inappropriate behaviour taking place on the Internet and creating victims. These are the types of things to which I question, what role does government have? This particular report raises a number of concerns on the impacts of AI and facial recognition. Imagine all the images on the Internet today that Canadians do not want on the Internet.

I am thinking of a breakup where one spouse is, without the consent of the ex, putting inappropriate pictures on the Internet. Bill C-63 is legislation that addresses an issue of that nature, yet it continues to be frustrated in terms of getting through the House of Commons on second reading. However, I know that a majority of members of Parliament who are sitting in the House of Commons actually support Bill C-63.

We have Bill C-26, which deals with the important issue of cybersecurity. When we think of cybersecurity, we can imagine the data banks out there collecting information and how critical that information is. We are defending and supporting Canadians, where we can, through issues related to privacy and the potential leak of data bank information.

There was a time when a data bank was paper-driven, and the shredders might have had good business at the time. I remember going into an embassy where I saw containers full of correspondence. Containers are disappearing as more and more things are becoming digital, and that applies in many different forms. In literally seconds, millions of data points can actually be lost and ultimately acquired by someone who might have malicious intent. However, we are still waiting for Bill C-26 to ultimately get that royal assent, not to mention Bill C-27.

Bill C-27 has a great deal to do with what we are talking about today. I think members need to fully understand, when we look at how important this issue is, that the last time we actually had a modernization of the acts that are in question, and I am referring to Bill C-27, was back in 2000, over 20 years ago, when iPhones did not exist. Can members imagine a time where iPhones did not exist? I can, and it really was not all that long ago.

When I was first elected, when I turned on the computer, the first thing I heard was a dial tone, a ding-dong, and then I was logged onto the Internet type of thing, and it took quite a while to get that connection. People used five-and-a-half-inch floppy disks. However, from 1995 to 2001, we really started to see an explosion of Internet advancement and technology, and it continues today.

Let us think about where the government has put its investments. It is not only toward protecting Canadians, but toward ensuring that communities have access to the Internet because of how critical it is to all of us.

We can look at one of the largest expenditures in my own province of Manitoba, which expanded broadband Internet into rural communities. It is being financed through the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Ironically, it is the same Canada Infrastructure Bank that the Conservatives say is doing nothing and has no projects. The leader of the Conservative Party has said he is going to get rid of the Infrastructure Bank. However, in Manitoba, we have seen the Internet expand through the Canada Infrastructure Bank.

The Internet is an absolutely essential service today. Back in the late eighties and going into the nineties, some might have said it was an option. Today, it is not an option. The year 2000 was the last time the act was updated. For almost a decade, Stephen Harper chose to do absolutely nothing to protect individuals' identifications from being consumed through the Internet.

This government, for a number of years, has been looking at how we can modernize the protection of Canadians through the Internet and how we can maximize the benefits of the Internet, while minimizing harms to society. Those are the types of initiatives the Government of Canada has been taking to show, in a very real and tangible way, whether with legislative or budgetary measures, that it understands the technology. We are going to continue not only to be there but also to invest in it. It is one of the reasons that Canada virtually leads the rest of the world in many areas, especially on AI and facial recognition. It is because we understand, looking forward, the role that they are going to play.

That is why it is so important to bring forward legislation and, ultimately, look across the way. In a minority situation, we need a sense of co-operation coming from all opposition parties. It does not take a majority of members to prevent things from happening in the House. All it takes is one political party. Any political entity in the House that has 13 or 14 members can cause a great deal of frustration, even though a majority inside the House might want to see actions taken. In the last federal election, a minority government was elected, but that does not take responsibility away from all political parties to take the actions necessary to support what is in the best interests of Canadians.

That is why I am standing up to speak to the report, which had a lot of work. I was not at the committee, but I can assure everyone that a great deal of effort would have been put into coming up with the report.

Having read some of the comments provided by the minister's office in response to the report, obviously the government has taken the report very seriously. If members want to get an appreciation for the content of the report, I would encourage them to take a look at it. They should also look at the response the government has provided to the report. I suspect that if they were to take a look at the response, they would find that once again, much as in the many comments I have put on the record thus far, we have a government that understands the issue and the report and has taken action, not only today but previously, to deal with the concerns being raised.

All we need to do is take a look at Bill C-27. In his response, even the minister made reference to Bill C-27. If members are genuinely concerned about the report, they should be sympathetic to at least allowing Bill C-27 to get out of committee. Why would that not happen? I can assure members, contrary to what the member across the way said, that as a government, we are constantly listening to Canadians. That is why we will find within our measures, whether they are legislative or budget measures, the thoughts and ideas of the people of Canada being reflected.

The Speaker's constituents, my constituents and all of our constituents are genuinely concerned about what is happening on the Internet today. To amplify that fact and the need for change, I quickly made reference to the year 2000, when we last had legislation. We had a big gap when absolutely nothing was done. I call that the Stephen Harper era. Then we had a government replace that era and it immediately started to work with Canadians to get a better understanding of the types of legislation and regulations that are necessary.

The best example that I can come up with, because of the explosion of iPhones out there today, is the issue of Facebook and how many people participate in Facebook. How many people own an iPad or iPhone or are on Facebook, Instagram or the many other social media, which did not exist in 2000? None of them existed. If that is the case, as I stated, I think a good question to pose is why there is resistance to supporting what Canadians want to see. Why would anyone oppose the framework legislation that we are bringing forward that would protect the interests of Canadians?

As I said, it is not like the Internet is an option nowadays. Today, it is an essential service. People will go to the Internet for a wide spectrum of reasons, whether it is streaming a favourite show from the past or something more recent, or looking at issues related to health conditions. I am always amazed at how the general knowledge of the population continues to grow on health-related issues.

That area has great potential, and it will incorporate AI and facial recognition. Non-profit and private organizations and even governments will use the Internet as a tool to deliver health care services and provide health care advice. Many people are taking that up and looking into it. That is one of the reasons that people will be living longer lives in the future. It is endless. That is—

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, with whom I have the pleasure of working on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which he chairs brilliantly.

It is interesting, because the Privacy Commissioner is proposing that privacy be considered a fundamental right, and I completely agree with that.

What struck me recently when I reread the 2022 report is that the recommendations that were made seemed quite far-reaching at the time. Today, these recommendations are less than the minimum required for living together. The government did not take any action and did not treat privacy as a fundamental right, and when it comes to protecting information, it is dead last. We therefore need to make a real change.

Bill C-27 does not treat privacy as a fundamental right.