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.

National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to a bill that Conservatives believe is critical to the safety and security of Canadians.

At face value, Bill C-34 would amend the Investment Canada Act with the intent to bolster Canada’s foreign investment review process and increase penalties for certain instances of malpractice or contraventions of the act. Canadians could consider this bill an attempt by the Liberals to take threats posed by some cases of foreign investment seriously. However, we live in an increasingly volatile world and, as we have seen over these past few months, Canada is not immune to infiltration and manipulation from abroad.

In the past, Liberals have failed to thoroughly review transactions involving Chinese state-owned enterprises. This pattern is repeating itself through Bill C-34. Namely, clause 15 would remove the obligation for any foreign investment to be subject to a mandatory consultation with cabinet.

On this side of the floor, we believe that Canada’s economic and security interests are paramount and this bill would not go far enough to protect them. That is why we put forward 14 very reasonable amendments at committee that would have intensified the review process of business acquisitions from foreign state-owned entities. Unfortunately, the Liberals and the NDP rejected all but four of them. They are nonetheless critical to improving the bill, so I will touch on each of them.

First, the government was prepared to pass a bill that would have given carte blanche access to investment from state-owned enterprises, no matter their relationship with Canada. There were no provisions that would require any investment by a state-owned enterprise to be subject to an automatic national security review when the government introduced this bill. Our amendment reduced the threshold to trigger a review from $512 million to zero dollars, meaning that all state-owned enterprise investments in Canada must undergo a national security review.

Second, Conservatives introduced an amendment which would ensure that the acquisition of any assets by a state-owned enterprise would be subject to review under the national security review process. It would guarantee that not only new business establishments, acquisitions and share purchases would be considered under the review but also that all assets are included in this process, which is another very good amendment to the bill.

Third, when the government introduced the bill, it failed to address concerns regarding companies that have previously been convicted of corruption charges. This makes no sense to me at all. The Conservative amendment now, fortunately, would require an automatic national security review to be conducted whenever a company with a past conviction is involved.

Finally, the government would have been happy to pass a bill that gives more authority and discretion to the minister, despite multiple blunders over the past eight years to take seriously the real threats posed by some foreign investments. The original bill would have left it to the minister to decide whether to trigger a national security review when the threshold was met. The Conservative amendment addresses this oversight and would make a review mandatory, rather than optional, when the $1.9-billion threshold is met.

I do not understand why the government would not have automatically included this in the bill. It concerns me that so many pieces of legislation from the government are giving more and more authority to individual ministers and not to those beyond them to make sure that, within cabinet and the oversight of the House, those things are truly transparent and that sober thought has been applied.

These amendments, the four that I mentioned, are crucial elements to strengthening this bill, but the Liberal-NDP government also denied Canadians further protections by rejecting some other key improvements that Conservatives really do feel should have been there.

Witnesses at the committee stressed that many Chinese enterprises operating internationally are indentured to requests from the CCP, even if they are privately owned. That almost seems like an oxymoron, does it not? Instead of taking sensitive transactions seriously, the Liberals and the NDP rejected our amendment to modify the definition of a state-owned enterprise to include companies headquartered in an authoritarian state, such as China.

In addition, the coalition chose to not provide exemptions to Five Eyes intelligence state-owned enterprises. Conservatives proposed an exemption to prevent an overly broad review process, which the Liberals and NDP rejected. Rather than focusing on real and serious threats to safety, the government would rather utilize its time and resources on scrutinizing our most trusted security partners.

This makes no sense. Clearly, the government has struggled to get things done in a timely manner, and this would have been an opportunity for it to be far more efficient and to also show an improving relationship with our Five Eyes partners and allies.

Lastly, rather than supporting our amendment to create a list of sectors considered strategic to national security, the Liberals and the NDP chose to leave the process up to regulation and put it at risk of becoming a political exercise, which Canadians are very concerned about when it comes to the government, where stakeholders may invoke national security concerns to protect their own economic interests. Clearly the government has failed over and over again to show it is truly operating in the best interests of Canadians.

I am glad to say that the amendments we were able to pass turned a minor process bill into a major shift in our nation’s approach to foreign takeovers of Canadian companies, but there is still more that could be done to improve it. As it currently written, the bill would give the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Public Safety near sole authority to bypass cabinet and approve projects coming into Canada.

Given past precedent, Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for years on why this would be a critical mistake. I am reminded of when the former minister neglected to conduct a full national security review of partially China-owned Hytera Communications’ purchase of B.C.’s Norsat International in 2017.

Twenty-one counts of espionage later, the United States Federal Communications Commission blacklisted Hytera in 2021 due to “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States”. However, it was not until 2022 that the then minister was left scrambling when the RCMP suspended its contract with Norsat for radio frequency equipment.

Shockingly, Public Services and Procurement Canada confirmed that security concerns were not taken into consideration during the bidding process for the equipment. This, of course, raises alarms. The Liberals also failed to consult Canada’s own Communications Security Establishment on the contract. Instead, the contract was merely awarded to the lowest bidder. This is also interesting because, quite often, it seems we are hearing of funds being shared by the government with organizations that simply do not do anything for Canadians with the money they are given.

Why was this allowed to happen? Why was a piece of technology meant to ensure secure communications within Canada’s national police force contracted out to a company accused of compromising national security around the world, as well as serving as a major supplier to China’s Ministry of Public Security?

Let us go back to 2020, when the government was prepared to award Nuctech with a $6.8-million deal to provide Canada’s embassies and consulates with X-ray equipment. Nuctech is, again, Chinese-based and founded by the son of a former secretary general of the CCP.

Deloitte Canada reviewed the offer and made a staggering recommendation to the government that it should only install security equipment in Canadian embassies if it originates from companies with national security clearances. Deloitte found that Nuctech’s hardware and software had advanced beyond the government’s existing security requirements to the point that its X-ray machines are capable of gathering information and accessing information networks. This raises huge alarm bells.

Global Affairs Canada did not review Nuctech for risks to national security during its procurement process, nor was the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security asked to conduct its own review. The government often says it will do better and can do better, but these things are happening over and over again. However, all this might have been too little too late, as the government has awarded four additional CBSA contracts to Nuctech since 2017. The government’s laissez-faire attitude to national security is simply beyond comprehension.

It does not end there. The government also cannot be trusted to safeguard the security of Canadians because it cannot even follow its own rules. In March of 2021, the minister updated guidelines for national security reviews for transactions involving state-owned enterprises and Canada’s critical minerals. Less than a year later, the same minister violated his own rules by expediting the takeover of the Canadian Neo Lithium Corporation by Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining. Once again, this was done without a national security review.

To make matters worse, the minister defended his decision by refusing to order them to divest from Neo Lithium while ordering three other Chinese companies to divest their ownership of three other critical minerals firms. It is confusing to me that the government would be so inconsistent. The hypocrisy is astounding. The government is once again picking winners and losers, and it is disconcerting who they are choosing to be winners. This time, national security is on the table. This cannot be allowed to continue.

We have seen a pattern of missteps by the government on how programs and projects are approved. Over the last eight years, there has been an unacceptable shift toward putting more power within the hands of ministers and outside advisory councils, with little to no accountability to this place. We certainly see that, and Canadians see it, too. There is less and less of a sense of responsibility in this place to Canadians. It is as though the government can simply go ahead and provide its ministers with legislation that gives them a carte blanche ability to do things, along with organizations and advisory councils that are outside of this place and do not have the proper oversight that the House of Commons, which reflects Canadians, certainly should have.

Often, we find that appointed advisory councils are established at the minister’s discretion prior to a bill even being signed into law. That just shows the incredible lack of respect of the Liberal government to due process in this place.

Other times, we see that the Liberals just cannot seem to pick a lane. With Bill C-27, for instance, the Privacy Commissioner’s new powers to investigate contraventions of the Consumer Privacy Protection Act were diminished by a personal information and data tribunal. In this tribunal, only three of its six members were required to have experience in information and privacy law—

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak on Bill C-34.

Before I do, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the calamitous vote the Liberal members of this House took earlier today by excluding all Canadians from being treated fairly by pausing the carbon tax for Canadians all over the country. I come from Winnipeg, one of the coldest cities on the planet. Today, Liberal members from Winnipeg said no to Winnipeggers, while their Atlantic Canadian counterparts seem to be more effective than they are. They have the ear of the Prime Minister who I suppose was trying to save himself from his terrible polling results with this desperate measure by the government. However, at the end of the day the Liberals chose not to pause the carbon tax pain, which is really unfortunate for all Canadians.

As far as Bill C-34 is concerned, I want to say this. After eight years of the Prime Minister, numerous foreign state-owned enterprises have acquired interests and control in many Canadian companies, intellectual property, intangible assets and the data of our citizens. The government is doing too little, too late to protect our national economic and security interests with this bill.

Since the Liberals came to power, business investment per employee in Canada has dropped 20%. At the same time, business investment per employee in the United States has increased 14%. Per capita growth is at the lowest level since the Great Depression some 90 years ago and Canada has the most at-risk mortgage default portfolio in the G7. According to the National Bank of Canada, for the first time ever, business investment is now lower in this country than housing investment. When we think about all the manufacturing, oil production and everything else, investment in those things is lower than it is in housing.

The goal of the Investment Canada Act is to deal with foreign investors controlling Canadian industry, trade and commerce. Foreign direct investment creates opportunities, stimulates economic development and introduces new ideas and innovation to Canada. For Canadians, this means more high-quality jobs and a stronger, more sustainable economy.

Billions of dollars of Canadian natural resources, ideas, IP and land are being controlled by foreign entities. Huawei, a state-owned enterprise that feeds intelligence directly to China, was still working with many Canadian universities as of this past summer.

Another example would be taxpayer-funded dollars at Dalhousie University that are funding Tesla intellectual property and research and that IP is all going back to California.

In 2017, the Liberal government allowed a telecom company from British Columbia called Norsat to be acquired by a company called Hytera, which is a Chinese-based state-owned company. Conservatives demanded at that time a full national security review. The Liberal minister of the day refused to do one and approved the acquisition.

This sort of lax attitude toward issues of national security is clearly a problem. After eight years of the Prime Minister, numerous foreign state-owned enterprises have acquired interests and control in many Canadian companies, intellectual property, intangible assets and the data of our citizens.

The future of Canada needs to be protected in the airwaves, AI and quantum computing. It needs to be protected in our farms, food-processing plants, oceans and fisheries, as well as in developing Canadian LNG, which the world so desperately wants. The government is doing too little to protect our national economic and security interests with this bill. Canadians know the Liberals do not take sensitive transactions seriously and have failed to fully review transactions involving Chinese state-owned enterprises, putting the security of Canadians and the government at risk.

The minister is the minister of broken bills, which is why Conservatives are having to make more amendments to this piece of legislation. On his other bill, Bill C-27, the digital charter implementation act, after a year and a half he was forced to make amendments.

The Liberals missed the chance to think big and understand what is going on in the Canadian economy. This bill does not go far enough to address the risks faced by Canadians. That is why Conservatives worked to pass four significant amendments to ensure a rigorous review process—

Motions in Amendment

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

Mr. Speaker, today, we are debating Bill 34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act, at report stage. We are dealing with a new amendment to this bill from the Conservative side of the House, as well as some housekeeping amendments from the government side.

To make sure everybody watching understands what the Investment Canada Act is about, it deals with the acquisition of Canadian companies by foreign entities: companies and governments that come to Canada to try to acquire our businesses. There is a government process, through Investment Canada, that these entities need to go through with the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and cabinet. Through the bill before us, cabinet would be removed from the process. I will speak to this in a moment.

Wayne Gretzky, whom I know everybody here admires, said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take”, and this bill fits that description. While it would make administrative amendments and speed up the process a little, it missed the opportunity to look at what is happening in the Canadian economy and deal with the increasing acquisitions of assets and businesses of various sizes, from small businesses worth a few million dollars up to minerals rights and large corporations, by states that are hostile to us. As has been said before, it has been 14 years since the act was amended. A lot has changed in the world, in particular around the way that state-owned enterprises have become extraterritorial in taking over companies around the world for their own economic interests. The Conservatives' challenge with the bill is that it thinks small. It did not use this opportunity to take a shot on net and score a goal by recognizing the change in the global economy and what is happening with the outright sales of Canadian businesses and assets to hostile states.

The minister is the minister of broken bills, which is why we are having to make more amendments to this one. On his other bill, Bill C-27, after a year and a half, he has had to make amendments. Perhaps if he had spent more time here in Canada understanding what was going on, he might have produced better legislation. The Liberals missed the chance to think big and understand what is going on in our economy. What is going on in our economy is what I call the Chinese government cold war. We are in a new cold war. It is not one of bombs and the military in that sense; it is the silent takeover of the economic assets of other countries. This is how China is gaining influence all around the world. We all know about the election interference issues, but those things are perhaps a little more obvious than this is to Canadians, this creeping strategic control by the Communist Party of China of Canada's assets and those of other countries. Other countries have put mechanisms in place within their investment acts to recognize this and prevent it. The bill, as it was introduced in the House and debated at second reading, did not contain any of that.

Small businesses in my riding, such as lobster buyers, are $2-million businesses being bought for $10 million by China. The Chinese government owns a number of lobster businesses in my riding. It is how it is getting control of our seafood assets behind the door. It is doing the same in agriculture. It is buying land and farms in western Canada and mineral rights in our land. It is buying more obvious things, which I will speak to. It is buying companies like the only producing lithium mine in Canada. Therefore, Bill 34 missed a lot and would just make small administrative changes.

The Communist Party of China cold war's being ignored in Canada might be out of incompetence, but it also could be the case, as we know, that the Prime Minister believes that China is his most admired country, so maybe it is more strategic. Let us take a look at the Liberal government's record on this issue.

In 2017, the Liberal government allowed a telecom company from B.C. called Norsat to be acquired by a company called Hytera, which is Chinese-based. Hytera does not make any money. Conservatives demanded, at the time, a full national security review. The Liberal minister of the day refused to do one and approved the acquisition. Lo and behold, in 2022, Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States and was banned from doing business there, but only eight months later, the RCMP in Canada, shockingly, bought telecommunications equipment from Hytera to put in its communications system. When I asked the RCMP, at the industry committee, because it was in all the newspapers, whether its members were aware that eight months before, Hytera had done this and been banned in the U.S., the RCMP, shockingly, said no.

I referred earlier to the Tanco mine, our only producing lithium mine, which was bought by the Sinomine Resource Group, a Chinese-owned mining company. Every ounce of that lithium in our critical minerals industry goes to China.

The record on this is very awkward for the government to hear, but it is a growing concern. It did not take those things into consideration in drafting the bill before us, As a responsible opposition to His Majesty, the Conservatives proposed a number of amendments in committee, and thanks to the support of the other two opposition parties amidst the objections of the Liberals, we made some significant amendments. Those amendments include that with any state-owned enterprise from a country that does not have a bilateral trade relationship with Canada, the threshold for review by the Government of Canada would now be zero dollars. Any transaction over zero dollars would be reviewed, compared to the threshold now, which is $512 million. China is buying a lot of assets for under $512 million, and the threshold would now be zero. The same would apply for a new concept we added, which is that all asset sales would need to be included in that test with a state-owned enterprise.

Today, we are also taking this one step further by saying that the minister has made yet another error. That error was trying to consolidate all his power and ignore his cabinet colleagues. The bill would change the Investment Canada Act process that requires that at the beginning, when an acquisition is made, the minister take his recommendation on how far to go with a national security and net benefit review into a study. The bill before us says that he would not have to do that anymore and that he could decide on his own, that at the end of the process, whatever the results are, he would come back and say he will decide whether or not he goes to cabinet with the results.

Removing cabinet from the decision-making process would mean that we would not get the breadth of experience of people around the cabinet table and that we also would not get the breadth of experience from regional perspectives. For example, there have been companies bought in Quebec. If an industry minister is from Ontario and our public safety minister is from out west, they would make the decision on their own without any input from Quebec. I suspect that the Bloc Québécois would be opposed to that issue and would want to see Quebec representation in those decision-making processes, but the bill before us has the potential to eliminate that part of it.

We are proposing common sense Conservative amendments, as we did in committee. Thankfully we upped the ante of the bill and made it more than an administrative bill such that it would deal with the serious international challenges we had, through the four amendments that were accepted. By the way, there are two national tests in there. One is on national security and the other is on the net benefit to Canada. Conservatives in committee added a third: if a company has been convicted of bribery or corruption, the minister would now have to take that into consideration in deciding whether to approve the acquisition. It would add much benefit, but, for some reason, Liberals did not think it was worthy when they voted against it.

We believe that Conservatives have improved the bill dramatically. We are trying to improve it again in the spirit of good public policy for Canada and protecting our economy against hostile interests, which the Liberals seem not to care about. I urge the House, including all members from the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the government, to recognize that cabinet's decision-making process is essential to getting the full breadth of things, and I urge members to vote for our amendment.

Amendments to the Standing Orders

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as this is the first time I rise in the chamber with you at the helm, I want to say congratulations for all the work you have done in Parliament as a parliamentary secretary and also for your tenure as Speaker in this chamber.

I am glad to speak on this motion, Motion No. 79, from the member for Elmwood—Transcona. I have affectionately referred to this bill as “ending Ottawa's entitlement to my entitlements” motion, because that is really what this is about. This is about the traditional gatekeepers in this facility who have kept the doors closed against many Canadians, at the same time protecting their self-interests. I will get into that a little bit later.

When prorogation was used by the Prime Minister, it could have been characterized as the “running to your mommy or daddy to protect you from the people around you” bill. They go running to the monarchy to beg for forgiveness. It was the Queen before and now it is the King. It is because “I can't handle it anymore. Please save me”. It is ridiculous. In a modern democracy we should not have to turn to our mommies and daddies as adults in this place. That is really what it is about. That is what has taken place with prorogation. It has been used to protect someone's own interests.

I think one of the biggest things that we want to see with this motion is greater accountability to the public so they understand the rules. At the end of the day, prorogation is about, “Well, I just simply don't have to do it anymore so the rules don't apply to me. I'll see you later.” I am sure a lot of Canadians can relate to that. They wish they could prorogue their laundry, their dishes or their awkward conversations with people who they do not want to be around, but they cannot. They have to deal with them.

It is sad because that is really what we are dealing with. I have seen this happen in the worst of circumstances with then prime minister Harper who did not want to deal with the House of Commons at that time and I have seen it with the current Prime Minister when he did not want to deal with the WE scandal, for example. It is a very serious issue, as it is a way of keeping privileges and entitlements. I was thinking about gatekeeping this morning and about protecting entitlements. There is the protection of the entitlements one gets as a prime minister with all the perks. For my Conservative friends, there are the perks of keeping Stornoway and all the privileges there. By the way, Stornoway does have a gate, because it protects the gardener, the butler, the person who is making the meals, and the $70,000-a-year budget. It has a history of being part of the entitlements that we need to get rid of.

I think that it is really important that people know that prorogation is unique and special at the workplace. People do not get to call a time out in a democracy, which is really what this is: I cannot get my act together. I cannot get my caucus together. I cannot do whatever and I get to call a time out. The problem with that is there are serious issues. One prorogation was over the documents of women and men and issues over Afghanistan. We have that legacy to this day. The devastation to individuals and what took place subsequently would have been shining spotlights on those things. The consequences are still felt now, because we have many Afghanistan men and women who served under our country's banner who are still in harm's way. Some still cannot even come to this country because we do not have our act together on that.

The legacy of prorogation goes beyond the moment of the day because all the stuff in the House of Commons ceases. Everything grinds to a halt, which costs money. To the parties who often champion their role of being the custodians of the public purse, the last unnecessary election sent another $630 million down the drain. A time when Harper did it resulted in a freeze of all of the House of Commons' operations, along with all of its work, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in that year alone between the studies that would have been done, the people who were flown in for hearings, getting witnesses to come forward and producing reports. All the work that was done in the chamber and all the hours that go into moving bills were basically liquidated at that point in time.

Dozens and dozens of important bills were killed by the Conservatives and the Liberals; some bills had to go on to the next Parliament. That is where the real damage is done. The rest of the world does not get a time out or time off. People do not go running to mommy or daddy to try to figure things out. The world still goes on. The grinding of Parliament starts and the grinding of Senate follows. What that means is that we have to start over.

I cannot say how many of those bills dealt with social justice, women's rights, housing, the environment and the auto industry. They dealt with a number of things that we are trying to compete with in the world. If the Prime Minister, right now, chose to prorogue this Parliament, we would lose the GST rebate, a modest housing initiative and work on the Competition Bureau. They would all be gone.

In the committee I sit on, there are 96 witnesses and about 140 who want to work on Bill C-27, Canada's first bill on artificial intelligence. As the entire world is moving beyond us right now, that would be the real consequence. If an election is called because we have to bend a knee to the monarchy again in the system that we have because the Governor General can decide, we would be into another costly election. none of these bills could be brought back unless there was unanimous consent. On top of that, there would be months and months, if not more, perhaps almost a full year, to get back into order the work that would be gone.

That is critical if we are trying to compete with the rest of the world and world events are taking place, as they are now. My heart goes out to those who are suffering due to what is taking place. So many people are suffering. It is not just the wars, it is famine. Canadians are dealing with an opioid crisis. There is a whole series of issues on housing affordability and people cannot afford groceries. The Prime Minister of the day could basically say he is calling a time out, everyone can deal with it on their own and he will keep all of his privileges intact.

What is funny is when that happens, the Prime Minister's salary, the perks of the residence and everything else are not prorogued. They continue. What does not continue is the hard work that is necessary to improve lives. That is why the member for Elmwood—Transcona is onto something here. It is critical that he get some type of recognition because this issue has not gone away.

The member's father, the former member for Elmwood—Transcona, Bill Blaikie, would be proud of him today. I stood in this chamber with Bill Blaikie many times and listened to his statesman approach, which is missing in many respects, and his maturity in trying to work toward trying to better this place and establish some rules, which is the legacy that current member for Elmwood—Transcona is carrying on. That is what Bill often did in this place: He brought sense and logic to it.

At the end of the day, this motion is about creating a balance of rules. It does not end all the rules but improves upon them in taking a credible step forward. That is critical, because we just cannot have what we have today. Imagine if Parliament shut down tomorrow. What is at stake is our lost voices.

I want it to be clear that this is a reasonable, modest, sensible and practical approach to changing the rules. Conservatives and Liberals should think about this. I know they do not often end some of the privileges in this chamber because they think they can constantly switch back and forth. There will be a new day when they are not there and they will be wishing for this legislation, because all their constituents will need it, instead of the ego of the member who occupies the Prime Minister's seat.

With that, I move:

That the motion be amended by replacing the words, “(iii) in Standing Order 45(6)(a)”, by adding, after the words “An exception to this rule is”, the following: “the division on a confidence motion pursuant to Standing Order 53.2(9) and”, with the words, “(iii) in Standing Order 45(4)(b)”, by adding after paragraph (v), the following: “(vi) a confidence motion pursuant to Standing Order 53.2(9).”

These are housekeeping amendments to improve this bill and make it even stronger.

Copyright Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to a bill that is vital to residents of Abitibi—Témiscamingue and Quebec, and that is Bill C‑244, which was introduced by the hon. member for Richmond Centre.

Bill C‑244 amends the Copyright Act in order to allow a person to circumvent a technological protection measure, or TPM, if the circumvention is solely for the purpose of diagnosing, maintaining or repairing a product.

This bill was examined at almost the same time as Bill C‑294 on interoperability. What is interesting is that the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology was able to look at the issue from different angles and improve the bill's content to allow for the right to repair, to fight waste and to better protect the jobs of repair people, mechanics and technicians in the regions.

Over the past few years, it has become a lot more complicated to repair objects. Our vehicles are turning into motorized computers, and access to programming codes is needed to diagnose problems with them. Unfortunately, more and more manufacturers are refusing to share those codes or are charging independent mechanics exorbitant fees to get them, supposedly for security reasons. This situation is jeopardizing these small businesses and threatening their survival.

How are we to manage when our brand new smart phones get a cracked screen or some other defect? What do we do when our high-end, front-loading washing machine suddenly stops working? What about our three-year-old farm machinery in need of repair?

Let us consider Apple's policy on repairing its products, for example. All Apple products must be repaired at Apple stores, if the parts are available.

By patenting the majority of these parts, Apple holds on to its monopoly, while the electronic locks created by its operating software, protected under the Copyright Act, make counterfeiting liable to prosecution. For a resident of Abitibi—Témiscamingue, the situation is even more troublesome considering that the region has no Apple store. To get the service they are entitled to as consumers, these residents have to ship their product by mail or travel more than 600 kilometres to a large urban centre. Incidentally, the situation is practically the same for passports. That needs to change.

Manufacturers are increasingly choosing the answer for us: toss it out and buy a new one. Tight grips on replacement parts, restrictive design, the use of digital locks and other legal protections have all contributed to the difficulty in repairing and maintaining the increasingly high-tech things that surround us.

Bill C-244 presents a solution to the calls from many individuals who support the right to repair in Quebec. Their message is consistent: The government must make legislative changes that will give us both the right and the ability to repair the objects we own without violating intellectual property laws and other laws.

Although the purpose of the Copyright Act is to protect creators and intellectual property, the way companies have been using it to impede repairs over the last few decades is harmful to society as a whole. It impedes the second-hand market and harms small businesses specializing in repairs.

By supporting this bill, the Bloc Québécois is also supporting Quebec's small businesses that are committed to becoming repair centres, mechanics, computer specialists and artisans who have acquired the skills to repair our everyday products. This industry plays a key role in our energy transition and supports jobs throughout Quebec. Even though repair people are becoming increasingly rare in our communities, this bill lends direct support to their work. It will provide a living for many Quebeckers.

It is not just consumer electronics that are under the microscope. The bill also targets industrial equipment, agricultural equipment, medical devices, electric cars and many other machines that are becoming notoriously difficult for independent technicians to repair and maintain. This increases businesses' operational costs, curtails market competition and discourages follow-on innovation.

The costs of our increasing inability to repair things go beyond pocketbook issues. It is imperative that we consider the environmental impact as well. My colleague from Repentigny will be happy to hear me mention this. The manufacture of new devices generates considerable electronic waste and consumes precious resources. It is therefore crucial to give consumers the right to repair their products. I would like to draw my colleagues' attention to a new law in Quebec that is along the same lines as this one. It reminds manufacturers that they have a role to play in this equation.

Quebec has passed a new law on planned obsolescence. We applaud the leadership of the Quebec National Assembly, which recently passed this legislation to ensure that these products operate properly and to prevent the sale of seriously defective vehicles, what we call lemons.

Let me get back to the shameful waste of raw materials. Extraction of raw materials, use of rare earth metals, lead soldering, shipping and packaging are just a few examples of the ecological toll imposed by the short lifespan of many modern devices and equipment. Electronics waste is now globally among the fastest-growing types of waste, increasing at a rate of 3% to 4% each year. As the global microchip shortage reveals, ostensibly every industry is now the electronics industry. The failure of one electronic part often renders things inoperative, making them all the more likely to end up in a landfill prematurely.

I strongly recommended to my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology that we study the metals, plastics and electronics recycling ecosystems from a circular economy perspective, because the critical minerals in these electronics are important. We must stop them from ending up in landfills. This study will resume once our consideration of Bill C-27 is complete.

We need to address this shameful waste of resources to reduce our tonne of garbage. Quebeckers have had enough. I urge all parliamentarians to support this bill. By voting in favour of this bill, we are demonstrating our commitment to our local businesses, we are contributing to the fight against waste and we are meeting a fundamental need to repair for all our constituents. By supporting this bill, we are sending a strong, united message about our determination to promote a more sustainable and accessible future for all. This is an opportunity for us, as legislators, to make a positive difference in the lives of our constituents and to work in favour of an economy that is more environmentally friendly.

Let us make sure that the right to repair becomes a reality for everyone.

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, Western University's brief has a pretty good outline of what some of the definitions of these are, and I would go back to it, as it has been thought about. I think there are two dozen references of other literature in there that I would draw my colleague's attention to.

I would ask colleagues on the justice committee to intersect with some of the work that is being done on the industry committee regarding Bill C-27, the artificial intelligence and data act, to ensure that our laws are harmonized as we move forward and make sure that is done in a way so women, others, people in public life and children are not victimized.

Canada Business Corporations Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to talk about the beaches of Bay of Quinte. Sandbanks is the largest freshwater sandbar in all the world. We welcome well over a million visitors a year, and everyone is welcome. Some of us wish we were there today.

The bill deserves the attention that we are trying to give it, as rushed as it is. We need to spend time on a lot of different bills right now. We are dealing with Bill C-34 and are waiting for Bill C-27. The reality is that there is a lot of important legislation that we need to get through, and we need to spend the ample amount of time that these bills deserve to have spent on them. As I have mentioned, we certainly would have liked to see a few more amendments studied. We wanted to see the future of money laundering studied and not just to catch up to today.

There is a lot of great work to happen ahead, and as soon as we are done with the beaches and it gets a little colder, we will see everyone back here in Parliament so we can keep working on behalf of Canadians.

Instruction to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing. I had just finished saying “Bill C-27”, and the member then stood up. Bill C-27 is what the motion is actually all about. The Conservative Party has actually moved a motion to try to get the government to divide Bill C-27 into more bills so Conservatives would have more opportunity to cause more filibustering in order to deprive Canadians of good, sound legislation. That is what the Conservative Party is doing.

What is Bill C-27? It would be an actual modernization. Believe it or not, and I say this for the Conservative colleagues across the way, technology has changed over the last 20 years. A lot of things have happened. Do members know the last time we actually had a modernization of this legislation? We are talking about over two decades ago, when iPhones and Facebook did not exist. One would think that the Conservatives would have, and be able to comprehend, the need to change the legislation. However, there has been no signal whatsoever coming from the opposition benches to recognize the value of modernizing this legislation.

The Conservatives should be concerned about it. Do they know the amount of data that is collected in both government agencies and private companies? People must understand that, through technological change, we have seen the development of huge data banks. Canadians are concerned about privacy. They want to make sure that the information being collected is, in fact, protected. A flash disk can have literally millions of entries, and that can be very damaging to the population. Twenty years ago, we did not have flash disks. We might have had the five-inch round disks; I can remember having those about 20 years ago. I will use Tim Hortons as an example, and I could easily use the example of McDonald's too. We can look at those restaurants' apps. People should open up and find out how many apps are out there. When we download these apps, whether they are for a restaurant or any other sort of service like a retail store, and we start using them, we are providing information. People should take a look at the airline industry, hotels and the many different industries out there that are actually collecting the private information of Canadians.

In the Government of Canada, we recognize that we have a responsibility to look at what is impacting Canadians today, and to bring forward not only budgetary measures, as we have done to protect the backs of Canadians, but also legislative measures. That is what Bill C-27 would do in this particular area; it would ensure that the privacy of Canadians would ultimately be respected and that these huge data banks that are being created would not be abused or exploited at the expense of Canadians.

We have consulted extensively. Through private, government and non-profit organizations, the department has done its job in terms of bringing forward legislation that would, in fact, modernize the industry. Most important from my perspective is that it would protect the interests and the privacy of Canadians.

I want to emphasize, at the end of the day, the amount of change that we have witnessed in 20 years, as I said somewhat lightly a few minutes ago. We should understand that when I was first elected to the Manitoba legislature, the Internet was something which people dialed into. The first thing we heard was the “ching-ching-ching-ching” and then the dial tone coming. Then we had to double-click and we were into the Internet, and, boy, was it slow compared to what happens today.

There were data banks at that time, and there was information being collected. That is why I would suggest that legislation of this nature is indeed warranted and needed. That is why we have standing committees. Earlier today, in the Conservatives' filibuster, they made a mockery of a standing committee and its efforts by moving an amendment even though the report was unanimously supported. They made a mockery of that.

I will suggest to the members who participate in standing committees of Parliament that they can play a very important role in giving strength to legislation and to improving legislation. We have a minister who is following the debate, listening to what members have to say, and looking for ways we can improve and strengthen the legislation in the name of protecting Canadians, the data banks and our privacy rights.

We want to see stability in the industry. Not only do consumers benefit from that stability, but businesses do as well. If we put more stability into place, also factoring in things like AI, it puts Canada in a better position to be able to continue to grow and expand our economy. This is an important aspect of that.

We have a Prime Minister and a government that have consistently said we want an economy that works for all Canadians from coast to coast to coast, urban or rural. The impact of the Internet on rural communities has been significant in terms of economics, not to mention in many other ways. I will focus on the issue of economics.

Retail stores can now be found within our computer, and the actual locations are often in rural communities. It can be a driving force for growth in rural communities. That is why it is important we get it right, that we have the confidence of consumers and Canadians in the information that is being gathered. We have to make sure that information is protected, whether it is names, financial information, health-related information and so much more.

The legislation is good. It is sound. We would like to be able to encourage the Conservatives to see its value. By supporting the legislation, they are supporting Canadians. This legislation is a reflection of what Canadians want to see put into law.

On that point, I know there is legislation the Conservatives say they support. Let us see if we can stop the filibustering here in the chamber so we can pass additional legislation so Canadians will be even better served by the House of Commons.

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

Mr. Speaker, I always welcome the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of the Conservatives. Sometimes they just make it too easy.

When I first walked in this morning, honest to God, I really thought we were going to be passing historic legislation. I really thought we were going to be talking about Bill C-22. After all, if anyone went on the Internet and looked at what is happening in Ottawa, what would be debated in the House of Commons, the first thing in government business was Bill C-22.

I am sorry, Bill C-22 is another national program, that is the disability program. We do so much good stuff, there so much out there. We are supposed to be talking about Bill C-35, and it did not take a Conservative to point that out. They kind of get lost in the numbers.

At the end of the day, we were supposed to be talking about Bill C-35 today. It is a national child care plan, from coast to coast to coast, and we are enshrining it into law. We had 20 minutes to go, and then it would go into law.

However, no, the Conservatives had a different agenda. They have a partisan agenda. They have an agenda that says, “cause frustration, do not allow legislation to pass.” The previous speaker stood up and said that we needed to have more legislation, referring to Bill C-27. He wants to multiply Bill C-27 into three bills. He wants us to introduce three more pieces of legislation so that the Conservatives have more to filibuster.

The member is criticizing the government, saying that it has been months since we last called this legislation. A lot of issues are happening on the floor of the House of Commons, even with the frustrations caused by the Conservatives, and they cause a lot of frustration. I will give them that much. They know how to play a destructive force. Never before have I seen an opposition, and I was in opposition for 20 years, so focused on playing a destructive force with respect to legislation.

Earlier today, I reminded the opposition that it was a minority government, and I acknowledge that. We accept the fact that we were elected as a minority government, and we thank Canadians for recognizing us and allowing us to continue in government. We take that very seriously. I kind of wish the Conservative Party would recognize that as well.

Do they not realize there is a sense of “responsibility” for opposition members as well. Providing endless filibusters and trying to prevent every piece of legislation from passing is the goal of the Conservative. Just last week, and I referenced it this morning, the Conservative leader made a strong statement, and it made the news. It was on Newswatch in fact, not to mention other news agencies. The Leader of the Conservative Party said that he was going to speak and speak and speak, and he might have said “speak” a few more times, to filibuster our budget implementation bill. Let us think about all the things in that the budget implementation bill, and there is not enough time to elaborate on that. That was his intention. He was going to speak until we changed it, and four hours later it passed.

We have these mechanisms to ensure that at least, even with the destructive force of the Conservative Party, we can still get things done for Canadians.

Let us fast forward things here. The Conservatives did not want to debate the child care bill this morning. Instead, they wanted to talk about an issue that now brings us to Bill C-27—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his arguments to divide the bill. I particularly dislike Bill C-27 for the artificial intelligence act that is included in it. It essentially would exempt the government from any kind of serious harms and any designated provincial government, while saying to business and innovation that it would hang this threat of a criminal offence over their heads, but not telling them what this means. It is going to push our industry and innovation down to the United States, where there is no legislation.

Does he believe this bill needs to have a full vetting, because generative artificial intelligence can be something that we can innovate in Canada? It is powerful. I would not say dangerous, but this kind of bill would push that activity to areas that are not regulated.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Motion No. 426, which deals with Bill C-27. For those watching who do not know Bill C-27, it is the government's piece of legislation to update our privacy laws and introduce a new act on artificial intelligence.

As to the purpose of this motion, even though the bill went through second reading and is now awaiting study at the industry committee, we are asking that the bill be split in three, because it really is three separate bills. The first bill, as my colleague from Bay of Quinte just mentioned, is the part of the legislation that deals with updating the Privacy Act, including all of the privacy terms for protecting an individual's privacy and protecting the rights of others to use someone's privacy, that is, how they can or cannot use it. The second piece of the legislation would create a new agency called the privacy tribunal. It is really a separate piece of legislation. In fact, it is classified as a separate piece of legislation, an act within this act. Then the third piece is the artificial intelligence and data act.

It really is three pieces of legislation in one bill, and that is why we have moved this motion asking that the bill be split in three. It is a massive 120-page piece of legislative change impacting every person and every business in this country. It deserves to be studied as three separate pieces, and members of the House of Commons deserve to vote separately on those three separate pieces of information.

I will start with the first piece, which is the privacy piece. We talked at second reading about the difference between our views on the purpose of this bill, this act, and the government's views. The government made the claim that this bill was making greater steps toward protecting the personal information of the individual, yet that is not what the bill does.

Clause 5 is the purpose section, the most important section of any bill that sets out what the legal structure or purpose of legislation is. It says that it tries to balance the protection of personal privacy with the rights of businesses to use people's data. It puts business interests on a par with individual privacy interests. As my colleague from Bay of Quinte just said and as I said in my second reading speech, that is a fundamental flaw of this bill. The Privacy Commissioner has already spoken out about it.

There has been discussion about whether privacy is a fundamental human right. There is language on this in the preamble, but the preamble of the bill has virtually no legal impact. It says that privacy is among the fundamental rights people have, but it is not in the purpose section. We have been seeking and will be seeking a broad discussion at committee on that issue and the legal implication of it. The purpose section of the bill, clause 5, should say that the protection of personal privacy is a fundamental right. It is not balanced between business needs and individual needs but is a fundamental right.

That is important not only for the reasons that I just outlined, but because further down, clause 18 of the privacy part of the bill creates a concept called “legitimate interest” for a business. Clause 17, just prior to that, lays out that there has to be the express consent of an individual for a business to use privacy data, but clause 18 goes on to say that there is a legitimate interest for the business to not care about an individual's express consent. In fact, it lets a company say that if something is in its legitimate interest as a company, even if it causes individuals harm, it is okay for it to use their data for something that they did not give permission for. It says that right in the legislation.

This is a fundamental flaw of a bill that pretends to be protecting people's fundamental privacy rights. It in fact protects big corporate data and the right of big corporations to use our data however they wish. It does give additional power, which is needed, to the Privacy Commissioner in that, but the second part of the bill then takes it back with the creation of the privacy tribunal.

Maybe the best explanations of the privacy tribunal is to compare it to and understand the way the Competition Act works. There are two aspects to how we decide competition issues and appeals. One is the Competition Bureau that looks at merges and acquisitions, and it says whether they are anti-competitive or not and will rule on that merger. Then there is a Competition Tribunal, like the privacy tribunal as proposed in the bill, which is the legal framework where the law gets done and the battle gets fought between the company that thinks it should do the merger and the Competition Bureau that thinks it should not.

A classic example recently was the Rogers-Shaw takeover. Quite a bit of time was spent both through the Competition Bureau process and the Competition Tribunal process, which ruled whether that sale could happen and then whether an aspect of that sale, being the sale of Freedom Mobile to Vidéotron, could be done.

The government wants to create that kind of process in the privacy law now. It is a separate act that creates this bureaucracy and this appeal mechanism, where six individuals will decide, as a privacy tribunal, whether a company has breached a person's privacy rights. However, out of the six individuals, only three of them need to any familiarity with privacy law. The others do not need any familiarity with privacy law, no familiarity with business, no familiarity with human rights, nothing. They do not need any other qualifications other than, perhaps in this case, they are a Liberal and are appointed to this board.

I have discussed this with a number of law firms since the bill was tabled a year ago. These law firms have very different views about whether this speeds up or slows down the process of dealing with individual privacy law issues. We need to have a separate study within the committee on that aspect. In fact, I have been talking to the chair of the committee about that structure, trying to get the hearings to be set up in a way that looks at these three pieces separately.

The third piece, which my colleague for Bay of Quinte spoke eloquently about, is on artificial intelligence.

Remember, the first two parts of the bill are essentially a modest rewrite of a bill from the last Parliament, Bill C-11, when the government tried to amend these acts and then complained that the bill did not pass, because it called an early election. The Liberals could not figure out why it did not pass. However, the Liberals reintroduced the bill, but then they bolted on this other thing, which has absolutely nothing to do with the first two parts.

The third part is called the “artificial intelligence act”, but it has nothing to do with the privacy of individuals and it has nothing to do with the appeal of a person's privacy. It is all about how to regulate this new industry, and it gets it wrong. The government is basically saying that its does not know what artificial intelligence is, which is not surprising for the Liberals, but it is going to regulate it. It is going to define it in regulation, and the minister is going to be in charge of defining it. The minister is going to be in charge of setting the rules on whether the law has been breached. The minister is also going to be in charge of fining someone who has breached the law of this thing the government cannot define. It is a total usurping of Parliament. The Liberals are saying that they do not know what it is, but we should trust them, that they will never have to come back to Parliament to deal with this again.

We are asking the House to split the bill into three, because it really is three separate pieces of legislation. The government would have more success in its legislative agenda if it actually brought in these pieces properly, individually, rather than a mini-omnibus bill of different types of issues. Then they could be properly studied, properly amended, properly consulted on and properly dealt with by Parliament. The government is choosing not to do that, which is why it is having such poor legislative success in all of its efforts to date.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting tactic. The Conservatives still do not want to talk about child care. I guess they have an objection to that. I think we could pass this historic legislation in about 25 minutes, but they are having an allergic reaction to yet another national program. It is somewhat unfortunate.

The member wants to talk about AI and splitting a bill that is already in committee. I think the Speaker at one point made a ruling on it, but the Conservatives want to continue to kill time. I understand and appreciate that. This is how they feel they are being a good opposition party, though I might challenge that a bit.

Does the member not recognize the legislation also talks about the protection of data? Data is so critically important. I am wondering to what degree the Conservative Party really recognizes that with technological changes, we need to modernize legislation.

Bill C-27 deals with things like AI and other very important aspects of modernization through technology and data banks. We need to deal with that. When does the member believe the Conservatives will agree to see that sort of legislation pass? Is he and the Conservative regime thinking it should be happening sometime this year possibly, or will they want to continue to filibuster this into the months and years ahead? When would they like to see this type of legislation pass?

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

moved:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology that, during 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, the committee be granted the power to divide the bill into three pieces of legislation:

(a) Bill C-27A, An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, containing Part 1 and the schedule to section 2;

(b) Bill C-27B, An Act to enact the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, containing Part 2; and

(c) Bill C-27C, An Act to enact the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, containing Part 3.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be here today to speak on this motion. I will be splitting my time today with the member for South Shore—St. Margarets.

Bill C-27 is a very important bill. We have talked about privacy legislation now for about eight or nine months. Our whole premise was that privacy always should be a fundamental right of Canadians. We talked about the limitations of this bill when the government announced it. That was missing from the bill. The bill was in three parts. The first part spoke to replacing the “PIP” in “PIPEDA”; the second part was announcing and debating the use of a tribunal; and the third part was about AI. This motion asks to split this bill into three parts so the committee can look at and vote on each part individually.

If we talk about why that is needed at this point, it is very simple. The third part about AI part is the most flawed. When we look at the bill in its entirety and we have gone through debate, we certainly hope to have this bill go to the industry committee. The government delayed sending this to committee, but I am hoping it will be in committee in the early fall, and we want to debate, for the most part, the AI section.

I stand today to shed light on a topic that has captured the imagination of many, and yet poses significant risk to our society: the dangers of artificial intelligence, or AI. While AI has the potential to revolutionize our world, we must also be aware of the dangers it presents and take proactive steps to mitigate them. For decades, AI and the imaginary and real threats it brings has been a subject of fascination in popular culture.

I remember, as a child, watching a movie called WarGames. A teenager wanted to change his grades, he went into a computer to try to do that and the computer offered to play a game of nuclear annihilation. It ended up that the U.S.S.R., through this computer, was about to attack the U.S. NORAD thought it was happening, was ready to strike back and somehow the computer could not figure out what was right or wrong and the only way the student was able to figure it out was to play a game of tic-tac-toe that he found he could never win. At the end, after playing the nuclear game he could never win, he said he would play a nice game of chess because that is easier, someone wins, someone loses and it is safe. This was AI in 1984.

My favourite movie with AI was The Matrix. In The Matrix, humans were batteries in the world, who were taken over and owned by machines until Neo saved them and gave them freedom. Another movie that I remember as a kid was Terminator 2, and we know how that one ended. It was pretty good. We are not sure if it has even ended yet. I think there is another one coming. Arnold Schwarzenegger is still alive.

We find ourselves in a season of alarmism over artificial intelligence, with warnings from experts of the need to prioritize the mitigation of AI risks. One of the greatest concerns around AI is the potential loss of jobs as automation and intelligent machines rise. Has anyone ever heard of the Texas McDonald's that is run entirely without people? It is coming. They have figured out how to use robots and machines to eliminate staff positions.

Even though it is not AI, all of us go to the grocery store now and can check out on our own. When we shop, we see lots of different ways, whether it is Amazon or others, that companies are using AI for robotics. We have heard of dark industrial storage where robots operate in the dark, moving products from exit to entrance, and people are not needed. It is a big problem for job losses.

Another major risk of AI lies in the erosion of privacy and personal data security. As AI becomes more integrated in our lives, it gathers vast amounts of data about individuals, which can be used to manipulate behaviour, target individuals and our children with personalized advertisements, and infringe upon our civil liberties. The first part of Bill C-27 has to do with the third part, but is not the same.

We must establish strong regulations and ethical guidelines to protect our privacy rights and prevent the misuse of personal data. Transparency and accountability should be at the forefront of AI development, ensuring that individuals have control over their own information. Moreover, the rapid advancement of AI brings with it the potential for unintended consequences.

AI systems, while designed to learn and improve, can also develop biases. We saw in the ethics committee, with facial recognition technology, when we had experts come into the committee that, alarmingly, Black females were misidentified 34% of the time by computers. It was called “digital racism”. White males were misidentified only 1% of the time.

Again, this is technology that we have allowed, in some instances, to be used by the RCMP and to be used by the forces. All experts asked for a moratorium on that technology, much the same as we are seeing with AI, because without proper oversight and diverse representation in the development of AI logarithms and algorithms, we risk entrenching society biases within these systems. It is imperative that we prioritize diversity and inclusion in AI development to ensure fairness and to avoid exacerbating existing inequalities.

The security implications of AI cannot be overlooked either. As AI becomes more sophisticated, it could be weaponized or manipulated by malicious actors. Cyber-attacks exploiting AI vulnerabilities could lead to significant disruptions in critical systems, such as health care, transportation and defence. They say the greatest risk of war right now is not by sticks and stones, but by computers and joysticks and that AI could infiltrate our systems.

One thing I was reading about the other week is the risk of a solar storm that could knock out all the technology, but AI and cybersecurity could do the same. Can members imagine what our world would be like if we did not have Internet for a day, weeks or a month? We certainly saw that with the Rogers outage last summer, but we can imagine if it was malicious in intent.

Last, we must address the ethical dilemmas posed by AI. As AI systems become more autonomous, they raise complex questions about accountability and decision-making. We have heard about Tesla having automobiles that have gone off course, and the computer is making the life-or-death decision about where that car is going.

The other day I heard a report about vehicles in L.A. that are autonomous and running by Tesla or by taxi, and that fire trucks and ambulances could not get by the vehicles, because the vehicles were programmed to stop and put their four-way lights on, so these fire trucks could not get past them due to AI decisions. They had to smash the windshields in order to get the vehicles out of the way, and they lost precious minutes getting to the scene of a fire.

While AI holds immense potential to improve our lives, we must remain vigilant to the danger it presents. We cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the risks of job displacement, privacy breaches, bias, security threats or ethical concerns. It is our responsibility to shape the future of AI in a way that benefits all of humanity while mitigating its potential harms. We need to work together to foster a world where AI is harnessed for the greater good, ensuring that progress is made with compassion, fairness and responsible stewardship.

Let us shift for a moment to the positive aspects of AI, and AI actually does exist for good. We have AI working right now with health care diagnostics. Algorithms are being developed to analyze medical images, such as X-rays and MRls, to assist doctors in diagnosing diseases like cancer, enabling earlier detection and improved treatment outcomes.

We have disease prevention and prediction. AI models can analyze large datasets of patient information and genetic data to identify patterns and predict the likelihood of individuals getting certain diseases.

There is environmental conservation. Al-powered systems are being used to monitor and analyze environmental data. I have heard of farmers who are using computer systems to monitor the nitrogen in soil, so they can monitor how much water and how much fertilizer they need to put in the soil, which is saving our environment.

There is disaster response and management. AI is used to analyze social media posts and other data sources during natural disasters to provide real-time information, identify critical needs, and coordinate rescue and relief efforts.

For education and personalized learning, AI is changing the way people are learning right now. The greatest thing we have is ChatGPT, and ChatGPT has revolutionized research. Of course we are looking at the possibility of jobs being lost. It has even helped me with my speech today.

We have a lot of great things that are happening, and in the bill we certainly are going to be looking at how we change and monitor that. The bill should be split into three sections. We need to make sure we look at privacy as a fundamental human right for Bill C-27 as number one; the tribunal is number two; but AI is number three. We need to have as many witnesses as possible to make sure we get it right, and we need to work with our G7 partners to make sure we all look at AI and its benefits, its shortcomings and its benefits to society in Canada and the future.

Canada Business Corporations Act

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to engage in this debate.

The reason I find this so important is that I am from the beautiful province of British Columbia and from the city of Abbotsford, which is nestled between majestic Mount Baker, at 10,500 feet high, and, on the other side, the mighty Fraser River. We live in a wonderful community in a wonderful region of the country. However, one of the challenges we have had over the years is that Canada, and more specifically British Columbia, has become the locus, the very heart, of money laundering in our country.

Just so Canadians understand what money laundering is, I will note that it is not benign activity engaged in by Canadians who want to avoid taxes or something like that. Money laundering is about taking the proceeds of crime, channelling them into what appears to be a legitimate business or a legitimate asset and trying to make those proceeds seem legitimate. It is a great way for criminals to hide the proceeds of crime. The last thing I believe Canadians want to do is aid and abet criminals to commit their crimes in our country, yet that is what has been happening for many years.

This legislation is not the be-all and end-all. Bill C-42 is simply a part of the solution. What it would do is establish a beneficial registry, an ownership registry, that would allow Canadians to see who actually owns the companies into which money might be directed from the proceeds of crime. This is not going to solve the whole problem of money laundering. Our police have their hands full in trying to track these criminals down, trying to identify the proceeds of crime and trying to get convictions.

Here is another problem. Money laundering has contributed significantly to the inflationary impacts on prices of land, real estate and homes that Canadians want to buy. These criminals know that if they can get money channelled into a house, it will be less likely for the police to identify that asset as being a proceed of crime. They also channel these proceeds of crime into legitimate businesses, like small and medium-sized enterprises. They channel this money into hard assets. They may be boats or expensive cars. At the end of the day, this costs Canadians big time.

There is another reason this is important to British Columbians. It was in British Columbia that the Cullen commission was established to investigate this very challenging problem to our criminal justice laws and to the broader issue of how much money laundering costs the average Canadian.

The Cullen commission made a long list of recommendations, most of which implicated the provincial government. It called upon the provincial government to act. However, there was one recommendation that stood out, which was that the federal government establish a pan-Canadian beneficial ownership registry for corporations. I believe Justice Cullen really intended for this to cover all companies in Canada. The problem is that the criminal justice law is federal law, so we as a Parliament have jurisdiction over it. Here is the problem: The large majority of Canadian companies are incorporated not at the federal level but at the provincial level, implicating every one of our 10 provinces and our territories.

How do we cobble together a pan-Canadian foreign ownership registry program with all of these different players at the table? The bill would, at least in the immediate term, establish a corporate beneficial ownership registry for federally incorporated companies, which is a good start. However, I believe the Cullen commission's intent was for the Liberal government to engage the provinces and territories to expand this to include the provincial regimes in federal legislation so that we can go after the money launderers in every corner of our country.

There is a reason this has come to our attention as lawmakers. Back in 2016, the Panama papers exposed how vulnerable Canada was to money laundering. Those papers made it clear that Canada was a laggard on the international stage when it came to addressing money laundering and interdicting the criminals who were taking proceeds of crime, filtering that money through legitimate enterprises and assets and then getting away with their crimes.

In 2017, it was the Liberal government's finance minister, Bill Morneau, who said we needed a beneficial registry to help combat money laundering in our market to determine the true source of funds and ownership in the acquisition of firms. He was right at that time, and that was 2017.

What happened in the intervening years? Nothing. From 2016 to 2023, we had eight years of inaction on the part of the Liberal government. This is pretty shocking, since the government, through its finance minister, at the very least had become aware that this was a very important issue for Canadians and nothing was done.

I will say that I am pleased that at least this has now come before us as Bill C-42, and it looks like we will see a beneficial ownership registry passed and implemented in our country. However, as the bill goes through committee review and comes back to the House, we are going to be asking a lot of questions. For example, how will this registry protect Canadians' privacy rights? We want to interdict criminals as they try to undertake their criminal enterprises, but we also want to make sure that the privacy of Canadians is protected.

I do not have great confidence that the government will actually protect our privacy, and here is why. We recently debated Bill C-27 in the House, which is all about privacy rights. We have been asking the government to actually include privacy as a fundamental right in Canada that Canadians can depend on. Sadly, Bill C-27 did not include that, so we have a right to be concerned.

We also want to ask who will have access to the information in the beneficial registry. Is it the police? Is it the ordinary citizen? It is business people? None of that is clarified in this legislation. We need to know that. Will the bill give law enforcement the necessary tools to combat money laundering and terrorist financing?

To conclude, I believe there is all-party agreement, so I am asking for unanimous consent to request a recorded vote on Bill C-42.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean.

Like my colleagues, I rise today to speak about China's interference in political and public affairs and the breach of privilege of a member of this House. Obviously, it is one member, but all of us are under attack in this situation.

I will try to make this quick because I understand that people are waiting to hear from my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean, whose expertise is in great demand. I think that there are some things that need to be said.

As we know, for several years now, a number of expert reports have highlighted China's actions, going so far as to accuse it of interfering in the political affairs of several countries, including our own. There have been reports of cyber-attacks on Canadian government institutions, businesses and universities, as well as other suspicious activities, such as manipulating social media and disseminating disinformation.

There are Chinese police stations that are operating while the Prime Minister looks on. There have been debates in the House on the active participation of Chinese government agents in the federal election and the controversial $200,000 donation to the Trudeau Foundation, which raises many questions about how much the Prime Minister knew about these matters.

These activities are extremely disturbing and raise questions about the integrity of our democracy and our electoral processes. We cannot allow foreign powers, no matter how big or how influential, to interfere in our political affairs and disrupt our democratic process. The Liberal government has gone from being disconcertingly naive about the Chinese Communist regime to inexplicably inactive in the face of China's repeated attacks on our democracy.

The straw that broke the camel's back was The Globe and Mail article about a CSIS report from 2021 stating that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills and his family in Hong Kong were being threatened by a Chinese diplomat who was still in Canada. The member for Wellington—Halton Hills had just voted in favour of a motion condemning the genocide of the Uyghurs by the Communist Party of China.

These are all very serious allegations involving troubling information that could have a potential impact on our parliamentary duties. The Speaker's ruling on this matter is exemplary, and I agree with the conclusion that an entity like China intervening with retaliatory measures against an MP and his or her family represents an attack on our collective ability to carry out our parliamentary duties unimpeded.

That is simply unacceptable and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. It is our duty to protect our democracy and defend our colleagues' privileges. We must work together to strengthen our national security and protect our democratic institutions from outside threats. We must also support our colleagues and give them the means to fulfill their democratic mandate without fear or intimidation.

The Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of this motion because it has already debated these issues favourably in the public arena. First, when it comes to the foreign agent registry, I will not list all of the opportunities that the government has had for serious reflection since the member for Wellington—Halton Hills moved a motion in 2020 concerning Huawei's involvement in Canada's 5G network. Obviously, time has proven him right.

The Bloc Québécois has expressed its support for an independent public commission of inquiry into foreign election interference. That position is shared by other opposition parties that think that the recent leaks about China's attempts to interfere in our elections require an independent public inquiry.

Former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley has expressed his support for such an inquiry. According to him, Canadians have the right to know everything about what happened, and the lack of a public inquiry will only prolong the consequences for those who were affected. Kingsley also rejected the argument that a public inquiry could compromise public safety. He stated that public safety is there to protect democracy, not the other way around.

The government has sought to put off a public inquiry for a long time citing public security concerns. However, that has not prevented many people, including the former director of CSIS, Richard Fadden, from joining in the call for a public inquiry.

Overall, it is clear that the calls for a public inquiry into foreign interference in elections are growing stronger. Canadians have the right to know if their democratic process is under threat from foreign actors and what steps their government is taking to protect democracy and the interests of their country.

Can we get the truth on the closure of the covert police stations in Canada and on the threats against people who return to China or who have family in China?

This is not the first report we have heard about persecution and repression of certain people who criticized the Chinese government or who were considered dissidents.

The Chinese government also brought in a social credit system that can affect people's ability to travel, find work and access certain services based on their behaviour and their political leanings. It is important to note that these operations are often carried out covertly and the information is often difficult to verify. However, there is enough evidence to suggest that these threats exist and that governments and citizens should be aware of these risks.

The government's attempts to lower the temperature and stonewall are eroding our confidence in it. Its handling of the expulsion of Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei has been embarrassing.

We must be proactive. We must take steps to strengthen our national security, and we must shield ourselves from foreign attacks. We must also continue to strengthen our ability to identify, report, monitor and counter cyber-attacks. They can be extremely difficult to detect and thwart, but we must be ready to face these threats and to protect our institutions against malicious attacks.

The case of the member for Wellington—Halton Hills raises a bigger problem in a world that is becoming more complex. With the growth of social networks, it is getting easier and easier for malicious people to target and harass elected officials, journalists and other public figures. The threats and attacks can be deeply disturbing and have real consequences for the safety of the individuals concerned. This is our cue to rethink our society and even our use of social media.

Increasingly, we tolerate threats because they are just threats. If we do not tolerate threats towards our colleague, we should not tolerate the threats we are subjected to on social media, either.

Our world is entering a new era. China may be using an old way of doing things right now, but new ways of influencing our elected officials will be found. They will become increasingly insidious. Our lives are showcased on social media. Hackers are finding new ways to go even further in getting data.

Just imagine. A fraudster can practically create a new identity for themselves using data leaked from a bank or government. If a member of Parliament is targeted, what impact will that fake identity have? How will a new power be able to influence elected officials?

I serve on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, and these are issues that must be discussed during our study of Bill C-27. We need to ask ourselves whether the government has really made all of the connections that need to be made between all of the laws in order to strengthen the protection of Quebeckers and Canadians.

When it comes to protecting ourselves from China, there is also the Investment Canada Act, which may not go far enough in protecting our vital areas, our supply chains. These are things that I have a lot of questions about.

With the arrival of even more powerful technologies, such as quantum computing, we know that a lot of our data is stored on servers and that China will not hesitate to check that data and use it against us, of course.

Consequently, and in conclusion, we have to equip ourselves with all the tools available to fight foreign interference. That starts with solidarity with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.