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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Garon, congratulations on your election as second vice‑chair. Welcome. You have great responsibilities to take on, because Mr. Lemire has been very helpful in his years on the committee. He was a very good parliamentarian, but I'm sure you'll be up to the task. It's a pleasure to have you with us.

Before moving on to Bill C‑27, I must also submit to the committee a proposal for supplementary estimates for our study of Bill C‑27. It indicates that an amount of $6,000 is requested, and that amount is broken down.

Do I have the unanimous consent of the committee to adopt this budget proposal?

[Wyatt Tessari L'Allié]

That is a huge discussion. Alongside our efforts on Bill C-27, we're also calling for a national dialogue on AI because what the human being does in a context where everything can be done better by an AI system is a huge question.

Precisely because it is smarter than humans, we could create a world that is better. We could live more meaningful and more fulfilling lives, but right now nobody knows exactly what that means. This is why it's worth taking the time to talk about it.

It's also why you need a law to regulate it in the meantime, so if you have to slow down certain capabilities to give people time to figure out what's next, you can do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

We still have a bit of a technical issue with Ms. Janssen. We'll start the discussion and perhaps interrupt it at some point to give her the opportunity to share her thoughts on Bill C-27.

I will turn it over to Mr. Perkins for six minutes.

[Jonathan Horowitz, Legal Adviser, International Committee of the Red Cross, Regional Delegation for the United States and Canada, Canadian Red Cross]

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you.

Catherine and I will be focusing solely on part 3 of Bill C-27.

We are representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Canadian Red Cross. Our organizations work to minimize the suffering of victims of armed conflict, and we work with governments to ensure respect for the laws that regulate armed conflict.

We appear before you today to emphasize that, when governments regulate AI, you need to consider how AI is, can and will be used in armed conflict and to ensure that it does not contribute to unlawful harms.

Today, we are observing in real time that privately made AI systems developed and designed for civilian use are finding their way onto battlefields, whether adapted by militaries, armed groups or civilians. We are particularly concerned with the use of AI that can result in death, injury and other serious harms. This includes the use of AI in misinformation and disinformation campaigns and how they can disrupt and interfere with humanitarian operations. Artificial intelligence allows harmful information to be generated and spread at a scope and scale never before imagined, with real-world dangers for civilians in armed conflict as well as those who work in these contexts.

To address these concerns, we recommend that the bill require that all Canadian-made AI systems used in armed conflict must be designed to comply with international humanitarian law in accordance with Canada's pre-existing legal obligations. International humanitarian law, or IHL, is the body of international law that places limits on how warring parties may fight each other in armed conflicts and, importantly, it provides protections to civilians and others no longer participating in those hostilities.

To ensure IHL compliance, it will also be critical that the bill include language that preserves effective human control and judgment in the use of AI that could have serious consequences on human life in situations of armed conflict; that the bill ensure AI systems are traded in compliance with Canada's export control obligations; and that the bill clearly regulate AI systems used in misinformation and disinformation campaigns and must contain language that ensures the definition of “harm” in proposed subsection 5(1) includes types of harm that AI systems may cause through the creation and spread of misinformation and disinformation.

[Nicole Janssen, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer, AltaML Inc.]

Thank you for the invitation to share my thoughts with the committee today.

My name is Nicole Janssen. I'm the co-founder and co-CEO at AltaML. AltaML is the largest pure-play applied AI company in Canada. We create custom AI software solutions for private industry enterprises, as well as the public sector. AltaML is not quite six years old, but we've worked with over a hundred companies on over 400 AI use cases.

I want to start by saying that Bill C-27 is both necessary and a solid step in the right direction. Canada has the potential to be the global leader in responsible AI. That is the title that is up for grabs—

[Wyatt Tessari L'Allié, Founder and Executive Director, AI Governance and Safety Canada]

Committee members, thank you for giving me the honour of being here.

AI Governance and Safety Canada is a cross‑partisan not‑for‑profit organization and a community of people across Canada. We started with the following question. What can we do in Canada, and from Canada, to ensure positive artificial intelligence outcomes?

In November, we submitted a brief with detailed recommendations concerning the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act. We're currently preparing a second brief in response to the amendments proposed by the minister.

The witnesses at previous meetings already discussed the risks posed by the current systems. I'll focus today on the upcoming economic and safety challenges posed by artificial intelligence; on the time constraints involved in preparing for these challenges; and on what all this means for the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.

Let me start by stating the obvious. With human intelligence staying roughly the same and AI getting better by the day, it is only a matter of time before AI outperforms us in all domains. This includes ones like reasoning, caring for people and navigating real-world complexity, where we currently hold a clear advantage. Building this level of AI is the explicit goal of frontier labs like OpenAI, Google DeepMind and, more recently, Meta.

The first implication of smarter-than-human AI is for public safety, due to the weaponization and control problems.

The weaponization problem is straightforward. If a human being can design or use weapons of mass destruction, then a smarter-than-human AI system can too. This means that, in the hands of the wrong people, smarter-than-human AI systems could be used for unprecedented harm.

The control problem comes from the fact that a system that is smarter than us is, by definition, one that can out-compete us. This means that if an advanced AI system, through accident or poor design, starts to interpret human beings as a threat and takes actions against us, we will not be able to stop it.

Moreover, there is a growing body of evidence backed by research at the world's top AI labs suggesting that, without proper safety precautions, AI systems above a certain threshold of intelligence may behave adversarially by default. This is why hundreds of leading AI experts signed a statement last year saying, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority”.

The second major implication is for labour. As AI approaches the point where it can do everything we can, only better—including designing robots that can outperform us physically—our labour will be increasingly less useful. The economic pressures are such that a company that doesn't eventually replace its CEO, board and employees with smarter-than-human AI systems and robotics will likely be a company that loses out to others that do. If we don't manage these developments wisely, increasing numbers of people will get left behind.

I want to be clear, however, that AI is also a very positive force, and we can't let fear take us over. The world we create with advanced AI could be a far more peaceful, prosperous and equitable world than the one we currently have. It's just that, as discussed so far, AI and, in particular, smarter-than-human AI represents a tsunami of change, and there's a lot we need to get right.

How much time do we have? The reality is that we're already late in the game. Even the rudimentary AI that we have today is causing issues with everything from biased employment decisions to enabling cybercrime and spreading misinformation.

However, the greatest risks come from AI that is reliably smarter than us, and that AI could be coming soon. Many leading experts expect human levels of AI in as little as two to five years, and the engineers at the frontier labs whom we've talked to are saying there's even a 5% to 10% chance of it being built in 2024. While accurate predictions about the future are impossible, the trends are clear enough that a responsible government needs to be ready.

What we can do? In our white paper “Governing AI: A Plan for Canada”, we outline five categories of action needed from government, including establishing a central AI agency, investing in AI governance and safety research, championing global talks and launching a national conversation on AI. Legislative action is the fifth, and essential, pillar.

The main reasons Canada needs an AI and data act are, first, to limit current and future harms by banning or regulating high-risk use cases and capabilities; second, to create a culture of ethics, safety and accountability in the public and private sectors that can scale up as AI technology advances; and third, to provide government with the capacity, agility and oversight to adequately protect Canadians and respond to developments in the field as they arise.

The minister's amendments are a good step in the right direction, and I'd be happy to provide feedback on them.

To conclude, while the challenges we face with AI are daunting and the timelines to address them are very tight, constructive action to govern the risks and harness the opportunities is possible, and bills like Bill C-27 are an essential piece of the puzzle.

As the wheels of history turn around us, one thing is clear: Success on this global issue will require every country to step up to the challenge, and Canada's on us.

Thank you.

I look forward to answering your questions.

[Professor Gillian Hadfield, Chair, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

My name is Gillian Hadfield. I'm a professor of law and economics at the University of Toronto, where I hold the Schwarz Reisman chair in technology and society. I'm also a CIFAR AI chair at the Vector Institute and a Schmidt Sciences AI2050 senior fellow. I basically don't think about anything except AI these days.

I'm appearing here in a personal capacity. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you about this crucial piece of legislation.

In my view, Parliament should move to enact AIDA as soon as possible. However, there are some outstanding areas of concern that I would like to highlight, along with some recommendations.

First, I think AIDA should recognize and address the fundamental, systemic and potentially catastrophic risk posed by large models. I don't think this is just fear talking. AIDA is currently focused on individual harms. I think that means we are neglecting potential systemic issues like financial instability, election interference and national security threats posed by advanced AI systems. Recent regulatory actions in the U.S. and the U.K. highlight the need to address systemic risks in AI alongside individual harms.

Proposed amendments to the definition of “high-impact system” remain focused on individual harms and should be expanded to include coverage of AI likely to cause systemic harms regardless of domain.

To further address systemic harms, Canada should swiftly establish, either as a part of AIDA or in separate legislation, a mandatory registry for large AI models to provide basic insights into developers, associated risks and legal compliance to ensure effective regulation amid the rapid pace of AI development.

Second, AIDA needs to retain the flexibility and adaptability that I saw in its initial draft. This is because of a basic tension at the core of AI regulation: Legislation does not move quickly; advanced technologies do. Consider the very process of passing Bill C-27. It's been well over 500 days since Minister Champagne introduced this legislation in June 2022, yet the bill remains at some distance from becoming law. Meanwhile, AI has been racing forward. Since that time, we have all witnessed the emergence of ChatGPT, GPT-4 and additional large models. Companies have scrambled to integrate AI into their operations. AI continues to demonstrate its practical applications across diverse fields like law, health care and finance. As I mentioned, other countries are taking action.

The rate of change of advanced technologies demands responsiveness and adaptability in the regulation we impose on them. The original draft of AIDA was extremely flexible in this regard. It set out broad parameters for AI regulation, leaving specific details to be worked out in regulations and administrative decisions. Minister Champagne's letter of November 28 last year reduced this flexibility by moving key regulatory requirements into the legislation itself. As you consider this bill and these amendments at committee, I urge you to be mindful that, while this may provide greater clarity to businesses in the short term, it will impair AIDA's flexibility and, therefore, its long-term effectiveness as the foundation of Canada's AI regulation.

I think the most important point I want to make is to emphasize that additional supports must be implemented to operationalize the desired flexibility, longevity and balance of AIDA. Relying on regulations that will take at least two years to develop will leave stakeholders in a dynamic and rapidly advancing area with significant uncertainty, as you've heard. Canada can make itself a leader in AI regulation, however, by implementing two low-barrier regulatory schemes to provide AIDA with the flexibility it needs while increasing certainty for stakeholders.

One is to have safe harbours that would offer time-limited guidelines for acceptable AI use to shield organizations from legal repercussions. The other involves a proposal I've made regarding regulatory markets, which would involve licensing private regulators to ensure flexible and efficient regulation.

These solutions aim to balance innovation and safety, to promote effective technology regulation without stifling innovation and to ensure that citizens are protected from AI-related risks. I'll note that Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, wrote a piece in The Wall Street Journal just last Saturday advocating this regulatory market approach.

I'd like to thank the committee for your hard work on this important bill, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Wonderful.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, today the committee is continuing its consideration of 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.

I would like to welcome today's witnesses.

We're joined here by Todd Bailey, vice president of intellectual property at Scale AI.

With us by video conference, we have Gillian Hadfield, chair and director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.

We're meeting in person with Wyatt Tessari L'Allié, founder and executive director of AI Governance and Safety Canada.

With us by video conference, we also have Nicole Janssen, co‑founder and co‑chief executive officer of AltaML.

Lastly, we're joined by two representatives of the Canadian Red Cross. Catherine Gribbin, a senior legal advisor for international humanitarian law, is joining us in person. Jonathan Horowitz, a legal advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross's regional delegation for the United States and Canada, is joining us by video conference.

I want to welcome everyone. Thank you for taking the time to discuss this significant bill.

Without further ado, I'll give the floor to Mr. Bailey for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to the continuation of meeting number 106 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, which was suspended on January 11.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

We'll begin today's meeting with a bit of committee business. Then we'll proceed to hearing our witnesses on Bill C-27.

Thanks to all of you for being with us today. As members know, we suspended our last meeting, which was meeting number 106. To move on to Bill C-27, we would need unanimous consent to withdraw Mr. Perkins' motion.

I will yield the floor to Mr. Perkins.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all I want to clear up some of the misinformation and disinformation I've heard so far. The public accounts committee is not looking at this issue. It is seized with other issues. As I understand it, the industry committee is busy looking at the sustainable green fund scandal, the problems with Bill C-27—the privacy bill—and the Stellantis contract scandal, so it is also not looking at this.

I'm extremely concerned with the pattern of behaviour I see with medical contracts. We have this Medicago one, where clearly there were two contracts and there's been a $150-million payment to Mitsubishi that isn't mentioned anywhere in anything that we've seen, so that's questionable. This is on top of things like the Frank Baylis “let's spend $172 million to buy ventilators but never use them”. Then, where do we get the money back or sell those ventilators to do something...? These kinds of things are happening all the time.

When the ministers come we always hear that they didn't read their emails and they weren't aware of the details of the contract. There are electronic bank records that go with every one of these transfers, so I don't accept that we can't get to the bottom of where this is.

I would also call.... When the Liberals say they want to have transparency, but then they bring an amendment like what they've brought, which is to say, “Okay, you can come and look at it, but you can't take pictures of it and you can't record it.” That puts us in the situation where, yes, we see it, and as Mr. Davies has correctly said, we can talk about it. However, as soon as we say, “Well, the contract said this, and this is a problem”, then the NDP will line up, as they always do, with their Liberal partners and say, “No, it doesn't say that.” Again, the public has no way of knowing what the truth is because there's no transparency at all.

I propose a subamendment to the amendment that's been made. The subamendment would take out some of the wording within the amendment. It would be “that, when these documents are received by the clerk, they be available to committee members no later than 30 days following the receipt of the contracts.” That would be it.

I will mail that to the clerk so that he has it in both official languages.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to come back to the urgency that we talked about with respect to Bill C-27 and reinforce the discussion we've had about how important this issue is.

I think if we all believe in the importance of making sure that the industry is held accountable and is responsive, we can take the time to do this right.

My father used to have a saying: “Act in haste and repent at leisure.” My concern is that we're in such a rush to get this done we're not going to have an accurate analysis of what the issue is.

Again, I have to go back to the fact that there are a lot of components at issue here, not the least of which is investment and technology, not the least of which is the dynamics of competition and not the least of which is the difference between price and cost that is determined by the volumes that people have and whether those volumes go up or down. You could have the same price, but if your utilization goes up, the cost goes up.

There are a lot of things that need to be examined very thoroughly, very clearly, in depth and wholesomely.

I'll go back to what Brian said earlier. If this is important, we should give it the fullness of our attention, but it needs to be prompt. At the same time, I've heard that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can do two things at the same time. My biggest fear is that we're looking at doing one and a half things at the same time.

I'm really disappointed that we're not giving it the thoroughness it needs. We're not giving it the level of investigation and the level of facts so that we can have a fact-based decision and go forward with making sure that we're doing what's right for our communities.

There is the authority for rollbacks on prices as well. However, at the same time, we haven't done anything to slow down the runaway technology that Bill C-27 has, and that's a genuine concern that I have.

Let's make sure that we're doing what's right for the country and not just trying to grab media headlines. It's important that we give full consideration to the issue at hand. If we're genuinely concerned about it, let's make sure that it's a thorough analysis and that we get all the facts.

With respect to the amendment that's being proposed, I'm not sure that if we say everything after (c) is deleted. It includes the paragraph that talks about the progress report, which I think is essential. That could form a part of what's being proposed by Mr. Lemire.

We need to give this due and thorough consideration. We need to make sure that what we're doing is in the best interests of the country, and not necessarily politically expedient.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Listen—this is like going around in circles. It's super frustrating.

I think Mr. Lemire's study is obviously relevant. There's something bigger here. The looming fact is that we were elected as members of Parliament to work. I'm not understanding the rationale within this group, if I'm to be honest with you. Canadians were promised that cellphone bills would not go up with this merger. That was the promise of the minister. It is front-page news. They are going up. They are going up in a cost of living crisis in one of the worst months of the year, January.

I tried to feel the vibe of the room here. Everybody here has said that, yes, this is a problem, but that, no, we're not going to vote in favour of this motion to bring forth the minister and the CEO of Rogers.

I put it forward as a friendly suggestion, but now, because I couldn't get a thumbs-up, I'm just going to put it forward as an official amendment that, within the motion that was put forward by my colleague Mr. Perkins—it's the same motion—I would like to remove (c), (d) and (e). We would still have Minister Champagne and Tony Staffieri, CEO and president of Rogers, appear before the committee.

These are questions that need to be answered. We have a big study of Bill C-27. We have the time. To say that we don't have the time to conveniently log on to our computers from our constituency offices and speak for Canadians who are suffering doesn't make any sense. We're talking about two meetings. This is two hours of our time. We were elected to do this. This is our job.

That's what I would put forward to the committee members. At least we'd be getting the minister in front of us. The minister has even said that he would use any tools necessary. He wants to deal with this. The Liberal minister has said he wants to deal with this.

What are we even contemplating here? It doesn't make any sense.

I would get rid of everything after “Rogers” in (b). It's just Tony, just to clarify. Again, the amendment would keep (a) as is, and under (b), it would be Tony Staffieri, CEO and president of Rogers, and that would be the end of it. Everything after that would be deleted. There would be none of Mirko, and so on. We would not be calling on those people. You can delete the rest of that. That is the amendment I am putting forward, that they would appear before January 26. If we have to put that to the clerk, let me know. I just think this makes the most sense.

We can agree on this. This is simple. This is what the minister has said. He will use any tools possible. Let's put Canadians first. Let's get this done.

Thank you.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I thank you for that, Mr. Chair.

I also thank Mr. Perkins for submitting this because we weren't really having those discussions yet, so this has kind of created that.

I do want to point out that Mr. Lemire's motion has been on the books since September. This is the latest round of what's taken place for Canadian consumers. Just because it pops up when the House of Commons isn't sitting and is a specific target on the minister doesn't mean that we don't care about all of the other things that have taken place. There could have been action on this or several other things that have taken place, and we could have broken off meetings at any point in time. We're the authors of our own destiny here.

I would hope, and my intention is, to go to the steering committee to try to find these extra resources or the time to do something more substantial than just a one-hit wonder on Rogers in this moment, to do something that's going to be meaningful for Canadians and to not have it later on after Bill C-27 that we have it. I mean, this is the reality that we're faced with right now. It's a Hail Mary pass motion during a time period right now where we have very little time to even notify the witnesses to come and guarantee that they will be here. Otherwise, we'll have to go in a circle again and come back to look at just this one narrow piece of it.

I'm not hearing...and I'm hoping that some Liberal members might chime in and say that they're committed to actually working with the steering committee to find the resources so that this doesn't get lost again. However, that's the reality. We could have abandoned our Bill C-27 study at any point in time. Any motion could have happened at any point in time on this or other issues. Mr. Lemire's motion has been on the books since September, and we have not acted on it. We haven't acted on it for a lot of different reasons.

I hope that we could actually then do what you're saying, Mr. Chair: meet together and get an appropriate combination that's more.... You know, the fact is that Mr. Lemire deserves some credit for being ahead of this. He's not reacting to what's taking place in just a small subset of a larger problem in the industry. Mr. Lemire actually approached the committee in earnest with a motion. He put it on the table. We voted on it and supported it. It's been sitting patiently, as he has been in this committee.

I'm hoping that other Liberal members will commit to making sure that we're going to do more than just wait around for Bill C-27. That's not the intent at all. For me, this is invigorating in the sense that we're actually going to get to something that I think is very much something that the committee should be spending some time on. Bill C-27 is soaking everything up, but we actually have some of the biggest responsibilities.

I'll conclude with this. This is why some of our work has been shopped around to other committees as well. It's been done by certain parties that have tried multiple motions on the same subjects in different committees, trying to take work away from us so we're not even finishing the stuff that we have actually passed motions on and that we actually still having witnesses coming forth on.

I guess the thing we have to discuss, whether it's going to be publicly now, openly later on or outside of our other meeting—we can have the subcommittee meet in public too—is whether we are going to abandon all of the other work, money and investment that went into Sustainable Development Technology Canada, that went into the auto motions. Are we going to actually give all of those things up too? I don't know. I don't know how we solve that on the fly like this. I just hope that we have a commitment here to do what we probably should have done: been more proactive on Mr. Lemire's motion.

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

Since I started this, maybe I'll provide probably the final comments.

Here's where we're at. We have a price increase that's happening by Rogers. We have a price increase that's already happened by Quebecor. We have two other of the four major players refusing to tell the public what they're going to do about price increases this year. We're in a position where, if I hear the Liberal members right, they think this is an urgent thing too, except they want it to wait until after we finish Bill C-27, which will be a few more months. I can understand why they want the delay on this. Obviously, more study on cost of living increases for the government is not something they want to have hearings on. The reality is that these companies are ignoring what this government said about reducing prices.

I guess I would feel more comfortable, because nobody's willing to do the thumbs-up, if the committee said this: Do you know what? We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can add on to Bill C-27 a third hour to begin a study on this when the House is back.

If it's on Mr. Lemire's motion, fair enough, but waiting until Bill C-27 is over is irresponsible given the cost increases. If, as MP Turnbull said, it's urgent and MP Sorbara said it's urgent, but just not the Conservative motion, then let's get to it and add on the time. We can't get another meeting slot, but we can add on, as we did in the fall with the green slush fund. We still have to finish that. As with the green slush fund, we can add on an extra hour. I'm certainly willing to spend three hours with the amazing members of this committee and the amazing testimony, where we do the two hours on the remaining elements of Bill C-27 and work on this in the third hour.

I fear that where we're going is that it will wait until after, because that's what the government wants. They'll hope that it goes away and that other things take over. I am very disappointed that the government members say that it's urgent but actually don't want to study it. I would encourage everyone on this committee, particularly those on the subcommittee, that, if you believe it's so urgent, when we have the agenda committee meet, hopefully before the House resumes—I think that's what we were talking about to organize our agenda—all will be unanimous in moving forward with adding a third hour to our meetings.

That's presuming, of course, and maybe I'm being a little too presumptuous, that my motion will fail. I hope you still have time to change your mind, see the error of your ways and see that Canadians believe that this is something that needs to be urgently questioned, that these CEOs need to be urgently questioned and that we can find time, sometime in the next two weeks, to call the CEO of Rogers before this committee to explain why he told us prices were going down but will be doing the opposite.

Apparently, or it looks like, my motion will be defeated. Members on this committee don't feel such urgency to figure out why the prices are going up when the commitment is to bring them down.

However, I will give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I look forward to your support in the agenda committee to adding a third hour to our hearings, starting when the House comes back and we have our normal meeting schedule.

Thank you.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I've been looking at this as well, and I'm wondering.... Maybe you can answer some of this too. I'm looking at the motion here. There are some inclusions that Mr. Perkins has that we can expand on; there's no doubt about that. I still think this is really more of a subset of Mr. Lemire's motion, but that's just my personal opinion. I don't want to challenge the chair on it, but I still think this is covered by what we've already addressed. We just didn't assign a date to Mr. Lemire's motion.

If we're trying to work this through, though, I'm also worried about it unintentionally being a trap that complicates getting the proper witnesses because of the date timelines in here and trying to shoehorn this on the fly to make it work somehow. We only have a week—next week—to meet, because the following week, we have our caucuses that we'll be attending. That will also affect our capabilities.

I'm working on constituency stuff right now that's just as important as this issue. In Windsor, we're dealing with, quite frankly, significant economic issues and other matters. This is obviously crucially important to the constituents here, but there are still several other things that we're dealing with.

I don't know what else to abandon if we are going to go.... We could try to do some in Ottawa, I suppose, or some virtually, which I don't believe is as effective, especially if we want to bring the CEOs to the table. I want the CEOs at the table, and I thank Mr. Perkins for pointing this out, because I didn't want the impression to be that it was just Rogers on that alone. It's more about Rogers customers, but I want all of those CEOs in the room with us in Ottawa. That's what I would prefer to have, trying to do it properly.

I don't know how we can do that today. Maybe Mr. Vis will come back with something, but at the same time, I'm just wondering whether the best process for us is to agree to some elements of the motion and that we're going to do work on those, whether it's in a motion that would say we're going to merge Mr. Perkins' and Mr. Lemire's motion—a simple one like that—and then go to planning so that we can get the proper resources or....

Here's what we can do. We can try to get in a couple of meetings, if we can, and then find some really important and interesting stuff that needs to be followed up on—I've listed a litany of things that I won't go through again—but then we find out that we don't even have the House resources for them. We can't make a decision on how we'll allocate Bill C-27 and a new study on this. We then bring in one or two people from the industry. We leave the others out, because we can't accommodate the time frames, and we're stuck in the doldrums, like a boat with no wind in the sails, waiting to find out if we can actually get some time.

Maybe, Mr. Chair, you could provide some guidance on the challenges of trying to get the witnesses. I will subpoena a witness if I have to. This is a significant issue, and what's important for me is the CEOs, so if we have to do that.... We've seen CEOs come to Parliament and come to our table, and not even tell us at the right times the right things that are supposed to be happening.

We even had at the industry committee the CEOs from the grocery store industry when they ended pandemic pay. All three of them came on the same day and basically threw a loophole in the system. That was actually important work that came out later on, and another committee is working on following up on it, but it was important because it was this committee that brought the CEOs of grocery retailers to Parliament for the first time.

I don't want to forget that, because I want to do this right with the same CEOs who are right here. It's outrageous that this is going on. Mr. Perkins deserves credit for highlighting a particular case and the whole whitewash on Canadian consumers that's taking place, but I also don't want to trap us accidentally, not do the right thing and almost start something that we can't even finish. It would be embarrassing.

I don't know how to wedge these two things together. I have a commitment to myself. Whether we can craft a motion that will say we're going to go to a committee business meeting or something.... We can even do it next week or whatever. It won't take the full operations of Parliament.

We'll focus on crafting a motion to merge the two that we will then start on. If we don't, then what do we do if we get one meeting or half a meeting, or maybe a couple of people at the table one day and nobody else can show up? We won't have any credibility with the CEOs and the public if we are giving people one business week to come in front of Parliament. That's going to light up the whole argument that they have to do it virtually and not even attend, and it will give them tons of credibility on that.

Second, they'll be able to escape that, and we've seen that with other industry initiatives that have gone from our committee to other committees that have had a hard time procuring witnesses at the last minute. They're still just spinning their wheels on some of that stuff because we're having a hard time getting people to show up.

My suggestion at this point in time is to see whether there's enough support to stand this down to some degree but also to have something committed to so that it gets the confidence of the author of the motion as well as the other author, Mr. Lemire, who has been sincerely waiting. He put that study forward a long time ago, and he did it with the sincere hope that it would be one of the things taken up when we had time and that it was a priority.

We have that commitment as well, and that was talked about when we were at the table. We said that to Mr. Lemire. We all did. We said that if we had some extra time and resources, we would go back and look at what we had done. That's why we passed his motion. We didn't have to pass his motion; we could have put it off to other business or something else. I haven't even proposed a motion as to how to actually go about allocating time use in this parliamentary session for industry, because I actually support what Mr. Lemire has put forth as a priority. That's the reason I don't have one waiting on the books, and I haven't pushed the committee to endorse it just to make a political point. It hasn't been done because Mr. Lemire actually has something that's pretty important. It's a pretty good way of looking at and using some of the previous industry committee work.

My concern is that we accidentally end up boxing ourselves in. I recognize the value of this motion, but I think it makes Mr. Lemire's point and motion much stronger. Perhaps we could somehow merge them with a commitment, even through a motion, so that there would be a public commitment showing that we do care about what's been brought forth here today. We could do it in a way that would solidify that we are going to go to our subcommittee and get a final draft to bring back so we wouldn't waste any time when we came back. When we came back to the House of Commons, at the first meeting we could actually do the final stuff on that. We could then hopefully move on to Bill C-27 right away and start to line up the witnesses for this motion or the final one that we have.

That might be a better use of our parliamentary time and resources and provide a more concrete opportunity for others outside of the lobbying halls of Ottawa, who always seem to get their time here. They might also be able to participate in a more fulsome study.