Bill C-27

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.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Freeland, Mr. Champagne, thank you for your testimony.

Although, according to the motion adopted by the committee, today's meeting is specifically on Supplementary Estimates (B), let me take advantage of your presence to highlight certain points and ask specific questions that are of interest to the committee but not necessarily related to the budget's theme.

Mr. Champagne, for three months now, the committee has set aside its study on the famous Bill C‑27so that you can propose a solution to the fact that some people oppose the creation of a new tribunal. A number of jobs, particularly in the cultural and creative industries, depend in part on this bill.

When do you think you can propose an off-ramp so that we can get back to studying Bill C‑27? We're getting a little impatient here. We are keen on moving forward with the study.

[Philippe Dufresne]

I do not, because, for both the private sector and the public sector, I do not have order-making powers, and I do not have the ability to issue fines. Those are recommendations that we've made to Parliament for both the public sector and the private sector. It's being proposed in Bill C-27 for the private sector. I would want to see this, certainly, in an upcoming bill dealing with public sector privacy law.

[Professor Colin Bennett, Professor Emeritus and Associate Fellow, Department of Political Science, Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, committee.

I have studied and researched privacy protection nationally and internationally for over 40 years, and in recent work I've researched the uses and abuses of personal data in election campaigns. I wish to address my remarks entirely to the requirements of section 444 on the “Personal Information Collected by Political Parties”.

First, I doubt whether the Elections Act is the appropriate statutory vehicle for imposing privacy obligations on federal political parties. Contemporary privacy law is complex and requires far more than the obligations for transparency included in Bill C-65. The required amendments fit uneasily within a statute designed to regulate the conduct and financing of elections.

If the government really wanted to establish “a national, uniform, exclusive and complete” privacy regime for FPPs and the organizations that work for them in response to the litigation that's currently under way in B.C., it would either bring the parties into the current Bill C-27, amending PIPEDA, or legislate a separate national privacy protection statute applying to them.

Second, privacy law, as the Privacy Commissioner has pointed out to you in his communication, should include all of the internationally accepted privacy principles, supplemented with serious and enforceable provisions for oversight and accountability.

The current provisions essentially permit the FPPs to collect whatever personal data they wish from whatever sources and to process it in any way they please, provided they are transparent about it, provided they give illustrative examples and provided they don't sell it.

They do not allow individuals any rights of access and correction, and these provisions therefore amount to little more than self-regulation, entirely at odds with the contemporary international consensus about how to protect personal information in the modern digital age.

Third, contrary to the claim in proposed section 444.1 that these amendments “provide for a national, uniform, exclusive and complete [privacy] regime” for FPPs and the organizations that work for them, I think they do nothing of the sort.

There's a recent report from OpenMedia, based on analysis of national and provincial filings on campaign expenditures, which reveals over 90 companies in Canada that work for political parties at federal, provincial and municipal levels. Nothing in these amendments obliges the political parties to obtain consent when they collect personal data from Canadians, yet companies that work for the parties under contract and are governed by federal and provincial privacy laws must ensure that personal data is collected in compliance with those laws. That's according to a 2019 decision from the B.C. and federal privacy commissioners. I think section 444 is likely to create confusion for the companies that process personal information on behalf of political parties.

Fourth, there really is no meaningful, independent oversight. Obligations for compliance are based on the notion that the Chief Electoral Officer could and would cease a party's registration if it did not submit a valid privacy policy. The system for administrative monetary penalties for those who commit violations is also ineffective.

Further, there's no indication of what an individual is supposed to do if he or she is dissatisfied with the response to a complaint from the party's privacy officer. With all due respect to Elections Canada and the Commissioner of Canada Elections, I don't think they possess the resources or the expertise to monitor the complex technical environment of modern digital campaigning. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner does and should be given a collaborative role in the oversight regime, which would be a similar arrangement as exists in B.C.

Finally, there's no effective mechanism for reporting data breaches. We've already witnessed a number of data breaches from political parties, and they're likely to continue. The current provisions only require the parties to inform the individuals affected if they judge that there is a “real risk of significant harm”. There must also be a duty to report such breaches to an independent body, such as the Privacy Commissioner.

Canada is just one of a few democratic countries where national privacy law does not apply to political parties and to the sensitive information on political opinions they collect. There is no evidence, despite assertions by the parties, that compliance with these laws in other countries and jurisdictions, including B.C. and Quebec, hinders political engagement, constrains their ability to recruit volunteers or otherwise prevents them from communicating with the electorate.

There is also no credible reason why Canadians should enjoy enforceable privacy rights with respect to government agencies and commercial organizations and not with political parties.

At root, this issue is not just about privacy rights; it's about the health and resilience of our democracy.

Political campaigning is changing dramatically as elections increasingly become more data-driven and the voter analytics, predictive modelling and artificial intelligence tools, which you discussed earlier with the Chief Electoral Officer, drive campaign communications. The need to develop and apply a strong and consistent set of enforceable privacy rules for federal political parties is urgent, and the provisions in Bill C-65 do not achieve those goals, in my judgment.

Thank you so much.

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

I'd like to get back to what I was saying. We are considering the motion passed earlier, but with a timetable. I think it would be worthwhile to add one here, considering that we don't know when we're going to have the government amendments on Bill C‑27.

Perhaps we should plan for when we come back after the holidays. I don't see how we could fit this in. I'd suggest to my colleague that we include a time frame, so we can be sure we will ultimately conduct the study. If this really is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed, I think it's important that it be included in the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I hope you don't put your life on hold for Bill C-27, Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Well, I started this meeting raising this exact point.

Maybe we could get, from the clerk, the exact timeline for when the Liberals broke off Bill C-27, so we can take a recess to find out whether or not.... We've been waiting for these amendments for four months, perhaps. I'd like to know specifically how many months it has been, because, magically, they seem to be suggesting to us that they're going to have amendments within a few weeks, even though I specifically asked for that over and over.

Now we're getting the Liberals opposing a specific thing we have to work on today in our calendar, because now they say amendments are going to come, after being quiet about it all meeting. We have to do our planning. Here we are back again. I think it has been four months. Off the top of my head, I'm just remembering when we broke off Bill C-27. We were promised all of these different things. I don't know how I'm supposed to even.... Mr. Généreux offered an amendment for us to do something. We're supposed to, I guess, have some faith that we're going to get some amendments and hold up from.... When the minister came here, he didn't even have amendments. He had ideas. Then, finally, we got into amendments, and that took about a year.

Now we're supposed to scuttle all of our planning for this meeting. Maybe we should recess the meeting. I should bring back a motion for you to find out from the minister, specifically. At this point, I, too, would like to know why it's taken so long. This is the challenge we have. I think the member is making a legitimate motion here that is important. Then we're supposed to disregard it. I don't understand the logic on the other side here. I really don't.

I guess I'm going to support the subamendment, based on all these things. I'm not going to wait for this unicorn to pop up with regard to having the amendments written for us while we're supposed to put all of our lives on hold again.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

On this subamendment, Mr. Chair, my preference would be to deal with Bill C-27 at the earliest. I'll speak to this motion later.

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

Basically, I don't share my colleague's opinion.

We're talking about holding two meetings for this study. As far as the study of Bill C‑27 is concerned, I don't think that holding two meetings will change things considerably. I think it would be important for us to do this study as soon as we come back in January, or in February. In fact, in January, we'll have barely two days. Do we have a meeting scheduled for January? We'll probably have one or two at the beginning of the year.

I don't think it changes the agenda for Bill C‑27. In any case, until the minister responds to our requests and says what he wants to do about the proposed amendments, we honestly can't work on or even plan to work on Bill C-27.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Yes. He's adding “right after”, which would suggest the committee.... I would respectfully oppose that, because I would like to be back on Bill C-27 immediately following that.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

We had hoped, obviously, that we would be back on Bill C-27 after that particular study. I know that Mr. Masse is asking questions about that, and we've been working very diligently to come up with options to get back to Bill C-27.

I think that if that's a priority for a number of individuals, to me that would be the preference when we get back, after the study Mr. Généreux mentioned, which I think we've now clarified as the order from the House, that we need to study—

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do support this motion. I just want to follow up in regard to my previous comments as we try to work our way through different evidence here.

We still have not heard from the parliamentary secretary or anybody about the intentions of the government on Bill C-27, so I would consider just drafting a motion for you, as chair, to ask the minister specifically. At the same time, I'm figuring that at this point I'll just assume that it's been abandoned. Why create more work for ourselves when we have other things like this that we can look at and that are important to Canadians? There have been significant issues in Telesat that have come up, as well as other things.

With that, I'm not going to propose that you write a letter to the minister to find out what he's doing, because I can only assume the behaviour that is conducted in public is really representative of what he sends his members here to do, and that's basically to abandon legislation. In committee in the past, we've abandoned our own studies and other things to focus on legislation. I want to remind everyone here that it was in the last two sessions that Liberal members were filibustering the committee by speaking through the time frames and timelines because they didn't know what to do about the tribunal.

We have a number of different organizations and companies that are asking us on a regular basis, on civil society to.... Even just yesterday I had another telecommunications lobby to me, asking what's going on with Bill C-27. I basically can only respond to what the minister is saying in public. I guess we move on at this point. If they're not going to come prepared to this meeting to tell us what their objectives are on this, we need to set our schedule and move ahead. It's entirely their fault on this, because we have set aside time and we have not heard anything back.

That's where I'm at. I'll support this because we will have some time when we get other things done. I'm hoping that we can clear the deck with the stuff we've already done. For those reasons, I'll support motions that will occupy our time, because, if not, we're just going to miss opportunities to look at very important matters. This is one that's been raised not only by the Conservative Party but by others with regard to Telesat. I'll support it based on that.

I'll just close by saying that, again, I was going to ask you to write it up. We've done this before, with unanimous consent, to have the chair look at it, but what's the point? They see all of this. They have their members in the room here. They have their people from their party lobby system, and they really don't give a damn, I guess, at the end of the day, so we'll just move ahead at this point in time.

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

I just want to say that I think this is an extremely important study.

Having said that, I'm going to oppose the motion for a very simple reason. This is an extremely important topic, and we've heard what the European Union, in particular, intends to do. In my opinion, it's not enough to insert two meetings in the middle of the Bill C‑27 study.

That would be extremely negligent, when this issue should be properly discussed, analyzed and studied. Therefore, I cannot support the proposal at this time.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I echo the comments of MP Masse. We all know, and I'll say it here, that the minister had conversations with everybody when the House came back, asking what he had to do to get Bill C-27 through. We—at least the three opposition parties, I think—all made it very clear what it would take, and the minister did pledge to go back and do that.

Then he's been yammering in the media about how the committee is blocking everything. The committee isn't blocking anything. The minister, once again, hasn't lived up to his commitment. He hasn't come back with the changes to the tribunal and the AI portion of the bill that we all required in order to proceed. It would be good if he would come here. I would support a motion by MP Masse to recall the minister and to ask him what the heck he's doing.

With regard to this motion, of course, I agree, Mr. Chair, that a lot of the things we're doing.... The House has ordered us to do a study on the potential anti-competitive nature of the e-transfer and the broader economic payment system and banking system that causes Canadians to pay what appears to be way too much money for their financial services.

On this particular motion, however, I do agree that there should be a study on the Liberal government's carbon tax—a carbon tax on everything, a carbon tax that has put up the price of everything, a carbon tax that the government claims reduces carbon emissions, yet their own environment department doesn't even monitor its impact, so it has no impact. It's so important to the government that the radical Liberal environment minister doesn't even bother trying to monitor its impact. I think it would be great to have a study on this.

My problem with the motion that MP Turnbull put forward is that he actually wrote the report in the preamble before setting up the study and made a bunch of conclusions, so I would propose the following amendment to Mr. Turnbull's committee study: to delete everything from the first word, “Given”, until the last sentence. That last sentence, of course, begins, “That the committee allocate no less than two meetings to study the topic of industrial carbon pricing”, but what I would do is amend that line to say, “That the committee allocate no less than two meetings to this matter on the industrial and consumer carbon pricing, and that these meetings begin once the committee has set its schedule and figures out appropriate timing.”

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the motion coming forward. I'm trying to figure out, as we go through several of these motions here, what it means for our current schedule with regard to the credit card study and then getting it, hopefully.... I was hopeful—and maybe this is a little bit too optimistic—that we might have a chance to either have a report before we break or table something if there's actually time, if we give direct discussion points to our analysts.

What I'm trying to figure out is how we go through this trifecta of suggestions on work we do without knowing our calendar. I don't want to end up in a situation where we do not end up finishing the work we wanted to get done. That's what I'm trying to figure out right now as we go through this. I'm not opposed to the motion, and I'm open to doing other things, but I'm just trying to figure this out.

Lastly, and I think this is a really important part of it, where the hell are the amendments from the government on Bill C-27? All I get is commentary from the minister in the public domain or in having to answer interviews. I think at some point I might have a motion to pull the minister here specifically for that issue, because it was promised that we were going to get these amendments. They weren't even amendments, if we go back in time. We still don't know where that is. I don't know how we can actually deal with all of these things, because we don't even know what the intent of the government is on him publicly saying here that he had amendments and publicly saying to us and in talking to us privately that we're getting something, but we still don't have it here.

If the government's real intention is that they've run up the white flag on Bill C-27, in terms of all the work.... I still thought there was some commitment to get the privacy stuff done. I have legislation ready that would split it in the House of Commons, as all parties know, and we've even discussed that before, so that we could actually get a piece of work to the Senate if there was compromise. However, we don't even know what that is. The government has another motion right now on committee business, and they still have not brought these other amendments on legislation.

I'm just trying to figure out how we prioritize all these things. If we knew exactly what the plan was from the government, then maybe that would help.

International Trade

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, we just need to get the documents that we have been asking for; we can then move ahead. It is as simple as that. Second to that, if the government wants to, if it has legislation that is sitting on the shelf or whatever, there are certain components that it can actually release to the public. If it cannot physically table it here entirely, it can still table a lot of the different information about that legislation. It may not get here into the chamber right now, but it could actually get us ready to roll on this.

I could also bring up the fact that, if the legislation is in good order, we could actually have our critics work on it so that we could pass it expeditiously in the House. The government can do a lot of things, but I do not believe that the legislation is drafted and available. I have been waiting in the industry committee for amendments on Bill C-27 for almost half a year now, and we are still waiting for those amendments on its own government legislation.