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.

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

Mr. Chair, earlier this week, as you know, we had the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Industry here. The Minister of Industry gave a very passionate presentation on how he would like Bill C-27 passed, as a Christmas present for him and Canadians, before Christmas.

In the spirit of Christmas and the holidays, I would like to suggest a way through this and help the minister along. I would like to seek unanimous consent to pass Bill C-27 with all amendments proposed by the opposition parties and the government today.

[Philippe Dufresne]

Yes.

We recommended it in the case of Bill C‑27, and the parliamentary committee accepted that recommendation. However, it's important that this be done in both acts.

[Philippe Dufresne]

As part of the study on Bill C‑11 which preceded Bill C‑27, we made recommendations, which we reiterated in the report on Bill C‑27 provided to the committee.

One of them was to include in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act more specific rules on transfers of personal information outside the country.

At the moment, the act is quite general on the issue. It states that we must, by contract or otherwise, provide protection equivalent to that provided by Canada.

However, other countries in Europe have more rigorous protection regimes where there is talk of alignment. Those countries assess the other country's legal system and determine whether privacy is sufficiently protected. There may also be model provisions, among other things.

That said, the regime could be stricter, which would lead to greater protection.

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

In its current form, does Bill C‑27 allow you to issue orders?

Industry and Technology

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I take advantage of what the Prime Minister has said to me, which is that he wants me to reflect the ideas, thoughts and concerns of the people of Winnipeg North. Whether it is here on the floor of the House of Commons, at the national Liberal caucus or even, very rarely but at times, at the standing committees, Liberal members of the caucus really believe it is important that we take the ideas and thoughts of our constituents to Ottawa. Then, when we present legislation or budgets, or when discussions take place at our standing committees or within our caucus, they are a true reflection of what Canadians, as a whole, are thinking and want the government to take action on. That is why we see legislation like Bill C-27.

I can tell the members opposite that Canadians are very much concerned about identity theft through the Internet. They are very much concerned about privacy. They want to know that the government is going to protect their privacy. That is why we are enhancing the Privacy Commissioner's abilities, with respect to the amounts of fines or the types of things the Privacy Commissioner would be able to conduct. This would provide assurance to Canadians that, even if the Conservatives are more concerned about playing games and filibustering, whether on the floor of the House or at our standing committees, we will continue to take actions to support Canadians.

Just last week, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry announced the launch of the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute. That is to bolster Canada's capacity to address AI safety risks, further positioning the country as a leader in the safe, responsible development and adoption of AI technology. Although we have a legislative responsibility we are advancing, we are also prepared to put in budgetary dollars to ensure the interests of Canadians, first and foremost, are being protected. While the Conservative Party is more focused on being obstructionist and making character assassinations, we have consistently supported Canadians, whether through budgetary or legislative measures, and ensured that issues of concern to them are, in fact, being reflected in Ottawa.

If we look at the advancement in the Internet and the issues that have come out of that, that is why, as a government, we have brought forward not one but several pieces of legislation to protect children and protect our economy. I think of the business transactions that take place every day. Protecting the interests of Canadians is a priority with this government, such as advancing the issue of AI and its use in a positive way, looking at ways we can ensure a heightened sense of safety on the Internet and looking at Internet security as a priority. By providing the funds and the legislative measures that establish a framework, it will make a difference. We want Canadians to know that, as a government, we are there to protect their interests when it comes to the information that is gathered on the Internet and the very real cyber threats out there. We will be there, today and tomorrow, to protect those—

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

Mr. Speaker, the member raises a very important issue about the Internet, and threats on the Internet, in a number of ways. He spent a great deal of his time focused on Bill C-27, and understandably so since that is what the motion is about. The government has taken a very holistic approach in dealing with all aspects of the Internet in the form of legislation and regulations.

Quite often in legislation, we see a framework that is absolutely essential to support healthy and strong regulations that, ultimately, protect the interests of Canadians. It has been somewhat frustrating, as the member was frustrated when talking about what is taking place in committees; on the floor of the House of Commons, it has also been frustrating. The member referred to Bill C-27 being held up in committee, but he tried to put the blame on the government.

One of the biggest differences between the government today and the government while Stephen Harper was prime minister is that we are very open to ideas, constructive criticism, and looking at ways we can improve legislation. That means we have been open to amendments and changes. There have been a number of recommendations, but there was also an extensive filibuster on Bill C-27. It was not just government members but opposition members, much like we see filibusters taking place now on other aspects of the safety of Canadians.

For seven or eight weeks now, there has been a Conservative filibuster on the floor of the House of Commons, and there are other pieces of legislation dealing with the Internet that the Conservatives continue to filibuster. I am referring to Bill C-63, which deals with things such as intimate images being spread on the Internet without consent and child exploitation. We are talking about serious issues facing Canadians, including Bill C-63, that we cannot even get to committee because the Conservative Party has made the decision to filibuster on the floor of the House of Commons.

When the member opposite talks about Bill C-27, I can assure the member that the government is very keen on the legislation. We do not see how Canadians would benefit by splitting the legislation because both aspects are really important to Canadians. We should look at where it can be improved and we are open to that. We have clearly demonstrated that, but we need a higher sense of co-operation, whether dealing with Bill C-63 in the chamber or Bill C-27 at committee. Bill C-26 deals with cybersecurity. As I said, the government is very aware of what is happening on the Internet and our responsibility as legislators to advance legislation that helps establish a framework that will protect the interests of Canadians.

Earlier, I referred to a trip I took to the Philippines in the last five days. One of the companies we visited was a Canadian company, Open Text, that employs 1,500-plus people. We sat in a room that had this huge monitor of the world, and Open Text talked about how threats to infrastructure and to individuals occur every second. We are talking about a trillion type of number when it comes to computer threats occurring on a monthly basis. Open Text can tell where they are coming from and where they are going. It was a very interesting presentation.

No government has invested more in issues around AI than this government has, recognizing the potential good but also the extreme harm out there. We can think about different types of data banks. There are government data banks, such as Canada Revenue at the national level and health care records at the provincial level. There are the Tim Hortons, the private companies, and the data they acquire in their applications. The amount of information about Canadian individuals on the Internet is incredible. Technology has changed the lives of each and every one of us, whether we know it or not.

We can take a look at the number of cameras on our public streets, in malls and so on. We can think of the number of interactions we have on a daily or weekly basis, whether that is banking, which contains very sensitive information, or medical reports—

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

Mr. Speaker, Bill C‑27 proposes industry self-regulation. That is like asking a fox to guard the henhouse. Bill C‑27 also calls for as much alignment with European legislation as possible, which is not happening even though it is the gold standard.

To me, this bill looks like a rough draft cobbled together by novices. It does not seem up to the task of protecting the basic right to privacy, which is what matters most right now.

What are my colleague's thoughts on that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Windsor West, for raising this issue in the House. I want to acknowledge how very patient he has been.

When I was on the Standing Committee on Industry a year ago, we were talking about this issue. We were working on it. We could already see the bill's shortcomings. Basically, the bill was outdated as soon as it was introduced. Why? It is because ChatGPT showed up right afterward.

Here is my question for my colleague. Why did the government not introduce a new version of the digital charter bill, Bill C‑27, since it was already obsolete when we studied it?

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the member is raising an issue on which, I would suggest, the government has been fairly aggressive. It has addressed a number of different issues related to the Internet, cybersecurity, protecting Canadians' data, AI and so forth.

He is referring to one piece of legislation. I think that there is a great deal of merit in terms of looking at it with a holistic approach. Given what we have witnessed over the last number of months, in terms of the House, we have an opportunity to at least make headway in areas that Bill C-27 is proposing. If we were to split the bill, it could ultimately prevent one aspect from being able to pass, even if it is just setting a framework.

Does he believe that this would be advantageous for Canadians?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

moved:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology that, during its consideration of 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 two pieces of legislation:

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

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

Mr. Speaker, as New Democrats, we are taking this opportunity to try to rescue part of a bill to protect Canadians' privacy as the Conservatives and Liberals have been warring over a number of different things. We have an important piece of legislation that has been drafted poorly but can be recovered. We are going to focus on this Parliament being able to rescue tens of thousands of dollars, having multiple meetings with witnesses and a variety of organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and others, that would not seem to be naturally in the NDP camp, but are on this issue.

It is important to note that the petty politics going on by the Liberals and Conservatives on this are at the expense of the privacy of Canadians. Specifically, I am talking about Bill C-27, which goes back to 2020 with regards to Bill C-11. It re-emerged in 2022 in this chamber, in November, when the Liberals tabled 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 Liberals drafted a bill that was so encompassing and so problematic because they were willing to compromise personal privacy rights for the consumer industry, big tech and other businesses at the expense of individual Canadians' privacy. However, we called them out on that. We have this motion in front of us today because the member for New Westminster—Burnaby stood in this chamber and helped separate the actual bill to make sure that the privacy component of this, which should have been done separately, can still get done.

As Parliament winds down, not only this session but potentially a future session, we still have time to protect Canadians' privacy. The Liberals and Conservatives have no interest in this whatsoever. They would rather play their own games and sacrifice the privacy of Canadians.

The bill was so poorly drafted that when I first saw it, I went to the minister back in 2022 and asked him to separate the bill, saying that he did not have to compromise Canadians' privacy for consumer interests. The Liberals knew that, because their lobbyists, their friends, their CEOs and the big tech, all those elements were chirping in the minister's ear, basically giving him the political support to go ahead with this. When I said to the minister, “Separate the bill, and let's do the privacy component first”, the Liberals basically said that they could not do it, they did not want to do it. We proved that wrong in this chamber by separating the bill in a previous debate.

Here we are now, as New Democrats, understanding there are dozens of organizations calling for the personal protection of privacy, including the Privacy Commissioner, to get this done and to not waste the work that is now being compromised by the games going on by the official opposition and the Liberals.

Again, this bill was drafted so poorly. When bills go to committee, they usually have maybe a dozen, at the most, amendments. Of those amendments, there are usually a few that are very significant to the bill and others that could be on language. I believe this bill had over 240 amendments to correct the problems with the bill.

We had debates here in the House of Commons and we referred the bill to committee. The minister showed up, after doing a lot of prancing around Canada about how great the legislation was, talking about the importance of artificial intelligence and how Canada has to deal with it, which we do agree with. However, the reality is that he did not care at all, and neither did the Liberals, about the privacy element.

In fact, we saw elements of the bill do the same thing to the Privacy Commissioner. This has been taking place in the Competition Bureau. I am referring to the Shaw-Rogers takeover. We saw the debacle that played out, because New Democrats were the ones that opposed that. We have seen that it has not lowered prices, only laid off workers. It has led to non-disclosure clauses from the people who got fired from Rogers. The Liberals did not care at all and created a tribunal over the top of the Privacy Commissioner.

That is important, because the tribunal, for doing its job, was actually sued by Rogers. Rogers took it to court to do due diligence, but the tribunal, which has people appointed from Liberals and Conservatives, then taxed our own Competition Bureau $10 million to pay for the legal costs for Rogers for just doing its job.

We did not want the same thing, we do not want the Privacy Commissioner being overridden by political appointees of Liberals and Conservatives. The history that I have seen here in this place, over the two decades I have been here, is one of constant appointments of either the blue or the red team to different positions of power, with no oversight and no accountability, leading to decisions against the public.

The bill came back to committee. I do not even know how many witnesses we had, off the top of my head, but we went for a long period of time and heard how badly the legislation was drafted. Some were so desperate to have anything that they would take anything, and they admitted that the bill was basically a piece of garbage. They basically said they would just take anything other than nothing, but most of those times, that was from the interests tied to businesses and consumer rights for industries versus those concerned with Canadians' personal privacy and protection. We heard that constantly, as the committee wound through all the different witnesses.

The minister came to us at the very beginning of all those witnesses and said he had some amendments, but it turned out those amendments were just ideas. They were not in any legislative format that we could deal with. They were not in any legal terms. He did not have the House of Commons or his department draft them. They were basically a set of ideas and propositions that did not even make any sense, in terms of the legislation. I do not think the minister even understood, and probably does not to this day, the amendments.

We got through the entire process. We fought over these amendments and what the minister really meant. Was he willing to compromise on the Privacy Commissioner and trying not to neuter it? Was he willing to do the right things to fix some of the elements of AI that people are concerned about? I kept on asking witness after witness whether they thought we should split this bill, and the resounding answer was “yes,” even from those who want to get the AI stuff done, and that there was no need to put the Privacy Commissioner in there.

Again, I go back to the roots of this legislation. The roots of this were to address the undermining of personal privacy of Canadians at the expense of businesses being able to access their data information and not be updated. We have an open hole right now. We have all this work that has been done, but we are going to propose to send it back to committee with this motion to try to deal with it and see if this House can actually get something done for Canadians. We spent a lot of time and money on this. There are some really significant issues here, and we are doing this because we have been in consultation with many groups and organizations that still want to see our privacy protected.

We got to clause-by-clause, and we went through over 200 amendments, as I mentioned. We found that there are some elements there that we could actually work with, at least as the opposition members. To give credit to the Conservatives, the Bloc and ourselves, there were some elements that we could actually agree upon and work with, and the government altered some of its stuff, too, but we were still stuck in a myriad of problems.

The situation became so bad that the Liberals began to filibuster their own bill in committee, because they did not know what to do. The minister then said he would come back with further amendments, and we have not seen them to date. I raised this most recently a couple of weeks ago as we tried to plan out our session, and we still have not had the Liberals bring back any of those amendments. They are on the record promising them. They said that they were going to happen, but we still have not been able to get over this tribunal issue. The tribunal issue is something important that we can get done.

Hence, we are going to split this bill, or see if there is interest in the House to do it, to see if we can rescue part of this legislation. I think it is important to note that, when we look at some of the issues here, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has raised concerns about this. It has some of the best capabilities of understanding legislation and it understands that we must protect the privacy component. Unlike the United States, we do have a Privacy Commissioner, and that is very important when dealing with artificial intelligence. It cannot actually be different.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada also expressed misgivings and reservations about the bill's structuring and proposed measures for digital privacy in AI. Governments could benefit from them being addressed separately, as these are distinct areas that require separate attention.

Again, we have that component that can go forward with support from the Privacy Commissioner. It is indifferent to how legislation should be brought through the House of Commons, but at the same time it recognizes this is not the only way to do this. The minister did not have to throw everything he could into a bill to diminish privacy rights to distract Canadians, and that is really what this was about.

We should never even have started on the AI component without finishing the privacy component. This could have been done ages ago, and it should have been done ages ago. The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic is calling for separation of the bill, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that privacy laws and AI regulations receive individual, dedicated scrutiny, especially given their different implications for society and households. These organizations, among others, are also very much interested in moving it forward.

I mentioned the Canadian Chamber of Commerce as well. It sent in support, believing that the legislation has to be separated. I had a chance to meet with the members recently on a number of different issues, including border issues. They are really well aware. I know the previous debate was partially about CBSA officers. I am on the front line; I have 40% of Canada's daily trade go through my riding to the United States. The New Democratic Party has been supporting getting the training centre and improving the mandate of CBSA officers. This includes being able to seize illegal and counterfeit goods and materials, which they cannot do so readily right now, as well as ensuring that the 1932 order in council has been rescinded and, most importantly, giving the push to get 1,100 frontline border officers and sniffer dogs.

Those who were doing the examination are hired back by the Liberals after they were cut by the Conservatives. Under COVID, we had two tranches of not hiring workers. They are short 2,000 to 3,000 workers right now. The Conservatives and Liberals pushed for apps like ArriveCAN to take over the workers on the border. They went to more automation.

We believe the solution is right in front of us, and that is workers on the front line. Bring back the sniffer dogs. Bring back the workers who were fired and put them on the border where they should be. This is also a way to help stop drugs, paraphernalia, car smuggling and all that from coming into Canada.

We can look at a number of different things. I want to go back to and talk about how the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is actually calling for this bill because it understands there is a difference when it comes to artificial intelligence and the privacy elements.

It is important, not only to individuals but also to companies to understand how to protect Canadians' rules. There are many Canadian companies that want to follow rules, protect privacy and do the right thing. Those companies should be rewarded versus some of the larger ones we have seen, like Meta, Facebook and so forth. These companies have used loopholes to expose people in their privacy or use it to their advantage to manipulate them, and are getting rewarded for it and do not have to pay the consequences of not respecting privacy or the provisions under data protection.

In fact, it was the New Democratic Party that put forth the first legislation on a digital bill of rights. We did this several years ago on everything from net neutrality to the right to be forgotten with regard to getting information scrubbed from the Internet, as well as a series of things to protect personal privacy. I know this very well coming from the automotive capital of Canada because we saw what took place with vehicles. They now gain information about drivers and how that is sold, how it is distributed and so forth, versus even actually selling the cars at times. This data can be more valuable than making the vehicle. This is one of the reasons we have had a focus on this for a long period of time, and we believe the privacy element should not be abandoned by the misfortune in the House.

There are a number of different organizations that are also concerned with this. In an article for The Hill Times, Andrew Clement says, “the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act needs a reset.” The author states that AIDA was written “too hastily”, noting that it “skipped...the normal public consultation” process and was introduced alongside the digital charter implementation act, whereas it should have been “separated from the rest of Bill C-27 for substantial reworking.”

The author suggested redrafting AIDA, which should include genuine public consultation; looking to the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act; and engaging community advocates, researchers, lawyers, and representatives of at-risk populations. The reason I gave that reference is that this was the due diligence and why the minister laid an egg with this bill. It was basically broken upon delivery as well because he did not do the work that was necessary beforehand, consulting all the different organizations. What we had is what Ottawa loves. Ottawa loves this so much. Ottawa has the back room scurrying with all the lobbyists who go to the Conservatives and Liberals. They all get paid for this. They are lawyers or representatives, who are getting the meetings and all those different things. Can we guess who the mass majority of them are? They are Liberals and Conservatives. They get all these appointments. They get all this lobbying going on; then, instead of having public consultations, which we think would have been important, they start to steer their influence if they can.

Canadians care about privacy. Members can look at the B.C. civil liberties union and others across the country, including some good protection in Quebec, which is better than in other parts of Canada. We need to give them credit for that. On top of that, that interest is well respected, not only here but also across the world.

Interestingly enough, on April 24, a joint letter was sent to the minister; it was also sent to the rest of us in turn, as well as to the official opposition. It was a joint call for AIDA to be sent back for meaningful public consultations and redrafting. Nothing has happened since then, aside from more debacle. These groups and organizations are calling for something the NDP has been asking about for a long period of time, in terms of why the government is putting privacy rights at the expense of artificial intelligence rights for businesses and corporations. I asked about that, especially when I had the first meeting with the minister.

These organizations include Amnesty International, the Canadian section; the BC Civil Liberties Association; the Canadian Arab Federation; the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council; the Centre for Digital Rights; the Centre for Free Expression; the communications program of Glendon College, York University; Digital Public; Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec; the Firearms Institute for Rational Education; International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group; Inter Pares; Just Peace Advocates; Macdonald-Laurier Institute; Mines Action Canada; the National Union of Public and General Employees; NSTP Consulting corporation; OpenMedia; the Privacy and Access Council of Canada; Response Marketing Association; Rideau Institute of International Affairs; and Tech Reset Canada.

Then there is a whole series of other individuals who would add another 34 names that I could actually put down here. I will not read them all because there are just too many. However, reading out the names of those different organizations tells us that there is a general consensus that the legislation is a complete and utter disaster the way it is. What we can do now is what New Democrats have called for in a motion, which is to separate them as follows:

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

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

That way, we can actually do the job that is necessary.

This is crucial because Canada has fallen farther behind. I know that the Liberals are all excited about creating another digital group and committee, which the minister announced, because we cannot get this through committee if there is no interest. Again, I remind the chamber that, the last we saw of this, the Liberals were in committee filibustering to talk out the clock before we broke session. They would not even come with their own committee recommendations or amendments. They talked the clock out on themselves for the last two meetings that we had because they did not know what to do. We are still waiting, to this day, for those amendments to come forward.

As I wrap up my speech, I want to thank all the interested parties out there. Canada has an opportunity with artificial intelligence; Canada could actually be a leading component for good on this in the world. However, we have to do this with the right protections in place and the right way of doing things. The first thing is to protect our privacy elements with the Privacy Commissioner and update, and the second part is to get it on to the business of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Minister. After three years chairing this committee, I think Santa Claus will have to work overtime to deliver what you've asked for, which is for Bill C-27 to be adopted by this committee. I'm optimistic.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Minister Champagne and Minister Freeland, for joining us for the full two hours. It's not often we have ministers for two hours, so I appreciate your participating in this.

Colleagues, we will suspend for about 10 minutes and then resume this meeting with Interac.

The meeting is suspended.

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

For sure, and I want to say thank you to you, Mr. Turnbull, particularly on the Sustainable Finance Forum. You gathered some of the best minds in the country. We should all be proud of what you're doing. Not only are you an outstanding member of Parliament, but also, as parliamentary secretary, you've been able to really guide us in this process.

Listen, it's very simple. For folks who are watching at home, if we want to move from fear to opportunity, we need to build trust. Trust is fundamental. How do you build trust? You have a framework. That's why Bill C-27 is so important, because only when you have trust can you have adoption. With adoption, you'll have innovation. That is the decision tree we're facing.

That's why I also want to thank you, Mr. Chair, for all the work you've been doing to try to bring us there. We said that this is the holy grail of productivity, but we need to build trust. That's why Bill C-27 and the work of this committee are so important.

We're getting close to Christmas. I know people have a lot on their minds, but if there was a gift that the Conservatives wanted to give to Canadians, it is really to allow them to have a framework so that Canada can continue to lead on AI. I know it's possible. Mr. Chair, you have been a witness that, when the House wants, we can do big things fast. We've done it before. If the members of the committee put their good hearts forward before Christmas, they'd say, “Let's give Canadians a gift. Let's give them a gift that will protect them and that will allow innovation and adoption of AI so that Canada will be a nation that can lead in the 21st century.” Let's hope that they have all listened to me today.

Mr. Chair, you've done a great job. Thank you for having me and Minister Freeland. I know that it's getting close to Christmas, and I see your smiles, so it's about time for us to end. Thank you very much for having us.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you very much.

I also want to pose a question to Minister Champagne about the importance of AI.

I remember that I got the chance to meet Yoshua Bengio. We're very proud of Geoffrey Hinton, and we're also very proud of Yoshua Bengio. Both of them have played such a critical role in terms of the thought leadership that Canada has provided to the world. He said that it was like an Oppenheimer moment for him. He was saying that he has created something and he's now worried about the incredible risks that AI can pose. That's not to say that there isn't considerable benefit for productivity, which there is, and we heard about that from my colleague Mr. Van Bynen.

I'm also concerned about protecting Canadians while ensuring that we can take advantage of the innovation and productivity gains that AI can provide to our whole economy, small businesses, etc., as you've already highlighted. I want to give you an opportunity to talk about the risk side of things and ensuring that we have ethical use of AI and critical legislation like Bill C-27. Do you want to speak to this at all?

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

I have more than an idea; after all, it's Christmastime. I even recently spoke with your leader to find a solution. You talked about a specific point that some are opposed to, which is the establishment of a new tribunal. We've said that we're willing to lok at this to move Bill C‑27 forward It's going to take a commitment from all parties.

If our Conservative and NDP friends supported us, we could show Canadians that a minority Parliament can still work in the interest of Canadians. That's certainly what we want to do in the AI space.

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

Mr. Savard‑Tremblay, your comments are music to my ears and those of everyone watching us this evening. Honestly, if there's one person who wants things to move forward, it's me. I think that all Quebecers and Canadians want it too.

Bill C‑27is important in two ways. First, it's important from a privacy perspective, because we want to give people more control when it comes to transferring and protecting their personal data.

Second, Quebec, and more specifically Montreal, is a leader in artificial intelligence. Think of Yoshua Bengio or the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, which has just been established. We're taking into account the suggestions made by our colleagues, whether it be you or other colleagues, to find a way forward.

I think the work of this committee is important. If we want to continue to be a leader on the international stage when it comes to responsible AI, we also have a duty to make progress at the national level. European Commissioner Vestager commented on the framework we were proposing, saying that it was the ideal Canadian version o AI legislation to add Canada's voice to the debate around responsible AI.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

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

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

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

[Philippe Dufresne]

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

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, committee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you so much.

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

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

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

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

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

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Well, I started this meeting raising this exact point.

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

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

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

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

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

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

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

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

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

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

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

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

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

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

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

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

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

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

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

International Trade

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

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

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

[Dr. Emily Laidlaw, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

Thank you.

When I teach freedom of expression to my law students, I start with the question of what freedom of expression means to them. Before looking at the law or philosophy, we should all start with the question of what expression means to us personally. It touches every aspect of our lives and democracy, and this meaningfulness is what informs our legal structure.

A commitment to freedom of expression asks a lot of us. It asks us to protect offensive, disturbing and shocking expression in the belief that society as a whole benefits, even if individuals are caught in the crosshairs. However, it is not an absolute right and it never has been.

Canadian courts have generally adopted a negative approach to freedom of expression, assuming that if government just stays out of the way, we'll be free. This, I suggest, is a false assumption. We do not enjoy equal freedom to express ourselves, and law can be an important vehicle to protect and promote freedom of expression.

This is especially important in the area of technology law, which is where I work, where laws targeting private companies are an important vehicle to ensure users' rights are protected.

When I got into this area almost 20 years ago, my focus was on how technology companies had become private arbiters of expression. No matter what we want to do online, we rely on a private company to make it happen. They decide who has access, what content stays up or comes down, the systems of dispute resolution, and how their sites are designed, using persuasive techniques to nudge behaviour, such as endless scrolling, rewards, notifications and “likes”, essentially hijacking our minds.

This means these companies have extraordinary power—more than most states. They are the deciders of global free expression norms, and there's minimal transparency about their practices and minimal legal mechanisms with which to hold these companies accountable. These companies are also soft targets for government pressure to remove certain content, called jawboning.

At its worst, it operates as a form of shadow regulation—government A pressures platform Y to remove certain content. More commonly, law enforcement, for example, investigates whether a post is criminal hate speech. They think it might be, but in the meantime, they think it probably violates the platform's own terms and conditions. Law enforcement notifies the platform of the post, and the platform independently assesses it against its own moderation processes. In this situation, is the state suppressing lawful expression? Generally, no, but it matters how this is done, and informal measures always risk being illegitimate in substance or appearance.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that the companies are bad actors—many are the source of innovation to the problems we face—but in the end, these are just companies. They're not good or bad, but they do have fiduciary responsibilities to act in their company's best interests, so there's only so much they can ever do to act in society's best interests, and some companies elect to do very little.

My message is this: When companies are this powerful and have this much impact on society, it is the government's job to create a legal framework around that.

There are two key steps that are crucial to promote and protect freedom of expression and address online harms. The first is to pass part 1 of Bill C-63 after, of course, careful study and amendments. It proposes a systemic approach to social media regulation.

What do I mean by a systemic approach? This approach is not concerned about specific content—whether this post or that is hate propaganda and whether a company leaves it up or takes it down. Rather, it targets the system that makes social media tick. What content moderation systems does the company have in place? Does it provide due process? Does the platform address the risks of the recommender system? Does the company have a plan to address inauthentic accounts and manipulation of its systems by bots and deepfakes?

The companies are required to be transparent about their practices, and a regulator can investigate companies for failing to have proper systems in place. In terms of freedom of expression, a systemic approach is the best in class to provide the most protection to freedom of expression while targeting the core problems social media have made so much worse.

The second step is to reform data privacy law and introduce AI legislation, such as some form of Bill C-27. These are data-driven businesses. The design of their interfaces, their practices concerning the collection, use and disclosure of user data, and their use of AI systems provide the keys to our minds and health and our agency to participate and express ourselves freely. Privacy has always been key to the enjoyment of freedom of expression, and therefore Bill C-27, or some version of it, is a key complement to Bill C-63.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Perkins, you don't have the floor. Mr. Perkins, I have the floor, and I'm the chair.

This is the end of this committee meeting. If you want to bring this motion back, you can move to resume debate at the next meeting, which will be after constituency week. That is when we will come back on Bill C-27, as a reminder, colleagues.

Ladies and gentlemen of the witness panel, we thank you for taking part in this exercise. We are very grateful to you. A parliamentarian’s life is not always simple, as you know. We thank you for the work you do for Canadians.

With that, I wish you a good day.

The meeting is adjourned.

[Dr. Sara Bannerman]

I guess I see two potential ways forward in the big picture. One is to incorporate all 10 principles fully into this bill, probably by working with the Privacy Commissioner, including adding oversight of the Privacy Commissioner in partnership with the elections head.

Another possibility would be to amend Bill C-27, if it's still possible to do that, to incorporate applicability to political parties under that bill. In other words, bring political parties under the ambit of commercial privacy law or privacy law that applies to the private sector, which is what is done in British Columbia.

There are two broad avenues there. I could also speak specifically to the 10 points if you would like me to go into more detail about that.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Originally, when I read the motion, I worried and wondered if it could undermine work on Bill C‑27 when it comes back. Indeed, we all hope it comes back. Like my NDP colleague, I understand it will be necessary to talk about it in the House.

I am very enthusiastic about the idea of including this part in the motion, because it will encourage our Conservative colleagues to talk about something else in the House, Mr. Chair. For us to talk about this motion in the House, the Conservatives will have to break the deadlock in the House.

So, if it can support democracy, Mr. Chair, I support the motion as written.

Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, in fact, the member for Calgary Nose Hill, who just spoke, has a private member's bill that is before the House as well, Bill C-412 which would do a better job of amending the Criminal Code to go after child predators.

What the Liberals are trying to do in Bill C-63 is create a new bureaucracy that would not be accountable to Canadians. From what we have seen with Bill C-27, I do not necessarily believe that the expertise in the Department of Industry is sufficient to manage the issues. The protection of children needs to be under the Criminal Code first and foremost, not under new regulatory bodies.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would agree with my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill that indeed we need an election right now.

With regard to the attempt by the government to update our laws with respect to personal privacy and its application with all forms of technology, the government has been very irresponsible with respect to the legislation in its attempt to update our laws. In fact, this is about the third iteration of the bill. Even since it was tabled by the government, the government brought forward special amendments during the committee process that completely changed the nature of the legislation because it just happened to miss things.

It is not every day that there are, as with Bill C-27, independent academics who come out against the government on its failure to consult appropriately with a broad set of stakeholders across Canada, including in the human rights space, as the member for New Westminster—Burnaby was outlining, where the technologies are going to seriously impact the lives and well-being of children especially.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, let me begin by acknowledging that I agree that racialized people, especially vulnerable children and women, are impacted by artificial intelligence the most. That is a fact; I believe that. The best way to protect these people is not to amend the human rights report, as per the committee's recommendation, but to enshrine the protections in Bill C-27, which is at committee right now, to ensure that they are in place to help people as quickly as possible.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, that is exactly it. We have to look very closely at Bill C-27 to update Canada's privacy laws to account for the revolutionary technological advancements that are taking place before our eyes today. Make no mistake, the period that we are living in right now and the technological advancements that were clearly articulated to the industry committee here in Parliament are equivalent to one of the greatest leaps in technology ever witnessed by mankind.

We do need to ensure, in Bill C-27, that these rights are protected. It was Conservatives who were pushing to ensure that privacy is seen as a fundamental human right.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, we all are aware that, when a privilege motion comes before the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House of Commons rules that there has been a breach of Parliament's powers, no other business can come before the House of Commons. If, indeed, the member was so concerned about the passage of Bill C-63 through the House of Commons, the government would do what Canadians want and hand over the documents pertaining to the green slush fund from the former Sustainable Development Technology Canada.

Let me remind the House that it was, in fact, our current industry minister who suspended SDTC, and it was our Auditor General who clearly found close to $400 million in misspent funds and 180 cases of conflict of interest.

Furthermore, pertaining to Bill C-27, the government decided not to continue the legislative review of that legislation when the House returned in September. Instead, it decided to start a study on Interac fees. That is on the parliamentary secretary to the minister of industry for not managing the legislative calendar appropriately and putting Bill C-27 on the side. This was done because they were worried about the amendments that all the other parties of the House of Commons deemed appropriate, but that were not deemed appropriate by the minister and the backroom lobbyists who are informing his position.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, in a rapidly evolving technological environment, it is important, more than ever, that we ensure children are protected. The report tabled by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, entitled “Facial Recognition Technology and the Growing Power of Artificial Intelligence”, looks at the benefits and risks of facial recognition and use in specific contexts, such as law enforcement, as well as exploring AI governance issues.

It is important we study this technology cautiously, as there are many benefits that will come from this type of innovation, but we must make sure this technology is used in a responsible way that protects the rights of all Canadians and, I would add, especially children. Throughout my time as a member of the industry committee, I have championed the inclusion of the best interests of the child in amendments to legislation of the Digital Charter Implementation Act, Bill C-27, which includes the government's proposed legislation on artificial intelligence, as well.

Nowhere in this bill was the term “minor” defined. The Liberals rushed to get this bill to committee and failed to include separate protections for children's privacy that would have demonstrated their commitment to putting children first. We all know stories about the damages social media platforms and AI have already done to our children and youth. Conservatives will fight for stronger privacy protection for children and find a balance to still be innovative with this technology, so it is used appropriately.

In addition to inserting the best interests of the child, Conservatives have also pushed to insert a children's code into Bill C-27, modelled after the U.K. Children's code. This amendment would empower the Governor in Council to introduce a code of practice for organizations, including businesses, to follow through regulation for online services related to children's online activity.

The U.K. Children's code has become an international standard for jurisdictions around the world in creating legislation, yet the Liberals failed to include it when drafting legislation that pertains to children's privacy. Many stakeholders and witnesses emphasized the need for a children's code to be included in the bill, but the government did not meet with any of these stakeholders before tabling it. Children must be put first when it comes to creating legislation around facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence.

This was outlined by the report tabled by the ethics committee, with the Human Rights Commission, indicating that the legal framework for police use of facial recognition technology should take a human rights-based approach that integrates protection for children and youth. This has indeed come up in respect to the recommendation in the report, and I would note it is actually the Conservatives fighting against the New Democrats and the Liberals to enshrine these very important rights for the protection of children to uphold their right to privacy.

These types of amendments to bills demand a holistic approach to a child's development, ensuring their rights cannot be overridden by the commercial interests of a company, especially. However, the potential benefits of facial recognition technology and AI are substantial. The report outlined that these technologies can assist law enforcement in locating missing children and combatting serious crimes. As Daniel Therrien, former privacy commissioner of Canada, pointed out, facial recognition technology can serve “compelling state purposes”, including safeguarding our communities and ensuring public safety. It can also be a powerful tool in urgent situations, identifying individuals who pose threats or finding those who are lost or in danger.

However, these advantages must be weighed against the significant risks that cannot be overlooked. The same technologies that can find missing children also risk infringing upon their privacy and civil liberties.

Kristen Thomasen, law professor at the University of British Columbia, noted, while facial recognition technology can be touted as a protective measure for marginalized groups, “the erosion of privacy as a social good” ultimately harms everyone, especially “women and children”.

As we enhance surveillance capabilities, we risk consolidating an environment of constant observation that stifles individual freedoms. Moreover, as we consider the integration of AI into the lives of children, we must recognize the profound potential for manipulation and deception.

By their very nature, children are often at a distinct disadvantage when navigating AI systems. Their cognitive and emotional development leaves them particularly vulnerable to influences that they might not fully understand. AI tools, including AI companions, smart toys and even educational applications, can unwittingly lead children to disclose sensitive or personal information. Such disclosures can expose them to risks of exploitation, harm and even predatory behaviours by adults. Children may not grasp the implication of sharing personal information, and AI systems designed to learn from interactions can inadvertently manipulate their responses or choices, leading to harmful outcomes.

For example, a recent tragedy just came out of the U.S. in which a 14-year-old boy, Sewell Setzer, committed suicide after speaking with a chatbot on Character.AI. His mother is now suing the company. She wrote that AI can “trick customers into handing over their most private thoughts and feelings.”

The implications of deepfake technology further amplify these concerns. Deepfakes are highly convincing but entirely fabricated images or videos, placing children in situations they never experienced. Such manipulations can depict minors in inappropriate contexts or lead to false narratives that can damage their reputation and emotional well-being.

As technology becomes more accessible, children may find themselves targeted by malicious actors who use these tools to exploit their innocence. To combat these dangers, it is crucial that we act swiftly and decisively to develop comprehensive policies and laws that prioritize the protection of children over commercial interests while still fostering an environment where innovation can take place.

A legislative framework should clearly delineate the appropriate contexts in which facial recognition technology and AI can be employed for legitimate purposes while firmly prohibiting any uses that could infringe upon the rights of children and other vulnerable populations. This is why I want to re-emphasize the importance of including a children's code when regulating facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence.

In industry meeting 99 on November 28, 2023, Elizabeth Denham, chief strategy officer of the Information Accountability Foundation, came to input her opinions on Bill C-27. While working for five years as the U.K. Information Commissioner, she oversaw the creation of the U.K. Children's Code, and the design of that code has influenced laws and guidance all around the world.

The code assists organizations in creating digital services that cater, first and foremost, to children's needs. It is also important to note that, when we discuss a children's code, we should take into account the fact that children are biologically and psychologically different and distinct from adults.

Protecting children in the digital world means allowing them to be children in that world, with appropriate protections for their safety and their reputations, both today and tomorrow, when they enter adulthood. Numerous stakeholder groups, such as the Centre for Digital Rights, and witnesses, such as the former U.K. privacy commissioner, have advocated for a comprehensive code of practice to be created when it comes to regulations and laws related to children's privacy.

More specifically, a children's code would be developed through a consultation process that, at minimum, included the Privacy Commissioner, parental rights groups and children. It would be developed with the best interests of the children over commercial interests in the same space. A children's code would ensure that the following standards must be included when it is developed: data protection impact assessments, transparency, the detrimental use of data, default settings, data minimization, data sharing, geolocation, parental controls, profiling, nudge techniques, connected toys and other devices, and online tools, to name a few.

In conclusion, as we embrace the transformative potential of facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence, we must remain vigilant in prioritizing our children's best interests. The balance between harnessing innovation and safeguarding rights is delicate, but it is a responsibility we cannot afford to neglect. Here on the Conservative side, as these bills come before parliamentary committees, first and foremost, we want to see children go above commercial interests in all cases.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

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

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

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North, who always has such relevant questions. I like to hear him talk about responsibility. Responsibility is a very important concept in society. For the record, it comes from two Latin words, res, meaning “things” and spondere, meaning “to promise”. The responsible person is the one who can promise things. In this case, we are talking about the government.

Privacy commissioners have been stressing out for many years recommending that our privacy legislation be modernized or updated. Yes, there are interesting AI developers out there and leaders in certain types of facial recognition, but they are delinquent when it comes to protecting personal information. Bill C‑27 sets out some interesting improvements. However, if the bill had been split the right way from the start, the privacy part would have already been accepted.

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

Madam Speaker, I think it is worth noting that Canada, among our peer nations and others, is doing exceptionally well with regard to the technological advancement of things like AI and facial recognition. Through that advancement there is a responsibility of the different stakeholders, in particular government, to look for ways in which we can actually ensure that our laws and regulations are of benefit and provide the type of assurances that Canadians want to see. It does not matter where one lives in Canada; it is just the general feeling, I believe, that a vast majority have.

I wonder whether my colleague could provide his thoughts on the importance of Bill C-27, which is unfortunately still at committee. I would have liked to have seen it taken out of committee months ago.

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

Madam Speaker, as I was saying, there are many different uses. Did people consent to those uses? Did they consent to being in an ad when they were walking down the street? Did they consent to having their image captured as they were getting on a bus in Trois‑Rivières? Did they consent to their comings and goings being tracked? Did passengers arriving at Trudeau airport consent to being identified for their passport using facial recognition?

How is that data being used? Did people consent to that? Is that data protected? After the data leak at Desjardins, we have to wonder whether facial recognition data at risk too.

This is certainly something we need to work on. Unfortunately, the lack of regulations gives the bad guys a definite advantage. Those looking to sidestep regulations sometimes succeed, but it is complicated. However, if there are no regulations, then it is the wild west, really.

Let me give a few examples of the benefits that facial recognition technology has to offer. Daniel Therrien, the former privacy commissioner of Canada, said that facial recognition can be used to solve serious crimes, such as missing children cases. It can also be used for other compelling state purposes, such as in the border context to ensure that people of concern can be identified at the border while not impeding the flow of travellers to the country. Obviously, that is desirable. These kinds of uses are intended to protect us. I think we would all support them.

However, there are drawbacks, and they often concern mass surveillance. One thing is immediately obvious. Mass surveillance is definitely being done without a warrant. People are being surveilled at baseball games, on the bus and in the subway. Although the goal may be to identify a perpetrator, everyone is surveilled in the process. That is problematic.

As for the disadvantages, Patricia Kosseim, Ontario's information and privacy commissioner, told us that, with regard to facial recognition, the biggest concern of commissioners across Canada is mass surveillance, whether done by a third-party private sector company on behalf of the police or by the police service itself.

Assistant or deputy commissioners of the RCMP candidly told us that they were using facial recognition without a warrant and without letting the public know. Obviously, we can expect the RCMP to use facial recognition for legitimate, worthy reasons. However, the privacy commissioner also found that there had been serious and systemic failings to ensure compliance with the act before collecting personal information and before collecting information in general, for that matter.

I was talking about shopping malls a little earlier. I mentioned the buses in Trois‑Rivières because facial recognition is used on them too. I think we need to be careful, because on top of the inherent bias against Asian people and people of colour, for example, criminal bias exists as well. Poor-quality cameras can produce images that lead to a person being incorrectly identified. In short, facial recognition is not foolproof.

Now, our faces can be used for other purposes as well, including disinformation. We have started seeing videos on social media of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris kissing and partying together. They are public figures, but the same thing could happen to us. We could show up in a photo or video with someone who was never actually with us, doing something we never did.

We have to be careful. Disinformation is a serious problem today, one whose impact we often underestimate. All sorts of foreign actors can put information out there for all to see, thinking that they can convince people. Last week, I believe it was Tuesday, Communications Security Establishment Canada intercepted 6.6 billion attempts at disinformation in Canada. That is just another day at the office for the CSE.

The fact is that all of this information contributes to how we think. It may lead us to do things that we may not have done otherwise. That is a problem. Facial recognition is one many tools of disinformation.

There is another rather remarkable thing that is concerning. When it comes to the environment, we often hear talk of social licence. We need to be careful because social licence is a form of renunciation, for example, we would prefer A to B. Social licence does not necessarily equate to enthusiasm. However, there has never even been a debate about social licence or future social licence for facial recognition. It is assumed that, if we are in a public place, our face is part of the mosaic and that, if we did not want to be there, then we could just do nothing. In my previous career, people often told me that they had not done anything wrong and so it was no big deal if their image was being captured. I often answered those people by saying that, if they knew what could be done with those images, they might be more concerned. There are always malicious actors around, whether local or international.

The topic is not being discussed. We discussed it once with our colleagues on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. We discussed it with my hon. colleague from Barrie—Innisfil. However, these discussions have not necessarily filtered through to society as yet. Some groups have apprehensions, but no discussion is happening. Concerns are being raised, but that is not enough. Ultimately, we concluded that we should probably make a few recommendations. Given the total absence of any regulations, we had to at least come up with a few proposals that would make the use of facial recognition more transparent. I am going to quote a few of the 19 recommendations, including the first and foremost among them, which reads as follows:

That the Government of Canada amend...the Privacy Act to require a government institution to ensure that the practices [when using facial recognition]...are lawful.

We are talking about the Canada Border Services Agency, the passport office, a whole bunch of places like that. We figured that the Privacy Act had not been revised since before the Internet arrived on the scene, and that a little update would be in order. I am throwing this idea out to my colleagues on the other side of the House. All kinds of committee reports have been presented and, in its responses, the government often says that we have some good ideas. However, an intention without action is just an intention. It is worthless, even if it is a good one.

We also thought there should be clear sanctions for privacy violations committed by the police. After all, law enforcement agencies are among the biggest users of facial recognition. I am not blaming them; there are legitimate reasons for using it. However, when they do violate privacy, whether voluntarily or not, there should be clear sanctions. When an action has no consequences, people continue doing it because there is no cost, financial or otherwise. It becomes a habit.

The following is another one of our recommendations:

That the Government of Canada amend the Privacy Act to require that prior to the adoption, creation, or use of facial recognition technology, [the government] seek the advice...of the Privacy Commissioner...

The Privacy Commissioner needs to be consulted before a facial recognition tool is developed. This recommendation was made in 2022. In 2024, while Bill C‑27 is being studied in committee, people are still questioning whether Canadians need to be protected. It is right there, in black and white, in the report. We have to protect citizens because this data is not always used for legitimate reasons, and even if it is used legitimately, it is often used without a warrant. We have to be careful. I think this is a serious warning. To illustrate how important this is, the fact is that two years later, we are still talking about it. There have been no conclusions and, in fact, the situation has sometimes been trivialized.

I want to talk about another interesting recommendation. It is not often discussed. It is the right to be forgotten. Someone might want to be removed from the network. The European Union adopted a similar recommendation. The right to be forgotten is the possibility of contacting an agency that coordinates everything in order to allow an individual to not be automatically identified on social media or to be forgotten if they want to disappear. This may seem odd in a time of influencers who take selfies every four seconds, but a person may not want to be on the web for very legitimate reasons. We want the government to require “service providers, social media platforms and other online entities operating in Canada to delete all users’ personal information after a set period following users’ termination of use”. This could include responses to polls, text messages a person sends, or photos in which they are identified. We would like to make it possible for this to be deleted.

I will not quote the other 16 recommendations. By the very nature of the recommendations that were made following a lengthy consultation with the Privacy Commissioner, provincial commissioners and stakeholders who promote facial recognition, as well as those who criticize its use, there was unanimous agreement that something had to be done. As we know, nature abhors a vacuum, and where there is nothing, the nothing gets filled with something. It is frustrating.

Just before I close, I would like to quote a witness, Carole Piovesan, from INQ Law. She said that we need to be careful, that we need to increase transparency, but that, if we are going to do it, we need to do it “with a scalpel, not an axe”. The idea is to be aware of this relatively new technology, which, after two years, is no longer all that new. We can benefit from it, as I have just outlined, and we can guard against the harms, particularly the ones I mentioned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 138 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

I would like to ask all members and other persons joining us here in Ottawa to consult the guidelines on the use of microphones and earpieces in order to protect the health and safety of everyone, in particular our interpreters. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the interpreters for the work they do.

Colleagues, you have received two requests pertaining to the committee's budget. The first concerns the study of Bill C‑27, for which a supplementary budget of $7,000 is requested, and the second concerns the study that we will undertake today on credit card practices and regulations in Canada, for which the amount of $22,000 is requested.

Is there unanimous consent to approve these budgets?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I didn't expect you to be familiar with the details, but it's something witnesses told the committee, so I know the information must be somewhere. That's why I'm asking.

I would've brought it up during a meeting about Bill C‑27, which we want to examine diligently and intelligently, but we won't get that chance in the next two weeks. That's why I took advantage of your being here today. Runa Angus and other members of your team may have information.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I understand.

I'd like to talk a bit about Bill C‑27. It was put on hold for two weeks so we could have a few meetings and conversations.

I've said many times, both publicly and privately, that the talks have stalled over the new tribunal. I reread the transcripts of the meetings that were held. Department officials came before the committee and said that the new tribunal was needed. One of the reasons they gave was that the Privacy Commissioner lost 70% of the cases that were heard by the Federal Court.

However, we learned things, somewhat informally, about the cases in question. The information the committee heard, which undermined the commissioner's credibility, was based on seven cases. In the four cases that the commissioner lost, the court's decisions had to do with jurisdiction, not merit.

Can you comment on that? Can you give us more information on the assertion that the commissioner isn't very successful in cases that go before the Federal Court, in other words, that the commissioner is not doing a good job?

Can you tell us exactly what calculations the department did to arrive at that assertion?

I'm having trouble understanding how come department officials, and sometimes the minister, indirectly, seem to want to undermine the credibility of an organization seen as important.

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

I introduced Bill C‑27. All you have to do is look at the pace at which things are moving. Sometimes you have to put out a plea and mobilize civil society—

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, you said earlier you didn't regret your comments that the opposition parties were holding up Bill C‑27. You also said that the industry was getting frustrated, that it was even angrier than you are. I take it you care about what the industry and civil society have to say.

When it comes to AI, copyright is another issue, specifically reform of the Copyright Act, which is full of holes. No copyright reforms have been proposed in relation to AI. There are groups of stakeholders who want to sit down with you and have their voices heard on the issue of copyright enforcement for visual productions and the copyright exceptions for universities.

I realize that you don't regret your comments, but it's as though one of your ears is a bit more blocked, depending on who's doing the talking.

When will we see Copyright Act reforms?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for being here, Mr. Minister.

I fortunately have to stay here for the moment. I have a couple of obligations to take care of.

Real quick, on Bill C-27, you were prancing about the Montreal area, blaming the committee for holding the bill up. We've had to issue a letter to you. I hope you've seen the letter with regard to the concerns expressed.

Do you have anything to report back to us with regard to your position on the tribunal?

I thought that we actually worked fairly well together as a committee to come up with a plan to at least see if we can get over the hurdle of the tribunal.

My question, quite frankly, is, do you regret your public relations strategy of, basically, blaming the committee here for the bill and the problem right now?

Second of all, are you still open to splitting the bill, so we can get the issues related to the one section of the bill through? We may not get the second part, on artificial intelligence, through.

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

I'm getting there, Mr. Garon. I can't speak any faster. You asked me not to speak too quickly in order to facilitate the interpreters' work.

In closing, I can tell you that I've been tracking the industry for a long time.

I took the liberty of talking about Bill C‑27, and I will continue to do so. You'll hear me do it again this afternoon. I'm going to talk about the work of the best researchers in the world, like Dr. Yoshua Benjio, because I think it's a cry from the heart. Commissioner Vestager even said that Bill C‑27 was an interesting and necessary framework. Canada is showing leadership at the international level.

I will now answer your specific question about the tribunal, Mr. Garon. I know you're eager to hear my answer.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Minister, I'm going to move on to another topic, with all due respect to the wood pile next door.

These businesses obviously need an assistance program, but, as I understand it, it's not being considered.

I'd like to talk to you about Bill C‑27, Minister. You've spoken publicly on this one, so I think we can broach the topic.

You said that this was an important bill that was being blocked by the opposition parties. The committee reached out to you about this. The bill is very clumsy, but it is still an important bill. It has three parts. It's not an omnibus bill, but it has a lot of components.

Even though the government is a minority one, it would be possible to get the ball rolling again by resolving an issue that is contentious here, namely the creation of a tribunal that three opposition parties do not want. You could split the bill in two and replace the tribunal with another solution.

We hear that work is being done. You have spoken publicly on a proposed solution to replace the tribunal. What leadership are you personally taking on this issue?

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

We indeed have a legislative role here today. What can we do right now, in addition to Bill C‑27, so as to understand and meet these challenges of the future that are rushing towards us?

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

A little earlier, you mentioned Bill C‑27. We're very familiar with this bill.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, what best practices from other countries could be applied here to protect parliamentarians and Canadians?

[Yoshua Bengio, Founder and Scientific Director, Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute]

Thank you.

I am grateful for the opportunity today to share with the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics my thoughts on misinformation and disinformation based on artificial intelligence.

The past few years have seen impressive advances in the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence, starting with the generation of images, speech and video. More recently, these advances have extended to natural language processing, which the public witnessed with the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT model.

Since the end of 2022, nearly two years ago, this last element brought us into an unprecedented technological reality, one in which it is becoming increasingly complex for the average citizen to determine whether they are conversing with a human or a machine when they interact with these models. This state of affairs, by the way, is commonly known in computer science as “passing the Turing test”: We can't distinguish between AI and a machine through a text interaction, and so the boundaries between human and artificial conversations are getting more blurred as these systems become more powerful and advanced after each release.

All of this is controlled by a handful of companies—all foreign—that have the required financial and technical resources. We're talking about over $100 million to train the latest models—and growing—so it's going to be billions pretty soon.

When analyzing the progress and acceleration of AI trends, we see that AI capabilities don't seem to be about to plateau or slow down. Between 2018 and today, every year, on average, “training compute” required to train these systems has quadrupled; the efficiency by which they exploit the data has increased by 30%—in other words, they don't need as much data for achieving the same efficiency of answers; the algorithmic efficiency has tripled—in other words, they are able to do the same computation faster; and the investments in AI have also been rising exponentially, increasing by over 30% per year, and in the last few years were an average of $100 billion, growing quickly towards the trillion.

There was a recent study carried out in Switzerland that I think is very important to the discussion of this committee. It showed that GPT-4, the latest version you can find online, has superior persuasive skills to humans in written form. In other words, they can convince somebody to change their mind better than humans.

What's interesting, and maybe scary as well, is that this advantage of the machine over humans is particularly strong when the AI has access to the user's Facebook page, because that allows the AI to personalize the dialogue. That's just now, so you can expect future generations of models to become even stronger, potentially superhuman in their persuasive abilities, and in ways that can disrupt our democracies. They could be much stronger than what we've seen with deepfakes and static media, because now we're talking about personalized interactive connections between AI and people.

I trust that most large organizations that develop these models make some efforts to ensure that they are not used for malicious purposes, but there are currently no regulations forcing them to do so anywhere in the world—well, I guess China is leading on this—and models, especially when they are open-sourced, such as Meta/Facebook, can easily be modified by malicious individuals or groups to change those models.

For example, they would be stronger at persuasion, helping more to build bombs, perpetrating all kinds of nefarious actions and providing information that can help terrorists or other bad actors. In the absence of a regulatory framework and mitigation measures, the deployment of such malicious capabilities would certainly have many harmful consequences for our democracy.

To minimize these pitfalls, the government needs to do a few urgent things. We need to pass Bill C-27, in particular to label AI-generated content. We need privacy-preserving authentication of social media users so they can be brought to justice if they violate rules. We need to register the generative AI platforms so governments can track what they're doing and enforce labelling and watermarking.

We need to inform and educate Canadians about these dangers to inoculate them with examples of disinformation and deepfakes.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my perspectives. This is an important exercise. Artificial intelligence has the potential to generate considerable social and economic benefits, but only if we govern it wisely rather than endure it and hope for the best. I often ask myself: will we be up to the scale of this challenge?

Thank you.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'll say, briefly, that I've tried to operate in good faith in relation to Bill C-27. We've methodically worked through quite a number of debates, and I think that was productive. I believe the bill has been strengthened through our work together on many components as we moved up to the tribunal.

Certainly, we've reached an impasse. However, by no means would I consider my interactions with officials on this committee, the deep debate, the questions we asked them, the clarification they provided us or the differing perspectives we had on the tribunal.... I take issue with that being called a “filibuster”. It was not a filibuster. It was me, the Conservatives and all the other members of this committee asking the officials for clarity. Yes, we disagreed and had some vigorous debate. However, again, I take issue with that being characterized as a filibuster. I want to put that out there.

The other thing is this: I think the minister is saying publicly that he's advocating for us to continue our work on Bill C-27. We recently said, “Okay, we're at an impasse on the tribunal. Let's take a pause. Let's do another study in the interim and have productive negotiations and conversations behind the scenes to try to work out our differences and find a path forward on Bill C-27.” We all agree that this piece of legislation is paramount to Canada's interests. It's in the public interest for us to have new, reformed legislation on privacy and artificial intelligence.

I don't think this is productive. The committee writing a letter of this kind doesn't seem, to me, to be at all helpful in terms of moving us forward. I'm looking to help us move forward—all parties collaborating to try to work out a path forward on Bill C-27.

That's where I stand. I think this is something we should take up in a future meeting if members choose to do so.

I will move to adjourn debate on this.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank my colleague for moving this motion. We're waiting for it in both official languages so that we can look at it in detail, because it was read quickly.

In Bill C‑27, it's hard to know who's blocking what. It's blocking on all sides for a variety of reasons. I listened to Mr. Perkins read his motion. It must be said that it contains nothing but facts. It's true that this bill was inadequate, that it was the subject of numerous government amendments, and that it complicated matters. It's also true that this bill dates back to 2022, that it's taking a long time to study, and so on.

At the same time, I think we need to work in a spirit of co‑operation. We don't know how much longer Parliament will last, but we do know that, among the elements addressed in Bill C‑27, the first part on personal information is important. I'm still hopeful that we'll find a way forward.

Since we're on CPC‑9, we can speak to it. There was the famous tribunal issue. As we said here in committee—it's no secret—we're more or less in agreement on the creation of the new tribunal, and we were prepared to find alternatives.

For the Conservatives, CPC‑9 is a good amendment. They did what they could. We understand that the Liberals don't want to give the commissioner all the powers, but there is a way forward without the tribunal. However, it seems possible to me that the minister or the department felt a kind of rigidity, which made the parliamentary secretary's task almost impossible. When you ask the parliamentary secretary to create a tribunal on which the three opposition parties in a minority Parliament disagree, you find yourself unable to do so.

I understand that there are filibusters on both sides. By the way, Mr. Chair, even though the topic at hand was electric vehicles, what we faced today is in many ways a filibuster against Bill C‑27. We still sent the witnesses home.

It's important to tell the truth. If CBC is reporting hockey scores, are we going to do a study on those scores? We've arrived at this type of argument to postpone the study, and the Conservatives seem to agree. I just want to confirm that I'm not moving a motion.

Obviously, there are facts. I think that the minister needs to keep a certain reserve, and he knows that when it comes to the first part and the way forward, everyone is talking to each other, everyone is being constructive. This is true in the case of my colleague Mr. Perkins and his cronies. It's also true in the case of the parliamentary secretary and Mr. Masse.

I also think that, if the minister wants to make things easier for us, he needs to keep a certain reserve in public. We no longer know where the blockage is coming from. It's everybody's fault and nobody's fault at the same time.

We'll look at the text of the motion to see if we adopt it. If the minister is listening, I ask him to appeal for calm, to trust the committee, his parliamentary secretary and the discussions that will lead us to find this path forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Has the motion been sent to all committee members?

I'm not sure if it has been sent to members, and no notice was given, but technically we are on Bill C-27 in this meeting, so I will allow it.

Next up will be Mr. Garon and Mr. Masse.

Mr. Garon, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I know there are people watching right now and probably tuning in to see what's going on with Bill C-27 as we're talking about this. There has been a bit of what I'll perhaps say is a confused characterization of the status of Bill C-27 by Minister Champagne, with comments in Montreal yesterday where he said the three opposition parties were filibustering Bill C-27. Somebody, perhaps MP Turnbull, should update the minister on the status of this bill.

We've had 10 meetings so far for clause-by-clause, and in the last five meetings, the Liberals have filibustered one amendment. If the minister wants to get up to speed about the status of his bill, he waited a year between introduction and second reading before we even got to second reading in the House, so he delayed it a year, or at least his House leader did.

The Liberals have been filibustering in the last five meetings. It was actually the Liberals who agreed and suggested we delay Bill C-27 and proceed with the credit card study while they sort out their problems with their broken bill and the bad elements of it, particularly the creation of a new Liberal bureaucracy with the tribunal.

In regard to that, the committee needs to send a message directly to the minister that we appreciate neither his lack of knowledge of what's going on at this meeting nor the misrepresentation he is making in the media about our work on Bill C-27.

With that, I will move the following motion:

That, with regard to the committee's ongoing study of Bill C-27, and given that Minister Champagne has accused opposition parties of slowing down consideration of the bill, but given that:

(i) the minister delayed consideration of the bill for a year by leaving it on the Order Paper, preventing its consideration in second reading; and

(ii) Liberal members of the industry committee have continually filibustered consideration of the bill for five out of the 10 meetings held on clause-by-clause, to prevent the passage of amendments recommended by the Privacy Commissioner;

the committee therefore express its disagreement with Minister Champagne's comments in Montreal yesterday and order the clerk of the committee to draft a letter to the minister requesting that his members stop their filibuster of Bill C-27.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Excuse me. It's one hour.

You'll have your time with the minister to ask those questions. I think we brought that into the scope of the motion to ensure those questions are.... It's anything to do with his priorities and mandate. That was how we left it. I think that's good news.

I say we dispense with this motion by voting on it, and then we can revisit this later on down the road when we've finished Bill C-27. We can say, “What does this committee have as priorities?” We can all put our thoughts into what our next priorities are and have a mutually beneficial discussion on reaching some consensus around what else we would like to study. The EV industry is something I'm interested in. I would love to think about how we might do something later on down the road on that, but I don't think, again, that now is the time.

It's the framing of this particular motion that I take issue with. I've heard very clearly from colleagues that they see it in a somewhat similar light. Actually, they made better arguments than I did, quite frankly.

Thank you.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Based on the conversation that we've had on this particular motion, I don't have a lot of hope for the Conservatives salvaging this right now. That's the feeling that I'm getting from the other colleagues around the table. I think we've all spoken passionately to where we stand on this. It’s clear that the framing of this is the problem. I think there are some underlying assumptions in the whole frame of the motion, which, fundamentally, I disagree with.

Therefore, Ms. Rempel Garner's changing the slight timeline, to me, doesn't fix the motion. I just think that it would be easier for us to revisit this when we finish Bill C-27. I think that if you and the Conservatives have questions for the minister on the changes to some of these, you're going to have him for two hours sometime in the next two weeks, which we've committed to.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I want to make a few points on the record about this. Hopefully, we can deal with this fairly quickly. There are many things to say about this, but there are some factual inaccuracies in the actual motion that concern me. Mr. Arya made some really good comments about this.

The green industrial revolution is not stopping because the Conservatives deny that climate change is a reality or deny that there's any need for that industrial transition. It's kind of shocking to see how they can't see the global trends that are going on around the world and that Canada is actually doing really well in terms of building out and attracting investment.

Canada is competing in the North American market for the EV battery supply chain. The fact is that we're number one in the world when it comes to.... BloombergNEF rates Canada as number one for the EV supply chain, which is fantastic. We've seen billions of dollars of investment that would not have come into our market.

We also see this as a really large transition that's global. Companies are going to have some challenges along the way. They're going to adjust their schedules. Some of that is to be expected.

The one factual inaccuracy that really strikes me here is that this motion.... I'm not sure who wrote it. I know Mr. Perkins moved it, but I don't know who wrote it. Maybe he didn't have a chance to read up on this.

The new numbers on ZEV sales in Canada show that there's a 30% increase, quarter over quarter, as of the last quarter. There were 65,733 new EVs registered in Canada in quarter two of 2024. Sales saw a rise and jump to 12.9% of market share, with Manitoba and Quebec actually leading the way. There was a 30% increase, quarter over quarter. That's significant. We want that to continue to rise. I think Canadians, rightfully, are showing interest in wanting to drive more EVs.

Globally, there are other trends that we could cite. There's an acknowledgement that this movement to electric vehicles is happening, whether the Conservatives like it or not. It's going to happen.

The question is, will Canada be competitive in that space? Will Canada actually be able to leverage all of its strengths and natural resources to truly be a global player and to be a player in the North American market, in the integrated supply chains that we have?

Obviously, we know that the United States and its Inflation Reduction Act changed the conditions in terms of Canada's being competitive. The things that the Canadian government has done have made us competitive and have drawn in investment.

The other factual inaccuracy is very small, but “Unicore's” is not “Unicore's”, it's “Umicore's”.

The other thing that we've heard, very quickly, is that Northvolt has said publicly that its Sweden restructuring doesn't impact the work here in Canada. Its production schedule and construction schedule haven't been impacted. We also know that no federal funding—the minister has been clear about this—has actually gone to Northvolt yet.

The structure of these deals is done in such a way that a lot of the subsidy portions are related to production. It's related to the sales of EVs. If these companies don't follow through and don't sell EVs, they don't get the subsidies that were promised. If the Inflation Reduction Act doesn't continue or somehow is repealed in the United States, those production subsidies are no longer in place. This makes Canada competitive with the United States. It makes Canada competitive globally. It really is the reason we've seen this amount of massive investment come in.

All of that is to say that the motion is flawed in multiple ways. In terms of what our committee has said, we all agreed on a schedule, which includes hearing from the minister, having four meetings on the credit card study, which Mr. Masse put forward and we all agreed to, and then getting back to Bill C-27.

If we have other considerations for studies, they should be after Bill C-27. This is just not the right time for this particular study.

I also worry about putting the industry on trial here. It needs flexibility in order to manage its operations and make these very large investments. If it needs to slightly reschedule things, I think that's perfectly reasonable.

I don't agree with this motion. I think it's deeply flawed in terms of how it's been written.

I think there's a great story to tell about the auto industry in Canada and the supply chains that we're building here. The frame of this motion is not one I can support. I think we should move past this and get on with our committee work.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I'll give it a few more minutes to see how this motion goes, because I got scared by Mr. Perkins with the intermission on Bill C-27. We'll see how it goes, but we'll liberate the witnesses earlier if need be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

You have moved your motion. Thank you, too, for the short intermission on Bill C-27. You broke the ice this session, so it's appreciated.

There's a motion on the table.

I have MP Arya, Brian Masse and Ryan Turnbull.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Are there any other comments on the motion as amended?

Seeing none, I would ask the clerk to put it to a vote.

(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 6; nays 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Thank you, colleagues.

This would bring us back to Bill C-27.

(On clause 2)

We were at CPC-9.

We had left it at a subamendment by Mr. Perkins on CPC-9, so I'm looking at Mr. Perkins.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon, everyone.

It is now 8:18 a.m., and I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 136 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Before we begin, I would ask you to consult the cards on the table for guidelines on the use of microphones and earpieces. These guidelines were put in place to ensure the health and safety of interpreters.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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'd like to welcome the witnesses who are here again. They haven't been asked a lot at the last few meetings, and I have little hope that they will be asked anything during today's meeting. Having said that, I'd still like to thank them for being here.

From the Department of Industry, we have Samir Chhabra, director general, marketplace framework policy branch, and Runa Angus, senior director, strategy and innovation policy sector.

As I mentioned, we are continuing our study of Bill C‑27.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

Opposition Motion—Confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, to the first hon. member who mentioned me, first of all, I am glad he listened so intently, but he missed the intentional indication that I made at the outset of my speech that I will not be supporting the opposition day motion. I believe we are talking about confidence in this government, and I would say that I have enormous confidence in our government. I am giving the member examples of why I have so much confidence in it and am talking about our AI strategy. I see all of this as very relevant and I am going to continue.

In 2018, the government launched the global innovation cluster program. This program is an ambitious coinvestment with industry that will create collaborations across the country to promote intellectual property creation and commercialization and to ensure that we have a very strong AI business ecosystem that will remain the most vibrant in the world. I believe we have a lot of work to do to create a culture of IP here in Canada, and we need to continue to invest very strongly in IP education and make sure we are patenting and trademarking the unbelievable ideas created here in Canada.

Going back to Canada's AI, to date, Scale AI has announced 151 projects representing a total coinvestment of $610 million. These projects have helped Canadian start-ups launch new products, find partners and grow. Scale AI has supported many Canadian AI successes, such as Routific in B.C. and AlayaCare in Montreal. With many more projects under way, Scale AI will continue to deliver on the promise of advancing AI innovation and driving economic growth across Canada.

As our domestic AI capacity has grown, Canada has leveraged this to shape global norms on AI. With France, we developed and launched the Global AI Partnership on AI in 2020, which is now the premier forum where countries can collaborate and advance the development of AI for good and for all. With allies in the Council of Europe, we developed the first binding treaty to ensure the respect of human rights, the rule of law and democracy in the use of AI. With G7 allies, Canada has developed cutting-edge principles and best practices for responsible AI.

This experience allowed Canada to be an early mover in developing clearer rules for developing and operating AI systems. In 2022, our Minister of Innovation tabled Bill C-27, which included a component entitled the artificial intelligence and data act. If passed, it will make a new law aimed at ensuring proper risk management and transparency for AI systems in order to promote trust. This act would ensure that firms developing or deploying AI systems play critical roles in the lives of Canadians, such as those determining access to credit or employment, and that they meet the minimum standards for transparency, assessment and mitigation of risk. This will ensure that Canadians can trust these systems to operate safely and fairly. The act would also create a new regulator, the artificial intelligence and data commissioner, to oversee compliance, with strong penalties for non-compliance. Canada was one of the first countries in the world to introduce comprehensive AI legislation, and many other countries are now going down the same path and following our leadership.

With the advances of generative AI that took place in 2022 and 2023, our federal government took action to ensure that businesses have the tools they need to adopt advanced AI in a trustworthy and responsible manner. Our government introduced a voluntary code of conduct on advanced generative AI. This code is voluntary, and those who sign on to it commit to set in place concrete measures, which include expectations for AI transparency, safety, accountability and testing. To date, 30 organizations have signed on to the code, and we expect more signatories in the future.

Most recently, our government continued its leadership in this space through budget 2024, which announced an ambitious package of measures totalling $2.4 billion over five years, starting in 2024-25, to secure Canada's AI advantage. This includes $2 billion in funding for a new AI compute access fund and an AI sovereign compute strategy, $200 million to support the adoption of AI across Canada's economy and $100 million to support small and medium-sized enterprises that are seeking to develop and scale their AI product offerings.

I want to finish off by saying that we have laid a strong foundation for future successes to come with the strategy and investment we have made in AI, and with the support we are putting into place for our world-class researchers. What we are doing now is doubling down on investments in compute and adoption and upscaling to make sure Canada remains at the forefront of the AI revolution. We are proud of the work we have done to support Canada's AI ecosystem and proud of the work we are doing to protect Canadians as we enter into the digital and AI-enabled age.

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to this important motion today on behalf of the residents of my riding of Davenport.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I feel that we're spinning our wheels here. We had the officials here today. We could have been productive on Bill C-27. It's unfortunate that they're no longer here.

I understand that Mr. Perkins has more motions that he wants to pass. I honestly don't see the need for document production going back to 2018, which is the amendment Mr. Généreux introduced. It's counter to the whole argument the Conservatives were making in the first place.

What is this really about? It just doesn't seem like it's consistent with the arguments that were made at the outset, so it's making me question the motives behind this motion.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I thought the argument the Conservatives were making for why this is necessary was to move forward and ensure that the organization was accountable and abiding by certain guidance, etc., from the Auditor General's findings. However, Mr. Généreux is now requesting documents going back to 2018. We also have another committee that's looking into this. I don't understand why we would need to do this in this committee.

We just agreed as a committee, and we all came together in consensus, on a motion about what we were going to study. Remember, we did this earlier. We allotted time for the request the Conservatives made in the last meeting, which was to have the minister for two hours. We said, “Let's make that a priority. Let's get the minister here.” Okay.

They want to hear from the minister. In the last meeting, we had a debate. The minister is likely going to need to appear numerous other times, but no, they wanted the minister on his mandate for two hours, so we made that happen. Then we had Mr. Masse bring forward a good-faith motion to study a topic we all said was important. We said, “Let's pause Bill C-27. Let's do some of these other things.” Now, today, right after we finished that, we have another motion to go back to studying SDTC again.

Just a few months ago, the Conservatives called a Standing Order 106(4) meeting in the middle of the summer. Do you remember that? I don't know if you remember that day, but we all came together to have a meeting. It wasn't all that productive, I would say. We still scheduled the first meeting when we came back to have two hours with Annette Verschuren and an hour with the Ethics Commissioner. Again, we showed and signalled we were willing to get to the bottom of this and willing to work together as a committee

Where do we draw the line? We just keep going down this path of more and more. This issue has been studied. There's another committee looking into it. Why do we need to do this here? If public accounts is already doing this work, I don't see why we need to duplicate its efforts—

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

With that in mind, I move the following motion:

That, in relation to the committee's ongoing study of conflict of interest breaches at Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), and given that

(i) Minister François-Philippe Champagne has issued a press release stating that “effective immediately, SDTC will also resume funding, under a reinforced contribution agreement with ISED, for eligible projects”; and given that

(ii) the SDTC whistle-blower has told the public accounts committee that “new project approvals have now started” under these agreements;

the committee therefore orders SDTC and ISED to produce copies of each reinforced contribution agreement signed since June 4, 2024, without redactions, in both official languages, within 14 days following the adoption of this motion, in order to monitor the department's compliance with the Auditor General's recommendations.

The reason is that earlier last week, the whistle-blower gave information about the old secretive contribution agreements, which have not been released publicly yet, or ever. They're not available anywhere. Those are the agreements between the industry department and the green slush fund as to what they can and cannot spend money on. Part of the Auditor General's report dealt with the fact that $58 million was spent outside of those contribution agreements. I believe we need access to more than those contribution agreements.

The whistle-blower testified not only that the new, interim, part-time, temporary board overseeing the fund had started to issue money again to companies; he also said the contribution agreements have been amended retroactively to include within the contribution agreement all of the projects that were previously illegal and outside of the contribution agreement. It's taking an eraser and trying to get rid of the old contracts that SDTC and ISED had agreed to and are refusing to release publicly, and we need to see this as soon as possible.

With regard to these agreements and having them out within 14 days, one presumes they're already written, since they've been done. The minister said that funding would start immediately. We need to make sure, since there has been a lot of discussion about repayment and payment of the money. The now-retired deputy minister—there are a lot of people retiring around SDTC—said that some of this money should be repaid, as have other parties at the committee. This morning the NDP were questioning and asking in the public accounts committee discussions why the money wasn't being repaid.

I would say that in order to ensure these companies.... We know that 82% of the board members who received this money were conflicted and that another $58 million was illegally spent outside the contribution agreements. This committee needs to know, and Parliament needs to know, which companies that received that money are getting money once again. In other words, nothing has changed.

We don't know that—it may have changed—but we got rid of the old SDTC process. Apparently, the new SDTC process is not really that much different from the old SDTC process, except for one thing. If you go to the SDTC website, which I did a year and a half ago—which started this whole thing off—the old SDTC was very transparent. Every quarter, they updated an Excel spreadsheet there of every grant that SDTC had given out, with a great deal of detail about when and how and the industry the company was in. Since its founding in 2001, every single transaction was available.

In this open and transparent process we have now under the minister, there's actually no public list available anymore about what SDTC is doing in giving out money. In fact, we've had testimony from the president of the National Research Council, where SDTC eventually will be housed before it gets again punted to another organization after the National Research Council has it. At the National Research Council, they don't actually publish absolutely any of their grants.

They put out a quarterly report that says that they spent so much on this program and so much on that program, but they do not put out a list of where that money goes. The organization was actually disclosing what they were spending the billion-dollar Liberal green slush fund on, so you could do the work and find out which directors were feathering their own beds, as it were, to the tune of $390 million, according to the Auditor General. Now, with the minister's open and transparent process, you can't even do that. You can't even see that on SDTC's website, on the NRC website, on anybody's website. It's a super-secret society. It looks to me like they're just trying to cover up everything that they're doing now.

We're asking for the basics here, which are the contribution agreements that have been altered in order to make bad wrongdoings positive, and also to understand what the new temporary interim board—before they punt it over to NRC—is actually spending money on now. That's the purpose of this motion. We need to continue to get to the bottom. It is one of the reasons I'm concerned about the previous motion we passed, and thank you for allowing the statement of the obvious to be put in, which is that the committee can interrupt deliberations on Bill C-27 if it deems it necessary, because we have to get to the bottom of this billion-dollar scandal.

I know that the government doesn't want us to do that, and I can understand that, since their appointees were found to be in conflict of interest. The chair was found.... I know it said two times in the Ethics Commissioner's report, but they also admitted in committee that the two were rolled up. It was 24 times that the chair hand-picked by the Prime Minister, Annette Verschuren, who—and I will introduce the subject so that MP Turnbull can introduce the letter—three times in committee when I asked her, said that she did not apply. I made it very clear and very simple. I asked, “Who contacted you?”

She said that Minister Bains had contacted her twice.

I asked, “Did you apply?”

She said no.

I asked if she was sure, because both the PCO and Minister Bains said that they only operate from lists of people who had applied.

She said that no, she had not applied. In fact, in the ultimate arrogance we often see from her, she said that she had never applied for anything in her life. It all lands in her lap.

Miraculously, a week after PMO had a chance to talk to their hand-picked appointee, her lawyer—not her—sent a letter saying something like, “Oh, I guess I was wrong when I said three times that I've never applied for anything in my life, including this job,” which she now remembers. She had her lawyer—not her—write a letter to the committee saying something to the effect of, “Oops, I said three times that I didn't apply, that I'm too important in Canada to apply for anything. Everybody comes to me and asks me to do things, including the Liberal government.”

I actually believe her original testimony, because it's consistent with what the former president, Leah Lawrence, said when she was before the hearings in committee on this. She said that the minister's office had directed specifically that Annette Verschuren be appointed over the objections of management of SDTC, who said that we cannot appoint somebody for the first time in our history who is conflicted. The Prime Minister's Office, through the Privy Council Office and Minister Bains, proceeded anyway, and Annette Verschuren admitted that they had hand-picked her. They moved outside the normal process. That is all—

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We're on Bill C-27, technically, but....

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We're on Bill C-27. I don't think, given that the communication's been sent to all committee members, that it's necessarily—

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Very quickly, I want to say I intend to vote in favour of Mr. Perkins’s motion. I think it’s pragmatic.

I think what we experienced at committee shows that certain elements, such as amendment CPC‑9 and the tribunal, are problematic. We therefore need time to think about it if we all want to attain the same objective, especially regarding the first part of Bill C‑27, which protects personal data. We may have some differences of opinion when it comes to the ways of attaining this objective, but I think we can do it.

I want to thank the parliamentary secretary, Mr. Turnbull.

I think it’s a great sign of openness, especially since we will be able to use our time intelligently for a study that, in my opinion, is nonpartisan and consensus-based. So, that’s already a very good thing.

I hope this spirit of openness on everyone’s part will remain active so that we can find a way forward. We are all thinking about it. I still think we can do it.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, MP Turnbull.

From our perspective, obviously, we always say that the committee is master of its own domain. It can always change this if it wants to, and I'm okay with the first three items.

I believe we need to find time in the schedule to do two things on MP Masse's credit card study. One would be to have the time to determine whether or not we need more than four meetings, because we did say—and the motion for the credit card study says this—at least four meetings. I think we have the flexibility in this committee to say, “Okay, we have more witnesses and more testimony we want to hear.” Plus, obviously, there is the planning of the report; the development of that study needs to be built in as well.

On the fourth item, I would be more comfortable if, after the part of the sentence that says “uninterrupted by any other study”, I could propose an amendment that says, “unless otherwise determined by the committee” so that it's clear the committee has options and that we've not agreed to just block ourselves out ad infinitum on Bill C-27 when we have other items that come up on the credit card study or may come up in the future.

Mr. Chair, I would propose that amendment to this motion, just off the top of my head. I don't know if we have anything that we can send to the clerk so that it's in both languages.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to support the motion.

We had some informal discussions, and I know there's a concern about the last part and making sure we focus on that, but it won't stop us if there is an emergency or if something else comes up. I appreciate the parliamentary secretary bringing this forward, given that we could go around in circles on some of this material, and we'll be stopped from doing that.

Also, obviously, I'm very interested in the credit card study. It's something I've been after for a while in terms of having more accountability, and I appreciate the time that we'll put into that.

I also try to appreciate that we've worked a lot on Bill C-27. I think that all parties here have been trying to find their way through this. It's historic, especially the issue of artificial intelligence. That aside, we've done a lot of stuff on the privacy aspect and we seem to be stuck at one particular point on the tribunal. If there's time to fix that in a way that's comfortable, I think that is better than trying to work through it with the officials here in real time, as opposed to a proper plan coming back.

For those reasons, I'll support the motion. I appreciate the nature and tone of this discussion, because this committee has historically worked really well together. We've had some moments recently on a few things, but at the same time, I'd like to spend my time here wisely, and I think this is a good program for going forward, so I'll be supporting the motion. If we do have an emergency or something else pops up in the interim, this doesn't stop a member from raising that issue.

I get the intent and why it's in there, and we'll deal with it as we go forward.

With that, I say thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

In an effort to hopefully work very productively today and on other days, and in consideration of some of the other motions that have been put forward, in particular the one from Mr. Masse, which I think we all supported last time, I would like to move the following motion, which is to suggest a program or schedule for some of our time over the coming weeks.

I'll read it into the record, and then we will send it to the clerk. We will also send this all by email shortly after that, with translation in both official languages.

I move:

As relates to the committee's future business, it be agreed that:

i. The committee dedicate its regular meetings on September 23 and 26, 2024, to consideration of Bill C-27;

ii. The Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and officials, appear at committee no later than Thursday, October 10, 2024, for two hours, on the subject of the minister's mandate;

iii. Notwithstanding the minister's appearance, that the committee dedicate its regular meetings during the weeks of September 30 and October 7, 2024, to the study proposed by MP Masse, on the issue of credit card practices and regulations; and that witness lists be submitted by each party by Friday, September 27, 2024, by 4 p.m. EST; and,

iv. That the committee resume consideration of Bill C-27 as of Monday, October 21, 2024, and that consideration of the bill be uninterrupted by any other study until the completion of clause-by-clause by the committee.

That's what I would like to propose. I think it accommodates two of the requests that were made by other committee members, which I thought were quite reasonable and around which I think we, as a committee, achieved a relative degree of consensus. One was the appearance of the minister for two hours, which, committee members will be happy to hear, we've identified we would be able to do before October 10. The other is to have no less than, I think, four meetings on Mr. Masse's motion on credit card practices and regulations, which we also agreed with and thought would be good, but we don't want it to take away from moving forward on Bill C-27, given that we've been at a bit of an impasse.

We are working and looking to hopefully use the time away from Bill C-27 for a couple of weeks to work with other parties constructively and negotiate a path forward on Bill C-27. All of us, over many months, have remarked how important that bill is, so we are looking to use that time constructively and, in the interim, to have the minister appear and also prioritize Mr. Masse's suggested study.

That's the effort here: to work constructively with all of our colleagues and account for some of the other priorities that were brought up in the last meeting. I hope the motion will be well received by the committee. We'll send it around by email.

Originally, we had in the motion that we would, hopefully, move past amendment CPC-9 temporarily, but given the way we worded it in our draft, we realized that wasn't going to be consistent with procedural practice because we would have to move past the whole clause, which we didn't feel was important. I have made the deletion myself. We'll send around the final wording to you in a few moments.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Very well.

As I was saying, we are now continuing our review of Bill C‑27 where we left off. As you know, we were on amendment CPC-9.

Mr. Turnbull has the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon and happy Monday, everyone.

I now call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 135 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Before we begin, I kindly ask all the participants here in Ottawa to read the guidelines on the use of microphones and earpieces. This is for everyone’s health and safety, especially our interpreters, to whom I extend my thanks, by the way.

I wish to remind you that, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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 back today Samir Chhabra, director general, Privacy and Data Protection Branch, who is—

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

It's quite remarkable when you look at timelines. We look at the more recent scandals that have come through the SDTC in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

You go back to this one here, and the criminal conduct that we're looking at was between 2016 and 2018. This was obviously in the earlier days of the current government's administration. Just look at the way things have progressed.

This was a source of contracts of about $230,000, something like that. To me, that's a lot of money. To the taxpayers that's a lot of money. Then you look at how grand the scandals and the grifting have become when you start looking at the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being misappropriated through SDTC. It's absolutely remarkable just how brazen the insiders and folks well-connected to the Liberal government have become.

I think studying this one would be very important because I think it will give us a good snapshot of just how this has all gotten out of hand so quickly, because this was early in this government's administration. I think it's going to show us just exactly the way the snowball has really gained momentum, has gained size. When you look at just how many different ways the taxpayer is being fleeced these days, I think this is a good way to show how that started and how that began and how that overall sense of entitlement, I would say, seems to have permeated throughout the public service with Liberal insiders.

This is another urgent matter. We heard today that there are all sorts of urgent matters because there is no end to it with this government. I would implore colleagues to take serious consideration of this one. I think we should get on to this one as quickly as we can because, as we've heard, we're at a bit of an impasse here now with BillC-27, with the Liberals filibustering for several meetings on the current provision that we are at on the meeting.

It's helpful that for once somebody has been criminally charged. He actually pleaded guilty, which is good, but I think we still need to figure out how this happened, why there was not accountability within the ministry. There are a lot of angles we can take on this to try to figure out how this is happening and being allowed to happen. It continues to happen in greater amounts to this day.

I look forward to us hopefully getting onto this study and making sure that taxpayers know that we take seriously the stewardship of the money the government takes from them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We're still debating the motion. The amendment is still on the floor and is removing “within 14 days”.

I have no more speakers, so I will put the amendment to a vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

Okay. We're back to the motion as originally proposed by Mr. Perkins.

I have no more speakers, but I understand from the debate we've had that there is general consent, unanimous consent, on this motion. I see heads nodding.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Now we should be back to Bill C-27, but I see Mr. Perkins and Mr. Turnbull.

I saw Mr. Perkins first.

Mr. Perkins, the floor is yours.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Indeed, as my colleague Mr. Généreux said, I think the minister probably needs to recharge his batteries. I think an appearance before the committee might be a good opportunity for him to do so.

There are also a number of issues we want to discuss with him, such as Bill C‑27. In this regard, the minister has a parliamentary secretary who is doing an excellent job, but at this point, given the significant blockages we're experiencing, it might be appropriate to discuss this with the minister as well.

As a result, I'm going to vote in favour of this motion.

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

Mr. Chair, I too would like to move a motion, notice of which was provided by Mr. Perkins on September 13:

That the committee invite the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry to appear before the committee for no less than two hours, within 14 days of the adoption of this motion, in relation to his priorities for the return of Parliament and his mandate.

We know that the minister hasn't come to see us for some time. In addition, all kinds of things happened during the summer. We need only think of all the investments the government has made in the battery industry, Northvolt being a significant part of that. In light of the current difficulties, it might be interesting to have an update from the minister on his overall mandate, as well as on his expectations regarding Bill C‑27.

Earlier, Mr. Masse said that one option to consider might be to split up Bill C‑27 and send part of it to the Senate for consideration as quickly as possible, to move things forward. Everyone agrees that it's important a bill gets passed on both privacy and artificial intelligence. So we'd like to know how the minister can help us move this very important bill forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Before I turn it over to MP Perkins, even though my opinion is of no importance because I just channel the will of the committee, whatever happens with the amendment, Mr. Masse, I'm very sympathetic to this motion. I think Mr. Garon's suggestion to use that study occasionally to fill in the gaps when we are at a dead end on Bill C-27 is useful. Whatever happens, I think we'll get it going sooner rather than later.

Mr. Perkins, go ahead.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate those sentiments, but I'm going to support the amendment because I want to get something going. I am listening to both my colleagues. I believe they both want to get this work done. I think the motion leaves the chair with discretion about the amount of time, how we will coordinate Bill C-27 and what happens next. I have total confidence in the chair's ability to judge that. I support the motion because it doesn't tell the chair specifically how many meetings, how much time and so forth, but basically he's going to get the airplane off the runway. That's the way I view it.

I really do respect what we've heard from my two previous colleagues about this. Sending it to committee is not to defer it. It is the usual practice for this. I would just rather deal with this right now than schedule another meeting with interpreters and all the different stuff that goes on, and then leave it in the chair's hands in terms of getting something going within the next couple of weeks.

You won't hear me complaining. I'm not expecting that meeting to circumvent everything else that's taking place here when we do get to Bill C-27 and try to deal with the tribunal issue, which I think is really important. If we can resolve that somehow at this table, then I think, quite frankly, we should split Bill C-27 and send the privacy component off to the Senate, and then decide on the other AI stuff as we go forward, so that we can get them working on this bill. That's just my personal preference right now.

I'm going to support the amendment, but it's because I think the amendment is crafted in a way that gives the chair the ability to do the necessary scheduling. That way, we won't deviate entirely from our duty here, and then at the same time we will at least show Canadians.... It will be interesting to see the reaction from the credit card industry once they know we're zeroing in on this issue. I'm sure there's going to be some activity right away. Ironically, I have a meeting coming up after this with the bankers. I see some nods here. They're lobbying on the Hill.

At any rate, I think that in itself is really important: that they know the Bloc Québécois, the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP are serious about consumer debt and what's taking place.

For those reasons, I'll support the amendment and leave it in your capable hands to determine how we proceed with the business at this table.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I completely agree with the wording of the motion. The proposed topic of study is something Quebeckers care about. In fact, the Office de la protection du consommateur du Québec is responsible for some of the regulations. The Government of Quebec has already looked into the matter. I do think it's time for us to take on an initiative of this kind, so I commend my colleague Mr. Masse's initiative. It's very important.

However, I'm inclined to vote against the proposed amendment, for the following reason. As we've said before, time is getting tight. We may have to change our schedule if we want to do things properly. I'm wondering how we should do it. I'm not convinced that it's the right way to go introducing motions with a few days' notice, providing dates and saying that we must devote two meetings to it this week, next week or in two weeks. If we start operating this way, the deadlines will eventually pile up and it will be hard to control.

I'm opposed to the amendment for the following reason. I think that we will ultimately have to hold a subcommittee meeting to discuss the schedule, be honest with each other and agree on rules for carrying out our work. I'm open to that. I even think it's possible, depending on how our discussions go on Bill C‑27, that we will need a break to find solutions to certain issues. If so, this study could very well slip in as a solution, and even help us manage our time properly if we need to discuss Bill C‑27.

I really think we should have a subcommittee meeting in the near future to discuss the schedule. I don't want my colleague to think that I'm in no hurry to do the study he proposes in his motion. This is an important issue, but it's not appropriate to do it this way, squeeze it in on very short notice.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My concern with that 14 days is this. In case the current issue we are supposed to discuss today, Bill C-27, doesn't get done within 14 days, it will get further postponed.

Is there any way we can say this can be taken up 14 days after the conclusion of the current things the committee is dealing with?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I have to say that I agree with my colleague, Mr. Arya, that this would probably not be the most productive use of the committee's time, given the fact that.... I know that the Conservatives have touted Futurpreneur. I have a long list of quotes that I've dug up very quickly. Many of the current sitting members on the Conservative benches have claimed and have given accolades to Futurpreneur for many years. I could read those into the record.

We've seen what the Conservative Party does on these fishing expeditions. I understand that sometimes they may be merited, and in those cases, I think you've often experienced that our party is willing to work with you and to undertake those studies. In this particular case, I don't think this is a good use of the committee's time, so we won't be supporting this.

I agree with my colleague, Mr. Garon, that really the committee is here today with our wonderful officials to work through Bill C-27, which we've all agreed, for quite some time, is a real priority for this committee. Obviously, government legislation generally takes priority. We know that committees are the masters of their own domains. We often say that, but we also all recognize that, as Ms. Rempel Garner said at the beginning of the meeting, it would be great to eventually study the AI portion of the bill. We have to get through a considerable number of amendments to get to that point, but I look forward to productively working through that process together.

I know we've reached a bit of an impasse on a key amendment, CPC-9, which I'm hoping to get back to today. I hope maybe we can get to a vote and move back to discussing Bill C-27.

Thank you.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The motion contains a number of things and, let's be honest right out of the gate, it seems to have, if not an objective, certainly the consequence of completely clogging up the committee's agenda for the next few weeks, and more particularly of preventing us from doing legislative work, which should be our priority now, based on my perception of what we need to do at committee, although we are sovereign.

Obviously, this program model to help and finance start-ups may be altogether acceptable. However, with this kind of model, public funds flow into organizations whose leaders are not necessarily subject to the Conflict of Interest Act. As a result, control over the use of public funds is lost or issues may become apparent once the money has disappeared or, at the very least, been misspent. This model has been criticized. That was the case at SDTC, Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Here we have another one. We should certainly reflect more deeply and completely on this long-standing practice by the federal government, on all sides of the House.

Despite all that, I get the impression that the purpose of the motion is to delay our work. I certainly don't want to judge the intent, but we will recall very recent cases where Conservative motions have resulted in witnesses appearing. Meetings were called in the middle of the summer under Standing Order 106(4). I know that made you very happy, Mr. Chair. We know you to be a patient man.

We propose studies of this kind and, in the end, we put anything and everything on trial rather than working on the purpose proposed in these motions, essentially because the political agenda is broader. I have a feeling that might be the intent of this motion. That's my impression, for what it's worth.

We see the Conservative strategy. For example, SDTC was raised again before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. It may be relevant. However, we're seeing the same thing every time we talk about a program that funds small start-ups, particularly when it comes to businesses that could become green transition and environmental technology leaders. By putting the funding model on trial, even though the case may be legitimate, we're also putting these businesses on trial. In doing so, we're harming their reputation, freezing funding, and hindering the green transition, which the Conservatives are obviously not very fond of. That's what's in their platform, if they have one. That's theirs, and that's fine. At the end of the day, we're realizing that we end up putting these businesses on trial.

In Quebec, we have a bunch of businesses like this. We like to innovate. Long before the current government came to power, Quebec introduced an emissions trading system that makes the emergence of these types of technologies cost-effective.

Given the legislative agenda before us and the time available to us, I'm not sure this is the right time to hold this trial. We don't know how much time we have left to do our work.

I will now turn to Bill C‑27, and this is directly related to the motion before the committee. I will then speak to Mr. Masse's motion. The Conservative motion was clearly drafted in such a way that my NDP colleague would feel guilty voting against it. I'm glad he saw through that. We can consider his motion, which has merit.

Having said that, we've all had conversations about Bill C‑27. We don't all agree on the terms, the amendments and the details, but we do agree that parts of this bill are important. Quebec has passed Bill 25 and there may currently be inconsistencies between it and the federal bill. Some provinces are waiting to amend their personal data laws. I'm referring here to the first part of the bill. We've always said that we feel the bill should be split up so that we can pass it in chunks and ensure that we're acting in the public interest. I believe we need to continue to work out our differences and move this bill forward. I'm not saying it will be easy. However, if we start making a circus of motions and undertaking studies of all kinds for which the committee sets aside a Monday here and a Thursday there, a few months will certainly have passed without us being able to work on Bill C‑27. Since time is a very scarce resource here, I don't think this way of doing things would allow us to work in the public interest.

Given the content of this motion and the merits of all these motions, we will not support it.

With regard to my NDP colleague Mr. Masse's motion, I will be pleased to discuss it at greater length when we debate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 134 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

I would like to apologize for being late. I had noted in my calendar that the meeting started at 8:30 a.m., but there's been a change. Our meetings now start at 8:15.

I would like to remind all members to please review the guidelines for the use of microphones and earpieces. These guidelines, which are on your desk, are intended to protect the health and safety of all participants, especially the interpreters.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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'd like to welcome the two witnesses from the Department of Industry, whom we are pleased to see again after the summer break. They are Samir Chhabra, director general, marketplace framework policy branch, and Runa Angus, senior director, strategy and innovation policy sector.

As you may recall, colleagues, at the end of our last meeting on Bill C‑27, we were on CPC‑9. Specifically, we were on the subamendment moved by Mr. Perkins.

I will now open the floor for discussion on this subamendment.

(On clause 2)

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Wonderful, the motion passed unanimously. It’s a fine demonstration of consensus.

The meeting is drawing to a close. It’s already 6:26 p.m. Thank you, colleagues.

We will therefore see each other on Thursday morning to resume our study of Bill C-27.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm very happy to be here. I'm leaving the industry committee. I think we're on our 190th meeting on Bill C-27, so it's nice to be leaving that committee. I know it's good work, and we had a very collaborative and co-operative committee, and we're looking forward to that here in the international trade committee.

Madam Chair, thank you very much for convening this meeting. The members of the Conservative Party and the NDP, through Standing Order 106(4), sent a letter to the committee to have this meeting today.

What we feel right now is we're dealing with potentially the greatest trade crisis of our time. We have two fronts that are facing us right now.

On one hand, we have what seems to be a close relationship with the U.S. that is cooling. Everyone saw the announcement last week where the U.S. almost doubled the softwood lumber tariffs on Canada even though Canada really has had a great trading relationship for a long time—a trillion dollars' worth of trade across the border and about the largest trading relationship in the world. Of course, we had a $52-billion U.S. announcement for battery manufacturing and assembly in Canada, and those batteries are used in cars manufactured in the U.S.

When we talk about what's at stake here, it's jobs. Two million jobs are attributed to our trading relationship with the U.S., directly and indirectly. The auto industry is the specific one we're focused on that employs 500,000 people in Canada. It's an industry worth $18 billion to this country, and this industry right now is under threat.

That is because, on the other hand, we face a contentious relationship with China. We've had allegations of foreign interference. We've had unfair trade practices, and when we talk about EVs, aluminum and steel—and I'm still the competition critic—I can tell you right now that the way China subsidizes these industries, especially their EVs, their steel and their aluminum.... It's not just the subsidization; it's the questionable trade practices and the questionable labour standards that they have. This is a really big threat to that trillion-dollar trade relationship we have with the U.S., but specifically to the auto manufacturing relationship we have. The stakes really could not be higher for Canada's economic future.

We talk about the money invested, but we also talk about jobs. The Americans didn't hesitate to protect jobs and industries. Canadians right now have been waiting three months to hear whether Canada is going to mirror the tariffs that have been put on those industries, which the Americans announced back in May. The Americans didn't hesitate. By not matching tariffs, we risk being seen as a weak link in the North American supply chain, and hesitation drives away investment. Retaliation, of course, is something we look at, but it's not something we can avoid by being passive. In fact, our inaction invites further aggression from countries like China, which will see our delay as weakness and capitalize on it.

We're not going to be able to stop the number of cars coming in. Tariffs don't stop EVs from coming into Canada. They will certainly slow them down, though. We risk certain effects if these vehicles enter Canada and they find their way through a back door to the U.S. market; we will further aggravate that Canada-U.S. relationship. Canadians deserve to know why it's taking so long to protect their jobs and industries. It has been three months since the U.S. implemented these tariffs. How much longer will Canadians have to wait?

The government must explain why it's dragging its feet when our economic future is at stake. Regarding the consultation the government conducted, we've talked to quite a few of the stakeholder groups involved in the consultation, and it has been thorough, but it clearly hasn't been comprehensive enough. Certain stakeholders have stated that we haven't covered data, for instance, and the fact that these are vehicles are coming into Canada. The U.S. is conducting a comprehensive study right now. We were studying part of that in the industry committee with Bill C-27, including, with these vehicles, the data that Canadians will give them, where it's stored and what it's used for by state-owned China.

The second thing would be the unfair labour practices, and the third would be the broader economic impact. Canadians deserve nothing less than to study this trade crisis, and therefore, Madam Chair, I will read the following motion to the committee:

That, given the risk heavily-subsidized Chinese-made electric vehicles pose to the over 600,000 Canadian workers in the steel, aluminum, mining, and auto-manufacturing industries, as well as risk to the $52.4 billion of taxpayers' money the federal government has spent on corporate subsidies for the electric vehicle industry in Canada, the committee begin a study of at least 8 meetings into the impact of tariffs on local industry and use of trade remedies to protect against Chinese electric vehicles, with 4 meetings held before September 30, 2024, and that the meetings consist of:

One 2-hour meeting with the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade, and Economic Development, and officials from Global Affairs Canada on the issue of tariffs and impacts on local industry.

One 2-hour meeting with the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and officials from the Department of Finance.

One 2-hour meeting with the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and officials from the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.

One 2-hour meeting with the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and officials from the Department of Global Affairs.

At least four meetings with stakeholders deemed relevant to the subject.

that the committee request copies in both official languages, of all submissions made to the Federal Government's public consultation which ran from July 2nd to August 1st, 2024 on protecting Canadian workers and electric vehicle supply chains from unfair Chinese trade practices, that the copies be sent to the clerk for distribution to committee members prior to the commencing of the study, that the committee report its findings to the House, and that the committee immediately report to the House of Commons that the Government immediately match the United States' tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, steel, aluminum, critical minerals, and EV batteries and battery parts, and remove Chinese-made electric vehicles from all Federal electric vehicle subsidy and rebate programs.

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

Well, I'm just going by what you're telling me. If you want to get the floor, you can get the floor. I know you'll put your hand up, MP Masse. If you want to start doing that stuff in public, we can, but you're the one who raised it in public and said that those...and flipped on some of the things we talked about. I don't appreciate that you are denying the conversations we had.

Anyway, at the end of the day, this isn't about you and it isn't about me. It's about the corruption that's gone on here and trying to get to the bottom of this in a timely manner. That was the simple request. It was to get to this in a timely manner. The timely manner is not two months from now when we have it before us now. The extra time was just to allow a little more flexibility than my original two weeks.

Some of the government members, but not all, have recognized that there is a problem here. Some members have said even today that there's a problem and they're willing to do it. Others have made different comments.

At the end of the day, our first business back, as I understand it, was not a steering committee or business meeting. It was the continuation of clause-by-clause on Bill C-27, the privacy bill. That's already on the schedule. I'm not sure what filibusters were referred to, because we had 21 hearings on Bill C-27, followed by 10 meetings so far on clause-by-clause on Bill C-27, which was where we were at the end of the day, and a bit of time on the NDP leader's private member's bill that had to be dealt with by this committee.

With that list since last fall, I haven't seen filibustering in this committee, except for the last five meetings on clause-by-clause, where the Liberals basically continued to talk about one amendment through five meetings. Maybe it's the Liberals you're referring to about the filibustering that was going on in committee, but it wasn't us over those 21 meetings, plus the six meetings for MP Singh's bill.

I'll leave it there.

Report Stage

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

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise to celebrate my colleague from Halifax's career in federal politics. I really enjoyed working with him, particularly on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. I believe it is possible to be friends with and trust the people with whom we work. I even believe that, together, we could have gotten Bill C-27 passed, if we still had similar responsibilities.

That being said, he talked about the many things that have been accomplished in Halifax, but he forgot one: Halifax hosted the Memorial Cup in 2019, which gave the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies the opportunity to win not one, but two cups, the President's Cup and the Memorial Cup, against the Mooseheads. Perhaps I should not mention that here. Perhaps now is not the time. I am sorry.

I really appreciate my colleague's ambition in running for mayor. I would like him to tell us what particular thing he is most proud of.

What is the greatest legacy he is leaving his city and this Parliament?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

There's no downside to making sure that this happens.

I'm kind of concerned that the Liberals, again, are counting on something that hasn't taken place, whereas this is going to ensure that there's consistency in this. We are facing right now the same situation with the Privacy Commissioner by creating a tribunal that the Liberals want. It's why they filibustered two days of this committee, not moving on Bill C-27 because of that. It was because we are at odds with regard to their creating a tribunal that could then cost Canadian taxpayers.

It's not just the Competition Bureau that lost in this case. It was Canadian taxpayers, who had to pay money out of their pockets to Rogers because the Competition Bureau didn't have the protection necessary to go at the case, and it's having a cooling effect out there. How many other large corporations, conglomerates and oligopolies are going to be allowed this type of exemption and be told that it's okay for them to go after the Competition Bureau in their rulings?

That's a cooling effect that's really hard, and it also takes resources away from the Competition Bureau. They're short $5 million from their funds right now to protect Canadians, because Rogers went after them on this specific case. It sends the message as well that we're going to pass this over and say, “Hey, it's okay. We're going to basically allow you to continue this type of behaviour, and we're going to green-light it.”

That's what this is about. It's fine if it is a little bit redundant with regard to what has taken place with another bill that's in another chamber that we can't guarantee will get done. The Liberals are going to oppose it for just that alone, not for the real reasons for doing that. That's fine. They can be on the public record for doing that, for giving them another pass. When they come here, it almost looks like an audition for them, looking at their board of directors, because we've seen the history of what's taken place when people leave here and where they go.

I can tell you this much, this at least is the most modest thing that has been proposed by a progressive bill, which is going to send a message to Canadian companies that they're not going to abuse our competition commissioner and the bureau anymore. I hope that this will get support to get done, because it is very much, at the very least, going to have the control that we have in this part here....

I'm not willing, but I guess the Liberals are willing to turn over the reins to the unelected Senate. With regard to this, I'm not willing to do so, because they could do an amendment on that bill that takes this out. We don't have the ability to know what they're going to do or when they're going to pass it. We would then have to deal with that back in the House of Commons as well. Maybe it's a precursor to this. Maybe it's their plan to take this out of Bill C-59 in the Senate bill and put in back in the House. That could be their strategy perhaps, because it doesn't make any sense for them to oppose what they put in the legislation before, which we can't control right now. However, we can do it at this moment and make sure that we send a strong signal to the Competition Bureau and the commissioner.

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

Yes.

I know that we've spent a lot of time on Bill C-27 for the last three or four months, and I know the committee is anxious to get to some of the other issues that are facing Canadians right now, specifically around the high cost of living, inflation, productivity, affordability, taxation and just the economy as a whole.

With all of that work and the fact that we still want to get back to Bill C-27 and get that finished in the fall, we are hoping we can still meet for a few meetings over the summer just to deal with some of these issues. I know that our member from Windsor also brought up, I think, a motion that he had on interprovincial trade and certain issues that we have that we want to bring the Competition Bureau back for, which I'm all for.

Therefore, we have a motion, Mr. Chair, that reads:

Given the large workload the committee has on the docket, the committee instructs the chair to book five meetings between July 8 and September 13, while the House is adjourned, to deal with unfinished business and pressing matters facing Canadians, such as regulatory barriers to competition, wireless telecommunications affordability, and examining the government's proposal to migrate Sustainable Development Technology Canada's funding into the National Research Council Canada.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm very interested to hear what Dr. Lilly and Mr. Heather just talked about regarding trade irritants. My concern, as we look into this review—I've called this out in other committees—is that we're going through a series of what I call “own goals” in Canada that will potentially frustrate it.

I want to ask both of you, Dr. Lilly and Mr. Heather, about the online streaming act, the DST and Bill C-27. If these all go through and are implemented, as it looks like the current government wants to do, will it make the CUSMA review easier or more complicated, in your view?

[Sean Heather, Senior Vice-President, International Regulatory Affairs and Antitrust, U.S. Chamber of Commerce]

Madam Chair, on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, I thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to be here to provide testimony to the standing committee as it evaluates actions ahead of the CUSMA review.

The chamber has a long-standing commitment to the North American economic relationship. No organization in the United States has been a more vocal advocate for a strong and mutually beneficial partnership with Canada and Mexico. We are guided by principle, not politics. We defend and promote free enterprise, free markets, rules-based trade and investment, and the rule of law.

The trilateral relationship goes beyond the impact of our $1.7-trillion annual three-way trade to include significant direct investment ties and highly integrated value chains that support millions of jobs across all three countries. Our three countries have the potential to expand this important relationship and work together to meet shared challenges, such as the diversification of semiconductor production, energy security, energy transition, food security and critical minerals.

CUSMA is intended to facilitate closer economic co-operation and provide legal certainty for cross-border trade and investment. The chamber calls on each of the three governments to address implementation and compliance issues and uphold the spirit and letter of the agreement. In short, we each must keep our word.

For example, the chamber has called for the U.S. government to uphold the dispute settlement panel ruling on automotive rules of origin published back in January 2023. As we aim to make North America the most competitive global platform for vehicle production, the future of the continent's automotive industry depends on the certainty provided by this agreement. In addition, maintaining our competitive edge also means avoiding the expansion of U.S.-driven buy American policies. In short, we need to recognize that in North America, we make things together.

At the same time, we appreciate the opportunity to highlight areas that require Canada to fulfill its CUSMA commitments. Canada is advancing an ambitious digital agenda. We are concerned that Canada is looking to bolster its competitiveness at times by targeting U.S. businesses. Such policies not only erode Canada's culture of innovation and competitiveness, but also undermine Canada's commitment to maintaining open and fair business climates.

First, I'd like to flag our concern with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's decision to impose an initial based contribution of 5% on U.S. streaming services. This decision fails to recognize the investments made by American streaming services in Canada's creative sector. Indeed, Americans can hardly turn their televisions on without seeing programs created here in Canada.

Consequently, Americans find it ironic that Bill C-11 specifically targets U.S. companies in a manner that may violate Canada's international trading obligations, including those under CUSMA. This action appears to contravene commitments that guarantee a minimal standard of treatment, require equal treatment of foreigners and local enterprises, and obligate Canada to refrain from imposing certain performance requirements on foreign direct investment.

Second, we have a deep concern over the potential for Canada to reintroduce its unilateral digital services tax by implementing Bill C-59. The DST is set to introduce discriminatory measures against U.S. companies, violating Canada's obligations under CUSMA and the WTO and contradicting Canada's commitment to the G20 OECD process. Adding to our concern is the fact that Canada's proposed DST is two and potentially three years retroactive. We would note that the Office of the United States Trade Representative has investigated several measures substantially similar to those proposed by Canada—including a French DST, on which the Canada version is modelled—and found them to be unreasonable or discriminatory and burdensome or restrictive to U.S. commerce and thus actionable under U.S. trade law.

Last, we have serious concerns with the artificial intelligence and data act, which is part of Bill C-27, currently being studied by your colleagues in the House of Commons industry committee. In its current draft, the bill is overly broad and restrictive, capturing a potentially endless number of low-risk use cases that risk putting Canada out of step with the U.S. and other important trading partners on AI regulation. If it moves forward, we are concerned that it will have an adverse effect on Canada's competitiveness, hinder AI development, limit business exploration and ultimately affect productivity and economic growth. During our visit to Ottawa this week, we'll be hosting an AI policy dialogue precisely to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities related to AI.

At the chamber, we are focused on keeping the 2026 CUSMA review in perspective. While the three trading partners are sovereign states, no one has identified a compelling reason to undertake a wide-ranging renegotiation of this agreement. Primarily, this upcoming review is an opportunity to ensure implementation and compliance with the existing commitments. Having said that, Canadian policies such as Bill C-11, the proposed DST, and Canada's approach to AI all have the potential to complicate this review. Perceptions that Canada is violating CUSMA commitments will serve to increase pressure to criticize the agreement during the review process.

In closing, the chamber stands ready to work with our partners in Canada to continue to build a strong North American partnership. We thank you for this opportunity to share our views at this hearing and look forward to your questions.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for a great panel today.

I'd like to reiterate MP Généreux's comments about the staff today. It's been a really long year at the industry committee, but we've done a lot of great work for Canadians. I want to thank all the staff for their extended efforts, especially on Bill C-27.

I'll pose an open-ended question to the witnesses today.

There has been great discussion on Bill C-56, Bill C-352 and Bill C-59, but when we bring this to our communities and our constituencies, the number one thing I'm asked—and that I'm sure pretty much every politician in Canada is asked—is when we are going to see lower grocery prices.

With Bill C-56, Bill C-352 and Bill C-59, have we done enough to lower prices for Canadians so their paycheques will take them a bit further every month?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Okay. We can follow up on this as well.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that things moved on as the bill was crafted and created, and that's normal in terms of processes here. It's the same with my position on the tribunal. Going through Bill C-27, I've kept myself open to creating a tribunal for part of it, but from the evidence that's been presented—and we around this table have never really dealt with tribunals before—I've come to some conclusions that give me great concern. Therefore, we left the door open for an amendment to the tribunal, but not to get rid of it. I mean, we could even get rid of the tribunal here, if this body actually chose to do so.

At any rate, that's kind of where we're at. We're in a work-in-progress environment here. I hope we can actually kind of continue to add on while we have the opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Arya, we're out of time.

This brings our meeting to an end, but before we adjourn, I just want to thank Ms. Angus and Mr. Chhabra for joining us yet again.

You've been with us for the whole month of May, and this is technically our last meeting on Bill C-27 for some time. We're at CPC-9.

I hope that this summer will make us reflect on where we want to go with this bill. Thank you very much for your professionalism and for your time.

I would also like to thank Mr. Mark Schaan, who is not here today.

The meeting is adjourned.

[Samir Chhabra]

In fact, that is the design of the system that's proposed by Bill C-27 in the CPPA. It is, in fact, to have the commissioner have a stronger hand at that appeal process by virtue of the fact that the tribunal has to defer to the commissioner's findings of fact and the mix of the findings of fact and law.

That is an entirely different playing field from what you'd find at court. In that way, it is very much designed to ensure speed, as well as to provide the commissioner with a significantly stronger hand than if he or she were to take a case to court. Also, of course, the fact that the finding itself of the tribunal can't be appealed is another piece that creates a very significant backstop against a lengthy delay or overextended process.

[Runa Angus]

The de novo is from the Privacy Commissioner to the Federal Court, which is the case right now.

What we mean by de novo is that, because the Privacy Commissioner right now does not have any decision-making power—Bill C-27 contemplates that decision-making power—the court doesn't give any deference to the Privacy Commissioner's findings. It has to make its case like anyone else would have to make their case if they took a company or any other individual to court.

There is no deference provided. That's something that's changing under the process we've contemplated in Bill C-27, where the tribunal would have to provide deference to the commissioner on questions of fact and mixed fact and law. That's what the de novo is. It's really the court substituting its own analysis for the Privacy Commissioner's analysis.

[Runa Angus]

I just wanted to add perhaps some more context.

In the case of the Social Security Tribunal, that tribunal is supported by the administrative tribunals support service system, which we have contemplated would also support the tribunal that is contemplated under Bill C-27. Again, compared to the two years the OPC is currently facing, the Social Security Tribunal heard cases in 2021 to 2022, for example, in 43 days.

There is a very substantial difference between the time in which a specialized tribunal can hear a case as opposed to the courts. That's something that, as I mentioned earlier, the courts themselves have recognized.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome back to everyone who is keeping tabs on Bill C-27.

For those listening at home, we're still working on the amendment on private right of action, an amendment that we're looking at to reinstate at least one line of that. I just wanted to make a few points that I was trying to end with at the last meeting, when we talked about why we believe the powers should be going to the Privacy Commissioner and what private right of action actually means in terms of taking away the tribunal and giving that power to the commissioner.

I believe it means an increased accountability for organizations. A private right of action would create a direct legal route for individuals to seek remedies for privacy violations, therefore increasing accountability of organizations, which is really important when we look at the Privacy Commissioner having that power but also at the ability of those individuals who are going through the Privacy Commissioner first to then take their own legal remedy against organizations that violate their privacy.

We talked about resource allocation for the Privacy Commissioner and the fact that perhaps the Privacy Commissioner would be overburdened. We all know what's happening with the Information Commissioner right now, who has asked for extra funding and is backlogged and is not getting that funding from the government. This would allow individuals to take legal action for privacy breaches and reduce the number of cases the Privacy Commissioner has, even though the commissioner should be getting more funding, depending on the caseload.

There's a deterrent effect in the possibility that facing private lawsuits would act as a deterrent for organizations considering lax data protection practices. The ability to have this through the Privacy Commissioner, of course, would be a deterrent.

On the empowerment of individuals, we've talked about making sure that privacy is a fundamental right. When you give this power to individuals, you're empowering individuals to take action and control their privacy rights, which I think is a very important part of this bill. We perhaps could have a faster resolution of complaints compared to administrative processes handled only or solely by the Privacy Commissioner's office or by the tribunal.

We think this will enhance privacy awareness. As individuals take legal action, it raises public awareness about privacy rights and the importance of data protection, the more that this gets into the hands of those individuals.

There could be a reduction in systemic violations. The threat of legal action from multiple individuals could encourage organizations to implement more robust privacy practices, reducing the likelihood of systemic privacy violations and reducing the overall burden on the Privacy Commissioner.

It goes on and on, but moreover, I think it's a complementary role. The private right to action serves as a complementary mechanism to the Privacy Commissioner's oversight, ensuring a more comprehensive and multi-faceted approach to privacy protection.

When we're looking at this, I think we all agree that this should be going first to the Privacy Commissioner, that the Privacy Commissioner should be the first step, but that private right of action is really important in giving that power to the Privacy Commissioner so the commissioner can handle and administer fines and we still have the option of the courts. Then we would find that the tribunal would be unneeded.

I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much, Mr. Masse.

(Clause 2)

We now return to clause 2 of Bill C‑27 and amendment CPC‑9.

Mr. Williams, you have the floor to debate Mr. Perkins' subamendment.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I'm sorry I can't be with you all today in person, and I have to join remotely.

I just wanted to say I'm generally supportive of Mr. Garon's motion. The topic is an important one. Perhaps we can study it. We've certainly said all along that we would continue to work on and prioritize Bill C-27. I'm hoping we can agree to that. I know we're not debating it today, but I just wanted to signal to him that we're supportive of studying this, but would prefer to do so after Bill C-27, if possible.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 126 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Today's meeting is taking place in hybrid format. Pursuant to the Standing Orders and the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming consideration of Bill C‑27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022. Today, we are continuing clause-by-clause consideration of the bill.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all members and other meeting participants in the room that it's important to keep their earpiece away from their microphone when it's on, and to familiarize themselves with the guidelines that are written on the cards on the table. The health and safety of all participants is at stake, especially the interpreters. I therefore ask you to act accordingly, and thank you in advance for your co-operation.

Today, Wednesday, we welcome back Mr. Samir Chhabra, director general, as well as Ms. Runa Angus, senior director, both from the Department of Industry's Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector.

Mr. Chhabra and Ms. Angus, thank you for participating once again in the committee's clause-by-clause study of Bill C‑27.

Before turning the floor over to Mr. Williams, who had the floor while we were debating amendment CPC‑9 and Mr. Perkins' subamendment, I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Garon, since he asked me for a few minutes to talk about the motion he gave notice of on Monday.

Mr. Garon, you have the floor.

Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I think it obviously was that way. I attended some of the natural resource committee hearings and meetings on that, and it seemed that the government members there were totally opposed to considering any other additions that could fix, help or improve the bill. That is obviously not the experience I have had in some other committees. In particular, I am vice-chair of the industry committee, a very collegial committee on Bill C-34, which amended the Investment Canada Act, and the government agreed to many of the amendments the opposition made.

Right now there are many amendments to Bill C-27, perhaps one of the most consequential bills that Parliament has dealing with privacy and artificial intelligence, a complete replacement of our Privacy Act, and we have already passed six amendments to the bill from all parties. The government is operating in a very different way in very different committees, which surprises me, but maybe it should not surprise me that it does one thing in one place and says another thing in another place.

[Mark Schaan]

I'll say three things maybe, and I'll turn to Mr. Chhabra and Ms. Angus for two of them.

One, to your last point, is that it isn't actually possible to necessarily find yourself before the courts in the current model of the bill, because in order to find yourself before the courts, you need a finding of violation by the Privacy Commissioner. That's a ticket to entry, so it does reduce the number of court instances in which this is potentially the case.

In the case of the current model, though, as you note, what happens when people don't like the determination that happens.... Maybe I'll turn to Mr. Chhabra and Ms. Angus to identify again what role we've given the courts as it relates to what they can and can't opine on. I think it's important, because at the core of this is who has interpretation and investigatory responsibilities under the act. In the scheme that's currently provided for under Bill C-27, the role of the courts in their actual consideration of OPC findings is actually relatively limited in certain cases.

I'll turn to Ms. Angus to walk through that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We were discussing Bill C‑27, specifically CPC‑9. Mr. Perkins had the floor.

As I mentioned, no one else seems to want to debate amendment CPC‑9. If anyone wants to add their name to the list to speak, they can just let me know.

Mr. Perkins, the floor is yours.

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

It's so we can get on to Bill C-27.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I have one question. If I remember correctly, we agreed to hold two additional meetings, one on Rio Tinto and one on SDTC, and to hold them outside the committee's normal hours, which requires additional resources. Is that correct? That way, we would be completely on track with the agenda we had planned, without in any way impeding the progress of the study of Bill C‑27, as promised by everyone. Did I understand correctly? At the end of the day, the essence of the debate is whether we should call these people or wait.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Happy Monday morning, everyone.

Welcome to meeting number 125 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming consideration of Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, and we are continuing clause by clause consideration of the bill.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all members and other meeting participants in the room of the following important preventative measures.

To prevent disruptive—and potentially harmful—audio feedback incidents that can cause injuries, all in‑person participants are reminded to keep their earpieces away from microphones at all times. As indicated in the communiqué from the Speaker to all members on Monday, April 29, the following measures have been taken.

All earpieces have been replaced. By default, all earpieces will be unplugged at the start of the meeting. When you are not using your earpiece, please place it face down on the middle of the sticker for this purpose that you will find on the table, as indicated. Please consult the cards on the table before you.

These measures are in place so that we can conduct our business without interruption and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their work.

Thank you for your co‑operation, colleagues.

On this Monday morning, we have with us three representatives from the strategy and innovation policy sector of the Department of Industry: Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister; Samir Chhabra, director general; and Runa Angus, senior director. I'd like to welcome you back to the committee.

(On clause 2)

[Samir Chhabra]

I think we've been really clear in explaining our rationale for why we think it would be more efficient in this model. I think we've also been really clear to note that in some cases the provincial commissioners don't have the power to issue administrative monetary penalties.

The previous commissioner was reacting a number of years ago to a different bill and a different approach. The current Privacy Commissioner has outlined an interest in seeing compliance agreements be more flexible in their approach. The government's amendment does in fact propose to make that a feature.

As my colleague Ms. Angus pointed out earlier, the ability to change the level of appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal rather than the Federal Court, which is also something that Commissioner Dufresne has pointed out, is not something that can be done in this proceeding, because Bill C-27 doesn't actually open the Federal Courts Act.

The other approaches that Commissioner Dufresne has highlighted have in fact been taken on board. Our conversations with the Privacy Commissioner suggest that there is an openness and an understanding of why this could be important. In fact, in his most recent testimony to this table, the OPC himself suggested that:

Since the bill provides the authority to issue orders and significant fines, more procedural fairness may be warranted.

To address that concern, the government could say, yes, more procedural fairness is needed. That's the model used in Quebec and other parts of the world.

Even in his own testimony before this committee, he did in fact raise that issue and acknowledge that there could be good reasons for doing so.

I would also point out that in your commentary earlier, the way it was presented made it seem like the commissioner could not act quickly. In fact, the exact opposite is true under CPPA. The commissioner can act quickly to issue orders, both compliance orders and stop orders.

This notion that somehow this tribunal function would slow down the ability for the commissioner to act in situations that are requiring speed is not the case, and this notion that somehow investigations or joint investigations would be impeded only because of an administrative monetary penalty, which, by the way, would always be set distinctly anyway.... The ability to collaborate on an investigation is not at all hampered by having a tribunal in place. The only thing the tribunal is responsible for is determining the ultimate amount of any given administrative monetary penalty.

[Samir Chhabra]

New powers afforded to the commissioner would include the ability to issue binding orders following investigations. As I mentioned earlier, those could include an order for an organization to do something to comply with the CPPA. They could also include an order that an organization stop doing something that violates the CPPA.

The commissioner would also have the ability to enter into compliance agreements. As I mentioned earlier, government amendments that have been tabled would allow for those compliance agreements to be entered into at any stage throughout the process and also for financial considerations to be included within that compliance agreement. That means, for example, if an organization were found to be in contravention of the CPPA, the OPC would have the power to negotiate a compliance agreement that could include, in essence, a financial payment or penalty.

All of those things are new powers the OPC would have as a result of Bill C-27, which are not currently available to the commissioner.

On the issue of alignment with other jurisdictions, as I pointed out earlier, we should always be very cautious about thinking narrowly about alignment on any one specific issue. We do see tribunals in effect in the privacy space in the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, taking an approach that is very analogous to the one being taken here, with some slight variations across them, but again, every jurisdiction has its own constitutional framework and other laws in place that drive those slight variations.

The point is that we are taking into account the best practices and the best approaches that have been undertaken internationally, and we are undertaking significant consultations here in Canada to bring forward a proposal that we think significantly improves the enforceability of Canada's private sector privacy law and gives the commissioner significant new powers to do so.

[Samir Chhabra]

I think we've seen that these issues tend to be quite complex when it comes to personal information, data flows and how information is being utilized. It's not necessarily a straightforward proceeding. It's not necessarily one where a judge would typically have a significant amount of experience in previous case law to build from. There is, obviously, some case law in this space, but not to the level that might be considered a commonly understood approach.

The speed element comes from making sure both that the tribunal's decisions themselves are considered final so that they're not being appealed but also that the degree of expertise resident in the tribunal is specifically designed to respond to stakeholder feedback that was received before Bill C-27 was tabled, about the importance of having at least three members of that group having expertise in privacy and information law. That is a growing field of law where experts have been developing their understanding of the issues and also of how emerging issues in the digital technology space, in terms of how data is being used, could have important effects on individual privacy.

It's understanding the nexus of cybersecurity, understanding the nexus with de-identification or anonymization techniques, understanding the importance of governance approaches taken within organizations and understanding the approaches being taken in other jurisdictions as well. There are a number of reasons that having expertise in the domain of privacy law and privacy and information protection would be helpful for speed and to make the decisions more effective and procedurally fair.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

This is a very important discussion, and I will admit there was very strong testimony received on both sides of the tribunal. If I understand it correctly, right now, the Privacy Commissioner has investigative powers. Those investigative powers would obviously still be retained if Bill C-27 were passed.

I'm speaking hypothetically here. The Privacy Commissioner conducts an investigation. If this bill passes in its current form, the Privacy Commissioner will recommend to the tribunal an administrative fine for a breach of privacy. The tribunal will then have to decide....

Am I correct so far? No. Please, correct me.

[Samir Chhabra]

There are a number of pieces there that I'd like to try to unpack. I think in the context of order-making powers, we've already been clear that the order-making powers in the CPPA would vest with the commissioner, so it's difficult to see how the tribunal would be slowing down the order-making abilities of the commissioner.

The notes that we have here from Ms. Denham include that there is a tribunal system in the U.K. and that administrative tribunals are used across many areas of law. It may seem like a lengthy process, but over time the tribunals become expert tribunals, and the Bill C-27 proposals are aimed at ensuring administrative fairness. That is really what we're talking about here—the carriage of justice, administrative fairness and ensuring that there is an appropriate delineation of powers and responsibilities.

My colleague will take a moment as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Good Wednesday afternoon to you all, colleagues.

Welcome to meeting number 124 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Pursuant to the Standing Orders and the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming consideration of Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022. Today we will continue clause-by-clause consideration of the bill.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all members and other meeting participants in the room of the following important preventive measures.

To prevent disruptive and potentially harmful audio feedback incidents that can cause injuries, all in-person participants are reminded to keep their earpieces away from all microphones at all times. As indicated in the communiqué from the Speaker to all members on April 29, the following measures have been taken to help prevent audio feedback incidents. All earpieces have been replaced by a model which greatly reduces the probability of audio feedback. By default, all unused earpieces will be unplugged at the start of a meeting. When you are not using your earpiece, please place it face down on the middle of the sticker for this purpose that you will find on the table, as indicated. Please consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. As you can see, the room layout has been adjusted to prevent this type of incident. These measures are in place so that we can conduct our business without interruption and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters. Thank you all for your co-operation.

Without further ado, I would like to welcome the witnesses, who come from the Department of Industry. We have Samir Chhabra, director general, strategy and innovation policy sector; and Runa Angus, senior director, strategy and innovation policy sector. Welcome to you both, and thank you for agreeing to join us.

(Clause 2)

Industry and Technology

[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 two 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 Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, and an An Act to enact the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, containing Part 2 and Part 3.

Madam Speaker, I rise today on an important debate that is coming from the industry committee. Right now, we are studying what seems to be the unending study of Bill C-27, which is privacy legislation.

I have risen in this House before at least one other time on this matter, as have other members of the Conservative Party and other parties, including the NDP. We are rising today to request that this bill be split into two parts. One would be the privacy legislation replacing PIPEDA in the tribunal, and the second one would be AIDA, or the AI portion of this bill.

The reason for that is twofold. It is taking a long time to pass this bill mainly because of the government. The government produced a bill that was flawed, and because of this flawed bill, when it presented the bill, it presented 55 amendments to the bill. We have been going through them at committee, and we are now just getting through the definitions part of clause-by-clause on the first part, which is PIPEDA. We are finding there has been 16 table-drops to this bill for amendments.

This bill was not ready to come to the floor. We are looking at the need for privacy legislation, which we do agree with. Conservatives have stood in this House and said we believed that privacy should be considered a fundamental right for Canadians. When we look at that aspect of the bill, and it is very important, the second part of this bill, the AI, the AIDA, portion of this bill, is so flawed that it is holding up the first part of the bill.

The parts never should have been put together; they should have been separate. There were some fundamental reasons why the government wanted to put them together. With 55 amendments and 16 subamendments to the main part of the bill, this bill is so flawed we cannot even get through the first part. We are worried if the bill is not separated into two votes, and we do not have AIDA separated and perhaps have it come back as a whole new legislation, we are not going to get the first part of the bill through, which is privacy legislation that Canadians are desperately asking for.

After nine years, Canadians have never had less privacy. We look at the fact that we have Alexa, or AI of any form, and when our children are on their iPads, that data is being scraped off the Internet and collected. None of it is private. We do not have any privacy with our data.

This week, we are looking at privacy, and we are trying to discern the difference between normal privacy and sensitive data. Sensitive data would be looked at under the act, but would be a bit more heightened. It would be looked at with greater penalties for those who breach it. We are certainly looking at everyone's privacy in the coming years with AI and the advancement of computers.

The one that we are specifically looking at is financial data. All of the transactions that we do through Interac, our banking system as a whole, our bank accounts, and the interactions that we have online, like with Apple Pay or on our cellphones, are all held by the banks. Many Canadians would be surprised to know they do not own their financial data.

A bank has someone's data, and that can mean anything from their credit history, where they spend their money, how they get their income or where they are paying their taxes. All of that data right now is not held as sensitive, and more importantly, it is not held under that person's consent. Financial data across Canada needs to be regarded as sensitive.

Perhaps the biggest breach of that within the last two years was when the government enacted the Emergencies Act and bank accounts were frozen under the act. The government has the ability to freeze bank accounts because that data is not sensitive. Through the government, when it took away the rights of Canadians, that data was then held by those banks against consumers' will.

In this country, we want to be able to have open banking. The idea with open banking is to have Canadians control who owns their data, and, with their consent, who can have their data. That is really the crux of this bill. When we talk about sensitive financial data, it is the ability for someone, as a consumer, to control where their data is and where it goes.

Open banking, of course, brings competition to our banking sector, which allows not only the six big banks to have our business, but also hundreds of other financial tech organizations that want to have our business and right now are only able to get it through screen scraping. This is taking data off screens or having their clients take screenshots of their financial history in order to get it to a financial tech organization so it can compete for their business. However, financial data should be sensitive information, and when we look at how that relates to AI, well, it is a whole different component of the bill. Also, when we look at location data, and the ability for someone to know from a person's phone where that person is right now, that is also sensitive data. However, the advancement of AI has allowed all of that information to be out in the open and to be emulated.

When we look at the AI bill, the most important part that we are going to be standing up for, as Conservatives, is to ensure that computers cannot emulate human beings without their express consent. However, when we look at privacy as a fundamental right, AI allows the ability of one's image, likeness and voice to be replicated and used all over this planet, which, of course, is bad when we talk about fraud. We have all the heard stories of parents who thought that their children were calling them for help and to ask for money. It sounded like them, they laughed like they did, but at the end of the day, it was an AI program that emulated an individual to cause an act of fraud.

Right now, Scarlett Johansson is in the news. If anyone has used ChatGBT lately, version 4, which is the new version, they would find that Sky apparently uses Scarlett Johansson's voice without her permission. AI does this right now. It can scrape images and likenesses off the internet, and there is no recourse to ensure that it is taken care of. However, having this AI bill attached to Bill C-27, the privacy act, is slowing this process down and, because of that, Canada is falling further and further behind. It should be a separate bill, and we are asking that the bill before us, of course, be put into two separate votes, as we have before.

I am splitting my time today, because I have some knowledge, but we have greater expertise coming from the member from South Shore—St. Margarets.

I will end with where we are with AI in general. It was announced last week on the budget bill, Bill C-69, that the government is going to put money into AI, figuring that, finally, Canada should have been a leader and should be a leader on this. However, another article, just released yesterday, effectively said, “Ah, too late”, and that the money the government wants to put into AI and infrastructure, Meta Llama 3 has just made obsolete. Of course, Meta, Microsoft, Google and so many other companies have already put money and resources into AI, and Canada is falling further and further behind because, after nine years, Canada has lost almost all of its IP in AI to the rest of the world. China had 13,000 patents in AI just last year, which was more than all patents filed in all sectors in Canada. The U.S. had close to 20,000 patents. So, now, when we put money into IP for AI in Canada, it is not Canadian IP. Once again, we are just investing in American and international companies in Canada. Canada is becoming a branch-plant state. We take our taxpayers' hard-earned money and we put it into intellectual property and multinational corporations that do not provide the GDP that Canada needs but just jobs, which is what we are left with.

We have a bill that was not properly done. It has 55 amendments from the government side and 16 subamendments. I could not believe that, the other day, the government was filibustering its own bill. We were in committee, and the government was talking it out. It did not like that we were talking about financial data as sensitive information. I had never seen this before. However, the bill is flawed and it needs to be split in two. We are happy to make sure that happens and that we get the bill right. Do not worry, a Conservative government will get it right.

[Philippe Dufresne]

Bill C-27 was introduced by the government. It would provide me with the ability to issue orders, and it would provide for the ability for fines to be issued. That's on the private sector side.

In terms of the public sector, there is no bill to modernize it.

Currently, the Department of Justice has done a consultation paper in which that was a recommendation in terms of a greater compliance mechanism, and I would certainly encourage that moving forward.

[Philippe Dufresne]

In terms of the sandboxes for organizations, we're not currently resourced to offer this, but my international counterparts are, and they are doing it with business, so they will say, “You can come over, and you can test this new technology in a safe space where the regulator can provide input, can provide risk. We're able to provide proactive guidance and to be consulted, and we have services for that, but not to the extent of offering sandboxes. This is something I'd like to be able to do. I think it would be good for Canadians and good for industry.

We've identified that we would need ongoing annual funding, an increase of about $25 million for Bill C-27, to optimally provide those services based on those new authorities.

In terms of the sweep that you made reference to, with our partners we look at various numbers of websites and see.... I don't have the randomized formula that was used by the team, but the goal is to say that we're going to do some spot checks and see.... Are there trends? Are there concerns? Are we seeing some websites that are using what we call deceptive practices or dark patterns, which are communication tools that will lead people into making bad decisions and will sometimes trick them?

[Philippe Dufresne]

We have roughly 215 employees at the OPC, and we have proposed budget funding for my office in the 2024-25 main estimates of $34 million. We have had an increase of $4.5 million in the previous year. Half of that is attributable to collective bargaining increases, so that's not really increasing our budget or our ability to do our work; it's just maintaining it. We've had temporary funding, as part of budget 2023, of $2.4 million for that year to help us address the backlog and privacy breaches.

We need increases in our budgets on a permanent basis. This additional funding is useful and very important, but it will come to an end, and the challenges will not come to an end. We are seeing more privacy breaches. We are seeing them on a larger scale. We are seeing that they are more complex, and technology is making it more challenging.

There is a need for more permanent funding on that. Specifically on the point of more proactive and promotion work, we will also need additional resources in this space, particularly if Bill C-27 is adopted. Bill C-27 would bring new responsibilities to my office from an enforcement standpoint, with order-making powers, but also with, just as importantly, more guidance opportunities to help organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises know what their obligations are, to provide clarity on this industry, which needs as much certainty as possible to do its work and to know what the expectations are.

There are very interesting provisions in Bill C-27 that would allow the preparation of codes of practice and certification programs. These are things that businesses around the world have been asking for to give them more certainty, and I would be playing a role in approving them and providing some more legal certainty.

There are a lot of things that we could be doing. The resources limit that. Of course, public resources have to be used judiciously and cautiously. We're looking at that. We've made some requests. We're going to continue to do that in a fiscally prudent manner.

[Philippe Dufresne]

We're investigating TikTok right now, so this is the one where we will have some findings to make. We made a general statement for all social media, in terms of protecting the rights of children, with my provincial-territorial counterparts. We cautioned against nudging techniques that would encourage children to give more personal information than they need to. We called for the treatment of children's personal information to be different and for them to have a greater right to delete information. I won't make a specific comment about a specific website if we haven't investigated it particularly on that issue, but generally we are calling on all of those platforms to be mindful of those elements.

Again, I think Bill C-27 will bring greater tools in respect of this heightened protection. I've made it one of my priorities, so we're going to continue the education work but also targeted compliance, as needed, to protect children, whichever platform is at issue.

[Philippe Dufresne]

In some of these investigations we're focused on the consent. Are you obtaining meaningful consent by Canadians, and are you doing that in an appropriate way with respect to the age? We have guidance on that in terms of the fact that what is appropriate for an adult isn't going to be appropriate for a child, for a minor.

There are different types of circumstances, and Bill C-27 recognizes that by protecting minors' information and treating it as sensitive, so that's an additional positive step to recognize the best interests of the child.

[Philippe Dufresne]

In Bill C‑27, for example, the emphasis is on making consent easy to understand and simpler. In addition, organizations are required to be more proactive, and there is a greater role for my office in preparing guidelines. It also provides for the authority to issue orders. So, that is why I think this bill is a step in the right direction.

[Philippe Dufresne]

We're working very closely with a number of our international counterparts. I'll name a few.

The G7 data protection authorities work yearly. Last year in Japan, we issued a joint statement on artificial intelligence from a privacy standpoint. I was very proud of that statement. It's a statement that was endorsed in the Department of Industry's and Minister Champagne's statement on voluntary codes for AI. It's that collaboration, the sense that my colleagues and I understand the need to have very strong privacy protection but at the same time very strong economies and a very strong ability for organizations to have data across borders.

I'll point to the U.K.'s ICO. They've done great work on children's privacy. They have a children's code, an age-appropriate code, talking about steps that we can take. I think this is something that Bill C-27 highlights. I was happy to see a recent amendment at the INDU committee recognizing the best interest of the child, which was one of my recommended amendments for this bill.

I think we're seeing lots of work in this space and lots of awareness too. Perhaps another example I'll give is the creation of what we call the privacy sandbox. A commissioner's office will invite industry to come and test a new process and highlight risks in privacy before this technology is deployed, so that the risk can be mitigated. You protect privacy, and you avoid a complaint on the front end.

[Philippe Dufresne, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, I'm pleased to be here today to discuss the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's main estimates for fiscal year 2024-25 and to describe the work of my office to protect and promote the fundamental right to privacy of Canadians. I'm accompanied by Richard Roulx, deputy commissioner, corporate management sector.

In January I launched a strategic plan that lays out three key priorities that will guide the work of the OPC through 2027. The first is protecting and promoting privacy with maximum impact, by using business intelligence to identify trends that need attention, producing focused guidance and outreach, leveraging strategic partnerships and preparing for the implementation of potentially new privacy legislation.

The second is addressing and advocating for privacy in this time of technological change, with a focus on artificial intelligence and generative AI, the proliferation of which brings both potential benefits and increased risks to privacy.

The third is championing children's privacy rights to ensure that their unique privacy needs are met and that they can exercise their rights.

I believe that these three priorities are where the Office of the Privacy Commissioner can have the greatest impact for Canadians, and that these are also where the greatest risks lie if the issues are not addressed.

Protecting privacy is one of the paramount challenges of our time. My office is poised to meet this challenge through strong advocacy, collaboration, partnerships, education, promotion, enforcement and capacity building, which includes doing more to identify and address privacy trends in a timely way.

Investigations under the Privacy Act, which covers the personal information-handling practices of federal government departments and agencies, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Canada’s federal private sector privacy law, are a key aspect of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s work on issues that significantly impact the lives of Canadians.

In February I made public the results of my investigation into Aylo, the operator of the website Pornhub and other pornographic websites. I found that the company had contravened Canada's federal private sector privacy law by enabling intimate images to be shared on its websites without the direct knowledge and consent of everyone who is depicted.

In releasing my report on this investigation, I reiterated that the non-consensual sharing of intimate images is a serious privacy violation that can cause severe harms to victims, and that organizations have an obligation under privacy law to prevent and remedy this.

This case is also relevant to the discussions that will be taking place on Bill C-63, and I will welcome the opportunity to share my views on the online harms act with parliamentarians.

I also look forward to sharing in the coming months the findings of two high-profile investigations that are closely tied to two of my strategic priorities—protecting children’s privacy and addressing the privacy impacts of emerging technology, including AI.

When I appeared before you last year on Main Estimates, I spoke about the launch of investigations into TikTok, as well as OpenAI, the company behind the AI-driven text generation ‘chat bot’ ChatGPT. Both investigations are being conducted jointly with my counterparts in Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta.

In the case of the TikTok investigation, the four offices are examining whether the practices of the company ByteDance comply with Canadian federal and provincial privacy legislation and, in particular, whether valid and meaningful consent is being obtained for the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information.

Given the importance of protecting children's privacy, the joint investigation has a particular focus on TikTok's privacy practices as they relate to younger users.

The investigation into OpenAI and its ChatGPT chat bot is examining whether the company is compliant with requirements under Canadian privacy law in relation to consent, openness, access, accuracy and accountability. It is also considering whether the collection, use and disclosure are done for an appropriate purpose.

Both investigations remain a high priority and we are working to complete them in a timely manner.

Protecting and promoting privacy with maximum impact remains integral to fulfilling my current mandate and preparing for potential changes to federal privacy law.

In the 2023 budget we received temporary funding to address pressures related to privacy breaches and a complaints backlog, as well as to prepare for the implementation of Bill C-27. While these temporary funds provide necessary and immediate support, it is essential that my office be properly resourced on a permanent basis to deal with the increasing complexity of today's privacy landscape and the associated demands on my office's resources.

To address this, we will continue to present fiscally responsible funding requests and will also aim to maximize agility and cost-effectiveness by assessing and streamlining program and service delivery.

With that, I would be happy to answer your questions. Thank you.

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

I shift, then, over to Statistics Canada. It's requesting $736 million, an additional almost $204 million compared to last year's estimates. The plan for the department focuses on the agency's continued modernization—and we heard about that in the digitization of service delivery—but how will Statistics Canada leverage large language models and generative artificial intelligence to deliver timely and reliable data? The reason I want to expand on that is that we're undertaking the study with Bill C-27, and I'd like to have an understanding as to how that might impact the government's plans, specifically through Statistics Canada.

Mr. Kennedy, I'll let you direct that too.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I actually wasn't trying to get you with that question. I was merely trying to raise the concern. It's an important sector, and it can sometimes seem as though decisions are made just like that. I wanted to hear your take on the situation, so thank you for that.

Now I have a quick question for the deputy minister responsible for Bill C-27. Under the bill, a new tribunal is being established, which the government says is necessary because the Privacy Commissioner's new responsibilities will result in more legal proceedings and things will get complicated. However, I can count on one hand the number of times the Privacy Commissioner's decisions have been challenged before the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal or Supreme Court. That casts doubt on the need for the tribunal. With the commissioner being given more tools to do his job, it seems as though the creation of this new tribunal might seek to undermine the commissioner's role.

I want you to understand why I'm raising the issue. As parliamentarians, we talk both behind the scenes and here, publicly, and we have questions. We know that the minister carried out consultations, so we want to find out which companies in the sector he consulted. Obviously, the committee hasn't met with those stakeholders, since we're having to work on this in a bit of a rush.

Can we, the members of the committee, know exactly which companies in the sector the minister consulted before bringing forward Bill C‑27 and his countless amendments? Clearly, the original version of the bill wasn't up to par, unfortunately, even from the department's standpoint.

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

Thank you.

Moving on, you gave a speech to a small group in a law firm in Toronto—I think it was a small group—about Bill C-27. We requested a copy of the speech, which you kindly provided. It was a speech at a business leaders' breakfast in Toronto, and it was behind closed doors. In that speech, you said, when we talk about high-impact AI systems, we are focused on a few key areas. You go on to list the systems, which include “systems...that can really be used to shape and often narrow perspectives if not appropriately monitored”. What narrow perspectives are you going to use Bill C-27 to moderate content on?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, everyone. I guess Mr. Schaan missed us, so he's back, even though we're not on Bill C-27.

I'd like to start, Deputy, if I could, again with the net zero accelerator. For the $8 billion that has been committed to this, the environment commissioner, who is part of the Auditor General's office, said that the department doesn't track the per dollar value or the benefit of whether or not it's actually reducing carbon. What's your response to that?

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

Mr. Chair, when the committee finishes Bill C-27, we'll have ample time to look at all these questions. To your point, Mr. Masse, yes, I'm open to looking at that, to be honest. It's one of these things.

I may just say—and I know it's not Bill C-27—the last time we looked at privacy in this country was before we had Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, so that's why I'm always coming back to the urgency of Bill C-27. I think folks watching at home would be surprised that, today, the law to protect our kids predates most of the social media that exists.

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

Thank you, again. You seem to focus on the big things.

Yes, definitely. I always say that the science of today is the economy of tomorrow. That's why, in 2016, we made record investments in science, and now you've seen $3.5 billion in the last budget. I'll mention one: $2.4 billion on AI.

Canada is already a world leader. We were the first country in the world to have an AI national strategy. We were the first country in the world, with the United States, to have a voluntary code of conduct. We want to keep that leading position.

Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian who has been recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 people in the world who have great influence, and he is helping us. I would say to people on the committee that they should listen to his voice on Bill C-27, because he's world renowned. To maintain that capacity of leading, these investments in AI, the $2.4 billion we've announced to have more computing power, and the agreement we recently signed with Nvidia should give confidence to Canadians that we're going to continue to lead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Minister. At the rate things are going, we need time to finish our study on Bill C-27 before you bring us a new bill.

We now go to Mr. Masse.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Let's stop there for a moment. I think you realize that sometimes committees serve to deliver a message. I think it's important to discuss the issue with the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities. I'm confident that the intentions here are good. In my neck of the woods, there's quite a bit of talk about Lion, and a lot of people are worried about this. That was my way of appealing to you, to get you thinking.

I have a bit of time left.

I imagine your binder there includes a page on copyright reform, since it's in your mandate letter. For years, Quebec's publishing community has been calling for the Copyright Act to be reformed, as promised. Despite being in your mandate letter, those reforms have yet to happen.

Educational institutions are not properly compensating authors. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a whole other issue. I don't want you to list off everything you've done in the area, because I know it will burn up my time and you're good at that. Bill C-27 raises concerns about copyright. In particular, works that are used by AI systems have to be protected.

When will the committee see a bill containing copyright reforms? If we knew the legislation was forthcoming, perhaps it would motivate us to speed up our study of Bill C-27.

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

I would say that we started with money for consumers, and I think we've been part of the equation, to your point. I think we will always be there for consumers. For companies, I think, it is a great thing, because I think people, rather than just buying them, would like to manufacture them. As you say, this is a game-changer for our nation, because we used to get some of it, and now we are kind of the centre.

I hear you, Mr. Masse. I think we're on the same side on that. I'd say we would be happy to look at that if the committee wants to do a study after Bill C-27, because I still need your help to make sure we will protect people's data and have a framework on AI.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I appreciate all that, and I agree, actually. I still want a national auto policy. We're not there yet, but there's more policy than ever before, and we're not doing Hail Mary rescue plans.

Again, though with respect to consumers, what do we do? I can't wait for a study in this committee. You raised Bill C-27, and that's going to take a long time in this committee. In the meantime, I'm not sure the government grasps the seriousness of our EV charging ports' being deficient and incompatible. As well, incentives to U.S. consumers are outperforming those to Canadian consumers. These are big margins—$5,000 Canadian versus $7,500 U.S. With $4,000 for used batteries, do you not think there should be at least a department or that the government should have some type of a plan there? If you look at other nations, even in Europe, we're way behind. There's money for companies but not for consumers.

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

Well, that's a very good question. That might also be a study for the committee in the future, when you've passed Bill C-27, because that is a very interesting part.

I'll give you an example. I was just in Washington recently, and in Nebraska over the weekend.

First, I'll tell you about cobalt—colleagues may know or not know. When I was in Washington, I asked my colleagues if they knew that there was only one refinery of cobalt in all of North America. Everyone was pretty surprised by that. I asked if they wanted me to tell them where it was. They said they guessed I was going to tell them even if they didn't ask. I said it was in Cobalt, Ontario. I asked them whether they knew how long it took to permit that. I said it took about a good part of a decade for that. I said to my American friends that it would probably be better if we worked together to scale, because what we need now is speed and scale. If they wanted to have theirs, it was going to take at least a decade. So, cobalt is a good example.

If I come back to the motion you had on Rio Tinto, you may have seen that now Canada is the largest producer of titanium in the world. We've displaced Russia, thanks to an investment by Rio Tinto, in fact, which invested close to $1 billion in Sorel, which is a small town in Quebec.

Now, what do you do with the titanium? Imagine, now you can produce titanium powder, and with that powder, you produce 3D printing of titanium parts. With that, you can basically repair jets on aircraft carriers. That's just giving you an example of where we're making headway. However, I would say we need to work together—and this committee has a role in that—because it's all about speed and scale, like you say, to make sure we have a resilient supply chain in North America.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen. I'm sorry, but we'll get back to you when we come back to Bill C-27. We've reached the end of our meeting.

I appreciate, members, your co-operation during this meeting.

Thank you, everyone.

I want to thank the witnesses.

Have a good day.

The meeting is adjourned.

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

Mr. Schaan, the current Privacy Commissioner, in the appendix to his submission on Bill C-27, also asks for the list.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Many things have been said about this amendment.

First, the government doesn't want it. The government doesn't want our extremely sensitive financial data, which can be stolen and used, subjected to a fairly high level of consent.

It's deplorable. I can't repeat it enough. We don't know who the minister consulted before tabling Bill C‑27, which ended up generating a ton of amendments because it was poorly drafted in the first place.

We don't even know which banks, which financial institutions, which insurance companies or which private interest groups were consulted. Perhaps consumer groups were involved. We don't know. However, clearly, if we're to again believe the advocates of this bill, we seem to be hearing from people in the industry.

My subamendment has been worded to include the contextual component. When we say that “the individual generally has a high expectation of privacy”, this implies that the Privacy Commissioner can incorporate the contextual component. There's absolutely no ambiguity here.

In Quebec, Law 25 provides some protection for financial data. However, we would like to remind the government that most financial institutions are federally regulated.

Mr. Chair, I would like to share the following quote from a Supreme Court ruling: “… I agree with the Privacy Commissioner that financial information is generally extremely sensitive.” I repeat: “… I agree with the Privacy Commissioner that financial information is generally extremely sensitive.”

This ruling is found in the Trang case. The Supreme Court recognizes that, in some circumstances and business relationships, a certain amount of consent is implied and the courts have leeway when it comes to interpreting that consent.

My subamendment doesn't say that financial information is always sensitive. Nevertheless, generally speaking, that's what it says for cases where the circumstances point to a high expectation. This fully aligns with the Supreme Court ruling in the Trang case. The subamendment was written with this in mind.

I also really want to emphasize that I share my colleague Mr. Masse's view that not including financial information would mean a step backwards from current law.

Once again, we stand by our position.

I also want to quickly address the comments made by my colleague, Mr. Williams.

We're saying that sensitive information isn't limited to the information on the list. Geolocation data is an example of information that could be considered sensitive, if the individual generally has a high expectation of privacy in this area and if the information is read in context.

This shows the importance of providing a certain amount of leeway given that five‑year reviews don't always take place after five years. In some cases, they take place after 8, 10 or 12 years.

I think that the amendment should be passed.

Lastly, consent fatigue must be taken into account. We're told that people will become tired of having to consent to the use of their information. Given this sociological phenomenon, we should refrain from including a person's financial information in their sensitive information.

I have no doubt about the scientific training of the officials here today. However, I took the liberty of consulting the scientific literature to find out about consent fatigue. That's what I read.

I understand that people may ultimately become tired of having to give their consent when alerts pop up every five seconds on their Apple watch—like my colleague Mr. Turnbull's watch—each time a bank wants to use their personal information.

However, apart from the office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, the fact remains that no one is currently talking to us about consent fatigue.

People are afraid that their data will be stolen and used.

People are afraid of being located. We know that devices, especially cell phones, contain a great deal of information. People talk to us about it. However, I have never heard anyone ask me to be careful that we don't wear them out when we legislate to protect their personal information. That has never happened to me. I don't accept that argument.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good morning, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 122 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Before we begin, I would like to remind all members and other meeting participants in the room of the following important preventative measures.

To prevent disruptive and potentially harmful audio feedback incidents that could cause injuries, I remind all in-person participants to keep their earpieces away from the microphones at all times.

As indicated in the communiqué from the Speaker to all members on Monday, April 29, 2024, the following measures have been taken to help prevent audio feedback incidents.

All earpieces have been replaced by a model that greatly reduces the probability of audio feedback. The new earpieces are black, whereas the former earpieces were grey.

Please use only the approved black earpieces.

By default, all unused earpieces will be unplugged at the start of a meeting.

When you're not using your earpiece, please place it face down, in the middle of the round sticker on the table, as indicated.

Also, please consult the card on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents.

Finally, the room layout has been adjusted, as you have been able to see since last week, to increase the distance between microphones and reduce the chance of feedback from an ambient earpiece.

These measures are in place to ensure that we can conduct our business without interruption and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters, whom we thank.

I thank you all for your co-operation.

That said, we are holding a new meeting on Bill C‑27.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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.

With that, I would like to welcome back the witnesses who are joining us.

Joining us today by video conference from the Department of Industry is Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister, and here, in Ottawa, we have Samir Chhabra and Runa Angus.

Thank you for being with us today.

Before I begin, I would like to add the following.

Colleagues, just to remind everyone of where we were, we're still on CPC-7.

(On clause 2)

There is a subamendment by the Bloc on the floor right now, which we were debating.

I will give the floor to Mr. Garon so that he can propose his subamendment.

[Philippe Dufresne]

One of the improvements, certainly, that I would like to see in the privacy legislation, for both the public and private sectors, is order-making power. That is something Parliament has given now to the Information Commissioner in terms of access requests, which was a positive step in Bill C-58. It is something that is currently proposed in Bill C-27 for private sector privacy legislation, and I would want this to be part of public sector privacy legislation. That was one of the recommendations in the Justice Canada paper.

Specifically with respect to access matters, I would want this to be expanded to all matters. I think this is an area in which some of our provincial counterparts and, indeed, our international counterparts are ahead, with the authorities to make not merely recommendations but also orders. That's one area.

I would be remiss if I didn't highlight the very strong collaboration I have with my federal, provincial and territorial counterparts in this space. That collaboration has led to joint investigations and joint statements and resolutions, so we're going to continue to work very closely with them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I want to welcome all of you to meeting number 121 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

I'll recognize you, MP Masse, in due time, but there are some things I need to highlight first.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all members and other in-room meeting participants of the following important preventative measures.

To prevent disruptive—and potentially harmful—audio feedback incidents that can cause injuries, all participants must keep their earpiece away from their microphone at all times.

As indicated in the communiqué from the Speaker to all members on Monday, April 29, the following measures have been taken to help prevent audio feedback incidents.

All earpieces have been replaced by a model which greatly reduces the probability of audio feedback. The new earpieces are black in colour, whereas the former earpieces were grey. Please only use the approved black earpieces.

By default, all unused earpieces will be unplugged at the start of a meeting.

When you are not using your earpiece, please place it face down on the middle of the sticker on the table for this purpose, as shown on the image.

Please consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents.

The room layout has also been adjusted to reduce acoustic shock.

Keep that in mind, colleagues. It's very important. I'll be monitoring this more closely than ever, given what happened.

To make it simple, you need to keep your earpiece as far away as possible from the microphone, when your microphone is on, or away from that of your neighbours. Any microphone that's on, you need to keep the earpiece as far away as possible.

Pursuant to the order of reference on Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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.

With that, I’d like to welcome back our witnesses and thank you all for being here this evening.

We welcome Mr. Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister, strategy and innovation policy sector; Mr. Samir Chhabra, director general, marketplace framework policy branch; as well as Ms. Runa Angus, senior director, strategy and innovation policy sector.

At the last meeting on Bill C‑27, we ended with the representative for the Bloc Québécois. Before giving him the floor, allow me to give the floor to another member.

I'd like to recognize MP Masse, who had a point of order.

MP Masse, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you.

Contrary to what MP Kusmierczyk said, INDU is not doing a study on this issue. I don't know why he keeps saying it. Perhaps he was having some challenges with the Internet connection when I was speaking earlier to it, when I said that INDU is in the middle of Bill C-27—the government's bill on privacy and artificial intelligence—and doing clause-by-clause to 256 amendments that have been proposed, all of them substantive, including the 55 amendments from the broken bill that the government proposed to its own legislation. There is no ongoing study of this, and it's misleading to say that, even though he heard me say it earlier.

The reason we're here is because this isn't me, this is the union, the Canada's Building Trades Unions, saying that this is happening. Let me get into some specifics, since apparently the Liberals missed the point on the $50-billion subsidy that they should be Canadian jobs if you're going to subsidize. Here's what the union is saying. They said LG has instructed Jeil and Daejin—they are subcontractors on employment—to use eligible Korean nationals and Mexican nationals who could qualify for a certain work visa on the site, and even told them to seek out refugee claimants in Canada who could perform the work. This is apparently in an effort to keep their costs low. NextStar is increasingly tapping into two contractors that are using foreign workers to take work originally promised to local contractors. This includes work on multi-million dollar press lines and installing module lines. The CBTU has told folks that they have lots of proof that foreign workers are performing this unspecialized work, and they have unionized members who are unemployed that could be doing this. In fact, after the Prime Minister met with NextStar on March 14, the union actually amped up their hiring of foreign workers after talking to him. I'd be curious as to what was discussed in that meeting that they felt after meeting the Prime Minister they could actually hire more foreign workers for the construction.

And there is no pause going on, as was claimed. That's the reason the union wrote this letter—there is no pause. In fact, they've got to the point where they're frustrated. Even after the threat of going to the media, the union had yet another meeting with management to try to get an MOU, an understanding, on not having foreign replacement workers. These are jobs, just to be clear, that Canadians can be hired for; workers who are available for work but are being replaced by people not from Canada. They're generally known as a foreign person coming in to replace workers in Canada—a foreign replacement worker—and that is what's happening at this plant.

The contract says they can only hire Canadians, or a limited number. I can tell you at one point NextStar said they were going to hire 600 full-time foreign replacement workers in the running of the plant. They also said they would have up to 1,000 foreign replacement workers. That was in the media. They changed their tune once they started to get public pressure by this committee and others.

This is a real issue. It's not something the government says Conservatives are making up. This is the letter from the union. Perhaps they didn't hear it. I could read it again, Mr. Chair, just in case some of the members' earpieces weren't working. I'll leave that.

However, if you don't know this, this is on the Government of Canada's website: material handler for the plant, languages needed, Korean. This is the Government of Canada's own website, and it says who can apply: candidates with or without a valid Canadian work permit. That's on the Government of Canada's website. Do you recognize the logo of NextStar Energy? A general affairs specialist is hardly some specialized worker from Korea who needs to come here. Let's see, it says that as a general affairs specialist, you will be responsible for various aspects of the company's operations, providing administrative and organizational support. Your tasks will be related to the efficient functioning of the office and ensuring smooth daily operations of the company. It also says here, “Responsibilities: office management and organization, correspondence handling and mail management, coordination of meetings and events, administrative support for various departments, document management and archiving, managing office supplies and inventory”.

These are really specialized tools that only Koreans have: “Supporting HR in recruitment and training”; “Building and maintaining positive relationships with vendors and clients”; “Assisting with travel arrangements for employees”; and “Ensuring compliance with safety and company policies”. Requirements include “Experience in a similar role or related field”; “Strong organizational and multitasking skills” and “Excellent verbal and written [skills]”.

They sound like very specialized, unique things that you can only find in South Korea, plus “Fluency in Korean”.

However, that's not all, Mr. Chair.

Here is another general affairs specialist with similar types of things, including more office management, in a separate posting by NextStar. It says that Korean is preferred. For the position of material handler, Korean is an asset. The position of general affairs specialist requires fluency in Korean. The position of electrode quality engineer is bilingual in English and Korean. A module production planner position requires English and Korean proficiency. In quality management systems, global experience is preferred. For a module production technician, the language requirement is reading and writing in English. Hey, we found one! A listing for a cell/electrode quality engineer says, “Bilingual in English [and] Korean”.

It goes on and on and on.

MP Kusmierczyk clearly isn't looking at the job sites when he is making this defence of his government, and I understand why he's doing this. He's embarrassed by the fact that his government didn't think to use the words “employ Canadians” when they made this commitment. He's embarrassed by the fact that the company has said it is going to hire up to 1,000 construction workers who are outside specialists.

Therefore, there will be 600 Canadians and 1,000 foreign workers. I guess it takes 1,000 specialized people to oversee 600 general construction workers. Also, there will be 500 to 600 permanent workers from Korea out of 2,500.

This is not one or two here or there. This is a serious issue. This is $15 billion in taxpayer production subsidies in this plant. This is half a billion dollars in construction costs being paid by the taxpayer. If you're going to do business with the Government of Canada, and you're going to suck all this government taxpayer money—Volkswagen, Stellantis, Northvolt, Honda—you had better be prepared for some public scrutiny. You had better be prepared to prove that you're hiring Canadians.

It's beyond me why the NDP does not want clarity on this. The motion at the industry committee, by the way, for those of you who don't watch the clock, ended an hour ago. That's why people are here. That motion was only to have the ministers appear. It wasn't to actually have the contract—

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just to clarify, INDU is not studying Stellantis. We're in the middle of a very lengthy clause-by-clause discussion on Bill C-27. There was a motion proposed at the end of INDU—they're probably still discussing it now—to have the Minister of Industry appear, but the motion has nothing to do with the contract. They're very different.

The effort on Bill C-27 will probably take us well into the fall, so I don't imagine that there will be another study at industry on this. We had one meeting in camera with officials after we viewed the contract. That's it, and that's not a study. There's not going to be a report either, because it was in camera, just for clarification.

On this, lobbing it off to industry is lobbing it off to a committee that won't get to it until before Christmas. That's not timely when you're spending $52 billion of Canadian money. This committee has the right to look into any spending and spending commitments—government operations is its name, the mighty OGGO, as I'm told—and actual expenditures of the Government of Canada. Some of these expenditures are actual now, particularly the construction ones. The government is already subsidizing half a billion dollars on the construction of the Stellantis plant and investing $778 million dollars of subsidy on the construction of the Volkswagen plant before you even get to the production subsidies. Those are the contracts right now that are in dispute, and the money we're spending is for the construction contracts.

I appreciate not wanting to distract the committee and take time from its important work, but I think that this is the appropriate place to study it, as my friend MP Genuis put forward, because, one, it is a government expenditure, and two, industry can't look at this in the foreseeable future because of the extensive nature of Bill C-27, the privacy and artificial intelligence bill.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to say we had a very detailed subcommittee report that came back to the committee. We had agreed on a set schedule. We have quite a lot of business that we've prioritized and we've even wedged in some additional meetings to make sure that everybody has opportunities to study their various topics.

Obviously, Conservatives, we know that you are bringing a new motion every single week with a timeline that seems to want to delay Bill C-27 work. I'm not saying this isn't an important topic. I don't want you to hear it that way.

I notice, though, Mr. Williams, Honda isn't even included. You started by talking about Honda and it is not even in the motion you brought, which is kind of strange.

Regardless, I think that our committee calendar is completely full until the end of June when we break for the summer, so I would say that we stick to that. We reached consensus with the Conservatives around having an additional meeting on SDTC. If you want to have this instead of that, I think that's an option you could consider, but when you bring a new topic every single week that is supposedly urgent, I would just say that you've got to prioritize at some point and say what you really want to study.

I think we've all agreed Bill C-27 is taking priority. We're digging in; we're doing some great work together. We want to keep that momentum going. Maybe you can wait until the fall to study this or swap out SDTC. That's what I would humbly suggest as an alternative.

Thanks.

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

We're studying C-27. It's a motion we had to make.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I didn't think we'd get this far today.

This follows nicely the good dialogue we just had with Mr. Schaan regarding how implicit or explicit this bill actually becomes. CPC-7 proposes to define sensitive information:

sensitive, in relation to information, includes any information pertaining to an individual that reveals

(a) their racial or ethnic origin;

(b) their political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union or political membership, or political contribution history;

(c) their sexual orientation or sexual habits;

(d) genetic data or biometric data that can uniquely identify them;

(e) their health condition, including any treatment or prescription on their medical record;

(f) government identifiers, such as their social security, passport or driver's license numbers;

(g) the content of their electronic devices, including messages, images, address books, calendars and call history;

(h) their passwords; or

(i) financial data.

Bill C-27 makes several references to the terms “sensitive information” and “sensitivity” without providing definitions for the terms. This approach is incredibly problematic for consumers and businesses if the definition is left to interpretation, with the obvious risk that some information will be regarded as sensitive data and other information as not, and those interpretations will vary. To resolve this issue, stakeholder groups and the Privacy Commissioner have advocated for a clear definition of the term, outlining a list of items legislators constitute as sensitive information.

I note that, in committee testimony on October 31, the Centre for Digital Rights stated:

At the moment, the definition of sensitive categories of personal information is left open and the words “sensitive” and “sensitivity” are used throughout Bill C-27 without definition (with the exception of minors). Thus, the definition is left to the organization with the obvious risk that some sensitive data will not be regarded as such, and that interpretations will vary.

This is a key element that differentiates the CPPA from other modern privacy laws like the EU GDPR and those found in California and Quebec:

So as to provide certainty for Canadians and Canadian businesses, and to align with both Quebec's Law 25...Bill C-27 should define “sensitive information” first by establishing a general principle of sensitivity followed by an explicitly open-ended list of examples....

The Office of Privacy Commissioner, in its submission to our committee, stated:

That a definition of sensitive information be included in the CPPA, that would establish a general principle for sensitivity followed by an open-ended list of examples.

In the GDPR, article 9, paragraph 1, it states:

Processing of personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.

It's very clear we relied heavily on the GDPR example in putting forward this proposed amendment.

I note that the Canadian Research Insights Council, on May 9, stated:

Bill C-27 could offer more protection for minors, for which the Bill is nearly silent. Bill C-27 indicates that information with respect to minors be considered sensitive information but offers no definition of minor nor sensitive information.

Australia's Privacy Act follows a similar line of language to the GDPR.

In America, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act outlines a whole suite of matters related to their definition, including:

(i) A government-issued identifier, such as a Social Security number, passport number, or driver's license number....

(ii) Any information that describes or reveals the past, present or future physical health, mental health, disability, diagnosis or health care condition or treatment of an individual.

The list includes financial information and:

(iv) Biometric information.

(v) Genetic information.

(vi) Precise geolocation information.

(vii) An individual's private communications....

The list includes passwords, sexual orientation or:

(ix) ...sexual behaviour in a manner inconsistent with the individual's reasonable expectation regarding disclosure of such information.

(x) Calendar information, address book information, phone or text logs, photos, audio recordings, or videos, maintained for private use by an individual, regardless of whether such information is stored on the individual's device....

It includes non-consensual intimate images, information that reveals the video content or services requested or selected by an individual, and minors' information.

I'll go on.

Daniel Konikoff from the University of Toronto stated:

The term “sensitivity” appears often throughout the CPPA, yet it remains undefined in the Bill's glossary. Bill C-27 should follow global standards and explicitly define sensitive information to capture the above-mentioned categories with an emphasis on biometric information, which is at the core of an individual's identity. The EU AI Act is already ahead of the curve on this, explicitly defining biometric data in a way that acknowledges its sensitivity, its unique capacity to identify a person, and the importance of consent in systems that identify based on “...physiological, behavioural and psychological human features”....

The CPPA's failure to capture biometric data as sensitive information leaves far too much up to interpretation, and may lead businesses to establish inadequate protections—or none at all—for information that merits stronger safeguards. Without this definition, other sections of the CPPA—such as 53(2) and 62(2)(e), which refer to retention periods for sensitive personal information, or 57(1), which pertains to establishing safeguards proportionate to the sensitivity of the information—are left open to interpretation.

California follows the federal law in America, which provides much of the same language in terms of sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origin, or religious or philosophical beliefs.

I'll note that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association outlined that sensitive information remains undefined in Bill C-27. It said, “Parliament should follow international standards and explicitly define sensitive information to better protect special categories of personal information.”

Bill C-27 defines “personal information” as “information about an identifiable individual.” According to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, personal information includes names, ID numbers, “location data, an online identifier or...factors...to the physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity” of the person.

I think there is ample testimony from business and civil liberties groups as well as the Privacy Commissioner outlining the need to have a definition in there. At the same time, I acknowledge some of the rationale we've heard from the department about the nature of lists. However, I also relied heavily on the expertise of the Privacy Commissioner when putting this forward. Our intention behind it is to avoid broad interpretation if and when this bill is enacted and becomes the new standard for Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Mark Schaan]

Again, this is not knowing what the initial service agreement was with the individual. When the information was actually collected, when the account for your four-year-old was first generated they had to tell you in plain language, which Bill C-27 will require, “This is what we're going to do with your information, are you comfortable with that?”

First of all, it's a four-year-old, which means you're making that determination. I'm sure your four-year-old is probably very clever, but they probably wouldn't meet the capability tests struck by the Supreme Court to make determinations on their own. You would be making that determination to say that you are willing to hand over this information.

There's guidance on that, in terms of what then occurs. It would be very much determined by what you said yes to. They could come back to you to say, “It looks you might be in a household that accompanies a four-year-old. I bet you probably really like PAW Patrol. Maybe you should watch or buy more of it.” It would depend on what you originally consented to.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

When and if Bill C-27 is passed, would the bill provide the safeguards needed with some of the amendments already passed to stop that current commercial practice?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Amendment CPC‑6 adds, after line 31 on page 5, the following definition of the term “profiling”:

Profiling means any form of automated processing of personal information consisting of the use of personal information to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to an individual, in particular to analyze or predict aspects concerning that individual's performance at work, economic situation, health, reliability, behaviour, location or movements.

In his brief to the committee on Bill C‑27, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada pointed out a gap in the bill. He said that, “unlike the European Union's general data protection regulation (GDPR) and other modern privacy laws in California and Quebec,” Bill C‑27 doesn't contain any provisions requiring organizations to take protective measures against profiling carried out by automated decision‑making systems. As drafted in the bill, the obligations would apply to organizations only when they use automated decision‑making systems to make decisions, recommendations or predictions about an individual. However, as the commissioner stated, “while profiling may be implicitly included in recommendations or predictions, not including it explicitly in the [proposed legislation] could create unnecessary ambiguity resulting in a significant gap” in terms of privacy. As a result, “often‑opaque activities such as data brokering—selling or … making available datasets about individuals which they will typically be unaware of—may not have the same needed transparency.” It's also unclear “if the obligations would apply to personalized digital environments,” such as the metaverse, in this case Facebook.

Although Bill C‑27 as currently drafted doesn't include any reference to the term “profiling”, the Conservatives are moving two amendments that use the term. As a result, this definition must be added.

Amendment CPC‑6 seeks to add a definition of the term “profiling” to the bill in order to support other Conservative amendments that use the term. These amendments seek to allow individuals to file an appeal against automated decisions made about them when they have been profiled, and to introduce a requirement for organizations to explain, in plain language, how their automated decision‑making systems profile selected groups.

With your permission, Mr. Chair, I would like to ask the witnesses a question.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada and stakeholders from the Centre for Digital Rights have expressed concerns about the current gaps in decision‑making.

Are there currently any other gaps in the bill related to automated processing or decision‑making?

[Mark Schaan]

At the international level, a number of approaches establish rights and responsibilities with regard to children's personal information. For example, the children's code in England sets the age of majority at 18. The Canadian bill is perfectly compatible with this approach.

We must acknowledge that, for the purposes of this bill, age matters because any information concerning children or minors is sensitive.

Compatibility won't really be an issue. The organizations in Canada will comply with the provisions set out in Bill C‑27, which recognizes the sensitive nature of children's information. Since Canada sets a high standard, this lays a good foundation for complying with all the other legislative approaches in different countries. If the provisions set out in Bill C‑27 are adhered to in Canada, the organizations can comply with the legislation in effect in England, and maybe even in the European Union.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

In this case, the best solution would be to meet with the minister to discuss the main estimates on May 8, and then find a later date between now and the end of the session to discuss Rio Tinto. I think that this would suit everyone. If members of Parliament have urgent questions about Rio Tinto, the minister can still answer them, even though he'll be there to talk about the main estimates. That way, we still have an hour to discuss each topic.

That's what we'll do. Thank you, colleagues.

That brings us to our regularly scheduled programming on Bill C-27, and if I'm not mistaken we were on CPC-4.

Mr. Masse, the floor is yours on CPC-4.

(On clause 2)

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Just to speak briefly to this, the estimates are important too. As we're creating this Bill C-27 sausage, it's important to have the minister talk about the estimates because there's money in the budget related to Bill C-27, so the timing would be extra important this time.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

As it is currently drafted, Bill C-27 provides no definition for the term “minor”, despite several mentions of the term throughout the text of the bill. In my opinion, this is problematic. In the absence of a definition, the definition of what constitutes a minor will have the meaning ascribed to it by provincial or territorial age-of-majority laws. For instance, it's 18 in Quebec and 19 in my province of British Columbia.

Different definitions across Canadian jurisdictions will, as some witnesses have said, “make compliance increasingly challenging and can put organizations in a position where they will need to build and implement different privacy practices by location raising both the technical costs incurred as well as the risk of failing to comply with a myriad of obligations by jurisdiction”.

This amendment seeks to resolve these issues by defining a minor as an individual under the age of 18. The age of 18 was selected to align with the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child, the U.K. children's code and the California age-appropriate design code. Choosing this definition will also bring Canada into alignment with the introduction of the children's code and age-appropriate applications in CPC-17.

I've spoken with Elizabeth Denham, my new favourite British Columbian, who designed the U.K. children's code. Her main concern with our proposed children's code was not using the age of 18, especially considering Canada's obligation under the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child, as I mentioned.

I would also say that, in testimony, we heard from David Fraser. He is from McInnes Cooper. He appeared at our meeting 91 on October 24. He stated:

One thing I'm a bit concerned about is that the current bill would be difficult to operationalize for businesses that operate across Canada. Whether or not somebody is a minor currently depends upon provincial law. That varies from province to province, and implementing consistent programs across the country would be difficult. I would advocate putting in the legislation that a minor is 18 years or below.

I will point out again that California's new online privacy and safety law for children outlines the age of 18, and it's modelled on the U.K. age-appropriate design code, which became enforceable on September 2, 2020. I would also note that, when we think about Canada's trade relationship with the United States, there are lots of precedents in American jurisdictions as well.

I reference these partly because of the testimony we heard from Scott Lamb. I can't recall the exact meeting, but I did have a follow-up conversation with Mr. Lamb where he talked about interpreting the existing privacy law in Canada and working on behalf of clients who have business in both Canada and the United States. He said that, from the perspective of applicable companies, they would often defer to the definitions included or the practices from American states and jurisdictions, and apply those same standards in Canada. This, of course, goes along with the design code they have in California. He was probably doing business with companies in California.

On July 1, 2024, Florida's law will go into effect. It applies not only to social media companies but also to online platforms that are defined to include online games and online gaming platforms. It defines a minor as someone under 18—not just children under the age of 13—in all online platforms that are predominantly accessed by minors.

Arkansas has passed the Social Media Safety Act, which, again, uses the age of 18 and has certain consent provisions related to the age of 18. Utah passed a law recently that prohibits kids under 18 from using social media between certain hours. That's a little excessive, but again, it's using the age of 18 with age-verification provisions. In Louisiana, it's 18 as well. Texas bans kids under 18 from joining a wide variety of social media sites without parental consent. I'm just outlining some of the great examples from America.

In our industry committee meeting number 98, Michael Beauvais said that the term “minor” must be defined. He said:

First, several key definitions [in this bill] need to be clarified. These include a definition of a minor and a definition of capacity to determine when a minor is “capable” of exercising rights and recourse under the act.

Michelle Gordon also said, in meeting number 98, that “minor” needs to be defined:

First, the law should define the terms “minor” and “sensitive”. Without these definitions, businesses, which already have the upper hand in this law, are left to decide what is sensitive and appropriate for minors. The CPPA should follow the lead of other leading privacy laws.

She then—and this is my reason for what I stated earlier—referenced the California Consumer Privacy Act, the U.S. COPPA, the EU's GDPR and, indeed, Quebec's law 25.

David Fraser, in meeting number 91, said that “minor” does need to be defined. He stated:

One thing I'm a bit concerned about is that the current bill would be difficult to operationalize for businesses that operate across Canada. Whether or not somebody is a minor currently depends upon provincial law. That varies from province to province, and implementing consistent programs across the country would be difficult.

In meeting number 92, Michael Geist, who, as I think we all know, is Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law, stated:

I'll note that one of the real concerns arises in differing definitions of minors from province to province and the like. Therefore, one thing I think we need to include within the legislation—I know other witnesses have highlighted it—is the need for some sort of consistent definition here so that we know there is that consistency of protection.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada submitted a brief on November 13, which stated:

Under the CPPA “minors” are not explicitly defined leaving the interpretation to be defined by the provincial/territorial age of majority laws. This lack of federal clarity makes compliance increasingly challenging and can put organizations in a position where they will need to build and implement different privacy practices by location raising both the technical costs incurred as well as the risk of failing to comply with a myriad of obligations by jurisdiction.

Our recommendation would be to amend the Bill to include a single age threshold nation-wide. The Bill should specifically define the term “minor” and perhaps align with Quebec's Law 25—

I will note, for my Quebec colleagues, that he did say that as a suggestion.

—as it is already in effect, and which establishes a minor as someone under the age of 14 years old. This will be a less complicated approach will keep minors safe and set companies up for success—not failure.

I'm going to go back to this point in just a minute, because I think it's really important.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce also stated:

As the term “minor” is not defined in the CPPA, the term will have the meaning ascribed to it by provincial/territorial “age of majority” laws, which provide that, in the absence of a definition or an indication of a contrary intention, a “minor” is a natural person under the age of 18 in AB, MB, ON, PEI, QC, and SK and a natural person under the age of 19 in BC, NB, NL, NT, NS, NU, YT. Differing definitions of “minor” across Canadian jurisdictions will require businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions to develop and implement different: (1) consent management policies, practices, and procedures; (2) user/customer experiences; (3) retention and breach reporting policies; and (4) security safeguards for different sets of jurisdictions. It may also require such businesses to engage in age profiling in jurisdictions where a “minor” includes a person who is 18 years old. This will impose an undue burden on such businesses and may lead to customer confusion. It is recommended to harmonize the definition with Quebec Law 25

I am reading this testimony for you specifically, Mr. Garon, because I did have internal debate about whether it should be 14 or 18. The reason I mentioned amendment CPC-17 is that, while I do note that a minor is defined as someone under the age of 14, as I've read two times already into the record tonight, the challenge I have approaching this as a parent and as an uncle is that I don't believe the decision-making capacities of children at 15, 16 and 17 are necessarily always developed to the extent that they need to be for them to make rational decisions about their well-being.

It kind of reminds me of a policy in the school district where my kids go. As a parent, I see that children in the school district have access to every social media platform imaginable. They can go and buy things on Amazon accounts without their parents knowing. They can look at whatever they want to on the Internet, but if you want to go skating with your class, my gosh, you need your parents' permission.

I'll end there. I look forward to a discussion on this. The testimony is very clear that we do need to have a discussion on defining what a minor is, largely for businesses' purposes. I would contend as well that it's for future amendments that will be put into this law, and my hope is that it will safeguard children from online harms.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

This is CPC-4, reference number 12753822. The original amendment that was put forward stated, “minor means an individual under 14 years of age”, in the context of Bill C-27. I would like to change that as a good-faith amendment, if it's actually allowed, to “minor means an individual under 18 years of age”. I have been debating this one for a bit, personally.

Before I go on, is that clear for everyone? In my amendment, I'm changing the age of a minor from 14 to 18.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Because of the interruption for the vote, if we can get closer to two hours on Bill C-27.... It's moving along so well.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This one's not a test, I don't think.

Throughout the bill, the term “lawful authority” appears. Now, we're in the early stages of the bill, and we found that our concern was that nowhere in the definition section of the bill does it actually define what “lawful authority” means. Without even providing that term, I think it provides a bit of ambiguity in there.

For instance, proposed section 44 of Bill C-27 allows an organization to share “an individual's personal information” with a government institution upon request “for the purpose of enforcing federal or provincial law”. The language of proposed section 44 is taken from PIPEDA, as I understand it, and it is problematic, given that it outlines few privacy safeguards that have been afforded to individuals in the past with Supreme Court decisions like the 2014 R. v. Spencer case. I'm sure everyone on the committee is familiar with that—I know that some of the witnesses are—but I'll just go over a summary of it.

R. v. Spencer, in 2014, according to Wikipedia, “is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on informational privacy. The Court unanimously held that internet users were entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in subscriber information held by Internet service providers. And as such, police attempts to access such data could be subject to section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At issue was whether the police could request subscriber information associated with an IP address from an Internet service provider without prior judicial authorisation, who could then voluntarily provide it. The Supreme Court ruled that the request for internet subscriber information infringed on the Charter's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.”

Law enforcement, with some exceptions, in my view—in our view—generally should be required to produce a court order when asking for somebody's personal information: a bank account, personal messages, health information and that kind of thing.

The ambiguity with respect to the meaning of “lawful authority” that existed in PIPEDA with regard to disclosures to law enforcement remains in the CPPA and will likely result in continued disclosures of personal information without consent by organizations to police and to other law enforcement agencies in the absence of a court order.

Given this issue, the Privacy Commissioner recommended that the definition of “lawful authority” for purposes of sections like proposed section 44 in this bill be amended to clarify that individuals should still enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy.

In the Privacy Commissioner's submission on Bill C-11 in May 2021, the Privacy Commissioner said:

Beyond transparency, clarity is also required with respect to the impact of the 2014 R v. Spencer decision with respect to when the state can obtain personal information via warrantless access. When Bill S-4 was before Parliament, the OPC recommended that:

a legal framework, based on the Spencer decision, is needed to provide clarity and guidance to help organizations comply with PIPEDA and ensure that state authorities respect the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. Such a framework would provide Canadians with greater transparency about private sector disclosures of their personal information to state agencies.

The Privacy Commissioner went on to state:

The ambiguity with respect to the meaning of “lawful authority” that existed in PIPEDA remains in the CPPA, as evidenced by companies' continued disclosures of personal information without consent to police and other law enforcement agencies absent a court order.

As such, we reiterate and update for Bill C-11—

At the time, that's what he was dealing with.

—a recommendation previously made in our 2015 submission to Parliament on Bill S-4, that a clarifying provision be introduced that defines lawful authority for the purposes of section 44. This provision would make clear that discretionary disclosures to law enforcement following a request should be permissible only where there are exigent circumstances, pursuant to a reasonable law other than section 44 of the CPPA, or in prescribed circumstances where personal information would not attract a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Recommendation 19: That a definition clarifying the meaning of “lawful authority” for the purposes of section 44 be introduced.

It wasn't. In his submission for this bill, on April 26, 2023, the Privacy Commissioner again proposed recommendation 19: “That a definition clarifying the meaning of 'lawful authority' for the purposes of section 44 be introduced” in this bill.

This amendment follows on the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner on numerous occasions to “make clear that discretionary disclosures to law enforcement...should be permissible only where there are exigent circumstances, pursuant to a reasonable law other than section 44 of the CPPA, or in prescribed circumstances where personal information would not attract a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

That's by way of introduction. I haven't read the actual amendment, which is fairly short, but I know the witnesses have read it.

Do you agree with the Privacy Commissioner that this needs to be added to this bill, that we need to add a definition in the definitions section for “lawful authority”, which is a term used frequently throughout this legislation?

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

All right.

The Commissioner's submission on Bill C-27 reads as follows on pages 13 and 14: There appears to be a discrepancy between the French and English versions of the definition of “de-identify” under section 2 of the CPPA. The English version clearly states that de-identified information means that one cannot directly identify an individual from such information, but there is nevertheless a risk that re-identification could occur. In the French version, the wording appears to focus on lessening the risk of reidentification rather than clearly stating that the individual should not be directly identifiable despite the fact that such a risk cannot be completely eliminated. To avoid potential interpretive discrepancies, the French version of this definition should be modified to reflect the more rigorous meaning in the English version.

Do you share the Commissioner's view?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Colleagues, we will resume. This part of the meeting should run until 8:00 p.m.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming clause-by-clause 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.

Once again, I would like to welcome Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector; Samir Chhabra, director general, Marketplace Framework Policy Branch; and Runa Angus, senior director, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector.

Thank you for being with us on this Wednesday evening.

If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Turnbull had a subamendment to NDP-2.

Mr. Turnbull, I'll yield the floor to you.

(On clause 2)

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

If we remove the expression “best practices”, that imposes a tremendous obligation on businesses. The fact that the commissioner can determine, among other things, that a person has been wronged and should not have been identified gives him—and I think this is Mr. Masse's intention—substantial power. It's a very important protection.

In the current version of Bill C‑27, it says that generally accepted practices would be determined de facto by the private sector. Mr. Turnbull's amendment proposes a compromise between the two.

What I'm trying to get at, then, is whether the proposed subamendment to G‑2 gives the government an opportunity to shirk its obligation to regulate properly.

Do you understand my question?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

First of all, Mr. Chair, I would like to express some mild discomfort.

The process that led us to the clause‑by‑clause study of this bill isn't clear. We know this, and it's been said many times. The department held private meetings. We haven't received a report or brief on the subject. We don't know what was said. It's difficult for me, as a parliamentarian, at times.

I'm assuming the officials aren't doing this voluntarily. I don't know if they're defending the industry or not, but I get the impression that they're selling us Bill C‑27 much more than they're answering our questions. What's more, we don't know where the information they have comes from.

This situation makes things difficult and undermines confidence in the witnesses we're hearing from today. For example, there's the question of harmonization with Quebec's Bill 25. Witnesses could have told us that this aspect can be regulated in Quebec and that it's in the legislation. But instead, they're trying to sell us on the bill. It's a sales pitch.

I find it very difficult to accept the way the government has acted. We're working in good faith. I'm not filibustering, but we want to work in good faith, and parliamentary work isn't easy.

The attitude of the witnesses may not be voluntary, but I urge them to make an effort, to answer questions much more than give us with a sales pitch. At the end of the day, we were elected by the people to study this type of bill. We can't know everything in detail about the bills of the ten provinces and three territories. In my last turn, the answer I got was to convince me that the current version of the bill is in line with what Quebec is doing. I find it very difficult to work this way. It's problematic in the context of our parliamentary work. Our work requires rigour. I just want to say that.

Now we're trying to determine whether it's up to the industry to tell us what the best practices are and whether we can compromise on that. Mr. Turnbull showed me the subamendment he's proposing to amend G‑2. It proposes that “businesses must comply with best practices and with what has been determined by regulation”.

I don't know if you've read that subamendment or not. We can ask ourselves whether this text gives the government the possibility of not regulating, of making the decision not to adopt regulations and, as in its current version, leaving the choice of best practices to the industry.

Obviously, since the bill is already drafted like that, it implies that it would be the preference of the government, or of the current government, at least.

Can the government make that decision? Can it table a regulation with no content?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you.

My second question relates to the broad discussion we've had, but it's a question that hasn't been asked yet. Does Bill C-27 provide for the scenario whereby data, once deemed anonymized under the possibility of new technology, is deemed to be reidentified?

Would it be, therefore, subject to the act again if that data was reidentified? Is there a clause you can specify in the bill that addresses that scenario?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

My question is a follow‑up to the conversation we had about aligning with the Quebec legislation. We've discussed it privately as well, but we can do it openly.

According to the federal government, the Quebec legislation refers to best practices. That's true. The Quebec legislation does refer to best practices. Consequently, according to the government, Bill C‑27, in its current form, would be consistent with the Quebec legislation.

That statement seems to me to be absolutely false. Although the Quebec legislation does refer to best practices, companies will have to anonymize and de‑identify data in accordance with the terms and conditions established by the Government of Quebec, by regulation.

Let's agree on the fact that there are best practices, that's one thing. However, it isn't enough to include those words. Mr. Masse said so as well.

We talked about the Canadian Anonymization Network, or CANON network. It's important to note that this is a lobby group. It's a collection of companies. To be able to come and speak to us here, to meet with members of Parliament, members of that network must be registered in the Registry of Lobbyists.

I'm not at all convinced that the industry won't set its own standards in this area. I think that's clear. This is in no way consistent with what is set out in Quebec's Bill 25. The government has no authority to establish criteria by regulation. I'll need to be convinced of that, but it will be difficult.

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

Do you think that the large number of interventions made by some groups, far more than others, could give the impression that industry players are trying to soften Bill C‑27, to make it more acceptable to them or easier to interpret and implement?

Are industry players looking to make their jobs easier at the expense of the real need to fundamentally protect privacy or children?

The purpose of the proposed legislation is to protect Canadians. Do you get the impression that these organizations want to water down the bill—if I can put it that way—to make it easier to interpret?

[Mark Schaan]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We are open to the idea of meeting with all stakeholders on Bill C‑27. We have received many requests for meetings, which I have accepted.

Obviously, my schedule is quite busy, especially because I come to testify before House committees, but members of my team are available to meet with those people.

I think there are two important parts to your question.

We met with representatives of the Canadian Marketing Association, as well as representatives of the Canadian Anonymization Network, CANON, a non-profit organization that brings together experts, other non-profit organizations and academics. That group has attended a number or conferences and meetings on the bill.

As I said, I accept any requests for a meeting to discuss the bill.

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

Okay.

Following consultations held after this bill was introduced, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry put forward a series of amendments last September. He told us that you had consulted about 300 individuals and groups.

In addition, during the consultations, people who were called to our committee meetings told us that their names were not on the list of those 300 individuals and groups. Some came to tell us that they had not been consulted or that they would have liked to be consulted, or that they would have liked to see much broader consultations. In fact, we have been told several times that the consultations on Bill C‑27 should have been much more extensive.

Now we have a series of amendments, including amendments NDP‑2 and G‑2, which again show that some people have tried to get you to change your perception of the bill or the way you're drafting the bill.

You met with some groups much more intensively than others, if I understood correctly. That is the case for representatives of the Canadian Anonymization of Data Network, CANON, whom you have apparently met with about 10 times.

Why has it been necessary to meet with representatives of this group more than 10 times since the bill's introduction and our analysis of it in committee?

[Mark Schaan]

In collaboration with my colleagues from the Department of Justice, my team is responsible for the drafting of Bill C‑27, whose objectives were set by ministers and cabinets.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the witnesses for being with us.

At the outset, madam, gentlemen, I would like to say that the series of questions I am going to ask you are not so much about the amendment itself as about the process that led to it.

I think we all agree that the definition of the verb “anonymize” in Bill C‑27 is a very important element for the future and for the interpretation that will be made of it going forward.

I absolutely do not want you to consider my series of questions as a form of judgment. I just want to understand the process.

Almost two years ago, the government introduced this bill, which is now being studied in committee. We analyzed it with the help of witnesses, and today we find ourselves with more than 50 amendments from the government.

Were you the ones who drafted the bill in the first place?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good morning, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 118 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. In addition, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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.

Today we are continuing clause‑by‑clause consideration of the bill.

I'd like to welcome back the representatives from the Department of Industry and thank them for joining us again.

We have Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister, strategy and innovation policy sector; Samir Chhabra, director general, marketplace framework policy branch; and Runa Angus, senior director, strategy and innovation policy sector.

Colleagues, as you will recall, we were at amendment NDP‑2, which relates to clause 2.

(Clause 2)

Monsieur Williams, you had the floor when we were debating NDP-2. I'll give it back to you as we resume the clause-by-clause on Bill C-27.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I'll read this for the people who are intently following along at home.

I move that Bill C-27, in clause 2, be amended by replacing lines 16 and 17 on page 3 with the following: “modify personal information to ensure that no individual”.

I'll just speak briefly to it, and then others can ask questions.

This comes from the Privacy Commissioner. It's to strengthen the framework for de-identification and anonymized information. Basically, it's to protect and de-identify anonymized data, and it comes from the Privacy Commissioner's recommendations.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

What importance does California have in the development of technology that might be applicable to Bill C-27?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our officials for being here today.

I'll start with my notes. In the last meeting, I did introduce Conservative amendment CPC-1, which would amend the preamble to include “fundamental right to privacy” and include text that would state, “the processing of personal information and data should respect minors’ privacy and their best interests”.

This subamendment clearly deletes the “best interests” clause. I will note in good faith that later on in the amendment process, there is universal agreement on the fundamental right to privacy. My real concern here is the second phrase that's being deleted: “respect minors’ privacy and their best interests”.

I put forward this amendment because it was one of the key recommendations tabled by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. In the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's submission, they recommended the following, in addition to putting in “fundamental right to privacy”, which I think there's unanimous agreement on at this committee:

The preamble should also reflect the importance of protecting children and minors. Jurisdictions around the world have recognized that children and minors may be impacted by technologies differently than adults, be at greater risk of being affected by privacy-related issues, and therefore require special protections.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner also said:

Updating the preamble in such a manner would encourage organizations to build privacy for children into products and services, from the start and by design. Since Canada’s privacy laws were designed to be technology neutral, this would help ensure that the best interests of children will be considered for new and emerging technologies, and for future uses of data.

It went on:

...adding the proposed language to the section that frames the legislation’s intent would help ensure that the best interests of children and minors are prioritized and consistently considered across all the related [bills].

I believe the law should recognize the rights of the child and the right to be a child. Taking into consideration the push-back on this language from the government—and some of the comments made by you, Mr. Schaan, at our last committee meeting—I hosted a meeting with the Privacy Commissioner yesterday to ask him to further emphasize the importance of including this language in Bill C-27. I will note that Mr. Masse joined me at that meeting. In having this important meeting, the commissioner gave some key insights as to why it is crucial to keep the “best interests of the child” language within the preamble.

Mr. Schaan, at the last committee meeting, we heard that the term “best interests of the child” was a subjective construct. After speaking with the leading experts in this field, I have to say that I don't agree with your interpretation and the way you phrased that term.

Can you provide us with the legal opinion that led to you making that statement on behalf of the department at the meeting?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

It's good to be back, colleagues.

Thanks to the officials for being here. I know you'll spend some time with us over the next couple of months. We look forward to working with you and getting to know you better.

I had asked the officials numerous questions to set the stage for introducing a subamendment that, at least we think, is a bit of a compromise on the language and provides further clarity. It's taking out some language, and it's based on some arguments that were made last time. Hopefully, those clarifications were helpful for committee members.

This was drafted by my colleague Iqwinder, who is here. I am introducing it today because he was absent last time and I intended to do it then. I want to thank my colleague Mr. Gaheer for his work on this.

The subamendment is that CPC-1, which proposes to amend clause 2 of Bill C-27 by adding a preamble after line 7 on page 3, be amended as follows:

(a) replacing “Whereas Parliament recognizes the importance of the privacy and data protection principles contained in various international instruments;” with the following:

“Whereas Parliament recognizes the importance of privacy and data protection;”

(b) replacing “Whereas the processing of personal information and data should respect minors' privacy and their best interests;” with the following:

“Whereas minors actively take part in the digital and data-driven economy and their personal information is worthy of stronger protection given their varying levels of capacity to understand how it is used by organizations and the potential long-term implications of such use;”

(c) deleting the following:

“Whereas the design, development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems across provincial and international borders should be consistent with national and international standards to protect individuals from potential harm;”

(d) replacing “Whereas Parliament recognizes that artificial intelligence systems and other emerging technologies should uphold Canadian norms and values in line with the principles of international human rights law;” with the following:

“Whereas Parliament recognizes that emerging technologies should uphold Canadian norms and values in line with the principles of international human rights law;”

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 117 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Furthermore, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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 our witnesses today and thank you all for being here.

From the Department of Industry, we have Mark Schaan, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector; Samir Chhabra, Director General, Marketplace Framework Policy Branch; and Runa Angus, Senior Director, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector. Thanks to all three of you for being with us again.

If memory serves, Mr. Turnbull had the floor at the end of our last meeting. And if I'm not mistaken, he was preparing to move a subamendment.

Mr. Turnbull.

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

I appreciate that, but of the 55 government amendments, there wasn't one proposed in this area.

Page 8 of the Privacy Commissioner's 2022 submission on this legislation says:

As the preamble would apply to all the Acts comprised in Bill C-27, including the CPPA and AIDA, adding the proposed language to the section that frames the legislation's intent would help ensure that the best interests of children and minors are prioritized and consistently considered across all [aspects of the act].

If the bill's preamble is amended in this manner, does it affect all aspects of the legislation, including the AIDA?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you to all committee members.

Today I am very pleased to speak about CPC-1.

Over the course of all our meetings, I really emphasized the need for a fundamental right to privacy, as many of you did, and the special rights we have the opportunity to put in place, not only to protect our freedoms and ensure fairness in the push for a just society, but to do so specifically for Canadian minors.

Let me break CPC-1 down for you. It essentially embeds the preamble into part 1 of the act and adds a crucial clause. It would read:

Whereas the protection of the fundamental right to privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information is essential to individual autonomy and dignity and to the full enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms in Canada....

Whereas the processing of personal...data should respect minors’ privacy and their best interests....

Why do these changes matter? The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has noted that, as Bill C-27 is currently drafted, the preamble of Bill C-27 appears only in the introductory text of the bill and not at the beginning of the CPPA or the AIDA. According to the Privacy Commissioner, once enacted, neither act will contain any mention of the preamble, which includes the bill's only mention of the fundamental right to privacy. While, yes, I understand that the preamble of an act is not legally binding, it does provide guidance to the courts with regard to the intention of our work in drafting this bill. When privacy interests and those of businesses are in conflict, the inclusion of the preamble will allow the courts to identify the intent of our work here at committee.

In addition to embedding the preamble in the act, this amendment would also make changes to the preamble's existing text. One, it would strengthen the recognition of a person's fundamental right to privacy in the existing text by making a specific reference to the right to privacy. Two, it would recognize that the processing of the personal information of minors should respect their best interests.

These amendments were recommended by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as a means to strengthen privacy protection for all Canadians. More specifically, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, in the submission made on April 26, 2023, made it clear that the preamble of the bill must...and stated, “Privacy is both a fundamental right in itself, and is instrumental to the exercise of other rights.”

Also in this submission, the OPC makes recommendations and proposes amendments in the following five areas to advance this broader theme—privacy as a fundamental right, children's privacy and the rights of the child, appropriate purposes, administrative monetary penalties and disposal. It recommends that the preamble should “recognize that the processing of personal data should respect children’s privacy and the best interests of the child.”

The preamble of the bill would apply to the CPPA and the AIDA, which is why the OPC believes it is important that this amendment is included in the text of the bill. Its submission also stated:

As the preamble would apply to all the Acts comprised in Bill C-27, including the CPPA and AIDA, adding the proposed language to the section that frames the legislation’s intent would help ensure that the best interests of children and minors are prioritized and consistently considered across all the related Acts.

At meeting 87, on September 28, the Privacy Commissioner repeated what was voiced in the OPC submission. He said:

Under the theme of privacy as a fundamental right, I recommend strengthening the preamble and purpose clause to explicitly recognize privacy as a fundamental right, and highlight the need to protect children's privacy and the best interest of the child, so that these important principles inform the interpretation of all aspects of the legislation.

In addition to listening to the recommendations given by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, it is very important for us to listen to what other stakeholders said on this as well.

In meeting 99, on November 28, Elizabeth Denham, who is the chief strategy officer of the Information Accountability Foundation, came to voice her input. She's worked for decades as a privacy professional and worked for 15 years as an information rights regulator in 15 jurisdictions. She previously had a role as the information commissioner for the United Kingdom in 2016, where she brought into oversight the board that administered the general data protection regulation, an important part of EU privacy and human rights law, which was also raised consistently at our meetings.

While working as the U.K.'s information commissioner, she oversaw the creation of a children's appropriate design code, which has influenced the U.K.'s laws related to privacy. The GDPR's children's code of age-appropriate design assists organizations in creating digital services that cater to children's needs, respect their rights and foster their exploration and growth online. In later meetings, I will speak about this further, as we have an amendment that would create a similar code to protect children in Canada. That being said, I think it's important for us to recognize what the GDPR has done in explicitly emphasizing the language of the best interests of the child.

Furthermore, in meeting 99, Ms. Denham emphasized the importance of including “privacy as a fundamental right” and the best interests of the child in the preamble. Two of the leading experts globally, who both happen to be Canadian, are asking for this. Ms. Denham said:

Looking first at Canada's CPPA from a global perspective, I see a big missing piece, and the legislation's language, in my view, needs adjusting so that it explicitly declares privacy as a fundamental right for Canadians. Its absence really puts us behind nations who lead the way in privacy and data protection.

She also stated:

One of them needs to be a statement in the preamble or in the purpose statement that recognizes that companies need to provide services in the best interests of the child. That language comes out of the UN convention that I mentioned earlier. Canada is a signatory to that.

The best interests of the child—

During meeting 98, on November 23, we heard from Michael Beauvais, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto's faculty of law, who said:

...the best interests of the child should be included as a fundamental principle in the act. Doing so would make the child's interests a primary concern in all aspects of the proposed legislation. For example, the best interests of children should matter in specifying the purposes of data collection, use and disclosure, as well as data retention.

During meeting 92, on October 26, Vivek Krishnamurthy, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado law school, said:

Including language that says the best interests of the child need to be taken into consideration throughout the interpretation of the subsequent provisions means that if you're doing a legitimate interest analysis, that's going to impact that analysis by the company or other organization that's collecting and processing children's data.

During meeting 94, on November 2, interim director of the privacy, technology and surveillance program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Daniel Konikoff, alluded to the fact that the current legislation does not give people a fundamental right to privacy. He said:

First, Bill C-27 does not give fundamental rights their due and frequently puts them in second place, behind commercial interests. It has been said before but CCLA believes that it's worth emphasizing that Bill C-27 must be amended to recognize privacy as a human right, both in the CPPA and in AIDA, since privacy is something that should be respected at all points throughout data's life cycle.

The stakeholders and witnesses have been diligent in making the case for why we must include this critical amendment. As legislators who serve a democracy, it is crucial for us to draft legislation that listens to the voices of professionals in this field, and they have been very clear on this point.

I now want to further emphasize why it is important that this bill specify a fundamental right to privacy and a child's best interests in the preamble.

First, privacy has long been considered a fundamental right in Canada. Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Privacy Act and territorial and provincial privacy legislation work together to protect Canadians' personal information held by governments or private institutions.

Recent trends and events have raised new concerns about whether personal information is adequately protected by governments and companies when this information travels outside of Canada's borders. With the increasing flow of computerized data across international borders, particularly to the United States, privacy concerns and the rights of Canadians to safeguard their personal information make it more important than ever to include the language of a fundamental right in the preamble of the bill.

In 1948, Canada signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is an integral part of protecting individual autonomy, dignity and the fundamental rights of people. We need to ensure that the text of this bill emphasizes this right, as article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Privacy is a fundamental right because it is intricately tied to our dignity and the enjoyment of other fundamental freedoms. Let me elaborate on this.

Privacy is not merely about keeping secrets. It's about control over our personal information. Our identities, beliefs and choices are deeply connected to the data we share. We heard that time and time again throughout all of our meetings.

Respecting privacy rights ensures that individuals maintain their dignity and autonomy. Think about some of the conversations we had during the meetings about what this would do to protect young people, who might make a really bad decision when they're young and online. We need to make sure that this law gets it right so that children have a right to have those bad decisions forgotten online and something is not following them throughout their entire careers and personal life. Essentially, it allows us to define who we are without undue interference, either intentionally or unintentionally.

In cases of conflict between private interests—such as convenience, business and security, as outlined in the bill—and public interest, privacy should always prevail. This balance acknowledges that, while innovation and security are essential, they must not come at the expense of individual privacy rights.

Privacy isn't an obstacle to progress. It is the catalyst that all of us have spoken so clearly on through this whole process. When people trust that their data is protected, they are more likely to engage in positive digital activities or even to use new technologies in a way that might help our economy, for example. Canada's innovation and competitiveness therefore rely on this amendment to provide a robust framework that encourages responsible data use.

Privacy will accelerate trust. When citizens feel their privacy is respected, they trust their institutions more. As digital citizens, we want to participate fully in society and the economy without compromising our fundamental privacy rights.

In summary, privacy is a fundamental right and is crucial for our digital age, which is why the preamble of the bill must highlight this right. It would ensure that we can benefit from technological advances while safeguarding our personal information and giving tools to the courts to make future decisions.

Secondly, I want to emphasize the importance of including the second half of the amendment, which states that “the processing of personal...data should respect minors' privacy and their best interests”. This line is vital at the beginning of the bill, as it sets a precedent and standard that should be followed throughout. This is especially important, as the bill proposes multiple clauses that are subject to a lot of regulation by the Department of Industry. By specifically indicating the precious needs of minors' data and in taking a nuanced approach that puts children first, we are putting protections that will hold future regulators and commissioners accountable to this fundamental concern, which we have all outlined during our meetings.

More specifically, the concept of the best interests of the child is, in fact, an international standard. It was first established in 1989, serving as a primary United Nations human rights treaty that focused on safeguarding children's rights. Article 3 states:

In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.

This declaration underscores the universal recognition of the importance of prioritizing children's well-being and interests in all decision-making processes, particularly that, one, “the best interests of the child will be a primary consideration in all actions affecting children”; two, “there will be no discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status”; three, states or parties that have signed it “recognize that every child has the inherent right to life and will ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child”; and four, “children will be assured the right to express their views freely in all matters affecting them, their views being given due weight in accordance with the child's age and level of maturity”.

Incorporating the best interests of the child into this legislative framework is not merely a legal obligation but a moral imperative for all of us. It reflects our commitment to nurturing environments where children can, where possible, thrive free from exploitation and harm, particularly in the digital realm, which we discussed at length. The digital landscape presents so many unique challenges and risks to our kids. We can get this done. With this robust safeguard, we can protect our kids. Embedding provisions that explicitly protect minors' privacy and prioritize their best interests within the legislative framework is essential.

Thank you so much.

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

Anyway, I think we're seeing the problem here.

Let me point this out. The government brought Bill C-27 through in June 2022. We waited a year—it was tabled before it was introduced. A bunch of amendments to this bill were brought.

Now we're debating the first amendment when we're not even sure there's going to be a schedule 2 or 3, and we're starting with that. I find that very problematic. It follows how this bill has been rolled out, introduced and debated as a whole. We sometimes have major issues with how we're bringing things through. I hope this is a learning experience for most people, but at this time, this is a bad way to bring an amendment forward to this committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

She's an expert on Bill C-27.

Let me start by saying that I think, Mr. Schaan, they are linked. They're linked in the idea that one requires the other, in that one is one and two is two. This is important, just so you understand that, because of what schedule 2 says.

Perhaps I can enlighten the Liberal members who aren't aware of what schedule 2 says. Schedule 2 allows the government to moderate content Canadians can see online, and that's why these two are linked.

Let me quote directly from the amendment to schedule 2:

The use of an artificial intelligence system in

(a) moderating content that is found on an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service; or

(b) prioritizing the presentation of such content.

To be clear, the government has given itself the ability, through this provision, which is linked to schedule 1 in the numbering, to regulate the design, function, presentation and use of AI systems on social media platforms as it relates to what content the government wants prioritized and moderated on social media platforms.

The minister's submission to the committee outlined that the purpose of the provision seeks to tackle the bias in AI. All AI, by the way, have biases. The powers provided to ISED in the regulation will allow it to go much beyond simply addressing the issue in AI systems. ISED has already confirmed this.

In speaking at the business leaders breakfast, hosted by McCarthy Tétrault advisers at the TD Bank tower in Toronto on November 7, 2023, Simon Kennedy, the deputy minister of ISED, told industry groups that the purpose of this provision in the minister's amendments to Bill C-27 seeks to tackle online misinformation. This could be accomplished through the minister's amendments to the AIDA, which are still very vague, and provide ISED with an incredible amount of power, including the legal authority to moderate online content to Canadians, as argued at this committee by Barry Sookman. Importantly, the provisions of the AIDA with regard to content moderation, as they relate to high-impact AI systems, have very few safeguards and are incredibly vague.

As Barry Sookman highlighted in his written submission to the committee, the provisions outlined in Bill C-27 will extend to “AI systems that filter, rank, or recommend content on platforms such as social media, search engines, or any digital service that curates or moderates”—

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

No, but it's all part of one bill. It's all part of the same bill, Bill C-27.

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

However, presumably the Department of Justice drafted this bill and this was the only schedule in the original Bill C-27. As such, it didn't need a number, or they would have numbered it. Now you're amending it for more precision to say it's schedule 1 for a reason, which is not that there isn't another schedule, but that you had already numbered the other schedule.

It's a simple question in the sense that you have one schedule in the bill that you're renumbering and you have another schedule that's new in an amendment you're proposing. You can't have two schedules that don't have numbers, so you've said in the opening of the bill that you're calling the one existing schedule schedule 1 because you have a future amendment.

Is that not the case?

[Mark Schaan]

I think that's a separate question about the consideration of this legal project, which is known as the digital charter implementation act, and the three bills contained within it. Notwithstanding that they're being contemplated and considered as one legal project, Bill C-27, they will become stand-alone legislation insomuch as the statutes of Canada will be amended to include a statute called the CPPA, a statute called the AIDA and a statute related to the tribunal.

[Samir Chhabra]

I appreciate where you're coming from. In effect, once and if Bill C-27 passes, AIDA would become its own stand-alone piece of legislation. As well, the CPPA would become its own stand-alone piece of legislation.

The two schedules would not interact with one another. This is purely a recommendation made by the Department of Justice for the appropriate reading of the CPPA once it's promulgated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Correct me if I'm wrong, Madam Clerk. According to the current schedule, one hour would be allocated to the Rio Tinto representatives on April 17. Another hour would then be allocated to the minister. This isn't confirmed, but it would be in addition to the main estimates sometime in May.

As I was saying, I would like to thank the witnesses for starting this process with us. As everyone knows, April and May are set aside for clause‑by‑clause consideration of Bill C‑27. We'll be seeing each other often over the coming weeks.

Pursuant to Standing Order 75(1), consideration of clause 1, which concerns the short title and the preamble, is postponed.

The chair calls clause 2.

(Clause 2)

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Masse.

(Motion negatived: nays 7; yeas 4)

I'm glad to see that we are all in good spirits after two weeks in our constituencies. It fills me with hope as we embark on this journey to do clause-by-clause on Bill C-27.

Once again, I would like to welcome the witnesses, who are here to answer our questions throughout the process.

We're meeting with Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister, strategy and innovation policy sector in the Department of Industry; Samir Chhabra, director general, marketplace framework policy branch; and Runa Angus, senior director, strategy and innovation policy sector.

Mr. Garon, you have the floor.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

First, I will point out to Mr. Masse that the labour force survey, the work that Statistics Canada does on understanding Canada's economy, goes far beyond the parameters of the census. I want the right data from the right people at the right committee to study the right problems that Canadians are raising with all of us right now.

It was during a period of time when Parliament wasn't sitting that the Bank of Canada made this announcement. I, as an opposition MP, have only so many tools at my disposal to raise the issues that the business community in Canada is very concerned about, and this is right at the top of the list. If I was not using my ability as an opposition member to raise a motion in committee with regard to a story that really has a lot of people concerned in Canada's business community, I wouldn't be doing my job effectively. They need to know that we're listening; my constituents need to know that I'm listening. The private sector doesn't get a lot of attention from this government right now. I have to do my job, and that's what I'm doing here in good faith, so I don't know why you're attacking me so strongly this morning. This was done in good faith, and I didn't want to do it in a way that would disrupt Bill C-27.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll try to keep this short. I'm also sure that the purpose of this motion is to delay our work. I even wondered whether to speak.

I have a question for everyone. What's the point of meeting as a subcommittee, planning, working diligently, agreeing on something, adopting a report and then completely contradicting what we unanimously adopted five minutes ago? There was filibustering for much of the meeting. What type of organization or committee does things of this nature? It makes no sense.

Honestly, I'm not sure that the Conservatives are all that interested in productivity. It's clearly a political ploy to make the news. Why weren't immigration policy experts proposed? We have a Canadian immigration policy, which aims to bring cheap labour and vulnerable people to Canada in large numbers. There isn't anything to challenge this. From an electoral standpoint, it helps the Conservatives and the Liberals. There isn't anything in this.

They weren't interested in productivity when it came to implementing policies that boosted oil exports from the west. I have an important point to make. When the Conservatives' policies are put in place, when more oil is exported, the Canadian dollar appreciates. This completely stifles Canada's industrial heartland in Quebec and Ontario.

We should be having these conversations long before the proposed conversations with the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the chief statistician. The Conservatives have shown little regard for them, as my colleagues said.

I would like us to remain consistent. At the last meeting, we could discuss other topics. We agreed on something. I'm a person who still believes that words have value. As a result, I think that we should continue our legislative work. Despite our disagreements on Bill C‑27, we should continue to work diligently, as quickly as possible.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Good morning, Chair.

I'm happy to see everyone this morning. Happy Monday to everyone.

First, to my colleague MP Vis, I was very happy to hear you say “the independent Bank of Canada”. That was very important. I thank you for putting on the record that the Bank of Canada is independent. I know your Leader of the Opposition wanted at one time to fire the Bank of Canada governor, and said that publicly. I think the independence of the Bank of Canada is very important for institutional integrity for many reasons, so I'm glad you put that on the record, Brad.

I want to get clarification on whether these meetings would be in addition to the meetings on Bill C-27.

We all want to have a strong economy with strong growth, and to create good jobs. I think yesterday's announcement on the AI front was part of that endeavour, and it continues to be.

I'm going to stop there. I look forward to getting to Bill C-27 and doing clause-by-clause.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Today's meeting is supposed to get into clause-by-clause analysis. Mr. Vis has brought this motion. I would note that we just unanimously passed the subcommittee report on agenda. We had a very productive meeting, which resulted in this report that we just passed unanimously. It has a schedule that outlines all of our meetings and how we'll spend them, and the priorities we've agreed to. I will say we came to a consensus on this through a very productive conversation.

Our committee schedule seems to be quite full. The Conservatives keep bringing up many other topics they would like to study. It's certainly their prerogative to do so, but there are only so many things you can fit into an agenda. We've all agreed that Bill C-27 and its clause-by-clause are the priority to get through.

I feel like these things keep being brought up in order to delay Bill C-27. I want to know whether the intention of this, Mr. Vis, is to delay getting to Bill C-27, or whether the Conservatives are legitimately interested in studying this. In that case, I would say the most appropriate time is when we finish Bill C-27 or the other items that we've come to agreement on. I'm not sure. It might be the fall by the time we actually get to something like this.

If the Conservatives want to replace this with one of their other priorities, which they've set out in our discussions...there are a number of them here. There are number five and number six, and number five was definitely a Conservative.... Maybe you want to substitute one of the other things to have a meeting on this topic.

I wonder if the Conservatives could clarify what the intention is here. Is it to delay Bill C-27, or is it to study this? Which other priority of theirs would they like to substitute this for?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Briefly, to my colleague Mr. Masse regarding the information presented by Statistics Canada, this deserves to be raised at the industry committee. It's not every day the Bank of Canada talks about a crisis of productivity in this country. I know we're about to commence Bill C-27 amendments but I'm hoping, with the will of this committee, we can have extra meetings to discuss some very serious concerns raised by the business community in Canada and the independent Bank of Canada and to hear from Statistics Canada on the alarming trends they are outlining in their regular reporting to Canadians.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Friends and colleagues, welcome to meeting number 116 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

I call this meeting to order.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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.

Before we start, colleagues, I would just like us to adopt the seventh report of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, the steering committee, as we call it.

You've all received it, and I would seek your consent to adopt the steering committee's report.

Are there any comments on the steering committee report?

Apparently not.

Is there unanimous consent to adopt the subcommittee's report?

I'm getting nods. Wonderful.

Before we begin clause‑by‑clause consideration of Bill C‑27, Mr. Vis would like to speak.

Mr. Vis, we're listening.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

As I said, I spoke with Minister Virani. He's currently looking at the next steps for Bill C‑27. At the same time, I'll be issuing an amended version of our directive on privacy impact assessment.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Well, first of all, I'm not sure that I've seen the motion in writing. It would be really helpful to have a copy of it. If the clerk has that, I would like to read it.

Obviously, ideologically, the Conservatives don't believe in climate change. They want to cut the rebates for Canadians. That seems to be something they're pushing as a false narrative constantly in denying the fact that eight out of 10 families get more money back than they pay, but that's beside the point.

I think we've all agreed to an agenda in our subcommittee meeting. The report was tabled in this committee as a whole. We all approved that unanimously, and we have a number of priorities that are set out in that agenda that do not include this particular study as the top priority. I think our agreement has been to follow through on that plan. We've seen the Conservatives time and time again try to insert additional studies into that agenda, which is fine—it's their prerogative to do so—but it seems like there's so many competing priorities they have that they can't pick which one they want to study first.

My sense is that we have to finish our work on Bill C-27, which is the top priority. I think all of us recognize the importance of that bill. We know that generally government legislation is supposed to take priority, although of course committees are masters of their own domain, but that has been our agreement. I think that quite rightfully we owe it to Canadians to update the privacy legislation, which is 20 years old, and to have a framework for regulating artificial intelligence. I think that that should be the top priority.

If, when that is complete, Conservatives want to change some of the other priorities that they've set out and prioritize this particular motion, then perhaps we can have that debate at that time, but for now I don't see how we can fit this in, and it doesn't make sense that this would somehow supervene the other priorities that have already been agreed to and identified with a set committee schedule that I think has to stay in place. We have witnesses lined up and committee meetings scheduled. We're all planning for those, and we have to get to clause-by-clause on Bill C-27.

Those are my perspectives. I'm sure other committee members will share theirs.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

The important thing is that we not delay the study of Bill C‑27, but that we hear from these people in short order. I can accept that we meet the Rio Tinto people for an hour and the minister for an hour, but we'd prefer it to be during the same meeting. We can then assess the need for an additional meeting, but we have to respect the timetable we've given ourselves for studying Bill C-27. I therefore suggest that we convene all these people as soon as possible, ideally for April 8, when we return, which will also give them time to prepare.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you to Mr. Garon for moving this motion. Certainly I think it's an important issue to study.

I wanted to clarify two quick things.

One is that the intention of this motion is not to delay Bill C-27, but would follow any work we have left on Bill C-27.

The other very small change, which I would like to propose, is just to remove the word “each” in the last paragraph in the English version, which would suggest we have one two-hour meeting on this. Right now, the way I read it, it looks like it's two hours each, which makes it four hours, as far as I interpret it.

If Mr. Garon would be amenable to those small changes and the clarification that this is to come after the work on C-27, I would certainly be supportive. I think we could probably say he would have the support of all the members on this side.

Thank you.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

My next question is for Carfax Canada.

We know that we're dealing with Bill C-27 in another committee and there are a lot of privacy issues with it, and we of course know that VINs—vehicle identification numbers—are part of that. Do you have any concerns about Bill C-27 and VINs? Is there an impact that this committee should be aware of?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Okay.

With respect to privacy, I have the pleasure and honour of sitting on the industry committee. With Bill C-27, there's an aspect of privacy in that, with PIPEDA and the relevant sections and so forth. Privacy is a huge thing these days, which is an understatement—I'm using very common language, if I can say that—in terms of striking a balance. Like many of our representatives, I worked in the private sector before I had the distinct pleasure of serving the residents I currently serve. When you are provided a device from your employer to utilize, it is their device. You need to use it with judiciousness and diligence. There's a balance there. I've always seen that a balance needs to be struck.

Within that, within the government operations, there have to be guardrails within the departments, and they need to follow the PIAs, the privacy impact assessments. I literally learned this in the last couple of hours. I sit on two other committees, so it's been a busy week. With the PIAs, there is an agreement that when investigations need to happen, they should happen, and the devices and the contents of those devices need to be looked at.

Also, taking a step back, if I'm working for Nathan's organization and I enter into an agreement with the federal government, there is consent that you will use this device but you will use it responsibly. I'm putting that out there, because there needs to be that balance. If processes were not followed properly, you would need to correct those internal processes and the governance, of course.

Do you not agree that consent is important and that balance is important, but the notion that there has to be responsibility on the end-user is important as well?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

That's a good segue for me to say thank you to our witnesses.

This concludes our portion on Bill C-27, where we have heard from a lot of witnesses. That's going to instruct us as we go through clause-by-clause in April.

Colleagues, before we suspend, I want to let you know—and also for the people watching at home who might be tempted to submit to us a brief on Bill C-27—that we would like to receive that by March 1.

Colleagues, we need amendments, if possible, by March 14, so we have the time to study the amendments proposed and have discussions. If you can do it earlier, that would also be ideal.

I would also like to thank our analyst, Ms. Savoie, who is attending her last meeting with us today.

Thank you, Ms. Savoie.

Thank you, colleagues.

I want to thank the witnesses again.

The meeting is suspended.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome, everyone.

These are the last five minutes I'll be able to comment with regard to Bill C-27. Obviously, a lot of work has gone into this bill. I just want to say congratulations to everyone involved and to thank all the witnesses who have come. It is well needed. Artificial intelligence is impacting and will impact every single person in Canada and across the world, in their lives and their livelihoods, in everything we do, from using Google Maps to the health care sector and any other aspect of our daily lives.

I would say it is good, to use a very simple term, that our government is working with and consulting with and listening to a number of stakeholders, who came forth in the dozens to be heard on Bill C-27. Obviously, not everyone will agree on legislation. That is part of our democracy. That is an individual's right. I get that, having been in Parliament for a number of years. Not everyone agrees, but we must work, we must take action and we must legislate, because that's what we are—legislators.

Since joining this committee several months ago and coming on board and looking at the privacy aspects of the bill, which I think are parts 1 and 2, and then part 3 is AIDA, I know there is a lot of stuff in here. We know that other jurisdictions are moving, with Europe and the U.K. and the United States and us. I do agree on one aspect, that a voluntary code is good, but we need legislation. I think that's a part of capitalism. Voluntary codes for business are voluntary, but you need teeth. That's why you need to legislate.

I want to start off there and turn to the individual who works at the Mayo Clinic, because I believe one of the powerful tools of AI will be in the health care sector. As we move toward more specialized medicine and specialized screening and specialized diagnoses, AI will continue to play a greater role.

Mr. Malik, could you comment on AI's role within the health care sector from your point of view, please?

[Jim Balsillie]

Sure, you could do a comprehensive set of amendments to make it proper, but you will always deal with the democratic integrity issue, and the first nations have said that they're going to litigate on Bill C-27 and AIDA. You're always going to have an integrity issue. You could do sufficient amendments to make it appropriate, from my point of view, but how do you have legitimacy from the stakeholders?

On the earlier comment, overwhelmingly the consultations were with industry after it was presented. It's a very dangerous move, and I don't see the math in it.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks.

I just wanted to go back to my line of questioning earlier, which was about the right to object to automated processing of personal data. I really feel like Bill C-27 has dealt with this through express consent for using biometric data. I can just withhold my consent if I don't want someone to use that data. If they contravene that requirement, they would be breaking the law, because they wouldn't have sought my express consent.

I don't understand why in your paper you're recommending that we do something that is actually, I feel, included in the bill. Can you maybe speak to that, Ms. Tessono, from your perspective?

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

We talked earlier, in a previous discussion, about how Bill C-27 in part appears to be at least based on the European Union's model. How would you compare those two pieces of legislation? More importantly, can you highlight some of the elements of the European proposal that are not included in the AIDA and should be?

Then I'll pass it over to my colleague.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

In the November 28 letter from the minister and his proposed amendments, in one of his bullets he talked about creating clearer obligations across the AI value chain, establishing data governance measures and establishing measures to assess and mitigate the risk of having biased output. You already mentioned the definition. My assessment is that, as we are having this broader discussion on governance in respect to AI, the government and the officials at Industry Canada don't really know what they're doing right now, so they're providing themselves, in this bill, massive and broad regulatory powers.

I'm personally having a debate about whether in fact we need this law: whether we should be voting in favour of this aspect of Bill C-27 on artificial intelligence or whether the government could simply do this through their regulatory capacity right now. I don't know.

Do you have any comments on that? Is it even necessary to grant industry so many regulatory powers and so much oversight in legislation? Would it make any difference if we just did that through GIC regulation?

[Jim Balsillie]

Well, put it within.... There's nothing saying that you can't run it within the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and extend its mandate and resources. It has parliamentary direct reporting that is well established and well respected.

By the way, all of these issues of adequacy and so on that we're looking for build upon the Privacy Commissioner's work, so this idea of adequacy in Europe is a living document that's actually contextualized on case decisions, principally from our courts and our Privacy Commissioner. The idea that these are separate structures and that you want parallel, fragmented...never did make sense to me. I don't know what.... Just give the powers to the Privacy Commissioner. Get rid of that silly tribunal. Fix the provisions of Bill C-27 so that they're actually like the GDPR. Have proper consultations on AIDA. If you do that, you're on your way.

I have an expression that I use: Life's hard enough, so don't make the easy things hard.

[Jim Balsillie]

Yes, thank you for that.

What I was trying to say is that this commissioner needs to be independent of ISED and have more powers than the competition commissioner or the Privacy Commissioner, who have been asking for more power. They do not set the standard; they themselves want a higher standard. As I've also said, who came up with this idea of a tribunal? Who pulled that out, and what the heck is that for? It just weakens the courts and creates a middle process.

Also, I think it's worth having a discussion about whether AI should be integrated with the Privacy Commissioner. That question has never been asked. Data and AI hang out together. They're not separate. Privacy is always at play there, and we have an existing regulator who wants to have that authority and whom we have the ability to build with.

If I was designing this, I would start the consultation again on AIDA. I would not include the tribunal. I would ask if this commissioner should be within the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, with enhanced powers and resources. We already have a running system, and we just need to fix the text of Bill C-27, including the consultation with the first nations.

We have a winning path here that isn't expensive and delayed, yet it was all just thrown out there without really thinking.

[Jim Balsillie]

Yes. I've always taken a crosscutting effects and rights approach to it, not a technological one, so I agree with those who frame it that way. Beware of those who think the answer to technology issues is more technology.

I think the place that is going to be hurt the most by far by AIDA and Bill C-27 is Quebec. They have by far the most to lose, because they've set a higher bar—an appropriate bar—with law 25, yet clearly this law is lower. Which one is in charge? Also, if you notice, it's ambiguous, and you know the federal is going to win, but corporations are going to arbitrage away from Quebec. It's like pollution laws are easier on one side of the river than the other, so you just move across the river. I think you'll lose. If you don't do strong laws, we all lose, but Quebec will lose the most.

Absolutely, social, cultural, economic, security, this is the mediation realm of the contemporary. It's extremely important, and I think the provinces should be given tremendous accord on this, and that should be clarified in this bill. However, your primary protection is raising the standard of this bill so that, as a minimum, it meets law 25.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that.

I'm going to jump to a slightly different topic.

Recommendation number 5 is about addressing the human rights implications of algorithmic systems. Mr. Balsillie mentioned as well the right to object to the automated processing of personal data.

Doesn't Bill C-27 currently already address this through both the requirement for record keeping and the easy identification of an AI-generated output, which has to be watermarked or identifiable? Also, biometric information is technically protected, so you would have to have express informed consent in order to use that.

Isn't that already addressed in this bill in some very real respects? Maybe you think we should go further.

I will ask Mr. Malik first, and then Ms. Tessono.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I really appreciate your contributions.

Mr. Balsillie, welcome back to committee. I know it's your second time here for this study. I appreciate your contributions.

I just want to say something off the top here, which is that we've had 86 witnesses, 20 meetings at INDU and 59 written briefs; the department and ministry have conducted over 300 meetings and consultations on Bill C-27, and the regulations that will be forthcoming will involve two years' worth of extensive consultations before they are released. I think there has been consultation. I understand that some witnesses today feel as though there needs to be more, and I value their perspective, but I just want to correct the record. When people say no consultation has been done, I think the evidence or the facts substantiate a different claim.

I just wanted to start with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I tend to agree, Mr. Turnbull, and I will ask Mr. Perkins to focus on the matter at hand before this committee, which is Bill C-27. However, I'll note that Mr. Balsillie is free to communicate with the committee, as he wishes, the information he feels is relevant to our studies, by and large.

Go ahead, Mr. Perkins.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I know we're studying Bill C-27. I'm just not sure of the relevance. I know that SDTC is another topic this committee is studying, but I don't understand how Mr. Perkins' line of questioning and request for documentation are related to the current work we're doing on today's agenda. It's not to say that Mr. Balsillie wouldn't be able to do that in future meetings on SDTC, but this is not the time or the place, in my opinion.

[Jim Balsillie, Founder, Centre for Digital Rights]

Chairman Lightbound and honourable members, happy Valentine's Day.

Thank you for the opportunity to come back and expand on my previous testimony to include concerns about the artificial intelligence and data act. AIDA's flaws in both process and substance are well documented by the expert witnesses. Subsequent proposals by the minister only reinforce my core recommendation that AIDA requires a complete restart. It needs to be sent back to the drawing board, but not for ISED to draft alone. Rushing to pass legislation so seriously flawed will only deepen citizens' fears about AI, because AIDA merely proves that policy-makers can't effectively prevent current and emerging harms from emerging technologies.

Focusing on existential harms that are unquantifiable, indeterminate and unidentifiable is buying into industry's gaslighting. Existential risk narratives divert attention from current harms such as mass surveillance, misinformation, and undermining of personal autonomy and fair markets, among others. From a high-level perspective, some of the foundational flaws with AIDA are the following.

One, it's anti-democratic. The government introduced its AI regulation proposal without any consultation with the public. As Professor Andrew Clement noted at your January 31 meeting, subsequent consultations have revealed exaggerated claims of meetings that still disproportionately rely on industry feedback over civil society.

Two, claims of AI benefits are not substantiated. A recent report on Quebec's AI ecosystem shows that Canada's current AI promotion is not yielding stated economic outcomes. AIDA reiterates many of the exaggerated claims by industry that AI advancement can bring widespread societal benefits but offers no substantiation.

References to support the minister's statement that “AI offers a multitude of benefits for Canadians” come from a single source: Scale AI, a program funded by ISED and the Quebec government. Rather than showing credible reports on how the projects identified have benefited many Canadians, the reference articles claiming benefits are simply announcements of recently funded projects.

Three, AI innovation is not an excuse for rushing regulation. Not all AI innovation is beneficial, as evidenced by the creation and spread of deepfake pornographic images of not just celebrities but also children. This is an important consideration, because we are being sold AIDA as a need to balance innovation with regulation.

Four, by contrast, the risk of harms is well documented yet unaddressed in the current proposal. AI systems, among other features, have been shown to facilitate housing discrimination, make racist associations, exclude women from seeking job listings visible to men, recommend longer prison sentences for visible minorities, and fail to accurately recognize the faces of dark-skinned women. There are countless additional incidents of harm, thousands of which are catalogued in the AI incident database.

Five, the use of AI in AIDA focuses excessively on risk of harms to individuals rather than harms to groups or communities. AI-enabled misinformation and disinformation pose serious risks to election integrity and democracy.

Six, ISED is in a conflict of interest situation, and AIDA is its regulatory blank cheque. The ministry is advancing legislation and regulations intended to address the potentially serious multiple harms from technical developments in AI while it is investing in and vigorously promoting AI, including the funds of AI projects for champions of AIDA such as Professor Bengio. As Professor Teresa Scassa has shown in her research, the current proposal is not about agility but lack of substance and credibility.

Here are my recommendations.

Sever AIDA from Bill C-27 and start consultation in a transparent, democratically accountable process. Serious AI regulation requires policy proposals and an inclusive, genuine public consultation informed by independent, expert background reporting.

Give individuals the right to contest and object to AI affecting them, not just a right to algorithmic transparency.

The AI and data commissioner needs to be independent from the minister, an independent officer of Parliament with appropriate powers and adequate funding. Such an office would require a more serious commitment than how our current Competition Bureau and privacy regulators are set up.

There are many more flawed parts of AIDA, all detailed in our Centre for Digital Rights submission to the committee, entitled “Not Fit for Purpose”. The inexplicable rush by the minister to ram through this proposal should be of utmost concern. Canada is at risk of being the first in the world to create the worst AI regulation.

With regard to large language models, current leading-edge LLMs incorporate hundreds of billions of parameters in their models, based on training data with trillions of tokens. Their behaviour is often unreliable and unpredictable, as AI expert Gary Marcus is documenting well.

The cost and the compute power of LLMs are very intensive, and the field is dominated by big tech: Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc. There is no transparency in how these companies build their models, nor in the risks they pose. Explainability of LLMs is an unsolved problem, and it gets worse with the size of the models built. The claimed benefits of LLMs are speculative, but the harms and risks are well documented.

My advice for this committee is to take the time to study LLMs and to support that study with appropriate expertise. I am happy to help organize study forums, as I have strong industry and civil society networks. As with AIDA, understanding the full spectrum of technology's impacts is critical to a sovereign approach to crafting regulation that supports Canada's economy and protects our rights and freedoms.

Speaking of sovereign capacity, I would be remiss if I didn't say I was disappointed to see Minister Champagne court and offer support to Nvidia. Imagine if we had a ministry that throws its weight behind Canadian cloud and semi companies so that we can advance Canada's economy and sovereignty.

Canadians deserve an approach to AI that builds trust in the digital economy, supports Canadian prosperity and innovation and protects Canadians, not only as consumers but also as citizens.

Thank you.

[Christelle Tessono, Technology Policy Researcher, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to address you all this afternoon.

My name is Christelle Tessono, and I'm a technology policy researcher currently pursuing graduate studies at the University of Toronto. Over the course of my academic and professional career in the House of Commons, at Princeton University, and now with the Right2YourFace coalition and The Dais, I have developed expertise in a wide range of digital technology governance issues, most notably AI.

My remarks will focus on the AI and data act, and they build on the analysis submitted to INDU last year. This submission was co-authored with Yuan Stevens, Sonja Solomun, Supriya Dwivedi, Sam Andrey and Dr. Momin Malik, who is on the panel with me today. In our submission, we identify five key problems with AIDA; however, for the purposes of my remarks, I will be focusing on three.

First, AIDA does not address the human rights risks that AI systems cause, which puts it out of step with the EU AI Act. The preamble should, at a minimum, acknowledge the well-established disproportionate impact that these systems have on historically marginalized groups such as Black, indigenous, people of colour, members of the LGBTQ community, economically disadvantaged, disabled and other equity-seeking communities in the country.

While the minister's proposed amendments provide a schedule for classes of systems that may be considered in the scope of the act, that is far from enough. Instead, AIDA should be amended to have clear sets of prohibitions on systems and practices that exploit vulnerable groups and cause harms to people's safety and livelihoods, akin to the EU AI Act's prohibition on systems that cause unacceptable risks.

A second issue we highlighted is that AIDA does not create an accountable oversight and enforcement regime for the AI market. In its current iteration, AIDA lacks provisions for robust, independent oversight. Instead, it proposes self-administered audits at the discretion of the Minister of Innovation when in suspicion of act contravention.

While the act creates the position of the AI commissioner, they are not an independent actor, as they are appointed by the minister and serve at their discretion. The lack of independence of the AI commissioner creates a weak regulatory environment and thus fails to protect the Canadian population from algorithmic harms.

While the minister's proposed amendments provide investigative powers to the commissioner, that is far from enough. Instead, I believe that the commissioner should be a Governor in Council appointment and be empowered to conduct proactive audits, receive complaints, administer penalties and propose regulations and industry standards. Enforcing legislation should translate into having the ability to prohibit, restrict, withdraw or recall AI systems that do not comply with comprehensive legal requirements.

Third, AIDA did not undergo any public consultations. This is a glaring issue at the root of the many serious problems with the act. In their submission to INDU, the Assembly of First Nations reminds the committee that the federal government adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act action plan, which requires the government to make sure that “Respect for Indigenous rights is systematically embedded in federal laws and policies developed in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous peoples”. AIDA did not receive such consultation, which is a failure of the government in its commitment to indigenous peoples.

To ensure that public consultations are at the core of AI governance in this country, the act should ensure that a parliamentary committee is empowered to have AIDA reviewed, revised and updated whenever necessary and include public hearings conducted on a yearly basis or every few years or so, starting one year after AIDA comes into force. The Minister of Industry should be obliged to respond within 90 days to these committee reviews and include legislative and regulatory changes designed to remedy deficiencies identified by the committee.

Furthermore, I support the inclusion of provisions that expand the reporting and review duties of the AI commissioner, which could include but wouldn't be limited to, for example, the submission of annual reports to Parliament and the ability to draft special reports on urgent matters as well.

In conclusion, I believe that AI regulation needs to safeguard us against a rising number of algorithmic harms that these systems perpetuate; however, I don't think AIDA in its current state is up to that task. Instead, in line with submissions and open letters submitted to the committee by civil society, I highly recommend taking AIDA out of Bill C-27 to improve it through careful review and public consultations.

There are other problems I want to talk about, notably the exclusion of government institutions in the act.

I'm happy to answer questions regarding the proposed amendments made by the minister and expand on points I raised in my remarks.

Since I'm from Montreal, I'll be happy to answer your questions in French.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Colleagues, good afternoon.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 111 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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 our witnesses.

We're meeting with Momin Malik, Ph.D. and data science researcher. He is speaking as an individual and is joining us by video conference.

We're also meeting with Christelle Tessono, a technology policy researcher at the University of Toronto. She too is joining us by video conference.

Lastly, we're meeting with Jim Balsillie, who is here in person and whom I would like to thank for coming to speak to the committee again.

I'll now give the floor to Mr. Malik for five minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first intervention is the challenge of what we do next, because what I think you have demonstrated today is that it's like the argument that we're going to consult you on Bill C-27, and we will fix it sometime on copyright, and we will fix it somehow after we pass Bill C-27. That is not sufficient for the NDP. It's clear to us that you can do both of those things. Alternatively, we either send this to regulatory oblivion—that's really what happens—or dismantle what we have here.

I'm looking at an alternative where we view it through the lens of almost like national security. Perhaps we even have a standing committee of Parliament and the Senate that looks at this over all the different jurisdictions, because copyright is proving that it's just outside this particular bill in terms of the technicality of it, but the reality is that it encompasses everything you have been saying and doing here in a much more wholesome way than in many other industries.

I have one quick question to go across the table here about an AI commissioner. Should the commissioner be independent and able to fine the abuse of artificial intelligence if that is part of the law?

Maybe we can start with ACTRA and go across.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to comment on the transparency issue. One of my colleagues, Mr. Turnbull, discussed this. He said it might be complicated to determine the identity of works that have been used among billions of data points. However, my impression is that an AI system capable of reading 100 million books a day is capable of searching from a list. You'd have to check that.

That being said, some intervenors have told us that Bill C-27 won't get the job done. Many representatives of the web giants told us so, almost implying that we should reject it, start over from scratch, modify all kinds of other acts and work on it for I don't know how many years. We have that option, but there's also the option of moving ahead, continuing to amend Bill C-27 and doing the best we can. Then there's the option of waiting and imitating Europe, since Canada is a minor player after all.

However, there's another solution: we could add a provision requiring periodic updates to the act, say every three to five years. That would force Parliament to review the act completely and would give it the opportunity to align the act periodically with the legislation of other countries so that Canada remains competitive, while enabling it to participate in the international review process.

Ms. Hénault, what do you think of that kind of provision?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I'll move to Marie-Julie Desrochers.

Welcome. My question concerns Bill C-27.

Is it not important that we finish off this bill and put it in place? Twenty years have passed. Wouldn't you agree that the reviews of this bill pertaining to AI—even the copyright side, which is ongoing—should happen at much shorter intervals?

[Patrick Rogers]

I don't believe that currently the bill describes music as high-impact. I would find it hard to believe that anybody who's spent the last two hours listening to us, though, would think that there wasn't a high impact of AI on all cultural industries. If there is an attempt to allow for AI not to respect copyright laws, then it will have the highest impact on us. That's something you could fix today in Bill C-27 by just saying that AI has to pay for the use of copyright material.

[Stéphanie Hénault]

Yes, I wanted to discuss the distinction between the Copyright Act and Bill C-27. The Copyright Act governs rights holders, whereas Bill C-27 concerns the construction and management of generative AI models.

It's important to regulate that industry by means of obligations of collective interest, including compliance with copyright. I imagine that other statutes, such as those on aircraft construction and transport, provide that one must comply with standards in the collective interest. We view Bill C-27 in the same way. It has to be said very clearly that developers must introduce policies to train their models fairly and respectfully and make them available. There must also be policies respecting users to ensure they clearly understand that this isn't a free pass to violate third-party copyright.

[Patrick Rogers]

Can I just say, without casting aspersions on anyone, that this is an impossible game of three-card monte for stakeholders?

The bill before Parliament is Bill C-27. There is a copyright review going on. If we don't comment on AI and its interaction with copyright during Bill C-27, we will have missed the boat. If we miss the opportunity to talk about it during copyright consultations, there's a high chance of it being suggested that we talk about it in Bill C-27.

[Marie Kelly]

Yes, we would, and we started our submission by saying we're thankful that the government is looking at this and we're thankful that Bill C-27 has been brought forward. It has allowed us to have this conversation.

There are significant changes we'd like to see in it, but we are happy to have the conversation. We're happy to be here, and we're glad that Bill C-27 is being discussed.

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

Now I'm going to speak to everyone.

On several occasions, many of you have discussed interoperability with what's being done elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe and the United States. Do you think Bill C-27 goes far enough, even though it was improved by the amendments the government proposed? Considering the answers you've been giving from the start, that doesn't seem to be the case.

To ensure your respective organizations remain viable, do you think it's important that Bill C-27 include the elements you're proposing?

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

Ms. Hénault, before you respond, I'd like to remind you that earlier you said that Canada mustn't become a banana republic. Do you view Bill C-27 as the bill of a banana republic?

[Marie Kelly]

I think it's going to be a lot of threading together of different things.

Copyright is key. You are hearing us say that as actors. I think you need to have protection on the data you're looking at in Bill C-27. I think it's very important for us to look at how it's scraped and what they're doing with it. We need to have knowledge about where this data is coming from in order for us to even be able to trace bad actors—and good actors who just happen to take it and may not know.

We're looking at things like this: What are you going to do with a worker who has their data taken from them by their employer so they can generate a program—say, a training session, etc.? Why not put something in the Employment Standards Act that protects all workers against having their name, image and likeness taken without consent, control and compensation?

Privacy laws have to be increased so we have those protections.

I'm sure there's more than that. This is going to be a patchwork.

[Patrick Rogers]

Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on that.

You can go about it either way. Either you can say that there are no exceptions for AI, that AI is like everything else, and you can do it in a bill like Bill C-27 and go back and reference the Copyright Act, or you can make the change in the Copyright Act and say that this is the case.

We didn't create copyright for the printing press. We created copyright for Dickens and the recognition that the work was worth more than what you paid for it right away, and we extended term of copyright for sound recordings because people were starting to live to the point at which they could hear their song on the radio and not get paid, so we made that change.

If we say that we know they're scraping our stuff, and we know that's a use—it's of value—we can just agree now that that's the case and get out of those sorts of fun academic conversations about “I don't know. Is it a copy?” I know it's a copy. I know they're taking it because our stuff is a thing of value.

[Patrick Rogers]

Mr. Masse, thank you for the question.

Look, I would encourage everyone to continue moving forward with Bill C-27 in its original state, which was a framework for all of these other pieces to hang on. I think that if I were you or any member on this committee, I would go to caucus on Wednesday morning, go to the microphones and say, “I heard really scary things about deepfakes and we have to do something on that now.”

If it takes longer for Parliament to work through Bill C-27, that's fine, but I think there are some actions you could take right now to take real, meaningful action for our industry and, in fact, for all Canadians.

[Dave Forget]

Thank you for the question.

My answer is going to be, yes, we should be moving forward, but the context is moving so quickly. Bill C-27 was drafted before we had the impact of generative AI in the way we see it now. It was only a little over a year ago, with my elected board, that this switched from being in the background to front and centre.

I can echo some of the comments you've heard. In our own surveys of our membership, who work not just as directors but across 50 different job categories, it impacts them in different ways, and it impacts them profoundly.

This is a major concern, so moving quickly but making the improvements, some of which we're happy to be discussing here today, precisely to be able to protect creators, is really important.

Move forward in a thoughtful way, but try to do it quickly. That would be our advice.

[Marie Kelly]

From my perspective, its not okay for government to do nothing. Across the globe, governments are struggling with this issue, and we do appreciate that this is a very difficult issue that touches on so many different industries, that touches on business as well as people. We appreciate that it's difficult. We also believe it's going to be a patchwork of protections that are going to come in. It can't just be Bill C-27.

Growing up doing some lobbying in my past life, I was always told, “Get what you can now because government's not going to revisit this for another decade.” That can't be what happens here. We have to move forward as best we can, at every opportunity we have, on protections for Canadians, for workers, for our society.

What I would say to you, on Bill C-27, is that we support the intention to ensure that consent is required for biometric information. We understand that it's going to start to protect name, image and likeness, but you're hearing us say, even on Bill C-27, that it doesn't go far enough for performers. We need greater protections within this bill, but you have to move. I would just say to the government, you have to move with speed.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

We aren't necessarily seeing that in Bill C-27.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Yes, we know there's an intersection here, obviously.

I think, Ms. Desrochers, you made a very good comment about how the two work together and how more requirements for transparency within Bill C-27 would actually help copyright to apply to the creative industries. Most of you are nodding your heads, so I take it that you agree with that.

Don't you think Bill C-27 and the amendments proposed make several steps in the right direction? Can we maybe start there and then ask whether we need to go further? From my perspective, in terms of the identification of AI-generated content and strengthened enforcement, it has made some significant headway.

Mr. Forget, would you agree with that?

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

As part of the consultation on copyright in the era of generative artificial intelligence, we also submitted a brief on behalf of all members of our coalition. As Ms. Hénault just mentioned, we believe that issues can be resolved in the Copyright Act. However, we're seeking very few amendments since it's already robust enough to provide an AI framework.

However, some provisions must be added to Bill C-27, including an obligation to retain the data used to train AI systems and make it available to the public in order to permit the authorization and remuneration of copyright holders. That must appear in Bill C-27. There really is a connection between the two acts.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you to all of you for being here.

I really appreciate your raising your voices in this important conversation. You all represent incredibly important players and members who are across our creative industries and whom I think we're all deeply concerned about when it comes to AI and the harms it can cause to individuals who are earning their living and who, in many cases, I think, develop that reputation over many years and with lots of hard work. I empathize with all of your positions. I've read a lot of your submissions and materials in advance. I really appreciate your being here. Let me just start with that.

One thing I keep hearing is conversations on intersecting with copyright. That's fair enough. I get that there are intersections of Bill C-27 and copyright, although we know that Bill C-27 doesn't deal with copyright. The Government of Canada is doing consultations and round tables. They have done seven round tables already.

I want to start by asking each one of you—maybe one representative from each group—if you have been consulted and are participating in the copyright consultation process. The Government of Canada is looking at whether this conversation merits amendments to the Copyright Act as a separate process, but not involved in the scope of this bill.

Ms. Noble or Ms. Kelly, has ACTRA been involved in that consultation?

[Marie Kelly, National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists]

Thank you for that question.

Our members are actors. They are performers. They are in film and TV. They are on video games. They are very much subject to the deepfakes and abuses that are taking place. What we want to bring to light here is that when it comes to actors and performers, we are kind of on the outside looking in to the protections of copyright. We take a step back and say that the first problem for actors is that they don't have moral rights under the Copyright Act to protect them to begin with. Musicians got moral rights when Napster came in a couple of decades ago and started stealing their music. Today we have the same situation with deepfakes stealing the image of performers. We don't have moral rights in the Copyright Act. We say that needs to be taken care of right away.

When we look at Bill C-27, we also see that under the definition of harm, you have “physical or psychological harm”. I would suggest that if we have to prove psychological harm, we'll have to get the DSM out, put it down on a table in a court of law, and explain the condition that was produced. That can't be the level for a performer. Then there's “damage to an individual’s property”. As I just told you, we don't have copyright protection. Now we go to the third one, “economic loss to an individual”. What we have to understand is that performers are precarious workers. Every day they audition for the next job. It might be one day on set in a series or a film. Every day they have to look for that job. How do they prove that they didn't get that role in Law & Order? How do they prove that as an economic loss?

We need to have the damage to an individual's reputation. Eleanor Noble makes a living based on what you see here. Her name, her image, her likeness, she caretakes that with everything she does, whether business or personal, because she knows that her next gig relies on it, and yet she is subject to the deepfakes that are happening out there.

Our data is easily captured now. Everything is streamed. Everything is on your phone. It's on your computer. It's readily available to be grabbed and used or misused. We really need this committee to take a look at the impact for performers in this country.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

We can also provide you with more information in writing.

These recommendations are consistent with some of those prepared by my colleagues. I'd be pleased if one of my colleagues wished to comment.

Bill C-27 currently provides that data must be retained, but we think that's not enough and request that data be both retained and made available to the public.

Second, to make the Copyright Act more effective, we request that this be clearly stated in Bill C-27 in order to clarify certain obligations of transparency.

[Patrick Rogers, Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada]

Good morning.

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss Bill C-27 with you from the perspective of Canada's major music labels.

Creating the rules of engagement for AI comes at an important time for the music industry, both here at home and abroad. I want to say, off the top, that our industry is already making use of positive elements of AI as a tool to help artists make more intriguing and interesting music, and using it, again as a tool, to help connect artists, including Canadian artists, with fans all around the world.

Those aspects are, of course, not the central domain of Bill C-27 or the reasons why there needs to be further regulation. I will dedicate the rest of my time to telling you where you can help us most.

As we saw with illegal downloading in the previous generation, the use and ownership of music is a valuable canary in the coal mine. Since then, we have learned the importance of regulating technology for its practical and common use rather than building exceptions into our laws and economic frameworks for corner cases. We've learned that the value of music and other forms of creative expression cannot be sacrificed to the drumbeat of technological revolution, and we've learned that quality, safe and licensed music is as popular with music fans as it is with the artists who are paid when their music is played.

That is why Music Canada is supportive of the efforts made in Bill C-27 regarding the regulation of generative AI.

There are three places where we would encourage you to go even further.

The first involves the need for AI developers to maintain and make available records of the material that was ingested and used for training. Much of the economic framework for the industries that will be affected by the further flourishing of AI requires that everyone understand what the AI is trained on. In order to truly understand that, developers must keep these records.

You will hear from the most excited proponents of unharnessed technology that this request is somewhere between missing the point and being impossible. I ask that the committee think about it in this way: If AI has the potential to cure diseases, design new and better cities for the future, and make travel plans for busy MPs a little more doable, then surely it can generate a spreadsheet or write a bibliography.

The second place the bill can go further is in requiring the labelling of solely AI-generated images and videos, especially in cases where they impersonate an individual. Right now, today, we are standing at the edge of the uncanny valley with AI. Once you learn what to look for, you can understand that the image of the pope in the white puffy jacket is not a photo of the pope, but this technology will never be worse than it is today. Every day it is getting better and, in many ways, more dangerous when it comes to the powerful potential for deception and misinformation. Requiring labelling is an important step towards addressing this.

The third is with respect to the need to address deepfakes and voice clones as a threat and to prepare our legal system so that we can all agree that the production of deepfakes and voice clones without the consent of the cloned person is wrong.

As elected members of Parliament, you know that it takes a lifetime to build the reputation that brings you to this House of Commons. You also know that it takes just one moment for that to come crashing down. Increasingly, this is a fact that people across all professions, livelihoods and ages are coming to grips with in the face of the proliferation of deepfakes and the ease with which they can be produced.

Abacus Data has found that exposure to deepfakes is common and that Canadians are worried about the risks. One out of every two Canadians has mistaken a deepfake for a real video. It's worse for younger Canadians, because 77% have been deceived and 15% say that it happens all the time. Canadians are worried about the effect of deepfakes on artists, political leaders and business leaders, but 79% of Canadians worry about it for themselves too. Almost unanimously, 93%, Canadians agree that there should be a right to prevent these impersonations.

Now is the time to strengthen Bill C-27 and all of our laws to ensure that antiquated analog laws that were once designed to protect celebrities' images from being used against their consent in magazine ads are prepared for the digital realities for everyone today.

Now, some will ask: What about free speech? When it comes to deepfakes, the answer is simple: Putting your words in my mouth is not free speech.

What about parody? Deepfakes aren't parody. They don't mimic with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect. They are done to deceive, misinform and steal one person's character for the advantage of another. We should make clear that in 2024, in a digital setting, that is illegal.

I thank you for your time and I look forward to your questions.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers, Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for your invitation and for this opportunity for the cultural sector to comment on Bill C-27.

I am the executive director of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. The coalition consists of more than 50 members from Canada's cultural sector: anglophone and francophone unions, professional associations and collection societies. We cover a broad and diverse range of audiovisual, musical, digital arts, book and publishing disciplines, as well as the visual and performing arts. We also represent more than 350,000 creators and nearly 3,000 businesses in the cultural industry.

I'm in good company today, surrounded by three coalition members: the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres du Québec, the Directors Guild of Canada and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. This small sample represents only part of the impact that the development of artificial intelligence has had on our sector. I encourage you to continue consulting the cultural sector so you can also hear from the representatives of visual artists, screenwriters, producers, composers, authors and others.

Our coalition's primary mission is to secure a cultural exclusion in trade agreements in order to preserve Canada's cultural sovereignty. We also want to ensure that Canada adopts public policies that guarantee protection and promotion for the diversity of cultural expressions, including in the digital environment. Our efforts build on the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. That UNESCO convention came to be as a result of the concerted efforts of Quebec and Canada, and France as well, and I would note that Canada was the first country to ratify it.

We are here today to comment on a bill that it is designed to protect Canadians from the risks presented by the spectacular developments in artificial intelligence, generative AI in particular.

The 2005 convention states that cultural diversity is "indispensable for peace and security at the local, national and international levels". In other words, the development of responsible artificial intelligence must take that diversity into account and ensure it is protected. Diversity is essential in safeguarding our freedom of expression, the health of our democracy and the maintenance of our sovereignty.

Bill C-27 essentially addresses the risks facing individuals as a result of artificial intelligence. As others before us have done, we wish to emphasize how important it also is to consider the societal risks that artificial intelligence presents.

The purpose of the new legislation, stated in clause 4, and the definition of harm that appears in the text are too limited. Adopting wording found in the European Union's AI legislation, we suggest that one of the purposes of the new act be to protect the health, safety and fundamental Charter rights, including democracy—of which the diversity of cultural expressions is a pillar—and the rule of law, as well as the environment, from the harmful effects of AI systems.

The main theme for today's witnesses is copyright. That's heartening because we are convinced that Bill C-27 has a major role to play in this area.

The Canadian government recently conducted a consultation on the impact of generative AI on copyright. The cultural community's unanimous view is that, contrary to the widely held perception, Canadian copyright legislation doesn't need to be significantly modernized to protect rights holders in reaction to developments in generative AI. It already protects human creation and prohibits the unauthorized use of protected cultural content. However, as a result of a lack of transparency regarding the data used to drive AI systems, that act cannot be applied in an optimal fashion. This is where Bill C-27 must play a role.

Here are two specific potential solutions that would restore the Copyright Act to full effectiveness for the benefit of rights holders and Canadians as well.

We should draw on European AI legislation and go beyond the obligation to retain data records, as provided in the new subsection 7(2) proposed by amendment to Bill C-27 and, in particular, provide that a sufficiently detailed summary of the use of copyright-protected training data is made available to the public.

It should also be more clearly stated that Bill C-27 creates responsibilities with respect to the Copyright Act, as the European Union has done.

The accountability framework outlined in new subsection 12(5) moved by amendment to Bill C-27 could thus support policies and procedures concerning the Copyright Act and the use of an individual's voice, image or reputation.

These additions would be consistent with the regulations being introduced at the international level and would foster the development of a licensing market based on consent and remuneration of rights holders.

Thank you for your attention. I will be pleased to answer your questions.

[Stéphanie Hénault, Director of Legal Affairs, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres]

On behalf of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres, I want to thank you for having me here in connection with this study on the first legislative initiative to specifically regulate artificial intelligence systems in Canada.

My name is Stéphanie Hénault, and I am the director of legal affairs at the association, which represents francophone book publishing companies across the country. Together with the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois, the association that represents authors in Quebec, we have established Copibec–Gestion collective des droits de reproduction, which offers copyright and royalty management solutions for users and rights holders. Associated with the International Publishers Association, the largest publishing federation in the world, we promote publishing as an economic, cultural and social development driver and are leaders in its evolution. By collectively participating in major international fairs and salons, hosting foreign publishers, booksellers and journalists here in Canada and taking part in numerous foundational projects, we are involved in numerous efforts to promote the exposure of French Canadian books.

For example, we established the Entrepôt ANEL-De Marque, which has fostered the successful development of a business model that complements that of the print industry, and we support our members in implementing digital strategies that promote their development. More specifically, we promote books in all formats in francophone countries and the translation of those books in countries such as Germany, Argentina, China, Egypt, Spain, the United States, Mexico, Iceland, Sweden, Serbia and Turkey, to name only a few.

The more Canadian literature is read internationally, the more popular it becomes among readers. The more often it's noticed by juries, the more awards it wins and the more it sells on all continents, including in our own country. The following numbers show how successful French Canadian books have become. In Quebec alone, sales of new books represent a market valued at approximately $680 million a year. Also in Quebec, the market share of francophone publishing companies represents 50% of sales, even though 900 foreign publishers distribute their books here.

In the artificial intelligence era, the entire Canadian book publishing industry needs our support, now more than ever, in establishing updated policies and programs by encouraging the lawful supply of content in this field.

This is why we took an active part in the recent consultation on generative AI and copyright by supporting the responsible development of artificial intelligence. We did it with Access Copyright, the Association of Canadian Publishers, the Association des éditeurs de langue anglaise du Québec, the Canadian Authors Association, the Canadian Publishers' Council, Copibec, the Literary Press Group of Canada, the Regroupement des éditeurs franco-canadiens, the Writers' Union of Canada, the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois, as well as with our partners in the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

The global publishing industry relies on copyright, particularly the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit the use of works and to engage in fee-based licensing. These rights are engaged when works are integrated in AI systems and when those systems are used if works are reproduced within them. For rights holders, the ability to grant or withhold permission to use works in these ways is as important as the compensation that may follow therefrom, particularly when a production of an artificial intelligence system competes with the work, substitutes it or undermines the author's moral right, to name only those forms of harm.

In the British, European and North American markets, we are seeing increasing numbers of copyright violation actions against AI models and trade agreements that are being reached to allow content to be licensed for text and data search purposes.

In Canada, licensing for text and data search is a growing market. We implore the government, on behalf of the book publishing industry, to encourage that industry by amending part 3 of Bill C-27 such that it clearly establishes that artificial intelligence must be developed and deployed responsibly, in the following manner: first, by implementing procedures that guarantee compliance with copyright legislation when its models are trained; second, by establishing obligations of transparency in the publication and availability of information on content integrated in its systems; and, lastly, by clearly and expressly stating in its own conditions of licensing with its users that the latter are required to comply with copyright.

The Copyright Act affords copyright holders remedies for addressing counterfeit cases involving AI developers, suppliers and users. First, however, AI framework legislation must at least provide that the intellectual property of Canadians be respected. Otherwise, the Canadian royalties market could well be hit even harder as systems will be developed and deployed secretly, unfairly and unlawfully.

Let me be very clear: we are not opposed to artificial intelligence, but we do contend that all Canadian market actors must support the legitimate interests of authors and publishers, as well as their essential contribution to innovation, knowledge, culture, diversity, cultural outreach, the economy and wealth of the country. We therefore emphasize that you must ensure our country at least complies with international practices respectful of authors and publishers, as Europe is doing with its new AI legislation, to prevent Canada from looking like a banana republic of international technology companies.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that authors and publishers are also counting on you to improve the Copyright Act, failing which they will be unable to receive the legitimate royalties that their international counterparts receive when their works are reproduced at certain educational institutions. I would also remind you that this priority was supported by the Standing Committee on Science and Research in its November 2023 report entitled Support for the Commercialization of Intellectual Property.

On behalf of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres, thank you very much for listening. I will be pleased to answer your questions.

[Eleanor Noble, National President, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists]

Good morning.

I'm Eleanor Noble, the national president of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this committee on behalf of the 30,000 members of our union. With me today is Marie Kelly, our national executive director. She's here with me to address any questions you may have.

For 80-plus years, ACTRA has represented professional performers across Canada who bring Canadian stories to life. We play a vital role in a nearly $14-billion industry that generates 240,000 jobs a year. We came to this committee today because we are concerned about the use of artificial intelligence and similar technologies in our industry.

To be clear, there are some positives to the adoption of technology in our industry when used responsibly. That said, our members are increasingly concerned about the unbridled and unmitigated use of AI in our industry and outside of it, which has the potential to significantly and harmfully impact our ability to work and make a living in the screen industry.

Last year, we undertook a comprehensive survey of our members about the impact of AI. Outside of collective bargaining, we have never had more responses to a member survey. Let me share with you some of the high-level takeaways: 98% of ACTRA performers are concerned about the potential misuse of their name, image and likeness by AI; 93% of respondents are concerned that AI will eventually replace human actors, beginning with background work and dubbing.

We have seen real examples of harmful use already. It was brought to ACTRA's attention last year that the voice of one of ACTRA's minor performers—underage performers—was uploaded to an AI text-to-speech voices list on a public website that allowed users to manipulate her voice to say crude, R-rated things. This is a minor, I'll remind you. This is unacceptable.

Similarly, an ACTRA performer on a video game was downloaded by players and, with the use of AI, their voice and game character were manipulated to say obscene things and to perform sexual acts, all without the knowledge or consent of the actor. This was accessible online for two years before the actor became aware, at which point ACTRA was contacted to step in.

These are just two examples of the harmful manipulations that performers—and, frankly, many Canadians—face. I think we can agree as Canadians that these are extremely harmful violations. We—you—have an opportunity to take action in this bill to protect us, and we are asking you to do so.

We are pleased that the government is reviewing the impact of AI in a multi-faceted manner. We believe it's important to update the privacy regime in Canada and to put a framework in place to ensure AI developers and deployers must take action to mitigate the potential for harm from their technologies.

We want to congratulate the government on bringing Bill C-27 forward and, in particular, we support your intention to ensure that consent is required for the use of biometric information, including a performer's name, image and likeness. Clarity around informed consent, we hope, will help in our work to ensure the industry does not ambush performers into signing away their rights.

This committee must push this bill further to clarify the type of harm performers experience on an all-too-regular basis. Not only is AI causing personal harm to performers like me, but it also risks our livelihoods and reputations. In the entertainment business, our reputation—including our name, image and likeness—is all we have. We are the brand, which we protect. The difference between getting a job one day and not getting one the next can come down to the most minute things, including one's reputation.

Sadly, reputational harm is not currently encompassed by Bill C-27. The definition of harm to include “psychological harm” or “economic loss to an individual” does not sufficiently encompass the reputational harm we experience. Due to the nature of our business, we might not be able to show an exact circumstance of work lost due to a deepfake or manipulation, but there is no doubt that damage to a performer's reputation means real and tangible loss for our careers.

We have submitted to this committee our proposed language to rectify this gap under the legislation. We strongly urge this committee to amend the definition of harm to ensure that performers' rights are protected under this bill.

Finally, the government must take action to amend other statutes to mitigate the harm of AI on Canadian performers. Specifically, we believe that the Copyright Act is fundamentally biased against performers by not ascribing a moral right to their work. We urge this committee to take action, either through this bill or with haste elsewhere, to protect Canadian performers. We understand that the upcoming budget bill may contain amendments to the Copyright Act, and we ask that you raise with the Minister of Finance the urgency of the need to provide moral rights to performers in it, as musicians have.

Committee members, we recognize that this bill is only scratching the surface of the public policy tools the government has on this file. We urge you to take us seriously. Our sector is an economic driver in this country, with real workers who strive to make a living and contribute to our Canadian cultural life. We need you, as legislators, to ensure that we can be protected and can continue to work today and into the future.

Thank you. Marie and I would be happy to take any of your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to meeting number 110 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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'd like to welcome all the witnesses here today.

From the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, we have Eleanor Noble, national president, who is joined by Marie Kelly, national executive director. We also have Stéphanie Hénault, director of legal affairs at the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres, as well as Marie-Julie Desrochers, executive director of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expression. From the Directors Guild of Canada, we have Dave Forget, national executive director, and Samuel Bischoff, manager of policy and regulatory affairs. Lastly, from Music Canada, we have Patrick Rogers, chief executive officer.

Thanks for being here with us this Monday morning as we're nearing the end of this study on Bill C-27. You are generating, as I see already, a lot of excitement in the room, so thanks for making the time to enlighten us with your testimony and your answers to our questions today.

Without further ado, we can start with Ms. Noble for five minutes.

The floor is yours.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Sure. If there is anything on that, I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

You talked about private-to-private information sharing. Bill C-27, the privacy act, is being reviewed now. The financial services sector for many years has asked for the ability to share information with peers in cases of suspected money laundering. Today they can already do that for fraud. I'm telling you all things you already know.

Did the Department of Finance make any recommendations to the government on expanding the safe harbour provision, if you will, in Bill C-27?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We are coming nearly to the end of the testimony and this witness panel’s appearance.

I am trying to form an opinion on what I heard. I am just trying to see where you are at regarding regulation so that I can think about it constructively.

I must admit I am a little confused.

On the one hand, when we asked all of you if this requires regulation, the answer was yes. When we asked you if quick action is needed, the answer was yes.

On the other hand, when we got into the details, you told us that Bill C‑27 is inadequate. It contains too many things and touches on too many aspects. Then you sort of told us that a lot of legislation would need changes. I noted down which ones we discussed today: The Canada Health Act, the Canada Elections Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the Criminal Code, the Copyright Act, the Patent Act and measures specifically targeting advertising for children. These types of changes would require endless legislative work, especially with the type of Parliament we’re sitting in today. In the end, it leads to us not having any regulation.

Furthermore, I think if we presented a bill to you in which we changed all of that legislation at the same time, you would probably tell us we are coming back to the same problem at the start of Bill C‑27, and it all boils down to the same thing.

If I understand correctly, it’s a matter of public relations and strategy, among other things.

I have the bad habit of being very direct. I will therefore ask you the following question: Isn’t this a rather clever way of telling us that you don’t want any regulation?

Take all the time left to answer my question.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank all the witnesses for being here with us.

Last Monday, when he appeared before this committee via videoconference, Mr. Bengio told us we had to move Bill C‑27 forward quickly, because in a decade or even within two years, robots as smart as humans could make decisions.

In today’s La Presse, an article on digital life shows that in 2019, during the pandemic, your four respective companies and Apple created nearly 1 million jobs. Since then, especially over the last two years, over 125,000 of them were cut, and it’s not over.

Are these employees, who created tools through artificial intelligence, now paying for it by having their jobs eliminated? Is this the start of a significant reduction in the number of employees?

I own an SME. As we speak, in the field of communications, tools like ChatGPT can create websites in five minutes. Obviously, it doesn’t take me five minutes to do it. One must adapt to today’s reality.

In the future, will artificial intelligence help us to create more jobs or fewer jobs in the field of information technology?

In fact, Ms. Craig, you talked about research and development. I think Ms. Curran did too.

Could Bill C‑27 undermine research and development in Canada if it sets out rules for artificial intelligence that are too strict?

My questions are for everyone. You may answer one after the other if you like.

[Rachel Curran]

I'd agree with that.

The issue you've raised around deepfakes, both video and audio, would not be addressed by Bill C-27, at least not anytime soon. I know that the government made an announcement—I think today—around the issue of deepfakes and an intent to deal with them. They could be dealt with very easily through an amendment to the Criminal Code or existing legislation.

It's the same thing around election disinformation. If that's a harm committee members are concerned about, that can be addressed through a quick amendment to the Canada Elections Act. There's even the Copyright Act on issues of creator rights. The use of material in the context of AI development that impacts creator rights can be dealt with through the Copyright Act as well.

There are existing statutes. We advocated previously for a sectoral approach to AI regulation because of this, but those could all be dealt with very quickly. They won't be dealt with in the context of Bill C-27 quickly.

[Amanda Craig, Senior Director of Public Policy, Office of Responsible AI, Microsoft]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members for the opportunity to testify.

At Microsoft, we believe in the immense opportunity that AI presents to contribute to Canada's growth and to deliver prosperity to Canadians. To truly realize AI's potential and to improve people's lives, we must effectively address the very real challenges and risks of using AI without appropriate safeguards. That's why we have championed the need for regulation that navigates the complexity of AI to strengthen safety and to safeguard privacy and civil liberties.

Canada has been a leader in putting forward a framework for AI, and there are positive aspects of the legislative framework that provide a helpful foundation going forward. However, as it currently stands, Bill C-27 applies the rules and requirements too broadly. It regulates both low-risk and high-risk AI systems in a similar way without adjusting requirements according to risk, and it includes criminal penalties as part of the enforcement regime.

Not all risk is created equal. Intuitively we know that, but it can be difficult to determine risk levels and adjust for them. In our view, the set of rules and requirements in the AIDA should apply to AI systems and used where the level of risk is high. For example, the AIDA applies the same rules and regulatory obligations to a high-risk system, such as AI that is used to determine whether to approve a mortgage, and to a low-risk system, such as AI that is used to optimize package delivery routes.

Applying the rules and requirements too broadly has several implications. Businesses in Canada, including small and medium-sized businesses, will need to focus on resource-intensive assessment and third party audits even for low-risk, general purpose systems, rather than focusing on where the risk is highest or on developing new safety systems. A restaurant chain and its AI system for inventory management and food waste reduction will be subject to the same requirements as facial recognition technology. This will spread thinly the time, money, talent and resources of Canadian businesses. It will potentially mean finite resources are not sufficiently focused on the highest risk.

Canada's approach is also out of step with that of some of its largest trading partners, including the U.S., the EU, the U.K., Japan and others. In fact, the Canadian law firm Osler has published a comparison of the AIDA with the EU's AI Act, which I'll be happy to submit to the committee. The comparison includes 11 examples where Canada has gone further than the EU, creating a set of unique requirements for businesses operating in Canada.

Going further than the EU does not mean that Canadians will be better protected from the risks of AI. It means that businesses in Canada that are already using lower-risk AI systems could face a more onerous regime than anywhere in the world. Instead, Canadians will be better protected with more targeted regulation. By ensuring that the AIDA is risk-based and provides clarity and certainty on compliance, Canada can set a new standard for AI regulation.

We firmly believe that with the right amendments, it is possible to strike the right balance in the AIDA. You can achieve the crucial objective of reducing harm and protecting Canadians, and you can enable businesses in Canada to be more confident in adapting AI, which will provide enormous benefits for productivity, innovation and competitiveness.

In conclusion, we would recommend, first, better scoping of what is truly high-impact AI. Second, we recommend distinguishing the levels of risk of AI systems and defining requirements according to that level of risk. Third and finally, we recommend rethinking enforcement, including the use of criminal penalties, which is unlike any other jurisdiction in the OECD. This would also ensure that Canada's approach is interoperable with what other global leaders, such as the EU, the U.K. and the U.S., are doing.

We are happy to provide this committee with a written submission detailing our recommendations.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We look forward to your questions.

[Rachel Curran, Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Rachel Curran and I'm the head of public policy for Meta in Canada. It's a pleasure to address the committee this afternoon.

Meta supports risk-based, technology-neutral approaches to the regulation of artificial intelligence. We believe it's important for governments to work together to set common standards and governance models for AI. It's this approach that will enable the economic and social opportunities of an open science approach to AI and also bolster Canadian competitiveness.

Meta has been at the forefront of the development of artificial intelligence for more than a decade. We can talk about that later during this hearing. This innovation has allowed us to connect billions of people and generate real value for small businesses. For our community, AI is what helps people discover and engage with the content they care about. For the millions of businesses, particularly small businesses, that use our platforms, our AI-powered tools make an advertiser's job easier. That's a real game-changer for small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to reach customers who are interested in their products.

In addition, Meta's fundamental AI research team has taken an open approach to AI research, pioneering breakthroughs across a range of industries and sectors. In 2017 we launched our AI research lab in Montreal to contribute to the Canadian AI ecosystem. Today, Meta's global research efforts are led by Dr. Joelle Pineau, a world-leading Canadian researcher and a professor at McGill University. She is the one who heads up Meta's global AI research efforts.

Our Canadian team of researchers has worked on some of the biggest breakthroughs in AI, from developing more diverse and inclusive AI models to improving health care accessibility and patient care, which have benefited communities in Canada and abroad. This work is shared openly with the greater research community, a commitment to open science and a level of transparency that helps Meta set the highest standards of quality and responsibility and ultimately build better AI solutions.

We applaud Canada's leadership on the development of smart regulation and guardrails for AI development, particularly through its leadership on the Global Partnership on AI and the G7 process. We strongly support the work of this committee, of course, and the initial aim of Bill C-27, which is to ensure that AI is developed and deployed responsibly while also ensuring that global regulatory frameworks are aligned, maintaining Canada's status as a world leader in AI innovation and research.

We think AI is advancing so quickly that measures focused on specific technologies could soon become irrelevant and hinder innovation. As we look to the future, we hope that the government will consider a truly risk-based and outcome-focused approach that will be future-proof. In that regard, we would flag a few specific concerns with Bill C-27.

First, one proposed amendment from the minister to this bill would classify content moderation or prioritization systems as “high-impact”. We respectfully disagree that these systems are inherently high risk as defined in the legislation, and suggest that the regulation of risks associated with content that Canadians see online would be better dealt with in pending online harms legislation.

Similarly, we think the proposed regime for general purpose AI is not appropriately tailored to risk and more closely resembles the requirements for truly high-impact systems. We suggest that the obligations for general purpose AI should be harmonized with international frameworks, such as the ongoing G7 Hiroshima process, which I referenced earlier, the White House voluntary commitments and OECD work on AI governance.

Lastly, we'd flag the audit and access powers contemplated by Bill C-27. We think they are at odds with existing frameworks—for example, with the approach by other signatories of the Bletchley Declaration arising out of the recent U.K. AI safety summit. That includes the U.S. and the U.K. Again, we'd encourage Canada to pursue an approach that preserves privacy and is consistent with global standards.

Members, we believe that Meta is uniquely poised to solve some of AI's biggest problems by weaving our learnings from our world-leading research into products that billions of people and businesses can benefit from while continuing to contribute to Canada's vibrant, world-leading AI ecosystem.

We look forward to working with this committee and to answering your questions.

Thank you.

[Jeanette Patell, Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada]

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. My name is Jeanette Patell and I am the director of government affairs and public policy for Google in Ottawa. I am joined remotely by my colleagues Tulsee Doshi and Will DeVries. Tulsee is a director and head of product in responsible AI at Google. Will is a director on our privacy legal team and advises the company on global privacy laws and data protection compliance. We appreciate the invitation to appear today and to contribute to your consideration of Bill C-27.

As the committee knows, this is important legislation, and important legislation to get right.

Today, we will present a few remarks on the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act. We will be very happy to answer your questions.

We will present our brief to this committee shortly. We will also maintain our commitments regarding aspects that could be improved and ensure better results for businesses, innovators and Canadian consumers.

When Canadians use our services, they are trusting us with their information. This is a responsibility that we take very seriously at Google, and we protect user privacy with industry-leading security infrastructure, responsible data practices and easy-to-use privacy tools that put our users in control.

Google has long championed smart, interoperable and adaptable data protection regulations—rules that will protect privacy rights, enhance trust in the digital ecosystem and enable responsible innovation. We support the government's efforts to modernize Canada's privacy and data protection regulatory framework and to codify important rights and obligations.

We also believe the CPPA would benefit from further consideration and targeted amendments in certain areas. For example, we agree with others, like the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, that consent provisions should be both clarified and tailored to more consequential activities. We also highlight the need for a consistent federal definition of “minors” and clearer protections for minors' rights and freedoms. Improvements to these areas would maintain and enhance Canadian privacy protections, make it easier for businesses to operate across Canada and the world and enable continued innovation throughout the economy.

Turning to the artificial intelligence and data act, as our CEO has said, “AI is too important not to regulate, and too important not to regulate well.” We are encouraged to see governments around the world developing policy frameworks for these new technologies, and we're deeply engaged in supporting these efforts to maximize AI's benefits while minimizing its risks.

Google has been working on AI for a long time, including at our sites in Montreal and Toronto, and in 2017 we reoriented to be an AI-first company. Today AI powers Google search, translate, maps and other services Canadians use every day. We're also using AI to help solve societal issues, from forecasting floods to improving screenings of diseases like breast cancer. Since 2018, our work with these technologies has been guided by our responsible AI principles, which are supported by a robust governance structure and review process. My colleague Tulsee has been at the centre of this work.

Canada has an exceptional opportunity to leverage investments in basic research and artificial intelligence. This committee will contribute to developing a legislative framework for solid public protection measures that will harness economic and societal benefits.

We welcome the government's efforts to establish the right guardrails around AI, and we share some of the concerns that others have raised with this committee. We believe the bill can be thoughtfully amended in ways that support the government's objectives without hindering AI's development and use.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to regulating AI. AI is a multi-purpose technology that takes many forms and spans a wide range of risk profiles. A regulatory framework for these technologies should recognize the vast range of beneficial uses and should weigh the opportunity costs of not developing or deploying AI systems. It should also tailor obligations to the magnitude and likelihood of harm specific to particular use cases. We believe the AIDA should establish a risk-based and proportionate approach tailored to specific applications and focused on ensuring global interoperability via widely accepted compliance tools such as international standards.

We hope to continue to work with the Canadian government, as we have with governments around the world, to build thoughtful, smart regulations that protect Canadians and capture this once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen our economy, position Canadian innovators for success on the global stage and drive transformational scientific breakthroughs.

Thank you again for the invitation to appear. We look forward to answering your questions and continuing this important conversation.

[Nicole Foster, Director, Global Artificial Intelligence and Canada Public Policy, Amazon Web Services, Inc.]

Thank you for your invitation.

It's a privilege to be here as the committee conducts its study of the AI and data act within Bill C-27.

AWS has a strong presence in and commitment to Canada. We have two infrastructure regions here, in both Montreal and Calgary, to support our Canadian customers, and we have plans to invest up to nearly $25 billion by 2037 in this digital infrastructure.

Globally, more than 100,000 organizations of all sizes are using AWS AI and machine-learning services. They include Canadian start-ups, national newspapers, professional sports organizations, federally regulated financial institutions, retailers, public institutions and more.

Specifically, AWS offers a set of capabilities across three layers of the technology stack. At the bottom layer is the AI infrastructure layer. We offer our own high-performance custom chips, as well as other computing options. At the middle layer, we provide the broadest selection of foundation models on which organizations build generative AI applications. This includes both Amazon-built models and those from other leading providers, such as Cohere—a Canadian company—Anthropic, AI21, Meta—who's here today—and Stability AI. At the top layer of the stack, we offer generative AI applications and services.

AWS continually invests in the responsible development and deployment of AI. We dedicate efforts to help customers innovate and implement necessary safeguards. Our efforts towards safe, secure and responsible AI are grounded in a deep collaboration with the global community, including in work to establish international technical standards. We applaud the Standards Council of Canada's continued leadership here.

We are excited about how AI will continue to grow and transform how we live and work. At the same time, we're also keenly aware of the potential risks and challenges. We support government's efforts to put in place effective, risk-based regulatory frameworks while also allowing for continued innovation and a practical application of the technology.

I'm pleased to share some thoughts on the approach Bill C-27 proposes.

First, AI regulations must account for the multiple stakeholders involved in the development and use of AI systems. Given that the AI value chain is complex, recent clarification from the minister that helps define rules for AI developers and deployers is a positive development. Developers are those who make available general purpose AI systems or services, and deployers are those who implement or deploy those AI systems.

Second, success in deploying responsible AI is often very use case- and context-specific. Regulation needs to differentiate between higher- and lower-risk systems. Trying to regulate all applications with the same approach is very impractical and can inadvertently stifle innovation.

Because the risks associated with AI are dependent on context, regulations will be most effective when they target specific high-risk uses of the technology. While Bill C-27 acknowledges a conceptual differentiation between high- and low-impact applications of AI, we are concerned that, even with the additional clarifications, the definition of “high impact” is still too ambiguous, capturing a number of use cases that would be unnecessarily subject to costly and burdensome compliance requirements.

As a quick example, there's the use of AI via peace officer, which is deemed high impact. Is it still high impact if it includes the use of autocorrect when filling out a traffic violation? Laws and regulations must clearly differentiate between high-risk applications and those that pose little or no risk. This is a core principle that we have to get right. We should be very careful about imposing regulatory burdens on low-risk AI applications that can potentially provide much-needed productivity boosts to Canadian companies both big and small.

Third, criminal enforcement provisions of this bill could have a particularly chilling effect on innovation, even more so if the requirements are not tailored to risk and not drafted clearly.

Finally, Bill C-27 should ensure it is interoperable with other regulatory regimes. The AI policy world has changed and progressed quite quickly since Bill C-27 was first introduced in 2022. Many of Canada's most important trading partners, including the U.S., the U.K., Japan and Australia, have since outlined very different decentralized regulatory approaches, where AI regulations and risk mitigation are to be managed by regulators closest to the use cases. While it's commendable that the government has revised its initial approach following feedback from stakeholders, it should give itself the time necessary to get its approach right.

[Matthew Hatfield, Executive Director, OpenMedia]

Hi there. I'm Matt Hatfield, and I'm the executive director of OpenMedia, a grassroots community of 230,000 people in Canada who work together for an open, accessible and surveillance-free Internet. I'm joining you from the unceded territory of the Sto:lo, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam nations.

I’d like to ask us all a question: What does cybersecurity mean to you as an individual, as a family member and as a citizen? For me, and for many people across Canada, our cybersecurity is inseparable from our privacy, as so much of our everyday lives is conducted online—much more so since COVID—and none of us feel secure with the thought of being spied on in our everyday lives, whether by hackers, hostile states or our own government. For most Canadians, our cybersecurity is very much about that sense of personal security.

The draft of Bill C-26 you have in front of you threatens that security. It poses enormous risks to our personal privacy, without basic accountability and oversight to ensure that the people given these powers don't abuse them against us. You must fix this.

Exhibit A is proposed section 15.2 of the Telecommunications Act, which grants the government the power to order telcos “to do anything or refrain from doing anything”. There are no limits here, no tests for necessity, proportionality and reasonableness, and no requirement for consultation. The government could use these powers to order telcos to break the encryption we need to keep ourselves safe from hackers, fraudsters and thieves. They could even use these powers to disconnect ordinary people indefinitely from the Internet, maybe because our smart toaster or an old phone we gave our kids gets hijacked by a hostile botnet. Without a requirement that these orders be proportional or time-limited, these are real risks.

It gets worse. The government would be allowed to keep even the existence of these orders—never mind their content—top secret indefinitely, and even if these orders are challenged by judicial review, the minister could bring secret evidence before secret hearings, which flies in the face of basic judicial transparency.

There's no excuse for this. Our close allies in Australia and the U.K. have shown how cybersecurity can be strengthened without compromising fundamental rights. Why do Canadians deserve lesser protections?

All this comes when Parliament is working on strengthening our privacy laws through Bill C-27. I have to ask, does one hand of our government even know what the other is working on?

We recognize that there are very real problems, though, that Bill C-26 is trying to solve. When we read the government's stated objectives, we're on board. Should we protect the digital infrastructure? Sure. Should we remove risky equipment from hostile states? Of course. Should we force big banks and telcos to better protect their customers? Of course. However, we can fulfill these objectives without sacrificing our rights or balanced, effective governance. Let's talk about how.

First, the government's new powers must be constrained. Robust necessity, proportionality and reasonableness tests are an absolute must. An unbreakable encryption is the fundamental baseline that all of our personal privacy depends on, so there must be an absolute prohibition on the government using these powers to break encryption.

Second, privacy rights must be entrenched. Personal information must be clearly defined as confidential and forbidden from being shared with foreign states, which are not subject to Bill C-26's checks and balances.

Third, the government must not be allowed to conceal the use of its new powers under a permanent veil of secrecy.

Fourth, when the use of those powers is challenged in court, there must be no secret evidence. Special advocates should be appointed to ensure all evidence is duly tested.

Fifth, any information the Canadian Security Establishment obtains about Canadians under Bill C-26 should be used exclusively for the defensive cybersecurity part of their mandate. I hope you all remember that NSIRA, the body explicitly established by Parliament to oversee CSE, has complained for years about CSE not being accountable to them. Knowing how difficult it's proved to keep them accountable for their existing powers, please don't grant them broad new powers without tight and clear use and reporting mechanisms.

As other people have said, when cybersecurity works, it's a team sport. It requires buy-in from all of us. We all have to be on team Canada, and we all have to trust in the regulatory framework that governs it. There's zero chance of that happening with Bill C-26 as is. Adequate transparency, proportionality and independent verification are the necessary baseline that this bill has to earn for it to work.

We're going to be delivering a petition signed by nearly 10,000 Canadians to you shortly, folks who are calling for that baseline protection. We urge you to listen to these voters and adopt the amendments package that civil society has suggested to you to get this legislation where it needs to be.

Thanks. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

What I have is to seek additional resources with the clerk for extra meetings on top of what we have on Bill C-27 next week. With these resources, we invite the CEOs of the telcos. In addition, we also invite the minister to come and testify as part of this telco study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Okay. I can definitely see....

If there's consensus around the room to say that we'll start this study on telecoms earlier than planned if we have the additional resources, and we'll keep Bill C-27 as planned.... The clerk is here by my side, so we'll be looking for additional resources.

There is still a motion before this committee, though. I don't know how colleagues want to proceed with this motion or if there's an agreement that we just start the telecoms study earlier.

I'll looking at Ryan and Brian.

Ryan, I'll yield the floor to you.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

No one is disagreeing with the fact that cellphone companies should be called before the committee and questioned about any planned increases. I think we've all agreed to that. That's actually in the subcommittee report. I think it's more substantive. It already includes the CEOs of Telus and Quebecor Media, etc. It includes all the CEOs of all the companies that have been mentioned. It also includes a focus on increased customer cellphone bills, so any.... It's already there.

I think we've already agreed to do this work, so I still can't understand the rationale for an additional motion that just bumps it up. If you're asking for additional committee resources to start that component of the broader study earlier, okay, that's fine, but then isn't it subject to committee resources? If we've asked for additional resources to study Bill C-27, why shouldn't that be the first priority, which is what we agreed to?

We've already agreed to that. We've already had that debate and that conversation. We agreed to what's in the subcommittee report, so why is this now...? Even though we've already agreed to it, somehow it's now an even higher priority because you just decided it in the last week or so.

It doesn't make sense to me when we've already agreed to do a broader study. We've agreed to call all the witnesses. We've agreed to focus on cellphone prices and bills and we've agreed that it can be the first priority in that broader study. We've also agreed to a report of findings and recommendations back to the House.

I just can't understand what the.... In a way, isn't this a redundant motion? We've already done this.

Isn't there some rule in the Standing Orders that a motion has to be substantively different in order for it to be considered? This doesn't seem different at all. I don't see anything that's different here. I really can't understand the rationale for this, other than a bit of a grandstand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Okay.

I'll turn it over to Mr. Turnbull.

There's a small thing to keep in mind in terms of scheduling. We have witnesses lined up for Bill C-27 on February 12 and 14. Should this motion be adopted, I would suggest we try to seek additional resources so as to not undo the great work that our clerk has done to get these witnesses before the committee. That's just something to keep in mind.

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I'm looking around the room to see if there are more interventions.

It is true that in the steering committee we did agree to start the telco study on the 26th and to finish the Bill C-27 witnesses before we adjourn for the constituency week in February.

I'll let Mr. Williams speak to his motion.

[Dr. Elissa Strome]

Not directly.

The pan-Canadian AI strategy at its inception was really designed to advance Canada's leadership in AI research, training and innovation. It really focused on building a deep pool of talented individuals with AI expertise across the country and fielding very rich, robust, dynamic AI ecosystems in our three centres in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton. That was the foundation of the strategy.

As the strategy evolved over the years, we saw additional investments in budget 2021 to focus on advancing the responsible development, deployment and adoption of AI, as well as thinking about those opportunities to work collaboratively and internationally on things like standards, etc.

Indirectly, I would say that the pan-Canadian AI strategy has at least been engaged in the development of the AI and data act through several channels. One is through the AI advisory council that Professor Bengio mentioned earlier. He's the co-chair of that council. We have several leaders across the AI ecosystem who are participants and members on that council. I'm also a member on that council. The AI and data act and Bill C-27 have been discussed at that council.

Second—

[Yoshua Bengio]

I'll let my colleagues answer some of those questions. However, I would like to clarify something I proposed in what I said and wrote. It has to do with setting a criterion related to the size of the systems in terms of computing power, with the current threshold above which a system would have to be registered being 10²⁶ operations per second. That would be the same as in the United States, and it would bring us up to the same level of oversight as the Americans.

This criterion isn't currently set out in Bill C‑27. I would suggest that we adopt that as a starting point, but then allow the regulator to look at the science and misuse to adjust the criteria for what is a potentially dangerous and high‑impact system. We can start right away with the same thing as in the United States.

In Europe, they've adopted more or less the same system, which is also based on computing power. Right now, it's a simple, agreed‑upon criterion that we can use to distinguish between potentially risky systems that are in the high‑impact category and systems that are 99.9% classified as AI systems without a national security risk.

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

Will Bill C‑27 allow it to be as effective as, or equivalent to, the U.S. presidential executive order currently in force?

Do you think the Americans will then pass legislation that will go further than this current presidential executive order?

The EU has already been much quicker to adopt measures than we've been. What is the intersection between Bill C‑27 and the bill that's about to be passed in Europe?

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses. Today's discussions are very interesting.

I'm not necessarily speaking to anyone in particular, but rather to all the witnesses.

Bad actors, whether they be terrorists, scammers or thieves, could misuse AI. I think that's one of Mr. Bengio's concerns. If we were to pass Bill C‑27 tomorrow morning, would that prevent such individuals from doing so?

To follow up on the question from my Bloc Québécois colleague earlier, it seems clear to me that, even in the case of a recorded message intended to scam someone, the scammer will not specify that the message was created using AI.

Do you really believe that Bill C‑27 will change things or truly make Quebeckers and Canadians safer when it comes to AI?

[Prof. Catherine Régis]

Influence is an issue, but I'd like to briefly comment on the self-regulation aspect, if I may. I think it's important. In my view, self-regulation clearly isn't adequate. There's a pretty strong consensus in the international community that opting strictly for self-regulation isn't enough. That means legislation has its place: it imposes obligations and formal accountability measures on companies.

That said, it's important to recognize that this legislation, Bill C-27, is one tool in the important tool box we need to ensure the responsible deployment of AI. It's not the only answer. The law is important, but highly responsive ethical standards are also necessary. The tool box should include technical defensive AI, where you have AI versus AI. International standards as well as business standards need to be established. Coming up with a comprehensive strategy is really key. This bill won't fix everything, but it is essential. That's my answer to your first question.

Sorry, could you please remind me what your second question was?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Recently, we've heard about scams that use AI to imitate people's voices and dupe a grandmother or grandfather. You'll have to forgive me if I don't use the right terminology. As I understand it, you are saying that the current regulatory framework neither requires companies nor incentivizes them—because there is a cost attached—to identify when something is fake.

Does Bill C-27, in its current form, remedy that? Does it cover everything it should, or does it need to be strengthened?

[Professor Catherine Régis, Full Professor, Université de Montréal, As an Individual]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the AI portion of Bill C-27.

I am a full professor in the faculty of law at Université de Montréal. I am also the Canada research chair in collaborative culture in health law and policy, as well as the Canada-CIFAR chair in AI, affiliated to Mila. From January 2, 2022 to December 2023, I co-chaired the ​​Working Group on Responsible AI for the Global Partnership on AI.

The first point I want to make is to reaffirm not only the importance, but also the urgency of creating a better legal framework for AI, as proposed in Bill C-27. That has been my view for the past five years, and I am now more convinced than ever, given the dizzying pace of recent developments in AI, which you are all familiar with.

We need legal tools that are binding. They must clearly set out our expectations, values and requirements in relation to AI, at the national level. During the citizen consultations that culminated in the development of the Montréal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence, the first need identified was for an appropriate legal framework that would enable the development of trusted AI technologies.

As you probably know, that trend has spread across the world, the most obvious example definitely being the European Union's efforts. As of last week, the EU is now one step closer to adopting a regulatory framework for AI.

In addition to these national requirements, the global discussions around AI and the resulting decisions will have repercussions for every country. In fact, the idea of creating a specific AI authority is being discussed.

In order to ensure that Canadian values and interests are taken into account in the international space, Canada has to be able to influence the discussions and decisions. Setting out a national vision with strong and clear standards is vital to playing a credible, meaningful and influential role in the global governance of AI.

That said, I think Bill C-27 could still use some improvements. I will focus on two of them today.

The first improvement is to make the artificial intelligence and data commissioner more independent. Although recent amendments have resulted in improvements, the commissioner is still very much tied to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. To avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent, the government should create more of a wall between the two entities. This would address any tensions that might arise between the government's role as a funder on one hand, and its role as a watchdog on the other.

Possible solutions include creating an office of the artificial intelligence commissioner that is totally independent of the department, and empowering the commissioner to impose administrative monetary penalties or require that corrective actions be taken to address the accountability framework. In addition, the commissioner could be asked to recommend new or improved regulations informed by their experience as a watchdog, mainly through the annual public report.

Other measures could also be taken. Once the legislation is passed, for instance, the government could give the commissioner the financial and institutional resources, as well as the qualified staff necessary to successfully carry out the duties of the commissioner. Making sure that the commissioner has the means to achieve their objectives is really important. Another possibility is to create a mechanism whereby the public could report issues directly to the commissioner. That would establish a relationship between the two.

The second major improvement that's needed, as I see it, is to further strengthen the crucial role that human rights can play in analyzing the risks and impacts of AI systems. The importance of taking into account human rights in defining the classes of high-impact AI systems is specifically mentioned. However, the importance of then incorporating consideration of those rights in companies' assessments, which could include an analysis of the risks of harm and adverse effects, is not quite so clear.

I would also recommend adding specific language to address the need to conduct impact assessments for human rights in relation to individuals or groups of individuals who may be affected by high-impact AI systems. A portion of those assessments could also be made public. These are sometimes called human rights impact assessments.

The Council of Europe, the European Union with its AI legislation, and even the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are working on similar tools, so exploring the possibility of sharing expertise would be worthwhile.

The second recommendation is fundamental. While the AI race is very real, there can be no winner of the race to violate human rights. The legislation must make that clear.

Thank you.

[Ignacio Cofone, Canada Research Chair in AI Law and Data Governance, McGill University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the invitation to share with the committee my thoughts on Bill C-27.

I'm appearing today in my personal capacity. Mr. Chair has already introduced me, so I'm going to skip that part and say that it is crucial that Canada have a legal framework that fosters the enormous benefits of AI and data while preventing its population from becoming collateral damage from it.

I'm happy to share my broad thoughts on the act, but today I want to focus on three important opportunities for improvement while maintaining the general characteristics and approach of the act as proposed. I have one recommendation for AIDA, one for the CPPA and one for both.

My first recommendation is that AIDA needs an improved definition of “harms”. AIDA is an accountability framework, and the effectiveness of any accountability framework depends on what it is that we hold entities accountable for. AIDA recognizes currently property, economic, physical and psychological harms, but for it to be helpful and comprehensive, we need one step more.

Consider the harms to democracy that were imposed during the Cambridge Analytica scandal and consider the meaningful but diffuse and invisible harms that are inflicted every day through intentional misinformation that polarizes voters. Consider the misrepresentation of minorities that disempowers them. These go unrecognized by the current definition of “harms”.

AIDA needs two changes to recognize intangible harms beyond individual psychological ones: It needs to recognize harms to groups, such as harms to democracy, as AI harms often affect communities rather than discrete individuals, and it also needs to recognize dignitary harms, like those stemming from misrepresentation and the growing of systemic inequalities through automated means.

I therefore urge the committee to amend subsection 5(1) of AIDA to incorporate these intangible harms to individuals and to communities. I would be happy to propose suggested language.

This fuller account of harms would put Canada up to international standards, such as the EU AI Act, which considers harms to “public interest”, to “rights protected” by EU law, to a “plurality of persons” and to people in a “vulnerable position”. Doing so better complies with AI ethics frameworks, such as the Montreal declaration for responsible AI, the Toronto declaration and the Asilomar AI principles. You would also increase consistency within Canadian law, as the directive on automated decision-making repeatedly refers to “individuals or communities”.

My second recommendation is that the CPPA must recognize inferences as personal information. We live in a world where things as sensitive and dangerous as our sexuality or ethnicity and our political affiliation can be inferred from things as inoffensive as our Spotify listens or our coffee orders or text messages, and those are just some of the inferences that we know about.

Inferences can even be harmful when they are incorrect. TransUnion, for example, the credit rating agency, was sued in the United States a couple of years ago for mistakenly inferring that hundreds of people were terrorists. By supercharging inferences, AI has transformed the privacy landscape.

We cannot afford to have a privacy statute that focuses on disclosed information and builds a back door into our privacy law that strips from it its power to create meaningful protection in today's inferential economy. The CPPA doesn't rule out inferences being personal information, but it doesn't incorporate them explicitly. It should. I urge the committee to amend the definition of personal information in one of the acts to say that “ 'personal information' means disclosed or inferred information about an identifiable individual or group”.

This change would also increase consistency within Canadian law, as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has repeatedly stated that inferences should be personal information, and also with international standards, as foreign data protection authorities emphasize the importance of inferences for privacy law. The California attorney general has also stated that inferences should be personal information for the purposes of privacy law.

My third brief recommendation is a consequence of this bill, which is reforming enforcement. As AI and data continue to seep into more aspects of our social and economic lives, one regulator with limited resources and personnel will not be able to have their eye on everything. They will need to prioritize. If we don't want all other harms to fall through the cracks, both parts of the act need a combined public and private enforcement system, taking inspiration from the GDPR, so that we have an agency that issues fines without preventing the court system from compensating for tangible and intangible harm done to individuals and groups.

We also have a brief elaborating on the suggested outlines here.

I'd be happy to address any questions or elaborate on anything.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning one and all. Welcome to meeting number 108 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming its study 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.

Today's witnesses are all joining us by video conference. We have with us Ignacio Cofone, Canada research chair in artificial intelligence law and data governance at McGill University; Catherine Régis, full professor at Université de Montréal; Elissa Strome, executive director of pan-Canadian AI strategy at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; and Yoshua Bengio, scientific director at Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute.

Welcome and thank you all for being with us.

Since we are already a bit behind schedule, I'm going to turn the floor right over to you, Mr. Cofone. You have five minutes for your opening statement.

Consumer-Led Banking Act

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

Madam Speaker, the member is a new addition to our industry committee; I look forward to working with him.

We see this across a lot of different spectra right now. This bill is asking for legislation. The legislation has to come forward. It is much the same as we are seeing with Bill C-27, and we have a much better privacy bill in Quebec, so I will agree with that. It is much the same as we saw today when we were talking about the problems with Manulife and Loblaw, and the fact that some of the legislation is provincial that is allowing Manulife to sole-source pharmaceuticals.

Yes, I agree with the member. We always need to look at the provinces, and we are looking at that with some of that legislation. However, let us get the legislation forward and passed, so we can all talk about it in the House of Commons and then get it passed for Quebec and all Canadians.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Professor Bednar, I have to interrupt you, because time is very limited. That said, the chair is very generous.

Do you think that, in its current form, Bill C‑27 is too permissive when it comes to self‑regulation? Should we rely instead on government regulations, for example?

[Prof. Nicolas Papernot]

I agree that AI is one way to analyze data, but there are many other ways to do it. So we need regulations on privacy, just as we do for AI. For the latter, the part of Bill C‑27 that deals with it talks a lot about privacy, but there are a lot of other ways to—

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you very much. That sends a clear message about the confidence an expert like you may have in the current regulations. There are even people who say that this bill is inadequate and that we should tear it up and rewrite it.

Canadian regulations already exist. Indeed, other legislation directly or indirectly regulates artificial intelligence and data protection. Do you think that, if Bill C‑27 were amended to reflect the advances, there would be a way to improve what we already have, or is it a waste of time?

[Professor Nicolas Papernot, Assistant Professor and Canada CIFAR AI Chair, University of Toronto and Vector Institute, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me to appear here today. I am an assistant professor of computer engineering and computer science at the University of Toronto, a faculty member at the Vector Institute, where I hold a Canada CIFAR AI chair, and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute.

My area of expertise is at the intersection of computer security, privacy and artificial intelligence.

I will first comment on the consumer privacy protection act proposed in Bill C‑27. The arguments I'm going to present are the result of discussions with professors Lisa Austin, David Lie and Aleksandar Nikolov, some colleagues.

I do not believe that the act in its current form creates the right incentives for adoption of privacy-preserving data analysis standards. Specifically, the act's reliance on de-identification as a privacy protection tool is misplaced. For example, as you know, the act allows organizations to disclose personal information to some others for socially beneficial purposes if the personal information is de-identified.

As a researcher in this field, I would say that de-identification creates a false sense of security. Indeed, we can use algorithms to find patterns in data, even when steps have been taken to hide those patterns.

For instance, the state of Victoria in Australia released public transit data that was de-identified by replacing each traveller's smart card ID with a unique random ID. The logic was that no IDs means no identities. However, researchers showed that mapping their own trips, where they tapped on and off public transit, allowed them to reidentify themselves. Equipped with that knowledge, they then learned the random IDs assigned to their colleagues. Once they had knowledge of their colleagues' random IDs, they could find out about any other trip—weekend trips, doctor visits—all things that most would expect to be kept private.

As a researcher in this area, that doesn't surprise me.

Moreover, AI can automate finding these patterns.

With AI, such reidentification can happen for a large portion of individuals in the dataset. This makes the act problematic when trying to regulate privacy in an AI world.

Instead of de-identification, the technical community has embraced different approaches to privacy data analysis, such as differential privacy. Differential privacy has been shown to work well with AI and can demonstrate privacy, even if some things are already known about the data. It would have protected the colleague's privacy in the example I gave earlier. Because differential privacy does not depend upon modifying personal information, this creates a mismatch between what the act requires and emerging best technical practices.

I will now comment on the part of Bill C‑27 that proposes an artificial intelligence and data act. The original text was ambiguous as to the definition of an AI system and a high‑impact system. The amendments that were proposed in November seem to be moving in the right direction. However, the proposed legislation needs to be clearer with respect to data governance.

Currently, the act does not capture important aspects of data governance that can result in harmful AI systems. For example, improper care when curating data leads to a non-representative dataset. My colleagues and I have illustrated this risk with synthetic data used to train AI systems that generate images or text. If the output of these AI systems is being fed back to them, that is, to train new AI systems, these new AI systems perform poorly. The analogy one might use is how the photocopy of a photocopy becomes unreliable.

What's more, this phenomenon can disparately impact populations already at risk of being the subject of harmful AI biases, which can propagate discrimination. I would like to see broader considerations at the data curation stage captured in the act.

Coming back to the bill itself, I encourage you to think about producing support documents to help with its dissemination. AI is a very fast-paced field and it's not an exaggeration to say that there are new developments every day. As a researcher, it is important that I educate the future generation of AI talent on what it means to design responsible AI. In finalizing the bill, please consider plain language documents that academics and others can use in the classroom or laboratory. It will go a long way.

Lastly, since the committee is working on regulating artificial intelligence, I'd like to point out that the bill will have no impact if there are no more AI ecosystems to regulate.

When I chose Canada in 2018 over the other countries that tried to recruit me, I did so because Canada offered me the best possible research environment in which to do my work on responsible AI, thanks to the pan-Canadian AI strategy. Seven years into the strategy, AI funding in Canada has not kept pace. Other countries have larger funding for students and better computing infrastructure, both of which are needed to stay at the forefront of responsible AI research.

Thank you for your work, which lays the foundation for responsible AI. I thought it was important to highlight these few areas for improvement in the interest of artificial intelligence in Canada.

I look forward to your questions.

[Professor Andrew Clement, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.

I am Andrew Clement, professor emeritus in the faculty of information at the University of Toronto. As a computer scientist who started in the field of artificial intelligence, I have been researching the computerization of society and its social implications since the 1970s.

I'm one of three pro bono contributors to the Centre for Digital Rights' report on C-27 that Jim Balsillie spoke to you about here.

I will address the artificial intelligence and data act, AIDA, exclusively in my remarks.

AI, better interpreted as algorithmic intensification, has a long history. For all of its benefits, from well before the current acceleration around deep neural networks, AI misapplication has already hurt many people.

Unfortunately, the loudest voices driving public fear are coming from the tech giant leaders, who are well known for their anti-government and anti-regulation attitudes. These “move fast and break things” figures are now demanding urgent government intervention while jockeying for industry dominance. This is distracting and demands our skepticism.

Judicious AI regulation focused on actual risks is long overdue and self-regulation won't work.

Minister Champagne wants to make Canada a world leader in AI governance. That's a fine goal, but it's as if we are in an international Grand Prix. Apparently, to allay the fears of Canadians, he abruptly entered a made-in-Canada contender. Beyond the proud maple leaf and his smiling at the wheel, his AIDA vehicle barely had a chassis and an engine. He insisted he was simply being “agile”, promising that if you just help to propel him over the finish line, all would be fixed through the regulations.

As Professor Scassa has pointed out, there's no prize for first place. Good governance isn't even a race but an ongoing, mutual learning project. With so much uncertainty about the promise and perils of AI, public consultation informed by expertise is a vital precondition for establishing a sound legal foundation. Canada also needs to carefully study developments in the EU, U.S. and elsewhere before settling on its own approach.

As many witnesses have pointed out, AIDA has been deeply flawed in substance and process from the get-go. Jamming it on to the overdue modernization of PIPEDA made it much harder to give that and the AI legislation the thorough review they each merit.

The minister initially gave himself sweeping regulatory powers, putting him in a conflict of interest with his mandate to advance Canada's AI industry. His recent amendments don't go anywhere near far enough to achieve the necessary regulatory independence.

Minister Champagne claimed to you that AIDA offers a long-lasting framework based on principles. It does not.

The most serious flaw is the absence of any public consultation, either with experts or Canadians more generally, before or since introducing AIDA. It means that it has not benefited from a suitably broad range of perspectives. Most fundamentally, it lacks democratic legitimacy, which can't be repaired by the current parliamentary process.

The minister appears to be sensitive to this issue. As a witness here, he bragged that ISED held “more than 300 meetings with academics, businesses and members of civil society regarding this bill.” In his subsequent letter providing you with a list of those meetings, he claimed that, “We made a particular effort to reach out to stakeholders with a diversity of perspectives....”

My analysis of this list of meetings, sent to you on December 6, shows that this is misleading. Overwhelmingly, ISED held meetings with business organizations. There were 223 meetings in all, of which 36 were with U.S. tech giants. Only nine meetings were with Canadian civil society organizations.

Most striking by their complete absence are any organizations representing those that AIDA is claimed to protect most, i.e., organizations whose members are likely to be directly affected by AI applications. These are citizens, indigenous peoples, consumers, immigrants, parents, children, marginalized communities, and workers or professionals in health care, finance, education, manufacturing, agriculture, the arts, media, communication, transportation—all of the areas where AI is claimed to have benefits.

AIDA breaks democratic norms in ways that can't be fixed through amendments alone. It should therefore be sent back for proper redrafting. My written brief offers suggestions for how this could be accomplished in an agile manner, within the timetable originally projected for AIDA.

However, I realize that the shared political will for pursuing this option may not currently be achievable. If you decide that this AIDA is to proceed, then I urge you to repair its many serious flaws as well as you can in the following eight areas at the very least:

First, sever AIDA from parts 1 and 2 of Bill C-27 so that each of the sub-bills can be given proper attention.

Position the AI and data commissioner at arm's-length from ISED, appropriately staffed and adequately funded.

Provide AIDA with a mandatory review cycle, requiring any renewal or revision to be evidence-based, expert-informed and independently moderated with genuine public consultation. This should involve a proactive outreach to stakeholders not included in ISED's Bill C-27 meetings to date, starting with the consultations on the regulations. I'm reminded here of the familiar saying that if you're not welcome at the table, you should check that you're not on the menu.

Expand the scope of harms beyond individual support to include collective and systemic harms, as you've heard from others.

Base key requirements on robust, widely accepted principles in the legislation and not solely in regulations or schedules.

Ground such a principles-based framework explicitly in the protection of fundamental human rights and compliance with international humanitarian law, in keeping with the Council of Europe's pending treaty, which Canada has been involved with.

Replace the inappropriate concept of high-impact systems with a fully tiered, risk-based scheme, such as the EU AI Act does.

Tightly specify a set of unacceptably high-risk systems for prohibition.

I could go on.

Thank you for your attention. I welcome your questions.

[Vass Bednar, Executive Director, Master of Public Policy in Digital Society Program, McMaster University, As an Individual]

Thank you, and good evening.

My name is Vass Bednar. You heard that I run the master of public policy program in digital society at McMaster University, where I'm an adjunct professor of political science. I engage with Canada's policy community broadly as a senior fellow at CIGI, a fellow with the Public Policy Forum, and through my newsletter “Regs to Riches”. I'm also a member of the provincial privacy commissioner's strategic ad hoc advisory committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear. I appreciate the work of this committee. I do agree there is an urgent need to modernize Canada's legislative framework so that it's suited in the digital age. I also want to note I've been on a sabbatical of sorts for the past year, and I have not followed every detailed element of debate on this bill in deep detail. That made me a little bit anxious about appearing, but then I remembered that I am not on the committee; I am appearing before the committee, so I decided to be as constructive as I could be today.

As we consider this framework for privacy, consumer protection and artificial intelligence, I really think we're fundamentally negotiating trust in our digital economy, what that looks like for citizens and actually articulating what responsible innovation is supposed to look like. That's what gets me excited about the direction that we're going.

Very briefly, on the privacy side, it's well known, or it has been well said, that this is not the most consumer-centric privacy legislation we see from other jurisdictions. It does provide clarity for businesses, both large and small, which is good, and especially small businesses. I don't think the requirements for smaller businesses are overly onerous.

The elements on consent have been well debated. Zooming in on that language beyond what is necessary, I think, is such a major hinge of debate. Who gets to decide what is necessary and when? I think the precedent of consent, of course, is critical. I think about a future where, as people who are experiencing our online world, or exchanging information with businesses, there's just way more autonomy for consumers.

For example, there's being able to search without self-preferencing algorithms that dictate the order of what you see; seeing prices that aren't tailored to you, or even knowing there is a personalized dynamic pricing situation; accessing discounts through loyalty programs, without trading your privacy to use them; or simple things like returning to an online store that you've shopped at before without seeing these so-called special offers based on your browsing or purchase history.

That tension, I think, is probably going to be core to our continued conversation around that need for organizations to collect.

On algorithmic collusion, recent reporting from The New Statesman elaborated on how the prices of most goods now are set not by humans, but by automatic processes that are set to maximize their owners' gains. There's this big academic conversation about the line between what's exploitative and what's efficient. Our evolving competition law may soon begin to consider algorithmic collusion, which may also garner more attention through advancements on Bill C-27 as it prompts the consideration of the effects of algorithmic conduct in the public interest.

Again, very briefly on the AI side, I agree with others that the AI commissioner should be more empowered, perhaps as an officer of Parliament. That office needs to be properly funded in order to do this work. Note that the provinces may want to create their own AI frameworks as a way to solve for some of the ambiguities or intersections. We should embrace and celebrate that in a Canadian federalist context.

In the spirit of being constructive and forward-looking, I wonder if we should be taking some more inspiration from very familiar policy areas of labelling and manufacturing just to achieve more disclosure. For the layer of transparency that's proposed for those who manage a general purpose AI system, we should ensure that individuals can identify AI-generated content. This is also critical for the result of any algorithmically generated system.

We probably need either a nutrition facts label approach to privacy or a registration requirement. I would hope we can avoid onerous audits, or kind of spurring strange secondary economies, that sprout and maybe aren't as necessary as they seem. Having to register novel AI systems with ISED, so the government can keep tabs on potential harms and justifications for them entering into the Canadian market, would be helpful.

I will wrap up in just a moment.

Of course, we, you, should all be thinking about how this legislation will work with other policy levers, especially in light of the recently struck Digital Regulators Forum.

Much of my work is rooted in competition issues, such as market fairness and freedom. I note that in the U.S., the FTC held a technology summit on artificial intelligence just last week. There it was noted, “we see a tech ecosystem that has concentrated...power in the hands of a small number of firms, while entrenching a business model built on constant surveillance of consumers.” Canadian policy people need to be more honest about connecting these dots. We should be doing more to question that core business model and ensure we're not enshrining it, going forward.

I have a final, very quick worry about productivity, which I know everyone is thinking about.

I have a concern that our productivity crisis in Canada will fundamentally act, whether implicitly or explicitly, to discourage regulation of any kind over the phantom or zombie risk of impeding this elusive thing we call innovation. I want to remind all of you that smart regulation clarifies markets and levels the playing field.

Thanks for having me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

That's wonderful.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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 now like to welcome the witnesses. We have Vass Bednar, executive director of the master of public policy in digital society program at McMaster University, who is joining us by videoconference. Also, from the University of Toronto, we have Andrew Clement, professor emeritus, Faculty of Information, who is also joining us by videoconference, as well as Nicolas Papernot, assistant professor and CIFAR AI chair.

Thank you to all three of you for being here.

I want to apologize for our being late to the committee. We had about 10 votes in the House of Commons. Because of the delay, we have until about 7 p.m. for the testimonies and the questions.

Without further ado, we will start with you, Madam Bednar, for five minutes.

[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.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Much has been said, so I won't repeat what has already been highlighted.

I have a continuing concern with respect to the way that the industry is going, with respect to the profound impact that we will see as a result of artificial intelligence and with respect to, if we don't act swiftly and decisively with respect to Bill C-27, the profound impact that it may have that we may not be able to undo. I don't want anyone to minimize the importance of going forward with Bill C-27 because it's an important thing on an ongoing basis as well.

I also believe that if we're going to look at this, we should be sincere and should make sure that this is a fulsome, thorough and fact-based review. Already we've heard two different perceptions of what Statistics Canada tells us. I think we should look at opportunities where all of those facts are on the table for everyone to consider. I think it's important that it captures all of the dynamics of the issue in telecommunications and recognizes some of the changes that we've seen in the Competition Act.

Concentration in marketplaces is turning out to be not as advantageous as we thought it would be, so there's been some change there. I think we need to give this thorough thought, and I think we need to give this the time, the framework and the scope that's being proposed in Mr. Lemire's motion.

Therefore, I would agree with the suggestion that Mr. Turnbull has made.

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I've listened intently to all the interventions. I'll start off by saying, no, I don't think we have consensus that cellphone prices have been down. I don't think I have a single constituent in my riding who would agree that cellphone prices have come down or that they're paying 22% less than they were paying last year in cellphone prices.

I'll just help MP Turnbull. This wasn't some mythical thing. It was announced by Rogers on January 3. You can google the media articles, if you like. The media articles state quite clearly that Rogers is putting up the price of new packages seven to nine dollars on average. That follows almost a month after your government approved the Freedom sale to Quebecor, where Quebecor put up the price on all BYOD. For those who don't know what that means, it's “bring your own device” packages. They put it up after sitting in this committee and saying that they would reduce prices.

We have contradictory...or I shouldn't say “contradictory”. We have cellphone companies saying one thing to parliamentarians so that they can get their deal passed. Then we have the other—the actual actions by them, not even when the ink was dry, saying they were putting up cellphone prices.

Again, only a few days ago.... Maybe you should google that article. Perhaps Rogers is putting this up because former industry minister Navdeep Bains, who was in charge of reducing cellphone prices and has now gone to work at the most expensive cellphone company in the world, has given them advice that, you know, Parliament's on to other things, so don't worry about it; you can squeeze through a price increase and nobody will notice.

Well, Canadians are noticing. That's where this comes from. While I appreciate that some members have been busy with other things since Parliament has risen, it's been in all the news that cellphone prices are going up. I do appreciate MP Lemire's motion. I will agree that it is broader, although it has a lot of micro things in it. I think it's an easy thing to make an amendment to the motion I proposed.

I just want to be clear here, because I'm not sure everyone read the motion clearly or heard the motion clearly. The motion basically says that we will start, because we have this crowded agenda, by doing hearings the week before we come back. Specifically, we will ask first about these price increases and about the inconsistency with regard to the commitments these companies have made to the federal government. Second, it talks about the broader industry opportunity. It lists specific witnesses. To MP Masse's concern, it lists the four big companies and not just the two.

With regard to (e), I can't amend my own motion, but another member could amend it to add in some of the elements from MP Lemire's motion on the earlier study. It says in (e) that we can have all other witnesses deemed relevant. The list that MP Masse and others went through are all eminently invitable under that, but you certainly can add into that a broader look at the cost structures, competitiveness issues and access, if you like.

The motion also goes on to say—as MP Sorbara said, we are in charge of our own domain in committees—that we can add more meetings. The suggestion here is to tag them onto the end of our existing meetings that we have scheduled with the new committee schedule of Mondays and Wednesdays for this committee. Another hour can be added on, as we've been doing with the green slush fund, to continue and to add this on. Obviously, I think the Liberals would prefer that we not look at cellphone prices until Bill C-27 is passed so that we don't have to deal with it until April or May, long after this story on the issue of cellphone prices is in the news.

I think we can do two things at once. That's what this motion is trying to do. It's saying that we can do not just one thing at once but two things at once, as we did in December. We can start the study the week before Parliament comes back and continue it by adding on meetings.

I'm open, as I said in my opening, to anyone other than me—because the parliamentary rules are that I can't amend my own motion—adding to item (e) or perhaps adding a new item (f) that incorporates some, if not all, of the elements of Mr. Lemire's motion. Then we can get on with the study and get to dealing with what Canadians want, which is getting to the bottom of why it is that these cellphone companies promised the government that they would reduce fees and then announced that they are increasing them.

That's what this is about. I would think that all members of Parliament, including the government, would want to get to that. Heck, the minister even said that this is not what he was expecting when he laid out the rules of this merger. He was not expecting cellphone companies to be increasing fees. He expected fees to go the other way. I would think that Liberal members would want to hear about why they are doing that in contravention of the commitments that they made to the minister only a year ago. I would think that Liberal members would want to hear about that urgently, not some time before the summer.

I would hope that either an MP on my side or MP Masse or somebody would be able to make an amendment that finds a way to mush those two motions together so that we can get on with this study dealing with one of the major cost-of-living problems and issues that Canadians have: their families' growing cellphone prices.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I wish everybody a happy new year. It's great to see you all, a little earlier than I thought. Thanks for the well wishes for my newborn daughter.

My condolences, again, to Mr. Masse and all NDP members. My riding is next door to Oshawa and at one point Ed Broadbent actually represented the people of Whitby as well as the people of Oshawa because it was one riding. I knew Mr. Broadbent to be a great leader. I didn't know him well, unfortunately, and I feel bad about that. I think we all know what great a legacy he left; my condolences for that loss.

It's sort of life and death for me. When thinking about Ed Broadbent as a loss, I think of my newborn daughter as a gift, a miracle of life. It's great.

I think the debate is good and this is an important topic. We've had several attempts to study this, as it has been on a list of studies. When I saw this letter from the members who signed the Standing Order 106(4) request, I immediately started Google searching information on cellphone prices. I confess that I wasn't 100% clear as to where the market was at. I felt bad about that because I felt that I should know more about it.

I quickly found some Statistics Canada information that is quite easy to find on their website in relation to telecommunications in Canada. I was interested to see information that shows that cellular services decreased in price by 22.6% over the course of 2023, from November 2022 to November 2023. This sort of conflicts with the claims made in the letter that was signed for the Standing Order 106(4) request. It is important to dig into this topic and get to the facts.

Mr. Sorbara and others have commented that hearing that Rogers is increasing prices is challenging to hear. My constituents, along with all of our constituents, I'm sure, would be concerned to learn this. Within a broader context, we need to understand what is happening with cellphone prices.

I've been listening intently to the comments. They are making me question whether the media report of a price increase is within the broader context that Statistics Canada is reporting on and maybe cellphone prices are actually going down. I think we should get to the bottom of this and talk it through.

I can see us doing a study. The challenge I have with the current motion, and I've heard this from other colleagues, is that perhaps Mr. Lemire's motion might give us a more robust study. Maybe there's a way that we could include Mr. Perkins' suggestion and do a broader study by using Mr. Lemire's motion that was adopted on September 26.

I would humbly submit that we should look at that as an option. I have some challenges in what's included in Mr. Perkins' motion, which says, “be immediately recalled to undertake a study”. I think the timeline is too short to do a robust study on this topic. It's in the best interests of Canadians to do a good job and, as Mr. Lemire suggested, broaden the scope of the study.

I also feel that the subcommittee should probably meet relatively soon to determine whether we can get additional resources and what they should be spent on. I know that Bill C-27 is a really big deal for us and all of us know it's a priority for us as parliamentarians. On behalf of Canadians, I think the evolution of artificial intelligence is something the world is talking about. The more we delay on Bill C-27, the more we fall behind. That's a dangerous place to be in. I think we need to really focus our attention on getting C-27 done.

I'm supportive of doing this work. We have to think about how we prioritize it. I would suggest that we refocus our attention on perhaps amending Mr. Lemire's motion that was previously adopted by the committee so that we can do an even broader and more in-depth study. I know we can't move this because we're debating the current motion, and I don't want to take our attention away from that. What I would like to do is just let you know in advance what I would suggest. As I was listening to others, I was thinking about this and writing down how we could include what Mr. Perkins has suggested but still work with Mr. Lemire's motion.

I would propose adding one line to Mr. Lemire's motion. It would state, “and that it examines the position of each player in the market, explores companies' service offerings and the factors that can influence competitive dynamics”.

That's a bit broader, I know, in terms of wording, but it gets at prices, at competition and at the service offerings. Mr. Lemire's previous motion also focused on operating cost and the maintenance of critical infrastructure. Mr. Sorbara made a really good point and Mr. Masse made a really good point about cellphone infrastructure being public infrastructure. We also know that private companies are investing a lot in that infrastructure. I have examples in the northern part of my riding, which is all rural, and the Durham region where I live is largely rural. There are urban centres close to Lake Ontario, but a large portion of our ridings in Durham region are rural. We've had significant investments in rural broadband and cellphone infrastructure, and those have been needed.

It's a combination of public and private investment that is making those things happen today. We have to think about how that impacts the industry, how we open that up and how we create more competition. There's been a lot of conversation about that.

I'm open to the conversation. I think it's a good study to have and I think we all agree that we have to ensure that cellphone prices come down. The way to do that is to have some witness testimony. I would love to hear from Statistics Canada, given the fact that I can find so easily from googling it on the Internet—it took me all of 10 seconds—information that shows that cellular service prices have decreased by 22.6%. That's over the entire industry in Canada. That's a significant amount given the fact that general inflation has been high. I actually found a graph that showed that cellular services are one of the only indexed CPI items that have come down dramatically. That flies in the face of what is being said in the letter that was sent. I would like to undertake a study that's broad enough that we can get to the bottom of that and really assess whether the competition policy of our government is working to bring down cellphone prices on average. I would really like to get to the bottom of that on behalf of Canadians.

Thanks very much. I can't move the amendment, but if we were on Mr. Lemire's motion, I would move an amendment in an attempt to get to consensus on this.

Thank you.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Going back to the beginning, obviously, congratulations to Parliamentary Secretary Turnbull on the addition of a new family member.

To Brian Masse and the whole New Democratic family, but really to all Canadians, we lost a passionate and great Canadian we were blessed to have for so many years. I still remember the first election campaign I paid close attention to at a young age. I think it was in 1988 and I was about 14 years old. It was the free trade election. I will never forget the debates that we were able to watch and that Mr. Broadbent participated in, and the passion he brought to workers and how he fought for all Canadians.

Rest in peace. I send my prayers to his family and friends.

To Mr. Masse, I very much enjoyed your analysis of the wireless industry. It has always been the goal of governments—I say “governments” on purpose—to ensure that we have four participants in the wireless industry. We used to use terms in the private sector such as the “quad four bundle”.

With new participants coming in, how will they be financed? If you look around the world, in literally every country, it's very unusual to have more than three wireless participants in most countries—large participants, as I would say. Here in Canada, getting to four participants in our markets has been a goal that, I think, we've achieved on many levels. Obviously, we need to continue to monitor it.

There are big sunk costs to enter into the market, whether they're on the wireless side or the wireline side, with the Internet or cable, and all of the changes in technologies that have taken place over the top and so forth. Now we have the idea that you can become a straight aligned wireless provider and not provide any other services. There are even those thoughts happening within countries.

I enjoyed your comments on the wireless spectrum and how that happens. For folks who want to understand, auctioning the wireless spectrum is a pure economic theory that is done. What's behind it is quite fascinating.

The issue here, and I agree with Minister Champagne's comment, is that now is not the time for wireless companies to be raising rates on consumers and hard-working Canadians. I agree with the minister on that front. Canadians—my constituents, like all constituents—have been through a lot in the last few years. We've had COVID. We've had global inflation. We have a war in Ukraine that continues on and has ramifications. We know with global inflation that people's pocketbooks have been pinched, to say the least.

We, as a government, have acted in unison with parties to put in place measures to help Canadians, whether on a temporary basis, like the GST/HST credit and the grocery rebate, or on a permanent basis, like the Canada child benefit and the national early learning and child care plan.

Here in the province of Ontario, by September 2025, we will have $10-a-day day care on average for Ontarians. I just met with the officials in York Region and went through how that is going.

I'm moving toward a national dental care plan. I was, much like many of my colleagues, with our seniors just last night, talking about the implementation of that and how it's going to save seniors. It's going to save nearly nine million Canadians literally hundreds of dollars, and sometimes thousands of dollars.

Going back to the issue at hand and looking at this sector, being relatively new to the committee during the last several months, and going to Mr. Lemire's....

Good afternoon, Mr. Lemire. I would like to wish you a happy new year.

Going to his, what I would call, umbrella motion that was brought forward, I think it definitely needs to be done. We definitely need to take a look at the dynamics within the market. For those of us who like to follow the industry closely, there's always the CRTC monitoring report that comes out annually. It's a 300- or 400-page booklet that gives you a lot of information on market shares, pricing and dynamics.

Do you know what? It is a statistical fact that a lot of pricing changes have taken place over the last several years. There have been significant decreases in the various plans that are out there.

At the same time, we're very cognizant that Canadians, including ourselves.... As Brad said, we go to the grocery store, and we see what the prices of goods are. I have three kids at home, and I know very well what it's costing to raise these three girls I'm blessed with. I'm very cognizant of that, and I always fight for my constituents to make sure that their lifestyles and the expenses they face day to day are affordable, that there is no price-gouging going on, and that there are no anti-competitive practices going on.

I will remind the committee of Bill C-34, which was passed in this committee, on competition, and there are other measures that we've been putting in place in the recent legislation we brought to Parliament under Minister Champagne on anti-competitive practices. It's really important that we continue to follow this vein.

Again, who are we fighting for? As Ms. Ferreri said, we're fighting for our constituents. We're ensuring that prices continue to decrease. We're ensuring that, when transactions happen in the marketplace, they're not detrimental to consumers. We're ensuring that consumers are benefiting from the most recent technology, whether it's 5G or AI and so forth in that vein. We continue to do that.

I look at Sébastien's motion, and I think it's incredibly important that we look at that because each committee is the master of its own domain. It gets to pick and choose what it studies and what it doesn't study. It gets to pick and choose, in addition to when the report is issued, whether there's a minority report that it wishes to issue or if there's a dissenting report that can also be done. That's the flexibility in committees.

I would like to add, Mr. Chair, that it's very important that we also have in front of us Bill C-27. I say to my parliamentary and esteemed colleagues from all parties that the nature of artificial intelligence and the nature of privacy and how it applies to all 40-plus million Canadians in this beautiful country are things that we really need to get to the—if I can use a football analogy—end zone on in a very diligent, very judicious way.

We know that the Europeans are on it. We know that the U.S. and other jurisdictions are on it. We need to show the professionalism, which we always do, and the leadership as industry committee members on what some would consider and what I would consider is probably one of the most important evolving technologies that we will see in our lifetimes. Potentially, from what I've been reading and from what other folks who I think are probably much wiser or smarter than me are saying, it will transform the way we do many things, and it is transforming the way we do many things in life. Hopefully it will be a beneficial mechanism to the standard of living of literally hundreds of millions, if not billions, of individuals in this world.

I'll just circle back and finish up briefly—Mr. Chair and colleagues, I thank you for your patience—with regard to the motion and why we're here today.

Thank you, Mr. Perkins, for bringing this motion.

We are parliamentarians. We do work every day, whether it's in our constituency offices helping our constituents or looking at legislation issues within our committee purviews. We do need to make sure that our citizens are benefiting from technologies and from market transactions that take place. We do need to make sure that they are seeing the benefits, whether it's lower prices on goods and services or it's improved competition, which drives innovation and prices. We need to see that.

I'm pro-capitalism; I'm pro-markets. The last thing I like to see is anti-competitive practices being adopted. To go back and finish up, I'm in full alignment with Minister Champagne. Now is not the time to be raising prices on Canadian consumers, whether it's a small percentage of customers or not. It's really important that consumers out there have confidence in the services they're receiving.

I know that a lot of us have plans at home with whichever wireless provider we have for services. I tend to call them all the time to ask what new pricing plans they have. We should all pressure them all the time to make sure that we're getting the best services and the best prices for the plans that we have.

It behooves the committee to continue to put that pressure on companies—especially on companies for which the fact of the matter is that there is no foreign competition. These are domestic participants. They've invested literally hundreds of billions of dollars in their businesses in totality.

I've covered this sector for many years. Whether it's at Bell, Telus or Rogers, the employees who work there are very proud to work there. They do a great job and they've invested billions of dollars in their businesses, building out.

I was reading today.... I grew up in northern British Columbia. I believe Rogers has invested more funds along the Highway of Tears—which is close to Prince Rupert, where I grew up—to Prince George. Anybody who has driven along that line of road, which is roughly 740 kilometres or so, will know there are many parts that have never had cellphone service in those areas in northern B.C.

That applies, as Mr. Lemire said.... When you look at rural Canada, our geographic landscape and the need and necessity for these companies to invest literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and billions of dollars, in building out cell towers and building out their services, they are investing in our communities.

We want them to be good corporate partners. We want them to be even better corporate citizens. We understand the interests they need to balance. At the same time, we know Canadians need to be assured of the affordability of life and that they're receiving the measures and the help they need to have. That's where I come in and say, “Do you know what? Now is not the time for price increases on Canadians.”

Thank you, Chair. I will turn it back to you and the next speaker.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to my colleagues for their condolences for the Broadbent family.

Of course, Mr. Turnbull, congratulations. It's an exciting time for you and your family. I wish you all the best. Having a holiday baby as well will be even more fun.

I have similar concerns about the industry, and they go back for a long period of time. I also have concerns about the process here.

I looked at Mr. Lemire's motion, and this is like a subset of that motion. Quite frankly, I thought it might not even be in order in some respects, because Mr. Lemire's motion would carry a lot of these elements forward. In fact, it gave some latitude for this. I know that this issue in particular that has been brought forth—and I appreciate it—is fairly specific to Rogers, but it also affects customers of Bell and Telus. Why we throw them under the bus by not including them is something I have a concern about as well.

When you look at the telco policy and how we've arrived at the most recent decisions of the minister, they actually go back to the foundations of deregulation in this country.

When I received my posting in Ottawa, it was during the time when John Manley and Brian Tobin were starting to work on this issue, and they had the deregulation through the Mulroney years. We then had Allan Rock, who put through a process for removing foreign direct investment. He was the first minister I went through. Lucienne Robillard was after that. We then had David Emerson, who was a Liberal and later on a Conservative, going back-and-forth with his policies.

We then had Maxime Bernier, who had a lot of changes during his time in the Harper administration. I would certainly want him as a witness at this hearing, because it would help find the foundation of some of the problems we're faced with right now. We then had the late Jim Prentice, who was a terrific man. He was the industry minister briefly. He was followed by Tony Clement, who might also be an interesting person to bring to this committee because of the policy changes that took place under his tenure.

There was Mr. Christian Paradis, who moved the process that.... When you look at the Harper government, they talked about a “first in telecommunications” plan in terms of advocacy for consumers. We then had James Moore. Minister Moore was here for a while. Again, he talked about innovation and changes. We then had Mr. Bains, who is referenced in the motion, and finally, our current minister.

It's no accident that Canada has had some of the highest prices in the industry and that some of the most abusive practices have taken place. This smaller chapter of those abuses is important, but I think we need to remind ourselves of some that have taken place over the years.

I remember that one of the first ones I dealt with was Bell Canada not giving pay equity to the women in Bell Canada. That was one of the first meetings we had in Ottawa. The CEO at the time, who is now hired by the Liberals, had to be dragged before our industry committee about that issue. We fought to finally get equal rights for women workers at Bell.

Part of this industry has also had a culture in the workplace that's been very disturbing for decades.

We also had the deferral accounts. For those who don't know about the deferral accounts or don't remember them, basically, there was an overcharge by the major corporations—except for SaskTel. SaskTel was actually the only one that didn't charge. In fact, at Bell it was over $80, and it tried to keep those millions of dollars, even after it was awarded that it had to go through the court system. They had to fight to get the persons with disabilities who were awarded money some of those things. We had deferral accounts. That was another thing.

We had unlocking cellphones, which was a big challenge. I actually give Rogers credit for that, because we worked on that and it was the first one to unlock its cellphones. That was an interesting campaign that was done.

We still have issues right now with the right to repair. We have cellphone abuse in the industry for the aftermarket, whether it's fixing your screen or electronic waste with different [Technical difficulty—Editor]. It's nothing related to intellectual property and so forth, but you have consumers with the short end of the stick compared to other countries because we don't have the proper consumer supports for that.

We have foreign direct investment, which was supposed to be the panacea of opening up the industry. I know I mentioned earlier Maxime Bernier and the addition of foreign entrants into the market, which were later allowed by government policy to be bought up and absorbed into the system. Now we have even less competition.

That's the example we have right now. We have—and I predicted it at that time—the cannibalization of Shaw by our own domestic industry as the natural course of action that's going to take place. Actually, there are probably going to be further mergers in the industry that could possibly reduce more customers'....

We have had massive public subsidies in regard to this over the years to try to incentivize them to go into the markets in rural and other areas. Mr. Lemire has mentioned that.

This committee actually had a study on that specifically, the recommendations from which have not been followed by successive Conservative and Liberal governments. We should probably inventory all of those actual issues to see which have been followed up on and which haven't, because they actually correlate to some of the things that we have in the study right here. That's something we actually did. We tabled that and did a press conference. It was supported unanimously by all parties at the time. At the time, Mr. St. Denis was the Liberal chair. He led the committee on a unanimous report on rural broadband services. That's been buried as well.

Most recently—and we don't want to forget about this—the industry is more interested in its own fight than in the interests of Canadians and public safety, as we saw when we had the 911 debacle. Let's not forget about that. They put their interests about each other in front of that. The minister had to call in when he was overseas to get them to be accountable for that.

At the same time we've had this, we've had government policies over the years and what they've done is actually lower corporate taxes on these entrants and on these iconic organizations. That hasn't always led to investment. It hasn't led to new competition. It's led to the bleeding of the public purse. It's also led to a policy of spectrum auction—on which I have been advocating for a change for years—from which over $22 billion has been taken into the public purse by successive Conservative and Liberal governments, back and forth, back and forth. That cost has then been passed onto Canadian consumers in the form of high prices so they can try to get that money back.

The public spectrum is a public asset. It's the same as our air. It's the same as our water. It's the same as our land. That $22 billion has gone up in smoke, and at the same time it has given the excuse for the entrants to have their feuds over towers and their feuds over spectrum. There is actually even a system put in place whereby you can buy and resell spectrum basically as a niche business in the actual industry. We still haven't changed that fully, especially as we're moving to 5G.

What else do we expect is going to happen when we pass that bill on to Canadians?

I can't accept the motion as it is written right now because it's not fulsome enough. Again, I think it partly reflects the intent of Mr. Lemire's motion. It's something we should be looking towards. We've had the issue of a digital bill of rights. Issues of privacy have come up. We have had a series of motions for Canadians. Pricing is of course the number one thing that's on people's minds right now. This motion is devoid of the fact that the cellphone industry and the technology behind it are a benefit of the public use of the airwaves. On top of that, it's now an essential service. We need to do more now than ever before.

If COVID taught us anything, it is that being included in society and the cost of that are associated with and related to your mobile device. Whether you're actually trying to attend school, to communicate with friends, family or relatives, to get a job or to stay in touch with the world during a 911 emergency, it's now an essential service that requires more examination.

Some of the things in the motion here are quite correct and they are very important to look at. I appreciate them. I would hate to leave out organizations that have known and bled this for years. We have the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. We have OpenMedia. We have Professor Vass Bednar. We have Robin Shaban. We have the Consumers' Association of Canada. We have CARP. We have all those groups and organizations that, I'm sure, would want to get in on this and would want to have some more fulsome discussions about it.

I'm open to looking at the issue for sure. I would like a further analysis, though, and I would like to hear from colleagues about Mr. Lemire's motion and whether or not this is really in order. It's very specific but is a subset of what Mr. Lemire was trying to get at. It's at least worth talking about, because we have passed that. Most importantly, I don't want to leave the other customers of Bell, Telus and others basically to the wind because we didn't decide to do the proper thing and look at the industry properly. I have just detailed the bare bones of what has taken place over 20 years.

We're here for a reason, and this specific case is here for a reason, but even if we were able to fix this specific case, it's such a small part of the entire story that it really won't give the relief that's necessary or the justice that we could do.

I also want to make sure that this won't be shopped around to other committees at the House of Commons. That's been the practice recently. Industry stuff has been shopped around to other committees and to other places. It's caused confusion and it's caused issues. If we're going to do this, let's do it right. Let's not leave this to be tabled at some other committee for it to do the proper job that we should be doing here. Again, this is one of the reasons I support Mr. Lemire's motion. We've been doing our best to get Bill C-27 through things and to focus on prioritizing that. We've also entertained other things, but if we're just going to look at this one minuscule issue for an industry that really is titanic, in many respects, with Canadian consumers....

It's certainly one that could have been a source of national pride. It's also one that has a public interest side more than ever before. Again, we own the spectrum. We also give up land rights for some of the infrastructure that takes place for this industry to run, yet we then cast ourselves to the wind. At the same time, successive governments have collected billions of dollars from Canadians and off of the spectrum auction, and then passed it on to them in their bills at the end of the day. There's another storm coming on that unless we change ourselves.

I'm open to looking at this. I'm open to doing some work on this. I want it to be a fulsome thing. Again, I don't want to look at just one niche part of it. It's a very important part, and I'm pleased that the motion has come forward with some description towards it, but I think it's a subset of all the things we need to get at. Time is running out. Our spectrum is going to go more out to auction in the future, and there still is a lack of consumer accountability. This is just one perfect example among many of why there needs to be an overhaul of the basically archaic system that we have.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

If this approach seems easier, then that's what I propose to do. It would be tedious for everyone to work through the text of the motion in this way.

I move that we reject the Conservative motion and prioritize the motion adopted by the committee on September 26, so that we can consider the issue in conjunction with the study of Bill C‑27. We could then take steps as soon as possible, and perhaps even now, to invite witnesses and really conduct an in‑depth study of the telecommunications situation.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to wish you all a happy new year.

I want to congratulate Mr. Turnbull and his family.

I would also like to express my condolences to Mr. Masse, the New Democrat Party family and all politicians for the passing of Mr. Broadbent.

I find it worthwhile to discuss telecommunications. The committee members know that I've been very interested in and passionate about this issue for the four years that I've been here.

During the previous parliament, I moved a motion to address the issue of high‑speed Internet and the cellular network. This was done in connection with COVID‑19.

As you know, I also tabled a motion on this topic in September. It was adopted by the committee on September 26.

At this time, I would like the chair or the clerk to clarify the procedure for proposing an amendment to Mr. Perkins' motion, in order to include the full text of my motion and thereby broaden its scope.

I think that Canadians and Quebeckers are expecting an update on the telecommunications situation. I gather that people in the industry have much to say. A great deal of information must be verified. There have been developments and setbacks when it comes to mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs. The CRTC held hearings on this matter in 2017 and 2019 if I'm not mistaken. Some updates are in order. I think that we're ready for an in‑depth study.

We all agree that our committee's priority is obviously Bill C‑27. That said, I'm ready to do my part to address this issue in conjunction with our study of Bill C‑27. The official meetings of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology will still focus on Bill C‑27 until the bill is passed. However, more meetings can be added. I think that we must look at this issue. People are certainly interested in this topic. We must carry out a real study.

Here in Abitibi‑Témiscamingue, network access and cellular network quality pose challenges. I think that some of my rural colleagues, such as Mr. Vis, would agree that this is also true in their areas. For a long time now, I've been calling on the federal government to set up a program to build cell towers so that every individual across the country can access the cellular network.

It's certainly a matter of economic development. It's certainly also a matter of public safety, quality of life and land use. In 2024, this issue should be resolved. There's also the issue of resilience in the face of climate change.

Is the industry still as viable as it once was? What about competition? In the recent spectrum auctions, companies made major investments, amounting to $2.2 billion. These auctions revealed a long‑awaited fourth player, Vidéotron, which invested between $200 million and $250 million in spectrum licenses.

My proposed amendment would involve adopting the content of the motion passed on September 26, in order to carry out a proper study.

My motion called for six meetings. Given the current situation, we could be looking at a 12‑hour or even a 16‑hour study.

The witnesses proposed in the Conservative motion seem appropriate. They include Commissioner Boswell; the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Mr. Champagne; the deputy minister, Mr. Kennedy; and the CEOs of the major telecommunications companies.

I'm also thinking of the people whom we've heard from in various studies, such as the representatives of OpenMedia. Yesterday, I was in the municipality of Kipawa, in my constituency. I met with people who described the issue involving the lack of a cellular network for a number of individuals. They would like to have their voices heard as part of this type of study.

I think that we're ready to update our approach.

Mr. Chair, do you need me to reread the motion adopted by our committee, in order to proceed with an amendment?

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

I know that sometimes you wish you had the control of my mute button, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everyone, for coming to the meeting while we're on a constituency session.

I too would like to begin by acknowledging, if I could, Ed Broadbent's passing today. I was a young staffer, as many of you know, in the Mulroney days when Mr. Broadbent was the leader of the NDP. He was a remarkable leader for that party and a great parliamentarian who represented the people of Oshawa well in his many years in Parliament. I'd just like to acknowledge that.

Also, on a happier note, I acknowledge that MP Turnbull signed in today with his new addition. We haven't had a chance to meet since you had your second child. Congratulations, Ryan. We're all very happy for you.

The letter that was sent in calling for this meeting—for those who are watching it's an emergency meeting that has to be called within five days of five MPs signing a letter—discusses whether or not we should have a particular study, an urgent study, on an issue that has come up.

This committee, as we know, is very busy with Bill C-27 and is still awaiting the next level of scrutiny of the Stellantis contracts. It was a bit surprising, I think, for most of us to see. I think it was announced on January 3, and it was in most of the media on January 4 of this new 2024 year. It was a kind of shocking way to greet the year that the most expensive cellphone provider in the world, Rogers, announced that apparently they're not making enough money and that cellphone packages are going up seven to nine dollars.

As my colleague MP Ferreri said, this is a very ubiquitous thing. It is probably the thing that most Canadians share in common: 83% of Canadians, by the last time I looked, have a cellphone. That's more people than own a house. More than anything else, probably, Canadians have a cellphone, and for the reasons that MP Ferreri outlined. It's our communication lifeline, our phone lifeline and our connection to the world through the Internet. It's our emergency lifeline, as she outlined in that difficult situation of her constituent.

This is a cellphone price increase when, a year ago almost to the day, the big three—Shaw, Rogers and Quebecor—were before this committee saying that we needed to have the sale of the Shaw assets and that it would increase competition in this country and reduce prices for Canadians. We know that a month after the Freedom sale was done in April 2023, just in that one month, before the ink had even dried on the Liberal government's approval of Quebecor buying Freedom Mobile and Rogers buying the Shaw assets—and those two transactions removed two cellphone competitors from the Canadian market—Quebecor also put up Freedom's prices, even though they said they would not do that. They waited only a month to do that.

Like I said, why is that important? Well, 83% of us have a cellphone and we're in the middle of this cost of living crisis. We know that since 2016 Statistics Canada has reported that Canadians are paying almost 20%—I know it feels like more to most people—more per household out of their income than they were prior to 2016 for cellphone services. International studies, many of them that we know, show prices for cellphone services in the U.S., Australia and other countries are actually declining while ours are going up. Cansumer reported in August of 2023 that Canadians pay 20% more than Americans and 170% more than Australians for the average cellphone package.

We hear the excuses. We heard before this committee from big telcos that the size of Canada is the reason. The size of the country with its low population is the reason we pay more. Rogers, Bell and Telus, though, are the most expensive cellphone providers in the world. I mentioned at the time a year ago—and I'll say it again—that their operating profits are quite high. Their gross operating profits are 62% to 65%. That's twice as high as the profits of the major carriers of cellphone and mobile services in the United States and Australia.

How bad is it? In Canada, the average price per gigabyte of data on your cellphone is $5.37. In a country larger than Canada—because we hear that excuse all the time about the size of Canada—in Russia, not that they're in vogue these days, they now pay only 25¢ U.S. per gigabyte. Australia has about the same density and land area as Canada. They have more competition, and they pay only 44¢ a gigabyte for data on their phones, while we're paying over five dollars and our cellphone providers are making twice the level of gross profit.

It's clear that what we have here is a problem with competition. Those who have this protected status take us, consumers, and, quite frankly, the federal government for granted. It's the federal government that protects Bell, Telus, Rogers and Quebecor, this oligopoly, because they use airwaves that taxpayers pay them for. It's that protection that allows them to have this double-the-average operating profit and be the massively most expensive cellphone providers in the world.

Last year the Liberal government approved the sale of Shaw's assets to Rogers and Quebecor, removing two of the competitors in the market. The Liberals claimed at the time that the companies would respect the fact that prices would still go down, even though there would be fewer competitors. It has never actually happened in any competitive market that you have reduced competitors and prices go down. Now Rogers and Quebecor are thumbing their noses at this Liberal government by raising prices.

The Liberal Minister of Industry, in meetings, has had tough talks, we hear. We've heard it in the House that there have been tough talks on groceries and on cellphones, but the prices still go up. What did he say about cellphones? He said, “I'm watching closely”, as MP Ferreri outlined. Watching closely doesn't help people pay the bills when the Liberals promised that the prices would go down, but they're actually going up.

Telus and Bell are refusing to answer the media's questions, in response to Rogers' increase, about what they plan to do. If they weren't planning to increase prices, we know that they would say, “We're not planning to increase prices,” to the media. I guess they must be planning increases as well, or they would come clean on that in public.

Because the Liberal Minister of Industry, who helps oversee this cost of living crisis that we have.... These cellphone companies came before this committee a year ago, and before the Competition Bureau, claiming they would reduce prices if the Freedom sale went through. They claimed that, but they're doing the opposite now by increasing the cost to Canadians. That's why this committee needs to have urgent hearings with these players as to why they said a year ago we should trust them and prices would go down, but now they've done the opposite.

Canadians want this gouging to stop. It has been going on for too long. Not a single Canadian I know who doesn't work for Bell, Telus or Rogers thinks that prices have gone down. I suspect the people who work for them think that, but they may be the only ones.

Mr. Chair, I think the clerk has a copy of the study motion that I would like to propose. If she could circulate it, I'll just read it out for the committee members while it's being circulated. I move:

That, in relation to recent reports that Rogers will increase customer cell phone bills following a pledge by Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri that “prices are going to come down” as part of the $26 billion Rogers-Shaw merger approved by the Liberal Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, after committee experts and the Competition Commissioner warned that the deal would lead to higher prices for consumers—

I'll interrupt myself in the middle of it. This committee, by the way, recommended unanimously not to approve that deal, but the government went ahead anyway.

I'll continue:

—the committee therefore agree to be immediately recalled to undertake a study of up to four meetings, of at least two hours per meeting, to study the impact of the Liberal-approved merger and that these meetings begin at the earliest opportunity and conclude by Friday January 26, in order for the committee to return to its regular agenda when Parliament resumes, and that the committee invite the following witnesses to appear before the committee:

(a) François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and Simon Kennedy, Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada;

(b) Tony Staffieri, CEO and President of Rogers; Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE; Darren Entwistle, President and CEO of Telus; and Pierre Karl Péladeau, President and CEO of Quebecor Media;

(c) Navdeep Bains, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer for Rogers Communication, and former Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry;

(d) Matthew Boswell, Commissioner of Competition; and

(e) all other witnesses deemed relevant by the committee;

and, that the committee request that the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development provide a progress report on Roger’s five legally binding investment commitments to improve connectivity over the next five years; and, subject to the approval of the recognized party’s whips, and the availability of meeting slots from the House of Commons, the committee hold additional meetings and/or extend committee meetings beyond an hour on each allotted day for each meeting on this matter.

We have a full agenda. I've suggested that we try to do these meetings before the 26th. I know that's maybe a challenge, given that's it's not next week but the week after. I understand that we all have, at various times during the week, the presession caucus gatherings. As always when we all propose and study motions here, we're open to improvements and suggestions on ways fellow committee members think we might be able to get this done within the agenda timing and with the many pressures that all of us have with various meetings.

With that, Mr. Chair, I'll leave it there for now.

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

It says “Print”.

We tried that for a few days of my schedule. It took five seconds to print out a single day. I am making that offer right now to the department of industry, which can't negotiate good contracts with Stellantis because they can't figure out how to hit “File” and “Print” on the deputy minister's schedule. Mr. O'Brien will come over and teach the department of innovation, science, and industry how to use “File” and “Print” on the Outlook schedule.

Not to be outdone, the deputy minister is an important man, as we all know. He has an associate deputy minister who appears before the industry committee on just about everything we do. We asked for his schedule for a year too. We did. Clearly, he's much more important than the deputy minister. Do you know why? I made a mistake earlier when I said it would be 11 years for the deputy minister's schedule, rather than eight, but for his associate deputy minister it was 11 years, because he's a much more important man than the deputy minister. It would actually take another three years to hit “File” and “Print” for all the days in his schedule.

I have to tell you that this is the department that MP Masse wants to rely on in item (i) to release the contract and for the ATIP.

I might challenge it, but it would probably take 11 years. That may be a dilatory sort of thing that the industry department is trying to hide. The industry department is actually trying to hide the deputy minister's schedule for some reason. They made claims in Bill C-27 that they've had 300 meetings over the summer, and it turns out they had about 300 meetings with the Canadian Marketing Association and the Canadian Bankers Association, but nobody who actually cares about the privacy of individuals, just people who care about abusing an individual's privacy, so they're trying to hide things at every turn, and that's why we need the transparency of the amendments that Mr. Genuis put forward, or my genuine compromise motion that I put forward today, which has about 80% or 90% of MP Masse's motion in it. It has the idea of having a third party review it, which is a compromise on our part, and having it released publicly.

The only difference, aside from all the grammatical errors, is the issue of a public or a private release. We trust parliamentary officers to release it and make those judgments. Apparently the government doesn't. I wonder why. Now the NDP no longer trusts the officers of Parliament to make the decision and release things publicly.

This is a production of documents motion, or that's the intent of what we originally put forward. MP Masse's version is somewhat of a production of documents motion, but it actually asks for things that aren't documents, so I don't know that it actually qualifies. I've not challenged the chair on whether or not this motion is acceptable under the rules. It's not really a production of documents motion in the truest sense, because it's asking for things that are not in the contract. It's asking for things like the number of foreign workers who are building plants involved in equipment installation and technology transfer.

Well, do you know what? Why don't we just have Stellantis before the committee and ask them that? I can tell you that this is not part of the contract. The contract has employment stuff. It doesn't list out the foreign workers they're bringing in, so it's about asking for the production of a new document that does not exist.

There are ways to do that. The member could have asked and filed what's called an OPQ around here. We're in Ottawa. Ottawa, like all governments, lives on acronyms. We're in the OGGO committee—another acronym. I sit on the INDU committee. The industry department is called ISED, which actually doesn't bear any resemblance to the title of the minister: The minister is Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and it's the Department of Industry, Science and Economic Development. They can't even get the title and the department straight and linked up, but we want to trust them that they're not hiding something and that they're negotiating a good contract.

He's asking for a document that requires special production, and OPQ means “Order Paper question”. Members of Parliament can ask what's called an Order Paper question. The government is compelled, in 45 days, to respond to those Order Paper questions. This is a perfect item for that, and I would recommend that MP Masse file an OPQ. You're allowed four at any given time. I've always had four, but I actually am so curious about what the government's doing that I generally have eight, 10 or 12 in at any given time, although you're only allowed four, so other MPs have to sign them.

You find out quite interesting information. The number of foreign workers who've been building the plants involved in equipment installation and technology transfer is a number. Numbers are what OPQs are best at exposing, so we don't need this here. In fact, that's not a document that is signed in the contract. I think it should be asked under an OPQ. That's not production of documents.

Number two is about the number of Canadian temporary and/or construction jobs to be created and how many permanent production positions are to be created as part of the contract guarantees. Well, the minister has said quite clearly, publicly, as has the Prime Minister, that there are 2,500 permanent jobs. I don't need to produce a document for that unless, for some reason, MP Masse doesn't even trust that number is correct. It says 2,500 jobs. That's the answer to the number of permanent production positions created as part of the contract. That's 2,500, or 2,300—we've heard a couple of different numbers. They're close. They've said both of those, so we don't need a motion to ask for that unless we don't believe the minister that it's even in the contract.

I trust the minister that when he said there would be 2,300 permanent jobs in the contract, that's what there will be. The minister just hasn't said that they're Canadian, or at least the company has said that they're not all Canadian. The minister has said they're Canadian, they're not Canadian, some of them are Canadian, a small portion are now in there—and then it's, “I really don't want you to know because I won't release the contract.”

Maybe MP Masse has a point. Maybe we can't even trust the number that the minister has put out, but again, that would make a classic OPQ. It's just a straight number. In fact, items one and two could be—wait for it—in the same OPQ, and they would have to respond within 45 days.

Item three is about the steps that will be taken to prioritize the employment of Canadians for building plants and equipment. Again, on the release of the contract, if it says that these jobs have to be Canadian, it would say that in the contract, but it isn't listed there.

In no contract that I've ever seen, and I was in large corporate businesses for 25-plus years.... I ran them. I was on boards of directors of publicly traded companies, private companies. You don't outline in a contract all the steps you take:

Number one, let's post an ad; number two, here are the qualifications; number three, let's do the interviews at this date; number four, let's interview the people; number five, here's how we'll score them. You don't put the steps that will be taken to prioritize the employment, as in, are they Canadian? Those steps on that hiring are not in a contract. It just says you're going to hire so many people to do so many things, and either they're Canadian or they're not.

One would expect that if you're putting up, in this case, $15 billion—the largest corporate subsidy in the history of Canada, for a single company for a six-year period, meaning $1,000 of taxes per household in Canada—you would put that requirement in the contract.

I think that could be very simply an OPQ, but it's not a production of documents question because that wouldn't be in the contract. They could have put in the construction schedule of the plant. That's in one of these contracts. There are two contracts for each of these. You could put that in the contract. You could ask for the steps of the construction schedule. That would be a legitimate element of the production of documents, but it wouldn't be the steps to be taken to prioritize employment other than saying....

I think what MP Masse is generally saying is that we want to know if it says you have to hire Canadians. If it does, release those clauses. MP Masse didn't ask for those clauses to be released. It's this liberalized, bureaucratized language that says, “Prioritize the employment of Canadians.” It sounds like the people who write acronyms wrote this up.

Number four says that the documents should be deposited with the clerk of the committee within—I have “one” blocked out—three weeks. I don't know if that's an old strikeout or not, but the redacted versions.... This again is where we had some confusion. Maybe it's a typo that we're trying to fix that's in the motion, because MP Masse said many times in the industry committee and in this committee that he wants it in public, and so does his leader in the House. He actually questioned—quite emotionally—the Prime Minister and the Minister of Industry on this issue, calling for the release of the contracts. I think that was probably a typo in the rush to get this done, and that's why, in all good spirit of assistance, MP Genuis has offered to help out to make sure that the motion is clearly consistent with the public position of the NDP.

Number five is that the “information related to the above specific areas not available in the contract be provided by the above mentioned companies to the committee in writing.” Here we go. It's the cone of silence.

There is a bit of grey hair around this table, but some people here may not remember, and some may, that classic TV series—I was a tiny little kid, I must admit—called Get Smart. Do you remember Get Smart? There isn't much Get Smart in this contract, but in Get Smart they had the cone of silence, and Max would go in and they'd have something secret to talk about, he and the chief. The cone of silence would come down over them. They'd try to talk to each other through the cone of silence and they could never hear anybody. That was the cone of silence.

This is the “cone of silence clause” here that MP Masse has put in. Do you know what happens when you put a cone of silence into this committee, in OGGO, in looking at the contracts? It's the same thing that happened to Max and the chief in Get Smart: It doesn't work. It doesn't provide transparency. Nobody can hear the contract. Nobody can see it. Nobody can prove it. It ties the members' hands to secrecy, and it's the goal of the Liberals to tie our hands to secrecy.

The only reason to do it is that they're hiding something. If they were proud of this contract, as they claim they are.... I've heard the Liberal members go on at length about the pride in these contracts. I've heard them and seen them do media. If you're proud of these contracts, release them. Obviously, you're not proud of the contracts; you're just proud of the rhetoric. If you were proud of the contracts, you'd release them.

Now that my assistant Graham O'Brien is back, I'd like to thank him again for all the work he did on exposing the secret society of industry that has decided that access to information doesn't apply to them and that it will take 11 years to produce a print copy of the deputy minister's and the associate deputy minister's schedules—Mr. Schaan. I would like to thank him for that work.

Graham, did you go back to the office to get the other 110 access to information request responses? I could really use them here.

I know the committee members would be fascinated with paragraph (i) on using access to information as the way to get this contract. That's just to give examples of how effective access to information is at getting secret government documents when the government doesn't want to do it.

Graham, maybe you could send.... We have a couple of part-time students. Maybe just give them a call and ask them if they'll bring them over. It may require a wheelbarrow.

I am prepared, in the hour of transparency, to demonstrate to this committee just how many access to information requests the Liberal government treats with a great deal of openness and respect in putting things forward.

I can tell you that I think the intent by Mr. Masse is right. I think he made some typos that Mr. Genuis is trying to fix in an earnest way—as my colleague always is—in trying to fix the motion.

If it would be okay, I'd like to make two more corrections, if I could, as a subamendment to Mr. Genuis's motion.

The chair proposed at the beginning of this meeting to clean up some of the language, so I would like to propose—

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

The question I have with respect to the ethics committee is that they're not doing.... They had two meetings, and they're done, so this all rests in our.... They're done, because the Liberals voted against doing any more meetings on this in the ethics committee.

Going forward, the only way we're going to get to the bottom of some of this contradictory testimony is to have another meeting. We are the keepers of our own destiny, and we have the ability, as we have done here, either to add these on to Bill C-27 or to do separate meetings without doing any harm to our study on Bill C-27.

From our side, we're more than willing to put in the time, effort and work to get to the truth on this. If it requires more meetings outside of our normal schedule.... I understand MP Lemire's desire to find an accommodation, but the interaction and questioning is where it happens. Pre-set questions or some sort of report from a request from us doesn't allow us to have that interaction, either with the Ethics Commissioner or with the individual we haven't heard from, who's provided all this ethical advice to the SDTC board, which, in our view, is clearly totally against the Conflict of Interest Act and the SDTC act.

We haven't had a chance to question them, and we have, clearly, testimony from officials that was a lie about their participation—in particular Mr. Noseworthy. There is absolutely no way he has sat on that board since 2017 and couldn't remember any of the meetings. There is no way he sat on that board and had conversations at board meetings about the government's priorities without having any recollection of that. There's no way he had conversations with the chair of the board outside of those board meetings and couldn't remember. That's why, for some of us of a certain age, there's Sergeant Schultz's line, “I know nothing.” That was his claim, and that's a lie.

He needs to be accountable to this committee for misleading the committee on his participation, and the fact that our committee members here don't think it's a serious offence for a government official to mislead this committee is very disappointing.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you.

From my perspective, it's a question of balance. We've heard some very good and important testimony here. We know that the ethics committee has also heard testimony on this matter. The balance for me comes on the important work that we need to do around Bill C-27.

I think that we need to focus on that important work on Bill C-27 at this committee. For me, the best use of time for us here at the industry committee is to wait until the AG report is completed. At that point, perhaps we can then revisit and see what it is we need.

My position is that we and ethics have done good work around this, and it's time for us to move forward on Bill C-27.

[Matthew Hatfield]

Certainly. My apologies.

To me, this hearing's topic seems to be pinning down what's wrong with tech platforms and what our government can do about it. I'll try to answer that question very precisely for you.

What's wrong with tech platforms and their influence on society? It's three things: their size, their vast asymmetrical data compared to regulators and citizens, and the engagement algorithms that drive their business model.

Let's talk size. Platforms like Amazon and Google have a stranglehold on a huge share of Internet commerce, app purchases, advertising and more. They often use that power to set unfair terms vis-à-vis smaller businesses and consumers. I'll note, though, that Bill C-18 misunderstood the specific dynamic around news. It assumes that news has inherent value to platforms that, for Meta at least, it does not.

The good news about the size problem is that Canada is opening new possibilities to do something about it through competition reform in Bill C-56 and Bill C-59. In the U.S., several bills were proposed last year aimed at regulating how tech giants treat small businesses and consumers. They include the American innovation and choice online act and the open app markets act, both of which OpenMedia campaigned for. In Canada, the Competition Bureau has never had the legal basis to study platform power effectively, let alone change it. Soon they will.

My second point is about data asymmetry and privacy. Platforms like Meta and YouTube have an endless volume of sensitive data about each and every one of us. They use it for advertising and to feed recommendations, but not for much else. Partly that's to respect our privacy, which is a very good thing. Their data in the hands of a spy agency or law enforcement would be a dystopic surveillance nightmare and one that we must guard against. However, that lack of curiosity on the platforms' part is also self-serving. It makes it easy to bury accurate study of what may be going wrong for some of their users and, in the worst case, lead that minority to harm themselves or others. The limited research that exists on how platform models may sometimes amplify harms is done with very incomplete data or with crumbs of researcher data access, which platforms are quick to withdraw if their interests are threatened.

Here we need both an individual and structural remedy. The strongest possible privacy bill, Bill C-27, giving Canadians meaningful and unalienable control of our personal data, is one solution, but another must be a very strong provision for both regulator and approved academic researcher access to perform studies on platform data in our upcoming online harms bill. We can't intelligently regulate platforms if we don't understand how any harms they help produce actually occur.

Last but not least, let's talk about the algorithm. Without even noticing it, we've become a society in which most information we get is delivered because it keeps us scrolling and clicking, not because it is nuanced, well researched or true. For music or hobbies, that can be a wonderful tool of self-exploration. People are not passive consumers of our feed. We curate it heavily, pruning the algorithm to serve us what we like most. However, for facts and reporting, that same process is making us a less-informed, angrier and more polarized society. We all feel the impact and very few of us like it. That doesn't make solutions easy, although I would say that Bill C-292, Peter Julian's bill, is something worth considering here.

I'll give a couple of signposts for what might help. We welcome this committee's interest in a dedicated study of how to create a viable news sector in Canada that continues producing vetted information. There's a case that Canadian news needs permanent government support, but the more involved government becomes, the more urgent it is that funds move through a system that is fully transparent to the public, has clear and fair criteria for who gets what support and prioritizes funds where they're most needed, in local news deserts and public accountability journalism, not shovelling funds indifferently toward Bell or the CBC. The alternative of stacking complex funding band-aids one on top of the other until they represent the majority of news funding is not going to build public trust in truthful journalism.

We would also welcome a Canadian study of how social media algorithms are impacting society. However, regulating the algorithm, if it comes, must be aimed at expanding transparency and personal control over how it works for Canadian Internet users, not manipulating it for what the government thinks is best for us.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mrs. Poitras, the former Privacy Commissioner, Mr. Therrien, told us that the federal commissioner and the provincial commissioners collaborated on various topics when it came to investigations of non-compliance.

Do you think lower standards, such as those set out in Bill C‑27, could hinder the investigations and co‑operation of privacy commissioners, if the federal legislation doesn't establish the same standards as those set out in Quebec's Bill 25?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you.

I have just a quick follow-up question. In terms of Canada being a fiscal federation, sometimes the provinces lead before the federal government, and vice versa. In terms of the consumer privacy protection act, Bill C-27, if I'm understanding this right—and please correct me if I'm not—do you think it's important to allow provinces a reasonable transition period? Why or why not?

I can go back to Michael on that.

[Michael McEvoy]

Let me start with one area where British Columbia, in my view, is behind. It is behind federally. That is on the issue of mandatory breach notification. There is no obligation on private sector companies in this province to report to my office when there is a breach that would cause a real risk of significant harm. Most importantly, there is no obligation on those companies to report it to individuals who are affected. This is something that needs to be changed.

There is a raft of other very good provisions that exist in other legislation, including Quebec's. I'm thinking of Commissioner Poitras' ability to oversee biometrics in the province, which is a burgeoning area and one that impacts people significantly. Facial recognition technology...all those kinds of things, where there is an obligation in Quebec to report the implementation of those kinds of programs. I think that is something British Columbia ought to be looking at.

The automated decision-making processes included in Bill C-27 should be, I think, incorporated in British Columbia, as well. However, I would urge British Columbia's government to go a step further than what is in Bill C-27. Again, Commissioner Dufresne has already alluded to what he believes—and we completely support this—are improvements to those provisions.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

In the 2022-23 annual report of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, you highlight the importance of modernizing British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act, which has not been updated since it came into force in 2003.

What do you think are the most important elements of a modernized Personal Information Protection Act? Could any of your recommendations to modernize it apply to Bill C-27 and, if so, which ones?

[Diane McLeod]

Thank you, yes.

We here in Alberta have three privacy laws, actually. We have the private sector privacy law that covers everything except for aspects of our non-profit sector. We have our public sector privacy law that operates similar to what Mr. McEvoy just explained, and we also have the health information law that governs the health sector in our province.

We here in Alberta are looking at harmonizing our own laws as we are looking at advancing our digital economy here and using technology to innovate. We're looking not only in Alberta but also, of course, at Bill C-27 as we consider what the landscape needs to look like.

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

In your opening remarks, you alluded to the new powers of the commission, and I'm not sure if those were human rights. As I understand it, the act provides funding for the promotion of rights, as well as binding powers.

Do you think that Bill C‑27 could have a similar mechanism to protect Canadians from the disclosure of their personal information and to raise awareness with them?

[Diane Poitras]

I'm concerned about all the provisions of Bill C‑27 dealing with anonymized and de‑identified information, particularly with regard to interoperability. There's also the issue of administrative monetary penalties and the scope of those penalties that could be imposed under the bill.

In addition, there's the absence of certain preventive measures for the use of technology. Before implementing an application or technology, an important preventive measure is to conduct assessments in advance to ensure that it complies with the law and does not constitute an inappropriate intrusion into privacy.

The commissioner also recommended measures against profiling or, at the very least, more transparency, so that people know they have a right to refuse. These are elements that are in the Quebec legislation for these new technologies. I think Bill C‑27 could be improved in that regard.

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

What provisions should be included in Bill C‑27 to bring it closer to the standards established by Quebec's Bill 25?

How can we be more interoperable? As you said, it would be to the advantage of entrepreneurs, since there would be less bureaucracy, among other things.

[Diane Poitras]

Thank you for the question.

This goes a little bit to what we were discussing, that is, the issue of interoperability. As I was saying, a company may have to comply with two sets of rules. The two acts may apply at the same time in certain situations. It's happening right now, and I understand that it will happen in the future as well.

There will be situations where a business will have to comply with both the rules of Bill 25 and the rules of a future bill resulting from Bill C‑27, if it's passed. It can certainly be difficult to comply with two sets of rules if the rules aren't similar. In addition, human beings being what they are, there may be a tendency to want to comply with the least restrictive rule.

It's also important to be able to monitor, control and collaborate in our respective actions across Canada.

That said, the scope of the Quebec legislation is quite broad. A business that carries on business and that, in the course of its economic activities, collects, holds, uses, discloses and retains personal information must comply with Quebec law.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mrs. Poitras, for your comments this afternoon.

I would also like to highlight the innovation and rigour shown by the Government of Quebec in this area.

Although the minister assures in his letter that the Quebec law will prevail in Quebec, concerns have nevertheless been expressed to this committee, particularly by Jim Balsillie. For example, it has been raised that, if Bill C‑27 sets standards that are lower than those in Quebec's Bill 25, that could hinder innovation and jeopardize investments in the Quebec economy.

With that in mind, how do you assess the potential consequences of Bill C‑27 on Quebec's economic landscape, particularly in terms of innovation and investment?

[Michael McEvoy]

I think you're quite right. In some instances, it would be seen as a licence to continue doing what companies are doing.

I think the most effective remedy that the government can provide in legislation for its regulator is order-making power. The three of us here today have the power to say to a company or an organization, "Stop doing what you're doing", which is a far more effective remedy in some instances where that action or conduct on the part of an organization may be harming a Quebecer, a British Columbian, Albertans or Canadians. That remedy is the most effective.

I know that Bill C-27 would put that order-making authority in the hands of the commissioner, which is a very positive step. As we've indicated, if there's going to be any appeal, that should be directly to the courts, as we have faced them over the years as a means of oversight over what we do.

[Diane Poitras]

Thank you for the question.

Commissioner Dufresne made some excellent recommendations around harmonization and so on.

As for anonymized and de‑identified information, I know that many stakeholders have told you that the definition of anonymization was very restrictive in Bill C‑27. In Quebec, following discussions and exchanges with stakeholders, parliamentarians included some flexibility in the legislation. According to Quebec law, information is anonymized “if it is, at all times, reasonably foreseeable … [for] the person to be identified directly or indirectly”.

However, they were concerned that this might open up too big a loophole. At the same time, it was stipulated that government regulations could impose terms and criteria on how anonymization is done.

De‑identification is also an important issue because of the potential for the use of de‑identified information. Bill C‑27 provides that, at times, de‑identified information is no longer personal information, which means that protection for that information is lost. That is a concern.

My colleague Mr. McEvoy did a good job of presenting the concern about administrative monetary penalties, but also the scope of the penalties. The situations in which the federal commissioner can recommend to the tribunal the imposition of administrative monetary penalties are very limited in Bill C‑27.

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

What are the most important recommendations you would make to amend Bill C‑27 to allow for interoperability across all provinces? I know that there are also reserves in British Columbia. I'm sure that my colleagues will ask Ms. McLeod or Mr. McEvoy questions about this.

We're trying to see how the bill can be improved so that it's interoperable across the country and so that everyone can easily implement it. This is a concern that has been expressed by all the stakeholders and witnesses who have appeared before the committee.

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

Yes, thank you.

I'm an entrepreneur myself. Since I'm not in my business full time, I don't know whether I have to comply with rules or whether my compliance is adequate. I think we train people in my business. After all, I'm in the communications business.

Are we talking about a minimum number of employees? How is it determined in Quebec that companies have to comply with certain rules?

My questions are still about what Bill C‑27 does and doesn't include.

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

There was a process that led to the adoption of the bill in Quebec, which unfortunately was not the case here. You were able to compare Bill C‑27 to what was passed in Quebec. We hear a lot about what will be a priority in the bill, for example, with regard to justice and law enforcement.

What is your analysis of the situation? I ask because I just heard Ms. McLeod express some reservations about certain aspects of Bill C‑27. Do you have some as well?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being with us today.

Mrs. Poitras, I'm delighted to meet you. First of all, I would like to congratulate the Government of Quebec and your organization for the work that has been done. Since we began our study of Bill C‑27, many have cited the Quebec legislation as a model. So I commend you for that.

From what I understood earlier, you are currently holding consultations on the six themes you mentioned.

Before the bill was passed, were consultations held in Quebec?

[Michael McEvoy, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia]

Thank you, Chair and members of the committee.

I'd first like to acknowledge that I'm presenting to you today from the traditional territories of the Lekwungen-speaking people of the Songhees and the Esquimalt first nations.

Given my brief time this afternoon, I want to focus my comments on the practical matter of how the privacy rights of Canadians ought to be considered and, where events dictate, enforced.

A common theme of these proceedings is the need to harmonize, to the greatest extent possible, the substantive privacy rights of Canadians across federal and provincial jurisdictions. The principle of harmony or substantial similarity should also apply to the processes that determine and enforce privacy rights.

Why is this so important? Data most often knows no borders. Many significant privacy rights cases impact citizens across the country.

It is therefore incumbent upon us, as privacy regulators with oversight over the private sector in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec and Canada, to act, to the greatest extent permitted by law, in a coordinated manner. This ensures that concerned individuals are addressed in a consistent way and that affected businesses are not queried by overlapping demands. In short, coordination builds the trust of Canadians in our privacy oversight system.

The coordinated actions I speak about will be enhanced considerably if the avenues for processing and enforcing those privacy rights are as consistent as the law permits across jurisdictions. In concrete terms, this means the federal Privacy Commissioner should certainly be granted order-making powers, which the three provincial authorities now have, and which Bill C-27 recommends.

I would go a step further. The proposed federal order-making powers should be reviewable in the same manner as that applicable to provincial authorities. That is to say that the federal Privacy Commissioner's powers should be directly subject to review by the courts. That has proven to be more than sufficient to protect the rights of all parties at a provincial level. Bill C-27's proposal to add a layer of administrative bureaucracy in between the commissioner's orders and the court review adds an unnecessary level of expense and time to distance Canadians further from the ultimate disposition of their privacy concerns.

The same considerations of federal and provincial harmonization should be applied to the matter of administrative monetary penalties. Quebec—as my colleague has just pointed out—is the first jurisdiction in Canada to authorize the regulator to administer such penalties where circumstances warrant. I have called for British Columbia's government to do the same.

The authority to levy fines—a last resort for regulators—protects the rights of Canadians and the vast majority of businesses from bad actors. It is critical that privacy regulators are able to ensure that when fines are necessary for multi-jurisdictional violations, they are levied in a coordinated, proportionate and non-overlapping way.

That is simply not possible under Bill C-27, which strips power away from the federal Privacy Commissioner to levy fines, and instead puts it in the hands of a third party that would not be in a position to coordinate matters with other authorities. This again creates federal-provincial asymmetries, which in no way benefit Canadians. It bears repeating that if a party is concerned about an imposed fine, a direct referral to the court system is more than adequate to ensure administrative oversight of the system.

In summary, while Bill C-27 goes some ways to strengthen the privacy rights of Canadians, the bill must be improved to ensure that those rights can be fairly, effectively and economically adjudicated and enforced.

Along with my colleagues, of course, I welcome any questions you may have.

[Diane McLeod, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta]

Good afternoon. I would first like to thank the committee for inviting us here today as witnesses to your proceedings on Bill C-27.

This bill is an important step in modernizing Canada’s private sector privacy law. It would support responsible innovation and development of innovative technologies while adequately protecting privacy rights.

Innovation is occurring in all sectors. These activities benefit Canadians, but there are also risks. This law would play a key role in establishing a foundation of trust amongst Canadians, which would foster the growth of our digital economy.

Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act, PIPA, has been declared substantially similar to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA. The objective of PIPA is essentially the same as that of PIPEDA, and both acts are consent-driven with certain exceptions. Given these similarities, I will not go through PIPA in detail. Instead, I will focus on an aspect of PIPA that may be of interest as you consider the Consumer Privacy Protection Act portion of Bill C-27, and that is specifically our order-making power.

Most reviews and complaints, about 85%, are settled by our informal case resolution team. If settlement fails, the commissioner may conduct an inquiry, a quasi-judicial process, which involves formal submissions to an adjudicator, who then issues an order to remedy any non-compliance.

Our informal case resolution team operates separately from our adjudication team. When a file moves to inquiry, our adjudicators conduct a de novo hearing. They do not have access to what occurred in mediation. Orders are final, binding and not appealable, but they are subject to judicial review by the Alberta Court of King’s Bench.

The majority of our orders are complied with. We have sought a court order to enforce compliance in only a few cases.

This structure brings finality to allegations of non-compliance in a cost-effective, predictive and relatively timely manner. Finality serves several purposes. It creates certainty around the interpretation of PIPA, which serves the interests of both organizations and individuals. It encourages settlement. Because our services are free, our office is fully independent from government, and the majority of our orders are complied with. This reduces the time it takes to remedy non-compliance.

PIPA is scheduled for review by our Standing Committee on Resource Stewardship likely to begin in early in 2024.

Given this, we’ve been paying close attention to what is happening with Bill C-27, specifically the CPPA, as it may influence amendments to PIPA due to PIPA's substantially similar status. We are also considering the impact of Bill C-27 on Albertans when their personal information flows across borders.

In the CPPA, there are positive new privacy protections for Canadians. There is the right to request disposal of personal information, also known as the right to be forgotten; rights regarding the use of automated decision-making systems; and rights regarding data portability. Other improvements include clarification of service providers' role and accountability, administrative monetary penalties to deter non-compliance, proactive auditing, better protection for minors, and the inclusion of privacy as a fundamental right, as well as proposed amendments on the special interests of minors.

However, we have some concerns regarding a few provisions. We are concerned about individuals' loss of control over their personal information resulting from new authorities in section 18 regarding business activities and legitimate interests. We are concerned about how the provisions on de-identification and anonymization would be used, and whether more controls would be required to mitigate potential risks to individuals. We are concerned about whether the inclusion of the tribunal as an appeal body to the Privacy Commissioner's orders would impact our ability to conduct joint investigations.

In addition, there are areas in the bill that could be enhanced. Stronger protections for children, such as those provided for in California and the United Kingdom, could be built in, as could requiring the use of privacy impact assessments in specific circumstances where there are higher risks, and requiring increased rights for the use of automated decision-making systems, and expanding the definition of sensitive information to mitigate the risks of harm that may flow from the processing of certain kinds of personal information.

I thank you for your time. I look forward to further discussion.

[Diane Poitras, President, Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the members of the committee for inviting me to participate in this study.

As you know, Quebec has undertaken a major reform of its privacy laws to make them more responsive to the new challenges posed by the current digital and technological environment. An Act to modernize legislative provisions of personal information, better known as Bill 25, was passed in September 2021. Its provisions have come into force or will come into force gradually over a three‑year period.

The changes made by Bill 25 can be grouped into three categories. The first involves new obligations for provincial businesses, organizations and political parties. The second contains new rights for citizens. Lastly, the third includes new powers for the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec.

Among the new obligations of businesses is the addition of the principle of responsibility for the personal information they hold. It implies that each company has a privacy officer and that it establishes governance policies and practices. When a confidentiality incident occurs, businesses are also subject to new obligations, which are similar to those found in Bill C‑27.

Bill 25 also introduces enhanced transparency obligations about what companies do with personal information.

To give citizens greater control over their information, new consent requirements are provided, such as for obtaining express consent when the information is sensitive. To be valid, the consent must also meet certain conditions, be requested in simple and clear terms, for each of the purposes pursued and separately from any other information.

The legislation also provides for measures to prevent privacy breaches, such as the requirement to conduct a privacy impact assessment at the design of products or technological systems that involve personal information. This type of screening must also be carried out before personal information is shared outside Quebec to ensure that it is adequately protected.

If an organization collects personal information by offering a product or a technology service, the privacy parameters must, by default, be addressed to those who provide the highest level of protection.

The act also provides a framework for the collection and use of particularly sensitive information and certain situations with a higher potential for intrusion, such as profiling, geolocation, biometrics, and information about minors.

New rights for individuals include the right to be forgotten, the right to portability of information and certain rights when a fully automated decision is made about a person by an AI system.

Finally, the commission is being given new powers. It's the organization responsible for overseeing the enforcement of laws relating to access to documents and the protection of personal information, and for promoting those rights in Quebec. It has had order‑making powers since its inception. It may also, on the authorization of a judge, initiate a criminal prosecution for an offence under the acts it is responsible for overseeing.

Bill 25 significantly increased the amount of penalties that can be imposed and lengthened the time frame for such prosecutions.

The commission now also has the authority to impose administrative monetary penalties of up to several million dollars. It can adopt guidelines, and it has enhanced investigative powers.

Bill C‑27 has similar objectives to those that motivated the reform in Quebec. For businesses, the consistency of the rules in the various jurisdictions in which they operate helps to reduce their regulatory burden.

The adoption of similar and interoperable rules facilitates the essential work of collaboration between the various control authorities across the country, but also internationally. At the end of the day, it also respects people's fundamental rights and increases their confidence in the digital economy and in the use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, which promotes responsible innovation.

In closing, I would like to point out that a collective, non‑partisan, transparent and inclusive reflection on the framework for artificial intelligence has taken place in recent months in Quebec. More than 200 experts, including the commission, looked at six topics, and a call for public contributions complemented that thinking. The preliminary direction of this work was discussed at a public forum last month.

Recommendations on regulating artificial intelligence will be submitted to the Government of Quebec by the end of the year.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to meeting No. 104 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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.

First of all, I'd like to welcome our witnesses. At the same time, I'd like to offer our apologies for the brief delay caused by a vote in the House of Commons.

We welcome Diane Poitras, president of the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec. Thank you very much for being with us, Mrs. Poitras.

We also have from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta,

Diane McLeod, information and privacy commissioner, also joining us by video conference. Thanks for being here.

Madame McLeod is accompanied by Cara-Lynn Stelmack, assistant commissioner of case management, and Sebastian Paauwe, manager of innovation and technology engagement. Both are appearing by video conference.

Lastly, we have Michael McEvoy, information and privacy commissioner for the Province of British Columbia.

Thank you to the three of you for joining us today. We have until 5 p.m. Without further ado, I will cede the floor.

I'll give you the floor, Mrs. Poitras. You have five minutes for your opening remarks.

Thank you.

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

I guess the premise of this.... Just for everyone listening right now, the first part of Bill C-27 does not cover the public sector, but to the point that you brought up, we have the Privacy Act, which, it could be argued, we should have been studying at the exact same time. The point I'm making is that there is nothing out there that exists, especially not in AIDA, that addresses AI in the public sector, and we've talked a lot about that.

I'm trying to get a better handle on your recommendation. Should this have been included with AIDA right now, or is this a whole other act that you're looking at that we should have included with this?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses.

As they say in Quebec, I am “sur le cul”.

I don't know if you know what that means. It means “I'm on my ass.”

I don't know if that translates into that.

I apologize to the interpreters.

Ms. Wylie, you're giving us a particularly interesting lesson.

Bill C‑27 has been on the table for almost two years. It has been evaluated. It was created by public servants, obviously, in Ottawa. Some politicians have done some work to try to put in place legislation that would frame a problem that you don't really see. In fact, you are saying that all the legislation we need already exists. We simply have to proceed by sector to correct the elements that will be related to artificial intelligence.

At the committee, we have heard from people. Over the past few years, we have conducted studies on blockchain, the automotive industry, the right to repair, and so on.

Today, you are telling us that what we are doing is not working at all. You are telling us to take back the studies we have conducted and the existing legislation and to correct what will affect artificial intelligence, because it is already in all these sectors, let's face it.

My question is still for you, Ms. Wylie, but I would also like to know what Ms. Brandusescu and Ms. Casovan think of your position.

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

One of the criteria in the algorithmic impact assessment is the level of impact on the rights not only of individuals but also of communities. We have heard the call from marginalized communities that Bill C‑27 must go beyond individualized harms and include harms that disproportionately affect certain groups.

Can you explain to us why we need to change some individualized language and ensure that the government directive will be as specific and inclusive as possible?

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

Can you give us some examples of some of the criteria used to determine the level of impact of each system? Would it be a good idea to add this type of requirement to Bill C‑27?

[Ashley Casovan, Managing Director, AI Governance Center, International Association of Privacy Professionals]

Thank you for inviting me here to participate in this important study, specifically to discuss AIDA, a component of the digital charter implementation act.

I am here today in my capacity as the managing director of IAPP's AI governance centre. IAPP is a global, non-profit, policy-neutral organization dedicated to the professionalization of the privacy and AI governance workforces. For context, we have 82,000 members located in 150 countries and over 300 employees. Our policy neutrality is rooted in the idea that no matter what the rules are, we need people to do the work of putting them into practice. This is why we make one exception to our neutrality: We advocate for the professionalization of our field.

My position at IAPP builds on nearly a decade-long effort to establish responsible and meaningful policy and standards for data and AI. Previously, I served as executive director for the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Institute. Prior to that, I worked at the Treasury Board Secretariat, leading the first version of the directive on automated decision-making systems, which I am now happy to see included in the amendments to this bill. I also serve as co-chair for the Standards Council of Canada's AI and data standards collaborative, and I contribute to various national and international AI governance efforts. As such, I am happy to address any questions you may have about AIDA in my personal capacity.

While I have always had a strong interest in ensuring technology is built and governed in the best interests of society, on a personal note, I am now a new mom to seven-month-old twins. This experience has brought up new questions for me about raising children in an AI-enabled society. Will their safety be compromised if we post photos of them on social media? Are the surveillance technologies commonly used at day cares compromising?

With this, I believe providing safeguards for AI is now more imperative than ever. Recent market research has demonstrated that the AI market size has doubled since 2021 and is expected to grow from around $2 billion in 2023 to nearly $2 trillion in 2030. This demonstrates not only the potential impact of AI on society but also the pace at which it is growing.

This committee has heard from various experts about challenges related to the increased adoption of AI and, as a result, improvements that could be made to AIDA. While the recently tabled amendments address some of these concerns, the reality is that the general adoption of AI is still new and these technologies are being used in diverse and innovative ways in almost every sector. Creating perfect legislation that will address all the potential impacts of AI in one bill is difficult. Even if it accurately reflects the current state of AI development, it is hard to create a single long-lasting framework that will remain relevant as these technologies continue to change rapidly.

One way of retaining relevance when governing complex technologies is through standards, which is already reflected in AIDA. The inclusion of future agreed-upon standards and assurance mechanisms seems likely, in my experience, to help AIDA remain agile as AI evolves. To complement this concept, one additional safeguard being considered in similar policy discussions around the world is the provision of an AI officer or designated AI governance role. We feel the inclusion of such a role could both improve AIDA and help to ensure that its objectives will be implemented, given the dynamic nature of AI. Ensuring appropriate training and capabilities of these individuals will address some of the concerns raised through this review process, specifically about what compliance will look like, given the use of AI in different contexts and with different degrees of impacts.

This concept is aligned with international trends and requirements in other industries, such as privacy and cybersecurity. Privacy law in British Columbia and Quebec includes the provision of a responsible privacy officer to effectively oversee implementation of privacy policy. Additionally, we see recognition of the important role people play in the recent AI executive order in the United States. It requires each agency to designate a chief artificial intelligence officer, who shall hold primary responsibility for managing their agency's use of AI. A similar approach was proposed in a recent private member's bill in the U.K. on the regulation of AI, which would require any business that develops, deploys or uses AI to designate an AI officer to ensure the safe, ethical, unbiased and non-discriminatory use of AI by the business.

History has shown that when professionalization is not sufficiently prioritized, a daunting expertise gap can emerge. As an example, ISC2's 2022 cybersecurity workforce study discusses the growing cyber-workforce gap. According to the report, there are 4.7 million cybersecurity professionals globally, but there is still a gap of 3.4 million cybersecurity workers required to address enterprise needs. We believe that without a concerted effort to upskill professionals in parallel fields, we will face a similar shortfall in AI governance and a dearth of professionals to implement AI responsibly in line with Bill C-27 and other legislative objectives.

Finally, in a recent survey that we conducted at IAPP on AI governance, 74% of respondents identified that they are currently using AI or intend to within the next 12 months. However, 33% of respondents cited a lack of professional training and certification for AI governance professionals, and 31% cited a lack of qualified AI governance professionals as key challenges to the effective rollout and operation of AI governance programs.

Legislative recognition and incentivization of the need for knowledgeable professionals would help ensure organizations resource their AI governance programs effectively to do the work.

In sum, we believe that rules for AI will emerge. Perhaps, more importantly, we need professionals to put those rules into practice. History has shown that early investment in a professionalized workforce pays dividends later. To this end, as part of our written submission, we will provide potential legislative text to be included in AIDA, for your consideration.

Thank you for your time. I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

[Bianca Wylie, Partner, Digital Public]

My name is Bianca Wylie. I work in public interest digital governance as a partner at Digital Public. I've worked at both a tech start-up and a multinational. I've also worked in the design, development and support of public consultations for governments and government agencies.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about AIDA. As far as amendments go, my suggestion would be to wholesale strike AIDA from Bill C-27. Let's not minimize either the feasibility of this amendment or the strong case before us to do so. I'm here to hold this committee accountable for the false sense that something is better than nothing on this file. It's not, and you're the ones standing between the Canadian public and further legitimizing this undertaking, which is making a mockery of democracy and the legislative process.

AIDA is a complexity ratchet. It's a nonsensical construct detached from reality. It's building increasingly intricate castles of legislation in the sky. It's thinking about AI that is detached from operations, from deployment and from context. ISED's work on AIDA highlights how open to hijacking our democratic norms are when you wave around a shiny orb of innovation and technology.

As Dr. Lucy Suchman writes, “AI works through a strategic vagueness that serves the interests of its promoters, as those who are uncertain about its referents (popular media commentators, policy makers and publics) are left to assume that others know what it is.” I hope you might refuse to continue a charade that has had spectacular carriage through the House of Commons on the back of this socio-psychological phenomenon of assuming that someone else knows what's going on here.

This committee has continued to support a minister basically legislating on the fly. How are we writing laws like this? What is the quality control at the Department of Justice? Is it just that we'll do this on the fly when it's tech, as though this is some kind of thoughtful, adaptive approach to law? No. The process of AIDA reflects the very meaning of law becoming nothing more than a political prop.

The case to pause AIDA and reroute it to a new and separate process begins at its beginning. If we want to regulate artificial intelligence, we have to have a coherent “why”. We have never received a coherent why for AIDA from this government. Have you, as members of this committee, received an adequate backstory procedurally on AIDA? Who created the urgency? How was it drafted, and from what perspective? What work was done inside government to think about this issue across existing government mandates?

If we were to take this bill out to the general public for thoughtful discussion, a process that ISED actively avoided doing, it would fall apart under the scrutiny. There is use of AI in a medical setting versus use on a manufacturing production floor versus use in an educational setting versus use in a restaurant versus use to plan bus routes versus use to identify water pollution versus use in a day care—I could do this all day. All of these create real potential harms and benefits. Instead of having those conversations, we're carrying some kind of delusion that we can control and categorize how something as generic as advanced computational statistics, which is what AI is, will be used in reality, in deployment, in context. The people who can help us have those conversations are not, and have never been, in these rooms.

AIDA was created by a highly insular, extremely small circle of people—tiny. When there is no high-order friction in a policy conversation, we're talking to ourselves. Taking public engagement on AI seriously would force rigour. By getting away with this emergency and urgency narrative, ISED is diverting all of us from the grounded, contextual thinking that has also been an omission in both privacy and data protection thought. That thinking, as seen again in AIDA, continues to deepen and solidify power asymmetries. We're making the same mistake again for a third time.

This is a “keep things exactly the same, only faster” bill. If this bill were law tomorrow, nothing substantial would happen, which is exactly the point. It's an abstract piece of theatre, disconnected from Canada's geopolitical economic location and from the irrational exuberance of a venture capital and investment community. This law is riding on the back of investor enthusiasm for an industry that has not even proven its business model out. On top of that, it's an industry that is highly dependent on the private infrastructures of a handful of U.S. companies.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Colleagues, I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting No. 102 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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'd like to welcome our witnesses this afternoon. With us is Ana Brandusescu, AI governance researcher with McGill University.

Good Afternoon, Ms. Brandusescu.

I would also like to welcome Alexandre Shee, industry expert and incoming co‑chair of Future of Work, Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence.

Good Afternoon, Mr. Shee.

From Digital Public, we have Bianca Wylie.

Thank you for being with us, Ms. Wylie.

Lastly, from International Association of Privacy Professionals, we have Ashely Casovan, managing director of the AI Governance Centre.

I'd like to thank you, too, Ms. Casovan.

Without further ado, I will yield the floor for five minutes to Ms. Brandusescu.

[Madam Céline Castets-Renard]

In Canada and the provinces, the use of facial recognition, generally speaking, and in particular by law enforcement agencies, is not circumscribed. Of course, without a legal framework, it becomes a matter of trial and error. As was demonstrated in the Clearview AI case, we know from a reliable source that facial recognition was used by several law enforcement agencies in Canada, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

When there is no legal framework, things become problematic. Practices develop without any restrictions. That's why people might, on the one hand, fear the legal framework because its existence means the technology has been accepted and recognized, while on the other hand, it would be naïve to imagine that the technology will not be used and can't be stopped, and possibly has many advantages for use in police investigations.

It's always a matter of striking the right balance between the benefits of AI while avoiding the risks. More specifically, a law on the use of facial recognition should ideally anticipate the principles of necessity and proportionality. For example, limits could be placed on when and where the technology can be used for specific purposes or certain types of big investigations. The use of the technology would have to be permitted by a judicial or administrative authority. Legal frameworks are possible. There are examples elsewhere and in other fields. It is certainly among the things that need to be dealt with.

I would add that Bill C‑27 is not directly related to this subject, because what we are dealing with here is regulating international and interprovincial trade. It has nothing to do with the use of AI in the public sector. We can, in due course, regulate companies that sell these facial recognition AI products and systems to the police, but not their use by the police. It's also important to ask about the scope of the regulation that is to be adopted for AI, which will no doubt extend beyond Bill C‑27.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Castets-Renard, I heard you yesterday on Radio-Canada as I was headed to Ottawa, and the topic was really interesting. You were talking about the things that could go wrong with artificial intelligence as a result of its use by law enforcement authorities, particularly in connection with facial recognition. What I understood from the case that occurred in Ireland was that the use of artificial intelligence could, for instance, place the presumption of innocence at risk.

Are current Canadian laws sufficiently advanced to protect against potential social problems? Bill C‑27 may not be the solution. How can we plan for or protect ourselves from these problems, which are probably imminent?

Not only that, but the use of artificial intelligence in political face-saving endeavours might well lead to other restrictions. That's what happened, I understand. Is that right?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Finally, I have one more quick question.

I, like many of us here around this table, have children. What do we need to consider for children with respect to AI?

Is there anything specific we can be doing on the AI aspect of Bill C-27 to ensure that we do whatever we possibly can to protect the innocence of kids?

[Madam Céline Castets-Renard]

Thank you.

I'd like to add something about Bill C‑27. A risk-based approach would avoid treating all artificial intelligence systems in the same way, or placing the same obligations on them. Other options include the high-impact concept, and the amendments introduced by the minister, Mr. Champagne, explain what this concept means in seven different sectors of activity.

I therefore don't think it's fair to say that it would be applied everywhere, on everyone, and haphazardly. It's possible to discuss how it's going to be applied in seven different activity sectors. Some, no doubt, would say that doesn't go far enough, but it is certainly not a law that will lack specifics, because the amendments specify the details.

To return to what was said earlier, it also means that there can be a comprehensive approach with general principles, and an separate approach for each sector or field. That's what the European Union has done with its amendments. That's why statutes being adopted in other countries need to be considered.

As for what was said about the United Kingdom earlier, Canada has signed a policy declaration which has no legal or binding value. It's a very general text that adds nothing to what we have already said about the ethics of artificial intelligence. It definitely does not prevent Canada from following its own path, as the United States did when it issued its executive order right before the summit in England. The Americans were not willing to wait for England to take the lead.

Those are the details I wanted to add.

[Jean-François Gagné]

I think these are good guideposts. An enormous amount of work was done by the international community to understand the issues. I think that many of the things I was reading about in Bill C‑27 and the amendments are valid, and I could identify which portions were intended to cover health or a specific aspect of biotechnology. I could really tell. However, it seems to want to cover all industries Canada, from the smallest to the biggest. What's really needed is to think carefully about them, make adjustments, and if there are specific situations, work with these sectors, while concurrently protecting people and being careful not to hinder innovation.

That's really my greatest concern. I have friends who are entrepreneurs, I'm an entrepreneur myself, and reading this worried me. It's already difficult to innovate and try to stand out from the crowd. If it becomes even more expensive to develop and launch products, it would make things more complicated.

[Madam Céline Castets-Renard, Full Law Professor, Civil Law Faculty, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and members of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

I would also like to thank my colleague, Professor Jennifer Quaid, for sharing her time with me.

I' m going to restrict my address to three general comments. I'll begin by saying that I believe artificial intelligence regulation is absolutely essential today, for three primary reasons. First of all, the significance and scope of the current risks are already well documented. Some of the witnesses here have already discussed current risks, such as discrimination, and future and existential risks. It's absolutely essential today to consider the impact of artificial intelligence, in particular its impact on fundamental rights, including privacy, non-discrimination, protecting the presumption of innocence and, of course, the observance of procedural guarantees for transparency and accountability, particularly in connection with public administration.

Artificial intelligence regulation is also needed because the technologies are being deployed very quickly and the systems are being further developed and deployed in all facets of our professional and personal lives. Right now, they can be deployed without any restrictions because they are not specifically regulated. That became obvious when ChatGPT hit the marketplace.

Canada has certainly developed a Canada-wide artificial intelligence strategy over a number of years now, and the time has now come to protect these investments and to provide legal protection for companies. That does not mean allowing things to run their course, but rather providing a straightforward and understandable framework for the obligations that would apply throughout the entire accountability chain.

The second general comment I would like to make is that these regulations must be compatible with international law. Several initiatives are already under way in Canada, which is certainly not the only country to want to regulate artificial intelligence. I'm thinking in particular, internationally speaking, of the various initiatives taking being taken by the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development, the Council of Europe and, in particular, the European Union and its artificial intelligence bill, which should be receiving political approval tomorrow as part of the inter-institutional trialogue negotiations between the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European Commission. Agreement has reached its final phase, after two years of discussion. President Biden's Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence also needs to be given consideration, along with the technical standards developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the International Organization for Standardization.

My final general comment is about how to regulate artificial intelligence. The bill before us is not perfect, but the fact that it is risk-based is good, even though it needs strengthening. By this I mean considering risks that are now considered unacceptable, and which are not necessarily existential risks, but risks that we can already identify today, such as the widespread use of facial recognition. Also worth considering is a better definition of the risks to high-impact systems.

We'd like to point out and praise the amendments made by the minister, Mr. Champagne, before your committee a few weeks ago. In fact, the following remarks, and our brief, are based on these amendments. It was pointed out earlier that not only individual risks have to be taken into account, but also collective risks to fundamental rights, including systemic risks.

I'd like to add that it's absolutely essential, as the minister's amendments suggest, to consider the general use of artificial intelligence separately, whether in terms of systems or foundational models. We will return to this later.

I believe that a compliance-based approach that reflects the recently introduced amendments should be adopted, and it is fully compatible with the approach adopted by the European Union.

When all is said and done, the approach should be as comprehensive as possible, and I believe that the field of application of Bill C‑27 is too narrow at the moment and essentially focused on the private sector. It should be extended to the public sector and there should be discussions and collaboration with the provinces in their fields of expertise, along with a form of co‑operative federalism.

Thank you for your attention. We'll be happy to discuss these matters with you.

[Dr. Jennifer Quaid, Associate Professor and Vice-Dean Research, Civil Law Section, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair. vice-chairs and members of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, I am very pleased to be here once again, this time to talk about Bill C‑27.

I am grateful to be able to share my time with my colleague Céline Castets-Renard, who is online and who is the university research chair in responsible AI in a global context. As one of the preeminent legal experts on artificial intelligence in Canada and in the world, she is very familiar with what is happening elsewhere, particularly in the EU and the U.S. She also leads a SSHRC-funded research project on AI governance in Canada, of which I am part. The project is directed squarely at the question you are grappling with today in considering this bill, which is how to create a system that is consistent with the broad strokes of what major peer jurisdictions, such as Europe, the U.K. and the U.S., are doing while nevertheless ensuring that we remain true to our values and to the foundations of our legal and institutional environment. In short, we have to create a bill that's going to work here, and our comments are directed at that; at least, my part is. Professor Castets-Renard will speak more specifically about the details of the bill as it relates to regulating artificial intelligence.

Our joint message to you is simple. We believe firmly that Bill C-27 is an important and positive step in the process of developing solid governance to encourage and promote responsible AI. Moreover, it is vital and urgent that Canada establish a legal framework to support responsible AI governance. Ethical guidelines have their place, but they are complementary to and not a substitute for hard rules and binding enforceable norms.

Thus, our goal is to provide you with constructive feedback and recommendations to help ready the bill for enactment. To that end, we have submitted a written brief, in English and in French, that highlights the areas that we think would benefit from clarification or greater precision prior to enactment.

This does not mean that further improvements are not desirable. Indeed, we would say they are. It's only that we understand that time is of the essence, and we have to focus on what is achievable now, because delay is just not an option.

In this opening statement, we will draw your attention to a subset of what we discuss in the brief. I will briefly touch on four items before I turn it over to my colleague, Professor Castets-Renard.

First, it is important to identify who is responsible for what aspects of the development, deployment and putting on the market of AI systems. This matters for determining liability, especially of organizations and business entities. Done right, it can help enforcers gather evidence and assess facts. Done poorly, it may create structural immunity from accountability by making it impossible to find the evidence needed to prove violations of the law.

I would also add that the current conception of accountability is based on state action only, and I wonder whether we should also consider private rights of action. Those are being explored in other areas, including, I might add, in Bill C-59, which has amendments to the Competition Act.

Second, we need to use care in crafting the obligations and duties of those involved in the AI value chain. Regulations should be drafted with a view to what indicators can be used to measure and assess compliance. Especially in the context of regulatory liability and administrative sanctions, courts will look to what regulators demand of industry players as the baseline for deciding what qualifies as due diligence and what can be expected of a reasonably prudent person in the circumstances.

While proof of regulatory compliance usually falls on the business that invokes it, it is important that investigators and prosecutors be able to scrutinize claims. This requires metrics and indicators that are independently verifiable and that are based on robust research. In the context of AI, its opacity and the difficulty for outsiders to understand the capability and risks of AI systems makes it even more important that we establish norms.

Third, reporting obligations should be mandatory and not ad hoc. At present, the act contemplates the power of the AI and data commissioner to demand information. Ad hoc requests to examine compliance are insufficient. Rather, the default should be regular reporting at regular intervals, with standard information requirements. The provision of information allows regulators to gain an understanding of what is happening at the research level and at the deployment and marketing level at a pace that is incremental, even if one can say that the development of AI is exponential.

This builds institutional knowledge and capacity by enabling regulators and enforcers to distinguish between situations that require enforcement and those that do not. That seems to be the crux of the matter. Everyone wants to know when it's right to intervene and when we should let things evolve. It also allows for organic development of new regulations as new trends and developments occur.

I would be happy to talk about some examples. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

Finally, the enforcement and implementation of the AI act as well as the continual development of new regulations must be supported by an independent, robust institutional structure with sufficient resources.

The proposed AI data commissioner cannot accomplish this on their own. While not a perfect analogy—and I know some people here know that I'm the competition expert—I believe that the creation of an agency not unlike the Competition Bureau would be a model to consider. It's not perfect. The bureau is a good example because it combines enforcement of all types—criminal, regulatory, administrative and civil—with education, public outreach, policy development and now digital intelligence. It has a highly specialized workforce trained in the relevant disciplines it needs to draw on to discharge its mandate. It also represents Canada’s interests in multilateral fora and collaborates actively with peer jurisdictions. It matters, I think, to have that for AI.

I am now going to turn it over for the remaining time to my colleague Professor Castets-Renard.

Thank you.

[Erica Ifill, Journalist and Founder of Podcast, Not In My Colour, As an Individual]

Good afternoon to the industry and technology committee as well as a lot of their assistants and also to whoever may be in the room.

I am here today to talk about part 3 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. Part 3 is the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.

Firstly, there are some issues, some challenges, with this bill, especially in accordance with societal effects and public effects.

Number one, when this bill was crafted, there was very little public oversight. There were no public consultations, and there are no publicly accessible records accounting for how these meetings were conducted by the government's AI advisory council, nor which points were raised.

Public consultations are important, as they allow a variety of stakeholders to exchange and develop innovative policy that reflects the needs and concerns of affected communities. As I raised in the Globe and Mail, the lack of meaningful public consultation, especially with Black, indigenous, people of colour, trans and non-binary, economically disadvantaged, disabled and other equity-deserving populations, is echoed by AIDA's failure to acknowledge AI's characteristic of systemic bias, including racism, sexism and heteronormativity.

The second problem with AIDA is the need for proper public oversight.

The proposed artificial intelligence and data commissioner is set to be a senior public servant designated by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and, therefore, is not independent of the minister and cannot make independent public-facing decisions. Moreover, at the discretion of the minister, the commissioner may be delegated the “power, duty” and “function” to administer and enforce AIDA. In other words, the commissioner is not afforded the powers to enforce AIDA in an independent manner, as their powers depend on the minister's discretion.

Number three is the human rights aspect of AIDA.

First of all, how it defines “harm” is so specific, siloed and individualized that the legislation is effectively toothless. According to this bill:

harm means

(a) physical or psychological harm to an individual;

(b) damage to an individual's property; or

(c) economic loss to an individual.

That's quite inadequate when talking about systemic harm that goes beyond the individual and affects some communities. I wrote the following in The Globe and Mail:

“While on the surface, the bill seems to include provisions for mitigating harm,” [as said by] Dr. Sava Saheli Singh, a research fellow in surveillance, society and technology at the University of Ottawa's Centre for Law, Technology and Society, “[that] language focuses [only] on individual harm. We must recognize the potential harms to broader populations, especially marginalized populations who have been shown to be negatively affected disproportionately by these kinds of...systems.”

Racial bias is also a problem for artificial intelligence systems, especially those used in the criminal justice system, and racial bias is one of the greatest risks.

A federal study was done in 2019 in the United States that showed that Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

A study from the U.K. showed that the facial recognition technology the study tested performed the worst when recognizing Black faces, especially Black women's faces. These surveillance activities raise major human rights concerns when there is evidence that Black people are already disproportionately criminalized and targeted by the police. Facial recognition technology also disproportionately affects Black and indigenous protesters in many ways.

From a privacy perspective, algorithmic systems raise issues of construction, because constructing them requires data collection and processing of vast amounts of personal information, which can be highly invasive. The reidentification of anonymized information, which can occur through the triangulation of data points collected or processed by algorithmic systems, is another prominent privacy risk.

There are deleterious impacts or risks stemming from the use of technology concerning people's financial situations or physical and/or psychological well-being. The primary issue here is that a significant amount and type of personal information can be gathered that is used to surveil and socially sort, or profile, individuals and communities, as well as forecast and influence their behaviour. Predictive policing does this.

In conclusion, algorithmic systems can also be used in the public sector context to assess a person's ability to receive social services, such as welfare or humanitarian aid, which can result in discriminatory impacts on the basis of socio-economic status, geographic location, as well as other data points analyzed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to meeting No. 101 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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’d like to welcome our witnesses today, Mr. Jean-François Gagné, an AI strategic advisor, who will be given an opportunity to give his opening address when he joins us a little later. We also have with us Ms. Erica Ifill, a journalist and founder of the Podcast Not In My Colour, and from AlayaCare, Mr. Adrian Schauer, its founder and chief executive officer.

I want to thank you, Mr. Schauer, for making yourself available again today. I know we had some technical difficulties before, but the headset looks fine this afternoon. Thanks for being here again.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, for the help, as well.

We have, from AltaML Inc., Nicole Janssen, co-founder and chief executive officer; and from Gladstone AI, we have Jérémie Harris.

And last, we will have Jennifer Quaid, associate professor and vice-dean research, civil law section, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa along with with Céline Castets-Renard, full law professor, Faculty of Civil Law , University of Ottawa.

As we have several witnesses, we will begin the discussion immediately. Each of you will have five minutes for an opening statement. Mr. Gagné, please begin.

Madame Ifill, the floor is yours.

[Joe Masoodi]

Thank you for the question.

There was a question on surveillance capitalism, which is a concept that was introduced by Shoshana Zuboff. It was introduced a couple of times during the hearings. The previous question was on what we can do to try to at least mitigate the impacts of surveillance capitalism, which was really initiated, if we look back, by Google. It was Google, through its machine-learning techniques, that facilitated that process. It was the inadequate regulatory and legal regimes that were in place that allowed that to happen.

If I were to provide some key recommendations or suggestions in terms of takeaways, I would say we need robust privacy laws. We've heard that over and over again. I'd like to emphasize that again. We need to have robust privacy measures in place, specifically in areas with regard to cross-border data transfers. I think Bill C-27 could use an area that specifically identifies cross-border data transfers as an area for robust protections.

[Matt Malone]

I would not support that.

I understand the intent behind the proposal. I think it's well-intentioned, and I considered it seriously, but I think it would have adverse effects that may not be what is intended.

The reality is that we need a privacy law that protects children by default. It shouldn't be the responsibility of a parent. There are mixed harms and benefits with these technologies, and I don't believe that parents or older generations are the ones who are always the best at navigating these technologies. I've seen lots of surveys from within the Privy Council Office itself that show young people are the ones who use these technologies; 30% of teens get their news from TikTok, and a lot of older generations don't use them at all. One concern I would have is that I wouldn't feel comfortable entrusting that responsibility to all parents, but that's just my personal view.

What I would say, though, is that I do believe children should be explicitly referenced as a vulnerable population within Bill C-27. I think it's unacceptable that children and youth, in particular, have been removed from Bill C-27 and are omitted. That was a deliberate intent by the Ministry of Industry. I have an internal brief that talks about the reasons behind that, and I'd be happy to share that with you.

[Sam Andrey]

I see a role for a digital regulator.

Currently, there's the idea of having an AI data regulator in Bill C-27, but it's an ISED department official. This, I think, is unacceptable, especially given that the minister will have the competing roles of championing the economic benefits of AI and regulating its risks. At a minimum, they should be appointed by the GIC. Ideally, it would be a parliamentary appointment that is separate.

I think you could task the same regulator with the online harms portfolio. It could be two, but that's a lot of digital regulators. That regulator would have the power to do audits and a forum on ombudsman-type functions to support individuals. They would also have a transparency function.

[Matt Malone]

I think Canada has an opportunity to reclaim a bit of the traditional role that we like to see Canada have, which is serving as a middle power with allied states.

Several ideas have been floated around creating safe dataflow zones that map onto the security alliances that already exist, like NATO for example. We already have a commitment to mutual defence with our NATO allies. It would seem logical that we might feel comfortable sharing our data, our personal information, with these allies in a free cross-border dataflow zone. There are opportunities for Canada to certainly create a niche role when it comes to regulation and the creation of regulatory frameworks for cross-border dataflows.

I think the more appalling concern that I have is with the state of the current law. The fact is that a lot of Canadian law, and certainly the priorities of legislators right now, is to create privacy law that applies only to the private sector. I think one of the real problems we've seen—and we saw this through the pandemic as well—is that we need robust privacy and data protection laws that also apply to government. I've been really upset at the fact that the artificial intelligence and data act does not apply to government actions, which is really concerning when you think about the deployment of AI technologies, AI-fueled and AI-driven technologies such as the ArriveCAN app.

I've also been really concerned about the fact that the priorities with Bill C-27 have not focused on government. To me, it's disturbing that this effort has been led by the industry portfolio and Bill C-27 would create new regulatory instruments that would be answerable to the Minister of Industry. It's really hard to say that we're approaching privacy from a human rights or law enforcement or national security perspective when the bodies we're creating are not truly independent. Not only are they not truly independent, but they're subservient to an industry portfolio whose mandate is to grow the economy.

[Matt Malone]

I think the word mirage accurately captures the current state of affairs.

I think informed consent, which is what all Canadian privacy laws are currently based on, doesn't serve the ends that we really need data protection and privacy law in this country to serve. The reality that Bill C-27 has perpetuated this—the idea that this instrument will still work and still serve its ends even with the legitimate business exceptions, even with the rules around implied consent—really won't take us to a place where we have robust privacy and data protection law in this country.

I think you need to fundamentally shift the paradigm so that possessing, retaining, using or disclosing personal information becomes a liability, as opposed to a profitable way to run a business, which is what we have let these ad exchanges/social media companies do.

[Matt Malone]

Thanks for the question.

I think it's really important to identify the TikTok representatives who spoke as lobbyists. They're registered lobbyists, and they do lobbyist work. I think it's important to talk about how a lot of the claims they made were very disingenuous. There are easy bypasses around a lot of the safety controls for children that they vaunted.

TikTok has been caught—to respond more directly to your question—engaging in all kinds of worrying conduct with respect to user data. There is public reporting that talks about TikTok accessing physical locations of journalists who are using the app, in order to track down their sources. That's in the public domain. There is public reporting about TikTok directing user data from the United States through China despite assurances otherwise, and there's a raft of other reporting.

There's internal government reporting from Canadian government actors like the Privy Council Office's intelligence assessment secretariat that identifies all kinds of other problems around the type of data and the persistent collection of data that occurs through the app. There are also materials that I've seen from the cyber-threat intelligence unit at the Canadian Forces intelligence command at the Department of National Defence that identify a series of concerning problems around censorship and so forth.

One of the really difficult issues here is that Canadian law is very permissive when it comes to data transfers. Even if you look at the proposed privacy legislation, Bill C-27, there's essentially nothing that would stop data transfers outside of Canada. Certainly, the privacy notice for TikTok states that by using TikTok you accept the terms and conditions, which are that the subsidiary TikTok can share that data with its corporate body, ByteDance, and Canadian law lets that happen. Even the proposed Canadian law would let that happen. Proposed section 19 and proposed subsection 11(1) of Bill C-27 specifically permit this type of data transfer.

Canadian data transfer law is essentially premised on the idea that organizations can send data to other organizations if they deem the protections are sufficient or adequate, as they would be in Canada. This approach is really different from the European approach, which is jurisdictionally grounded—country to country. You can't transfer data outside of a country unless you're satisfied that the protections would be essentially equivalent. There's a really big difference in Canadian data transfer law compared to the European data transfer law. Once data gets out of Canada, there's really no telling what happens to it. They don't take basic safeguards like you do.

For this meeting, I asked the chief information officer of the House of Commons where the data was being localized and processed for Zoom, which I would be using, and I was told—and I was very happy and impressed by this—that the data would be processed in Canada. Your in camera meetings are even more secure, so good on you. It's not for the users of TikTok.

[Matt Malone]

When you look at the resources that are available, they're not meeting the demand. In 2018, when Public Safety went through a cybersecurity update and threw a lot of money at the RCMP to get more serious about online cybercrime, that was when the initial announcement was made about NC3, the national cybercrime coordination centre.

I wrote about this three years ago and said that we were already waiting a long time to get this rollout happening, but fast-forward three years, and that reporting system is two years behind schedule. If you visit the website right now, it will tell you that the system is still in beta testing and that it accepts only 25 cybercrime complaints a day for the entire country, which is really low. In a series of access to information requests regarding the number of resources that were devoted in terms of personnel, I discovered that there are several provinces that don't have any cybercrime investigators, which is a really shocking statistic. Here in B.C., the third-largest province in the country, we have only four full-time people on the cybercrime team.

I believe these tools need to be rolled out more rapidly. There should be more transparency around them, and legislation should be crafted around what we're seeing, because these tools allow us to understand what types of harms are being perpetuated. There are all kinds of analyses you can run based on the reporting data that comes in, and NC3 shows that more than half the reports that go to NC3 are about ransomware. It's really interesting that Canadian legislation ignores ransomware, which is the biggest cybercrime threat we're facing.

One thing that's interesting to take into consideration when we talk about Bill C-27 is also Bill C-26, which would regulate things like ransomware for critical industries.

[Sam Andrey]

I would add that I agree with the premise of your question, that we are falling behind in some respects, though I think we have, as Dr. Laidlaw put it, second-mover advantage to learn from some of the lessons and some of the flawed legislation or approaches that have been passed in allied jurisdictions.

On AI regulations specifically, I think Canada is moving quickly as relates to the rest of the world, which I think is a good thing, but, yes, I would say we need to move more quickly, and Bill C-27 is part of that.

[Matt Malone]

I'm happy to jump in.

I believe one of the problems that Canada faces is that we're not a large power and we're stuck between approaches to privacy and data protection among large powers that are diametrically opposed. Failing to act soon will lock us into one of those approaches. The Europeans have adopted a more restrictive approach. Ever since the drafting, passage and implementation of the GDPR, we've seen an array of restrictive measures, which are leading to things like data localization, stricter requirements around data transfers, and a robust equivalency test.

The United States is taking a diametrically opposed approach with its regulatory framework, in which it has not updated its privacy legislation, and there's no uniform privacy legislation in the United States. At the same time the U.S. is doing that, it's exporting, through trade treaties and governance bodies worldwide, a view of data governance and privacy that locks in what Canada can do.

Discussions about data transfers have to take into consideration the fact that the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement has a prohibition on restricting cross-border dataflows, and it has other restrictions that are relevant as well. The CPTPP has similar restrictions.

One of the problems with Canada's failure to act is that we're getting locked into one of these approaches. Unfortunately, we show no urgency around acting. The Privacy Act, which regulates government conduct, hasn't been updated in over 40 years. PIPEDA is well in need of a meaningful update, not just tweaks. I personally don't believe that Bill C-27 is the appropriate way to do that.

I'll let the other panellists chime in.

[Sam Andrey]

In our annual survey of online harms, we found that Canadians have very low trust in social media platforms, both to keep their data secure and to act in the best interests of the public, ranking well below other technology companies and other organizations of a variety of types. In fact, trust in TikTok, specifically, fell significantly last year, to last place. Only 7% of Canadians say that they have a high degree of trust in the platform, despite its rapid growth with nearly 30% of Canadians using the platform.

TikTok has been the subject of particular scrutiny, given its corporate structure. As was pointed out earlier in the committee, prior to 2019, TikTok's privacy policy was transparent in stating that it shares people's information “with any member or affiliate of [its] group” in China. This line was later updated to remove that specific location reference, but the sharing provision remains. That same provision is also in the privacy policy of WeChat, which is used by 6% of Canadians. As our colleague Mr. Malone has pointed out, it is true of many others.

Canada's current privacy law does not prohibit companies from transferring personal data to third parties or outside of Canada in this way. We think that there is an opportunity before parliamentarians to respond to these risks through the proposed Bill C-27. However, as it currently stands, Bill C-27 would, in some ways, allow for even easier data sharing to take place between corporate actors by eroding what limited consent provisions do exist. Proposed section 18 of the CPPA creates new, large carve-outs for companies to share data without either knowledge or consent through the inclusion of language like “business activities” and “legitimate interest”.

We don't think that it should be the exclusive responsibility of Canadians to educate and protect themselves online. We would propose that there be more precise requirements added to the bill to ensure that equivalent levels of protection are provided for data when it's transferred outside of Canada. We would also suggest requirements that near the EU's GDPR, to obtain explicit informed consent from Canadians for the transfer of their personal data to jurisdictions that do not provide equivalent levels of protection, providing information about both the specific countries involved and the specific data. While a lot of people have pointed out to this committee that there's consent fatigue, we, at least, think that transparency with respect to data transferred to countries outside of Canada is important.

We'll end by saying that Canadians overwhelmingly support such a change. A representative survey that we conducted found that 86% of Canadians support requirements to keep Canadians' data in Canada, with only 3% disagreeing.

Thanks for your time. We look forward to your questions.

[Matt Malone, Assistant Professor, Thompson Rivers University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Matt Malone, and I am an assistant professor at Thompson Rivers University faculty of law in Kamloops. Today I am attending the meeting in a personal capacity.

I am going to use my opening remarks to share my thoughts using a case study, which is specifically regarding the selective ban of TikTok on government-issued devices that was announced in February 2023. As the committee might recall, that selective ban was accompanied by a statement about concerns relating to privacy and security.

These stated concerns do not explain several things. First of all, they do not explain why the government waited five months to act on the underlying intelligence brief that warned about TikTok's practices. Second, they do not explain why the government continues to buy advertising on TikTok itself. Finally, they do not explain why the government has ignored that TikTok is not the only app that retains user data in foreign jurisdictions and potentially shares it with foreign regimes.

As the Treasury Board Secretariat confirmed to me a couple of days before this hearing, none of the following apps are banned from download and use on government-issued devices: the Russian-affiliated VKontakte social media app, the Russian-affiliated Yandex app, and the Russian-affiliated Mail.ru app, as well as other social media apps, like Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Snapchat, Bumble, Grindr, Truth Social, Gab and Discord, which was implicated in the 2022-23 Pentagon leaks and which Dr. Laidlaw noted does not have child safety protection measures in place.

As I recommended in a recent article—and as I'll take this opportunity to recommend again now to the President of the Treasury Board—I believe that a better privacy and security baseline would see the government ban all social media apps on government-issued devices, unless there is a strong business justification otherwise. It's crazy to me that the apps I just listed are not banned on government-issued devices. I also believe that the government should stop buying ads on all social media services.

Even with such bans in place, it is worth noting that federal privacy law places no meaningful constraints on data transfers to jurisdictions like Russia and China. An internal government brief that I obtained through the Access to Information Act notes that Bill C-27 and the proposed privacy legislation currently before Parliament avoided putting into that bill any new or European-style restrictions on the transfer of personal information across borders specifically out of deference to commercial interests. It's very telling that the privacy bill before Parliament is being stewarded by the industry portfolio in cabinet, not a portfolio in human rights, public safety or national security.

Like many social media apps, TikTok does deserve opprobrium for its privacy violations, data harvesting and narrative control practices, and for granting access to data despite assurances otherwise. Like other social media apps, it is a vector for online harm visited on young people. Its business model is focused on privacy-invasive, targeted advertising that exacerbates the mental health crisis affecting young people. The app's safety features for children are all easy to bypass.

Through various access to information requests, I have seen several internal briefings where Canadian government actors repeatedly identified these problems. I'm happy to talk about these.

However, it's important to note that the real culprit here is Canadian law, because it does not stop these practices for TikTok or any other social media service. As TikTok lobbyists appearing before this committee repeatedly underscored, TikTok's handling of Canadians' user data is governed by Canadian law. That's the problem. Canada's privacy laws fail to respect the rights and interests of individuals and collectives in the digital age. Enforcement is basically non-existent. At the federal level, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has become skilled at making fanfare announcements about its investigations, but it is very slow at investigating, as I learned in my own complaint about the ArriveCAN app, which was ultimately sustained.

Law enforcement has struggled to adapt to the new digital landscape as well. The RCMP's national cybercrime and fraud reporting system, which this committee recently heard about in glowing terms as part of this study, is actually two years behind schedule and still in beta testing. Its website says that it accepts only 25 complaints per day nationwide.

To give members another illustrative example, as I learned in a recent access to information request, the RCMP's cybercrime investigative team has only eight employees in all of Alberta. Here in British Columbia, where there was a recent tragic sextortion case involving a young person that was carried out over social media, there are only four employees on the cybercrime investigation team for the entire province. There are none in Saskatchewan, Manitoba or any of the maritime provinces.

With privacy and data protection legislation that deprives citizens of meaningful protection, government funding priorities deeply out of alignment with stated values and actual needs, and gaps in law and policy that the government shows no urgency to fill, the federal government's policies and practices pose significant challenges to addressing the real types of harms that we are seeing perpetuated these days on social media.

To wrap up, I want to thank the committee for its unexpected invitation.

I also want to give a particular shout-out of appreciation to the MP for Mississauga—Erin Mills for her leadership on this very important issue. I've been very impressed with her work on this file.

I look forward to answering, to the best of my abilities, any questions that the committee members might have.

Thanks.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to pick up on some of this, particularly around Bill C-27. I myself think that this portion of the bill would have been better dealt with here under an ethical framework rather than an industry one.

Dr. Laidlaw, can you maybe talk about the ethics of AI and why, from a legal framework, those considerations in terms of the legitimacy of democracy and the ways in which AI is undermining society would probably be best situated as a carve-out, as you just suggested?

[Dr. Emily Laidlaw]

I fully support the recommendations for amendments by Commissioner Dufresne regarding Bill C-27. I think it needs to be amended. I think it only solves part of the problem, because it's still a consent paradigm. Also, as long as it relies on consent, it doesn't dive into some of the more problematic aspects of social media and their influence, which, really, nobody can consent to.

Therefore, unless we wholly change Bill C-27, which I don't think we'll do, we need online harms legislation. I do think the AI act is problematic and needs to be pulled out of Bill C-27 and reworked. It absolutely should not be set up under ISED as a commissioner within that body.

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

In 30 seconds, can you tell me whether you support Bill C‑27 as it currently stands?

[Brett Caraway]

That's supposed to be part of Bill C-27, the formulations of some sort of protections for minors. If you listen to representatives from TikTok, they will tell you that they have self-regulation and that they are the vanguard of that. They would say that people 18 and under can't livestream, or the privacy settings are by default for people 16 and under, or people 16 and under are limited to 60 minutes. However, these are settings that can just be changed.

It is important for the government to step in and help parents out, because they are literally overwhelmed by all the different social media platforms, and, of course, teens are on these platforms, depending on whom you ask, four to five hours a day.

[Alexandre Plourde]

I think that you want to understand how the personal information and data protection tribunal affects consumer rights.

As I said earlier, we have mixed feelings about the personal information and data protection tribunal. We would rather the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada have the power to impose administrative monetary penalties.

However, in our view, the personal information and data protection tribunal isn't the biggest issue. Our main concern isn't the tribunal. It's all the other common law courts where a consumer could bring proceedings against a company on the basis of the new federal privacy legislation. There's a major problem. The current bill contains a significant restriction that could undermine consumers when they want to use this legislation before the courts.

The issue isn't the personal information and data protection tribunal. The issue lies outside the criminal process, including the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the new data protection tribunal. In our view, Bill C‑27 seriously impedes, or at least threatens to impede, the civil process.

I'll talk about Quebec. It's the only area that we know well, obviously. Quebec has its own privacy legislation, which has more teeth than the legislation on the table today. Quebec also provides for civil remedies. If a company fails to meet its obligations under federal legislation, I can turn to the civil courts in Quebec to assert my rights.

We think that the current bill carries risks. We can't predict what the courts will say about the scope of section 107. We're worried that it could lead to long legal debates. We would like MPs to ensure that this bill doesn't interfere with civil remedies. We're very concerned about this issue. We urge you to take action to protect consumer rights in Quebec, in order to ensure that consumers can pursue remedies under this legislation, should the need arise.

[Alexandre Plourde]

The problem we have with clause 107 of Bill C‑27 is that it threatens Quebeckers' right to pursue civil remedies, an issue that seems to have fallen off the radar in this bill, but that really worries us.

Based on this clause's current wording, the private right of action—the right to sue a company in a civil court under federal legislation—can only be exercised under very strict conditions: if the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has found that a company has failed to meet its obligations; if a compliance agreement has not made it possible to compensate the consumer; or if a fine has been imposed in one of the very specific cases set out in the bill.

Otherwise, the consumer cannot sue the company in a civil court, cannot sue for compensation, and cannot assert their rights in court. They could find themselves in a situation where the office of the commissioner, for example, did not accept the complaint they filed against the company or did not make a finding, thereby failing to meet the requirements set out in clause 107. The consumer would then be deprived of recourse in court and would not be able to sue the company in a civil court.

Option consommateurs is an organization that files class action lawsuits and pursues civil remedies before the courts. In many situations, it has launched class action lawsuits against tech giants. For example, it filed a lawsuit against Google. However, that class action lawsuit is not the result of a complaint handled by the office of the commissioner. If we had to interpret clause 107 of the bill strictly, such a class action lawsuit may not be able to take place.

As a result, in order to avoid endless constitutional debates before the courts, we ask that the legislator's intent be clarified, since it is not, I am sure, to limit remedies available to Quebeckers. To that end, we are asking that a subclause be added to clause 107 of Bill C‑27 indicating that it does not exclude provincial civil law remedies. The provincial remedies, the civil remedies, would then be in addition to the remedies set out in clause 107. That would solve a lot of problems and legal debates for us and would give consumers a great deal of access to justice.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Levac or Ms. Plourde, I have a quick question for you. We are talking about amending clause 107 of Bill C‑27 to remove all restrictions on the exercise of consumers' right to pursue civil remedies. In your opinion, to what extent does that clause restrict the exercise of consumers' right to file a class action suit?

I think that's a fairly unique aspect that we haven't heard about at this table yet.

[Philippe Letarte]

I will say from the get-go yes, but I think Bill C-27 is a really good first step into those regulations. It really lays the foundation upon which we can build and it levels the playing field about modernization and privacy in this country, which is greatly overdue.

In terms of my own interests, I hope we're going to get open banking sooner rather than later. I really believe it is kind of an emergency to have open banking at this point in time, for several reasons.

First, we know that the cost of living in Canada is problematic. We know that we need to give more resources to Canadians. We also know that we are losing competitiveness on international ground, so whatever gets it done the fastest is good, but Bill C-27 is a good foundation upon which we can build.

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

The premise of this is that it seems these are actually in the right stride, parallel to each other. Bill C-27 deals with data. For those listening at home, the whole premise around consumer-led banking is really to make it mandatory that the banks have to share your personal data with other entities who can bank you, which allows.... In the U.K., where we saw it with 4,000 companies, U.K. residents are saving 12 billion pounds a year and businesses eight billion pounds a year. It's really great.

My first question for you as we look at the key to unlocking consumer-led banking is this: Can consumer-led banking, open banking, exist without this legislation right now?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses.

Mr. Letarte, it's nice to have you here today. I introduced a bill about a month ago in Parliament to make sure that consumer-led banking—open banking—gets going. Actually, I'm going to have a bet with my colleague from Abitibi-Témiscamingue—about $50—on whether we'll get third reading of Bill C-27 first or open banking first. I'm not sure. I think I can win some money off him.

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

So I understand that you are in favour of including provisions similar to those in Quebec's Bill 25 in Bill C‑27 to strengthen it.

Who could be called upon to challenge an automated decision?

[Sara Eve Levac]

Currently, Bill C-27 would allow someone to obtain on request an explanations of automated decisions. We propose that this should go further, somewhat as you explained with the Quebec example.

First, it may be difficult for consumers to determine whether a decision concerning them was an automated decision. For example, when credit card applications are denied, no explanation is provided to the applicants that would let them know the decision concerning them may have been automated. Consequently, we would recommend that Bill C-27 provide for an obligation to inform consumers that the decision concerning them was an automated decision.

Then we could request that Bill C-27 provide that explanations be provided regarding that decision. An additional step would be to provide as well that a human being may review a decision made by an automated tool, somewhat as is possible in Quebec, so that person can make observations.

There have been media reports of cases in which people were denied credit because the information considered in making the decision included errors. The possibility that such decisions can be reviewed could therefore help avoid situations in which consumers are denied contracts or loans because the decisions concerning them were based on false information.

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

Ms. Levac or Mr. Plourde, Bill C-27, which will replace the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, will give consumers a new right to explanations for the use of automated decision systems to make predictions, provide recommendations and make important decisions concerning them, even when the data used have been depersonalized.

However, unlike Quebec's Bill 25, Bill C-27 makes no provision enabling anyone to oppose the use of an automated decision system or to review a decision made by such a system. What do you think are the potential repercussions for consumers of the absence of any such provisions from the bill?

[Sébastien Gambs]

The quantum field will have an impact on many aspects of communications security, not just on data monitoring tools.

I think that the security standards that are being developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States and that will apply to the Internet already reveal a willingness to provide security tools that will help resist quantum attacks.

I don't know whether Bill C-27 mentions anything regarding post-quantum resistance. Apart from data-monitoring tools, that may concern personal data or data security in general.

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

Is it necessary to extend the provisions of this bill to the private sector to guarantee complete protection for the data of Quebeckers and Canadians? At the same time, how could Bill C-27 be adapted or reinforced to ensure adequate regulation of the use of these kinds of tools in the public sector?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gambs, with your permission, I'd like to benefit from your expertise.

Yesterday, Radio-Canada revealed that government departments and agencies were using spying equipment initially associated with the intelligence community to recover and analyze data, including encrypted and password-protected information. Furthermore, the use of those surveillance tools had apparently not been subject to a privacy risk assessment, despite a federal directive requiring it.

In the circumstances, considering that the public sector is included in Bill C-27, what are the main concerns regarding the use of these types of surveillance tools by government entities and, more particularly, the failure to conduct privacy risk assessments?

[Alexandre Plourde]

Consent is indeed one of the methods for protecting consumers. It's the method that has mainly been used in this bill. Something else could have been chosen, and other protection standards could have been added, but what we still have here is legislation that hinges on consent. Consent can be a method that operates to protect consumers in the digital environment and enables them to control their information, provided that consent is effective and can genuinely be useful to consumers.

Bill C-27 poses a problem with regard to related exceptions to the requirement of consent. We feel that those exceptions are too broad. The exception that concerns us most is the one provided under clause 18, for the purpose of business activities and legitimate interest. This is an exception that we consider too broad. We find it hard to understand how it can be consistent with the implicit consent that already exists. We therefore suggest deleting clause 18, which would allow businesses too much leeway to use consumers' information without their consent.

You also mentioned pop-up windows at the start of your question. It seems to me you're referring to the concept of consent fatigue, which occurs as a result of being constantly asked to give your consent. People are bombarded with demands and requests for consent, and we're aware of this concern about consent fatigue.

We think that businesses should show some creativity. The bill should also offer effective solutions enabling consumers to express a blanket refusal to be tracked online. When we go onto various websites, mobile apps and tech company platforms, our privacy and data are permanently captured for those businesses to use for commercial and other purposes. The current method is to have us consent singly to each business when pop-up windows appear.

The solution we suggest in our brief is that we instead create mechanisms enabling consumers to state a blanket refusal to allow their browsing data or other personal information to be transmitted to any companies with which they do business. This is what we call the "do not track" mechanism, which is already available in web browsers but isn't recognized by businesses. We propose that businesses be required to recognize this kind of signal or parameter that, with one click, enables people to send a blanket refusal to provide their personal information. This would put an end to the consent fatigue we all dislike.

[Philippe Letarte]

Absolutely. That's why we're very pleased that Bill C-27 was introduced. Our business currently operates in a system that lies in a kind of grey area and that hasn't been extensively legislated. We've been asking the federal government to intervene on behalf of consumers for a very long time now.

You mention pop-up windows. From our viewpoint, it's much more precise than that and more highly regulated. If you have an online app to do your accounting or manage your retirement or investments, you will have to give consent. We want that consent to be adequately protected and renewed as well.

Although our case is a bit different from anything involving cookie files and pop-up windows, we want regulations to be added that give consumers the power to consent to their data being shared and that guarantee them adequate protection. Let's be honest: there are two taboos in society, and they are our finances and our personal information. Here we're combining the two.

So, to sum up, it's important to have adequate protection, and, as far as we're concerned, just as important that consent have to be given. For all the systems and authorities I mentioned earlier, businesses should be responsible for getting consent.

We're very pleased with the content of the bill because it will create a legislative framework that's safe and therefore more effective for consumers. That will also enable our business to grow in an environment that's secure and stable.

[Philippe Letarte]

I think it's already a good start for businesses, and that, incidentally, is why I'm here.

I know that the sharing of bank information isn't necessarily the main subject matter of Bill C-27, but I think the bill lays the foundation for the legislative framework promised in the fall economic update. It's currently the closest thing to something that enables data sharing and portability.

I also think you should establish stricter terms and conditions and insert them in a regulatory division following from Bill C-27 or in a future bill directly concerning an open banking system.

[Sara Eve Levac, Lawyer, Option consommateurs]

Our second concern relates to flaws in relation to children's privacy. Those flaws are still present despite the amendments announced at the start of the consultations.

Although Bill C-27 recognizes the sensitive nature of minors' personal information, we believe it does not go far enough to really protect children's privacy. We propose that the protection provided by this bill be strengthened by incorporating the best practices recognized in international law.

First, the bill has to offer stronger protection for children in the digital universe, by protecting them from commercial exploitation of their personal information. The web applications that children use may collect countless pieces of data about them. That data may then be used for profiling or targeting the children for commercial purposes. There is nothing in Bill C-27 that prohibits those practices.

Second, the act should provide that decisions concerning a child's personal information must be made in the child's best interests. The concept of the best interests of the child provides for a more comprehensive vision of privacy than mere recognition of the sensitive nature of the child's personal information. For example, it allows for an assessment of whether the use of the child's personal information by a business promotes his or her overall development and whether the child's rights are being exercised for his or her benefit.

For example, it might not be in the child's interest to give the child's parents or guardians access to his or her personal information where the child is being abused by them. An analysis based solely on the sensitive nature of the personal information would not limit access of that kind.

We will be pleased to answer your questions.

[Alexandre Plourde, Lawyer and Analyst, Option consommateurs]

Hello, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

Thank you for offering us the opportunity to present our comments.

My name is Alexandre Plourde. I am a lawyer with Option consommateurs. With me is my colleague Sara Eve Levac, who is also a lawyer with Option consommateurs.

Option consommateurs is a non-profit association whose mission is to help consumers and defend their rights. As a consumers' association, we are in regular contact with people who are having privacy-related problems. In recent years, we have often become involved in privacy issues, for example by publishing research reports and taking part in consultations on proposed legislation. We have also initiated large-scale class actions, including under the federal Privacy Act.

As you can read in the brief we have submitted to the committee, Bill C-27 contains a number of flaws, in our opinion, particularly regarding the exceptions to consent, the absence of a right to be forgotten, the limitations on the right of portability, and management of individuals' data after their death.

Since our time is limited, we will first address two aspects of Bill C-27 that are of particular concern to us.

First, I am going to talk about Bill C-27's lack of deterrent effect and the obstacles this may create for civil actions by consumers. Second, I am going to talk about the flaws in relation to children's privacy.

Our first concern relates to Bill C-27's lack of deterrent effect. We believe that the bill contains flaws that could make enforcing it problematic. First, although the bill contains high administrative monetary penalties, only certain violations of the act can result in such penalties being imposed.

Second, the Privacy Commissioner will not have the power to impose penalties directly; they will be able to do so only by recommending to the new personal information and data protection tribunal that penalties be imposed. That additional step suggests, at least, that there will be significant delays in applying the penalties imposed on businesses that commit offences.

In addition, the deterrent effect of legislation is also based on the public's ability to rely on it in the civil courts. However, we believe that the new private right of action provided in proposed section 107 in the bill seriously threatens consumers' ability to apply to the courts to exercise their rights. The problem arises from the fact that the new private right of action allows a company to be sued only if prerequisites are met, requiring, in particular, that the situation have first been dealt with by the Commissioner.

In our opinion, it is entirely possible that the big companies targeted by class actions will rely on these very stringent conditions in order to defeat the legal actions brought against them. There will then be interminable proceedings in the courts to determine the scope of the federal private right of action, given the provinces' constitutional jurisdiction over civil law.

We therefore invite the government to clarify that section 107 is in addition to the other civil remedies provided in provincial law, to ensure that it does not obstruct civil actions instituted under Quebec law.

I will now give my colleague, Ms. Levac, the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting No. 100 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. This is a bit of a special occasion.

I would also like to note that this is the birthday of our analyst, Alexandra Savoie. We wish her a happy birthday and thank her for her help with this important study.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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 the witnesses and also apologize for this meeting starting late.

Our witnesses are Sébastien Gambs, Canada research chair in the privacy-preserving and ethical analysis of big data, who is participating by videoconference from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and Philippe Letarte, head of policy and public affairs at Flinks.

From Option consommateurs, we have lawyers Sara Eve Levac and Alexandre Plourde. And last, we have Sehl Mellouli, deputy vice-rector of education and lifelong learning at Université Laval, who is joining us by videoconference.

Welcome, everyone.

With that, I will not take up any more time. We will start with the opening remarks without further delay.

Mr. Gambs, you have the floor for five minutes.

Committees of the House

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

Mr. Speaker, the games the Conservatives continue to play to stop debate on the important issues of the day for Canadians is no surprise. At the end of the day, the very same bill, Bill C-27, is the one on which they moved the concurrence motion. Let there be no doubt that the Conservatives oppose the legislation. This is yet another tactic being used to filibuster legislation, legislation that is important to Canadians in many different ways. In this situation, we are talking about the privacy of the digital charter, which is so very important. It also talks about AI, which impacts every Canadian.

My question for the member opposite is this. Why do Conservatives continue to play a destructive role on the floor of the House of Commons in an irresponsible fashion? We see this virtually on a daily basis. The best example that comes to my mind is when they filibustered and voted against the Canada-Ukraine agreement. Shame on them.

Industry and Technology

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

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad we are debating the motion today, because today is the one-year anniversary of the release of a generational, society-changing technology, and that, of course, is ChatGPT.

I think I was the first legislator in the world to stand up in a parliament and say “Hey guys, have a look at this.” Since that time, over 80% of Fortune 500 companies are now integrating ChatGPT technology. Legislators around the world are trying to deal with the vast societal implications of the release of the technology. Also, the world is trying to grapple with the fact that the technology was released into the world without any sort of comprehensive regulations around the development of large language models and the large-scale deployment of this type of technology, and then without a lot of thought to use.

The other thing is that, in the last year, we have had to build, internationally, parliamentary capacity for legislators both to understand the technical aspects of how artificial intelligence has the capacity to impact our society and to try to look at how our regulatory systems can meet the challenge. Our systems are notoriously non-nimble and slow, and this is why there should be no partisan divide on the fact that the motion should pass. The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act should be hived off. Without offence to the government, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act was developed about a year or a year and a half prior to the deployment of ChatGPT. It is like developing regulations for scribes, putting them forward and debating regulations for scribes, after the printing press was deployed around the world. That is really the transformational change we are dealing with.

Taking a partisan hat off, civil society, academia and industry all need to be consulted, and we need to go back to the drawing board on a lot of places in the bill. As my colleague for Bay of Quinte talked about, this is something that the Standing Committee on Industry has heard over and over again from every witness it has had. However, it is also important to split the bill to give the government an opportunity to better coordinate with other jurisdictions around the world that are trading partners with Canada, are already well ahead of us and are close to passing their own artificial intelligence regulations. For example, the European Union is already well down the path, as is the United States. Frankly, we also need to include the global south in the conversation. We need to be working with the global south, as it impacts the global south.

I am pleased to announce that the Canadian Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union successfully passed a motion at the IPU's last assembly in Rwanda a few week ago, and that Canada will be a co-rapporteur on the Standing Committee on Human Rights to develop a motion specifically to do this, to build capacity for parliamentarians around the world to learn about the impacts of artificial intelligence, to take that back to their respective political parties and legislatures and to ensure that all voices are being heard. This is one of the reasons we have to pass the motion before us today.

I want to echo what my colleague for Bay of Quinte said. I think there is one testimony that sums up why AIDA has to be hived off so the privacy components of Bill C-27 can proceed. I will read from Barry Sookman, senior counsel at McCarthy Tétrault, who argued that AIDA fails to adequately shield the public from potential risks associated with high-impact AI systems. He also said that the centralized power that was envisioned in this pre-ChatGPT legislation undermines the structure of parliamentary sovereignty, adding that “AIDA sets a dangerous precedent”.

These are Canadian legal experts who have made the argument that the implications of implementing under-considered legislation on an issue as impactful as artificial intelligence is extremely risky. Any flaw in AI regulation could affect millions of people, exposing companies to class action lawsuits of historic proportions. It could also expose the public, our constituents, to risks, because we have not thought this through. This issue is so huge. It has the capacity for so much societal transformation that the bill must be hived off. Members from all political parties need to be engaged in robust, fulsome debate with all aspects of Canadian society. They need to think about this in three silos.

The first is the way that artificial intelligence is developed. It has come to light over the last year that ChatGPT was developed using extremely low-paid labour in the global south. These low-paid labourers were exposed to violent child pornography imagery to help train the large language model. There are no global regulations or standards around this. That needs to change.

The other thing there is really no global standards for, certainly not in Canada, is the protection of intellectual property when it comes to training large language model systems. This is highly problematic. We are already seeing precedent-setting legal cases coming forward in other jurisdictions, which could have extreme impacts on Canadian businesses, the ownership of IP and also how we promulgate and respect our trade agreements with other partners. A lot of our trade agreements did not consider artificial intelligence.

The second is the development of artificial intelligence. The fact that ChatGPT was released on the public, where a hundred million users are using this on such a regular basis without thought to what that means, is like releasing a pharmaceutical onto the public with no clinical trials, with no data. As a country, we need to think about how we research these products, how we allow research and innovation, but also we need to ensure that the societal impacts are thought about in an ethical framework prior to deployment.

The last thing is that I want to encourage colleagues to join the parliamentary caucus on emerging technology. I have colleagues who are sitting here today who I know have such a heart for these issues. This debate has been in a non-partisan manner. It has been collaborative and it has been great.

Just briefly, there is the impact of AI on democracy with deepfakes, with the spread of information, and on labour and the disruption of labour. Will we see AI replacement workers? Is that being considered in any legislation? These things need to be considered in an AI regulatory framework: cross-jurisdictional issues, the issues of human rights, the issues of autonomous weapons.

I could go on and on, because the bill needs a separate vote. Probably, the government needs an opportunity to go back to the drawing board to internalize the situation. This needs to happen now, though. I think that this is a no-brainer. I think there is a lot of consensus in the House of Commons for that. I would like to see agreement in the House on this matter and it be put to a vote.

With that, I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his hard work and for contributing to the debate.

Bill C-27 has a lot of different aspects, but here are the worst parts of them.

There is a provision called “legitimate interests”, which allows businesses to collect data, but there is no real definition as to what they can use that data for. It is so obscure that, right now, without a clear definition, we are not going to be able to get it through. There is no instance in the purpose clause or in the bill of privacy being a fundamental right, and that is something Conservatives have been fighting for. We are the only party, really, fighting to have that in.

When it comes to AIDA, the third part we are trying to split off, when I asked witnesses at committee about three weeks ago to rate it from one to 10, one being bad and 10 being the best, six out of seven rated it a one out of 10. That piece, without public consultation, which did not happen, needs to go. It needs to be split off, and that is why we are asking for the motion.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to refocus the discussion back on the matter at hand, which is splitting Bill C-27. I would like the member to comment on the inadequacy of the bill, the weakness that he has found in it and why it is so important that we get it split into proper components such we can debate them and have them voted on separately.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for a couple of minutes of grace there. The House had some activity on Bill C-27, so I was just getting a quick briefing on that. Thank you for a couple of extra minutes to get here. I appreciate it.

I want to respond to something Mr. Jowhari said. He is actually a friend, so when he made that joke about not listening, other members should not be offended. He did that yesterday. It was related to a filibuster that I was doing at the time. The Liberals were trying to reduce my time at the industry committee, so I spoke for over two and a half hours, I think it was, on the bridge in Windsor.

Mr. Jowhari did actually listen when I'm not sure sometimes whether others did or not. It was a kind pun that he was making yesterday, not a negative thing in any respect. He's always reminded me that I've briefed him well on the border between Windsor and Detroit.

I do appreciate that, but he also asked about this issue affecting my riding, and this is one of the reasons for the motion as it is. It is important for me to clarify that, in many ways, it restricts my capability to do my job in terms of the interest that I have in the sector and also these investments, and I will say that there are investments. There are a lot of questions out there about the number of jobs that are going to be created. There are also a lot of questions about how they will play out in the community. The lack of planning that's been done is scary, quite frankly.

A lot of people at this table will understand the shortage of housing across Canada that we now have to deal with, and there has been very little federal or provincial support provided to the municipality or the citizens as to where some of these workers will come from and whether they are going to be permanent or temporary or maybe cycled in and out. There has been engagement with the private sector to some degree, and there have been city resources spent for that, but it's one thing that's going to create angst and anxiety and it is something we need to get out there in public to continue to make sure the numbers are correct for proper social planning.

Maybe with these opportunities, if we are going to have to live with any possible contracts in whatever way they are going to be written, there will also be a way of making sure that, when these housing elements are done and the workers are gone, the housing can maybe be turned into social housing. There is work that can be done in that vein, which is important to maybe cover some of the concerns that are being expressed about the amount of capital investment that's taking place and the fact that we are going to have to have some workers come in regardless, because the contracts are signed.

These are some of the reasons why I think shedding light on this issue is tremendously important. I also want to have confidence that proper training is going to be provided. We've had all this time between then and now to work on getting more training done, and we haven't seen that take place. However, perhaps with more light on this there can be training opportunities for the future, whether they are for the plant in Windsor, which is coming online first, or perhaps for some of the other communities, which might send some of their members to our area temporarily or have some of the Windsor members go to different places to actually contribute and lessen the burden on foreign workers and their necessity in the future.

We don't have any of those things in place right now, and we don't know the answers to those important questions. That's one of the reasons I can't agree with the amendment.

I come from an auto family and I know that it is critically important that the jobs be worth it, but we still don't have a national auto strategy. That is something I have been after for a long time. We have one-off deals that leave us vulnerable to these situations, because we end up doing Hail Mary passes. For those who aren't familiar with the football jargon, this refers to the last play of the half or the quarter, in which you throw the ball as far as you can and hope that somebody catches it and you can win or tie the game. That's kind of our approach to some of these—

[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 two pieces of legislation:

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

(b) Bill C-27B, an Act to enact the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, containing Part 3.

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed that we are not talking about housing, and about RBC and HSBC, in the House today. After eight years, this country is in the worst housing crisis we have ever had. We just have to talk to any constituent to see exactly what is happening.

Before I get into that, I want to mention that I will be splitting my time today with the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.

When we talk about housing, it is absolute ludicrous that there are families right now that cannot afford the mortgage they do have, if they are so lucky to have a home, and also that those who are renting are finding that rents have doubled. We are hearing, across all of our communities, that homelessness has doubled. I met with the police chief and the mayor from my city last week, and we talked about detox centres. It is not only a housing crisis that has put people on the street; it is also a major drug, mental health and addictions crisis that is putting people into precarious situations. Oftentimes things are out of control and they cannot handle it. We had 66 overdoses in one week in Belleville, Ontario. It is just out of hand.

Housing should be announced as a crisis in this country. At the end of the day, after four years of talking, and after eight years, housing is in such dire straits. Of course, we look to competition to be the answer for that. Every single government has brought that forward and talked about competition. However, it has really been just drip, drip, drip. There has been one little policy or one little change, but no major competition. For the most part, it would bring in consumer-led banking, which would mean that many companies, fintech companies, could provide different options for consumers. The second part of that would be to ensure that we really look at stopping major bad deals that have happened under the existing Competition Act.

The speed of competition is really bad right now. There are major oligopolies in the banking sector. Six companies have 93% of all of the banking and 87% of all of the mortgages in Canada. The HSBC rates right now are 81 basis points lower than the RBC rates. This morning, HSBC is at 6.14% for a five-year variable mortgage rate, versus RBC at 6.95%. We can see what that means for competition.

The Competition Bureau is really a policing agency that is not supposed to prosecute but is supposed to look at competition in terms of a law enforcement society. We have all watched Law and Order. I don't remember their names, but the two detectives are supposed to bring the culprits in, and then, of course, there is the judicial system to tackle that.

The speed for competition law is about 100 kilometres an hour, when competition in housing should be a school zone; the speed should be 15 to 20 kilometres an hour so we look at slowing things down, blocking mergers such as HSBC's being bought by RBC, which would become the biggest bank in Canada by buying the seventh-biggest bank.

My bill, the consumer-led banking bill, if it were to push the government to bring legislation to the House, would ensure that we change one thing in the Banking Act: to ensure that people's personal data, which should be theirs, could be shared, with their consent, with other banking institutions. Doing so would create real, meaningful competition in the banking sector.

That is exactly what we are looking at with Bill C-27. Bill C-27 is about protecting data. It is looking at personal data for Canadians. I have spoken extensively about that in the House, about how our children's data is not protected right now. All of our children, at one point, have an iPad or an Amazon firestick, or they are on personal phones. Right now, data protection is so bad in Canada that all of that data can be scraped, and it is owned by companies, not by the children. It is sold to other companies.

Of course, we have not talked about the Privacy Act in Canada's not having been updated since 1987, way before the iPod. It was way before the time when we had technology and the Internet, as explosive as it is, which puts our children's data at risk.

However, the government, in its speed, in not adhering to speed signs, has sometimes been talking and making announcements as quickly as it can, and certainly not bringing action forward as quickly as it can. It has taken a year for the government to put Bill C-27, after its introduction in the House, into committee where it is now. The biggest problem with the legislation and the out-of-control speed of the government on announcements and on talking, not speed of action, was that the Liberals combined an AI bill with Bill C-27. The minister at the time said that this was because it was what the Liberals needed to do and that we would be the first jurisdiction across the world to do it. However, they were so speedy in announcing that they were doing it instead of doing it. They did not even do public consultation. We had no chance for public consultation when the AIDA was thrown into the act as the third section of Bill C-27.

So far, we have had about nine or 10 committee meetings about Bill C-27. Every witness so far has basically said that the AIDA, the third section of the act, is terrible and it is weak. The bill would not do the things we need to do, because we did not have public consultation and did not look really prudently at legislation that should have had public consultation and public input that would have listened to the industry.

AI in Canada is pretty scary because it is evolving quicker than we can look at it. It is not scary enough to say that we need to put in placeholder legislation and do something that is above that and different. No, it is scary enough that we have to do it right, which means that we slow it down. Just through testimony so far and because of the importance of the issue and how bad AIDA is, combined with the bill, we see that it will delay the better part of the bill, the first two parts of Bill C-27. The first two parts deal with updating privacy and the digital charter, but also with the tribunal.

The tribunal, which is still up for discussion, is taking from the Competition Act a process by which, if a privacy commissioner made a ruling or recommendation against an individual or against a corporation, at the end of the day, that tribunal would allow the option for an individual to have a second reading. The problem is that the tribunal in the Competition Act is not all that great either, which we saw with the Rogers and Shaw merger. The Competition Tribunal was utilized to review a merger of Rogers and Shaw, which was rejected by the Competition Bureau. The make-up of the Competition Tribunal is supposed to be three experts in privacy law, only three, so there is a lot of debate on that.

The first two parts of the bill are so complex. The third part throws the whole bill into a spin. The recommendation we are making is one we have made before. However, after hearing testimony in committee, we have recommended to separate the third part of the bill, which really needs to be scrapped because it is so weak. The recommendation about the bill would be to make it a separate vote. Probably the biggest argument for this is that it could save the first two parts of the bill, because we do need to update privacy legislation.

With respect to the most important part, which is owning one's data, I am going to go back to why that is so important with competition in banking. Right now, the only way to get people's credit-card and banking-statement data, which is theirs, is a method called “screen scraping”, which means that people give their safe word to another institution so they can go into their bank account and see their information. This is wrong. The U.K. and Australia have outlawed that because it is absolutely wrong, but it is a practice we allow in Canada. Consumer-led banking would ensure that people own their data, and, on their consent, they move that data to new competitors. New competitors could then bank them and provide better service, lower cost and more competition in Canada.

We have to separate the third part of the bill. AI is extremely scary. It is extremely important. I know that the next speaker is going to speak very profoundly on that. She is an expert on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Before I turn to Monsieur Lemire, I'd like to say thank you to our witnesses. I think, given the time and the nature of the discussion, we're not necessarily near a vote on this motion.

I want to thank you for your testimony today and for sharing your insights with this committee on Bill C-27. Feel free, if you want to listen to this debate.

Otherwise, you are free to leave the meeting. Thank you once again for making yourselves available to the committee today.

I now turn the floor over to Mr. Lemire.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Sookman, at the ALL IN summit on AI, you hosted a panel entitled Creating tomorrow today: AI, copyright, and the wisdom of experience. I'd be very curious to hear what you have to say about it.

What are the concerns regarding copyright protection, particularly in the cultural sector, but also in a research context.

What are the weak points of Bill C‑27 when it comes to protecting artificial intelligence?

We know that Canada's Copyright Act is now out of date and that it generally provides little copyright protection.

Will Bill C‑27 push us down into an even deeper hole?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to go back to Ms. Denham and take advantage of her international experience.

Bill C-27 creates a new artificial intelligence and data act, which appears to be based on at least part of the European Union's artificial intelligence act, which also proposes a risk-based framework for artificial intelligence systems.

How do you compare those two pieces of legislation?

[Elizabeth Denham]

Yes, I believe so. Legitimate interest is one of six legal bases that a company can use to process personal information—the others being required by contract, informed consent, binding corporate rules and public tasks. There are many legitimate bases for processing personal information. Legitimate interest is not meant to be an exception. It's one type of legal basis for collecting and processing data.

I think what has happened in Bill C-27—

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

Ms. Denham, there are two sections of the GDPR that Bill C-27 copied. It ended up with a copy that, strangely, looks like it has been AI-generated. That would be “sensitive information” and the “legitimate interest” exemption.

In the GDPR, legitimate interest is meant to be a rare exception—not used normally, as it is in Bill C-27. The GDPR has a legitimate interest analysis that must be submitted and approved. Do we need to reform Bill C-27 to better copy the GDPR?

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

Thank you, sir.

Ms. Denham, the GDPR has been criticized for imposing a high cost of compliance on small businesses.

Do you feel Bill C-27 creates a burden for small businesses when it comes to complying with the data protection and filing obligations?

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

Could you submit specific wording to the clerk for any of these definitions? I'll give them to you again before you go on: reasonable person, legitimate business interest, appropriate purposes and appropriate circumstances for data collection. If you have that and can submit it, it helps with our amendments to the bill, sir.

Something else we believe, on the Conservative side, is that there needs to be a balance between protecting a Canadian's fundamental right to privacy and ensuring the ability of businesses to use data for good.

Do you feel Bill C-27, as written, achieves that balance?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being part of this important discussion, online and in person.

Mr. Sookman, Bill C-27 introduces a large number of new terms to our privacy protection regime, and then leaves them undefined and open to interpretation. For example, the bill gives extra protection to the sensitive information of a minor, but it does not define who a minor is or what sensitive information is. The list goes on: reasonable person, legitimate business interest, appropriate purposes and appropriate circumstances for data collection.

Do we need to define these terms in the legislation. If so, how would you do so?

[Elizabeth Denham, Chief Strategy Officer, Information Accountability Foundation]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Chair.

Good afternoon, committee members and Madam Clerk.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. Hopefully my input will benefit the committee's important work.

I speak from decades of experience as a privacy professional and from 15 years as an information rights regulator in four jurisdictions. My ongoing work takes place really on the international stage, but it's backed by long-standing familiarity with our own federal and provincial privacy laws.

When I became the information commissioner for the United Kingdom in 2016, that role really brought me into the EU's oversight board that administered the GDPR implementation. That brought me into direct collaboration with all EU member states, and that experience greatly expanded my view of data protection and privacy that was first cultivated at the federal level in Canada, in Alberta and British Columbia.

During my five years as the U.K. information commissioner, I also served three years as the chair of the Global Privacy Assembly. That position greatly expanded my horizons once again and enhanced my knowledge of other laws and other cultures, including the global south, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. To this day, the work I do spans continents.

The issues of pressing concern are largely the same, and those are children's privacy and safety and the regulation of artificial intelligence.

Looking first at Canada's CPPA from a global perspective, I see a big missing piece, and the legislation's language, in my view, needs adjusting so that it explicitly declares privacy as a fundamental right for Canadians. Its absence really puts us behind nations who lead the way in privacy and data protection.

The legislative package goes some way towards establishing expectations for AI governance, but it lacks specific and much-needed protections for children and youth. In a study I conducted through my work with an international law firm, Baker McKenzie, which surveyed 1,000 policy influencers across five jurisdictions, we found that all those surveyed came to a single point of agreement: The Internet was not created and not designed with children in mind.

All those policy influencers felt that we need to do better to protect children and youth online. Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and I think Canada owes it to our young people to enshrine the right for them to learn and to play, to explore, to develop their agency and to be protected from harms online.

In the U.K., I oversaw the creation of a children's age-appropriate design code, which is a statutory enforceable code, and the design of that code has influenced laws, guidance and codes around the world. I'd be happy to answer more questions about that.

Additionally, I believe the legislature should go further than it does to provide the Privacy Commissioner with robust enforcement powers. I exported my career from Canada to the U.K. in large part because I wanted to gain hands-on experience administering laws with real powers and meaningful sanctions.

In Britain, privacy harms are treated as real harms ever since the GDPR came into effect. One result was the leap in the U.K. information commissioner's fining authority, but other enforcement powers were equally powerful: stop processing orders, orders to destroy data, streamlined search and seizure powers, mandatory audit powers and so on.

These enforcement powers were mandated by a comprehensive law that covers all types of organizations, not just digital services but a business of any kind, a charity or a political party. By comparison with the GDPR, Bill C-27 lacks broad scope. It doesn't cover charitable organizations, which are not above misusing personal data in the name of their worthy causes. Neither does Bill C-27 cover political parties. It leaves data and data-driven campaigns off the table for regulatory oversight.

Serving as a privacy commissioner at the federal and provincial levels in Canada exposed me to towering figures in my field. I think of Jennifer Stoddart, the former federal privacy commissioner, and David Flaherty, the former B.C. information and privacy commissioner. Their names recall a time when Canadian regulators and Canadian law were deeply respected internationally, when our laws and our regulators really served the world as a bridge between the U.S. and Europe. Although commissioners who followed, Daniel Therrien and Philippe Dufresne, have continued to contribute internationally, Canada’s laws have fallen behind any global benchmark.

I think we can recover some ground by returning to fundamental Canadian values, by remembering that our laws once led the way for installing accountability as the cornerstone of the law. Enforceable accountability means companies taking responsibility and standing ready to demonstrate that the risks they are creating for others are being mitigated. That's increasingly part of reformed laws around the world, including AI regulation. The current draft of the CPPA does not have enforceable accountability. Neither does it require mandatory privacy impact assessments. That puts us alarmingly behind peer nations when it comes to governing emerging technologies like AI and quantum.

My last point is that Bill C-27 creates a tribunal that would review recommendations from the Privacy Commissioner, such as the amount of an administrative fine, and it inserts a new administrative layer between the commissioner and the courts. It limits the independence and the order-making powers of the commissioner. Many witnesses have spoken against this development, but a similar arrangement does function in the U.K.

Companies can appeal commissioner decisions, assessment notices and sanctions to what is called the first-tier tribunal. That tribunal is not there to mark the commissioner’s homework or to conduct de novo hearings. I would suggest that, if Parliament proceeds with a tribunal, it has to be structured appropriately, according to the standard of review and with independence and political neutrality baked in.

As a witness before you today, I have a strong sense of what Canada can learn from other countries and what we can bring to the world. Today, Canada needs to do more to protect its citizens’ data. Bill C-27 may bring us into the present, but it seems to me inadequate for limiting, controlling or making sure we have responsible emerging technologies.

Thank you for hearing my perspective this afternoon. I very much look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins. We'll will follow up with the department. The clerk and I will see where the department and the minister's office are on the said amendments.

It is true that we are nearing the end of the privacy part of our study on Bill C-27, so it would forthcoming. It would be good to have these amendments forthcoming. I'll reach out to the department.

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

Ms. Thomasen, I believe you're also with the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, so my apologies for that.

We'll start, without further ado, with Mr. Sookman for five minutes.

The floor is yours.

[Dr. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning. My name is Michael Geist. I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where I hold the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. I'm here in a personal capacity, representing only my own views.

I've appeared before this committee many times, yet it seems necessary to expand on my standard opening by stating that I have never been compensated or otherwise received a benefit from any tech company in conjunction with any of my appearances, submissions or statements on any legislative or regulatory issue. I don't think I should have to say this, but given the tendency of some to defame critics of Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 as shills, I should be absolutely clear that my views are not for sale.

Further, I should also be clear that criticism of Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 was not opposition to tech regulation. There are real harms, and we need regulation. I recently appeared before the INDU committee, calling for the strengthening of Bill C-27 on privacy and AI regulation. I have to say that I have spent much of my time, in the aftermath of the events of October 7, focused on the alarming rise of anti-Semitism and the urgent need for action both off-line and online, which could include the much-delayed online harms bill.

Since this study is about tech efforts to influence policy, I'll focus on that.

There have been important studies and reports that chronicle tech sector efforts to influence policy. For example, the Tech Transparency Project reported on Google-supported research. It identified many papers and work by academics with links to, or financial backing from, that company. However, the investigations identified virtually no Canadian examples. In fact, a search for any articles or reports from the project, since its inception across multiple tech companies, reveals very little involving Canada.

If we consider efforts to influence Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 through lobbyist meetings—we just heard about lobbying—one organization leads the way. It isn't Meta, which had relatively few meetings on these bills—in fact, fewer than CAB, ACTRA, CDCE or CMPA. It isn't Google, which ranked second for the meetings. Rather, the organization with the most registered lobbyist meetings on these bills is News Media Canada.

It's important to state that, if this hearing is about retribution for the blocking of news links in response to Bill C-18, I think that's misguided. Companies and many experts warned repeatedly that the legislation was deeply flawed. Now that news-link blocking has gone on for months on Facebook and Instagram without any apparent interest from that company in regulatory reform, I think that's pretty clear evidence that this is a consequence of the legislation and not a tactic to influence it. It was not a bluff, as many kept insisting. Indeed, I would argue that, frankly, both companies were pretty consistent from day one in their statements about the legislation.

In many respects—we just heard about threats to remove or stop investment—it's no different from Bell's recent announcement, in which it threatened to cut capital investment by a billion dollars in response to a CRTC wholesale Internet access ruling, or Stellantis putting its investment on hold earlier this year in Canada with the announcement of the Volkswagen deal. Simply put, legislation and regulation have consequences.

If this is actually about addressing concerns around regulatory or legislative influence, however, the real issue isn't tactics. It's regulatory capture. On that front, there is cause for concern in Canada. With Bill C-11, there was ample evidence of regulatory capture, as a handful of legacy culture groups dominated meetings with officials and time with this committee. The voices of Canadian digital creators were often dismissed or sidelined, including those from indigenous and BIPOC communities, some of whom reported feeling disrespected or intimidated by department or ministry officials.

The situation was even more pronounced with Bill C-18. Members of this committee indicated they were ready to move to clause-by-clause review without even hearing from Meta. During that review, someone stated that online news organizations were not even news. This form of regulatory capture was particularly damaging. Online news outlets were sounding the alarm over the risks of the bill and took the biggest hit with news-link blocking. They too were ignored. Some have now stopped hiring or been forced to suspend operations, yet News Media Canada somehow managed, in the span of five years, to obtain a $600-million bailout, the swift enactment of Bill C-18 and now an expansion of the labour journalism tax credit, in which their demands were met down to the last penny. Now that is influence.

Cultural policy is the bedrock of this committee, but culture isn't static. It's essential this committee and the department ensure they avoid regulatory capture and provide a forum for all voices. Failure to do so makes for bad policy and raises the risk of intimidation, in which—inadvertent or not—it may be the government, or this committee, that does some of the intimidating.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your questions.

[Prof. Avi Goldfarb]

When we think about technology and technological change, information technology is capital, so the owners of that capital have done better and better. This whole literature on the decreasing labour share and the increasing capital share of the economy is partly related to the ability to scale through information technology.

The impact of these particular data-driven technologies on market power is more subtle. The reason is that, in a Stats 101 sense—and I don't know if and when you took statistics—there are decreasing returns to scale and data in a formal technical sense. It's like this: If you have 10 people and you get an eleventh, you learn a lot; if you have a million people and you get one more, you don't learn that much. In an explicit technical sense, there are no economies of scale in data.

On data-driven and machine-learning technologies, there are reasons not to expect monopolization. There are, importantly, other forces going in the other direction, and those are the things that we should keep an eye on and regulate. The forces going in the other direction are things like.... The ability to use data requires certain other technologies or can benefit from certain other markets where there is dominance. The ability to use data, and use it well, requires computing, so if the cloud services market is monopolized or has strong market power, that's going to impede innovation and be a real competition worry. Also, if media, in some ways, are monopolized, and therefore the ability to understand users as they interact with media becomes monopolized, that's another way that could [Technical difficulty—Editor] in terms of competition.

In my view, those are related, but only tangentially related, to most of the content of Bill C-27.

[Prof. Avi Goldfarb]

My view is that, in many ways, the most important thing about a policy—and, to some extent, a privacy policy—is to ensure that we protect competition.

At the same time, I don't know what an amendment to this act would look like in terms of protecting competition for the next generation of technology. A vigorous antitrust enforcement by the Competition Bureau and the continued vigilance on how large tech companies and others are potentially using their existing dominance in some markets to connect to and take advantage of new markets is worth protecting.

I'm not sure that belongs in Bill C-27, in the sense that things like ensuring interoperability between existing systems and new technologies are very valuable.

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

Let's come back to an article that you co-authored and published in September, “The Economics of Digital Privacy”, in which you state that digital privacy regulations can “have negative consequences on market outcomes, particularly with respect to competition, innovation, and both producer and consumer surplus.”

Do you think that Bill C-27 should be amended to protect the competitiveness of Canadian businesses?

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

Do you feel that Bill C-27 gives the minister and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada enough tools to ensure that firms implement data management practices, considering the sensitive nature of personal information?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question will go to Mr. Beauvais.

Do you feel that Bill C-27 gives the Privacy Commissioner of Canada enough tools to ensure that firms implement data management practices, considering the sensitive nature of personal information about minors?

[Antoine Guilmain]

Maybe I can give you a very simple example regarding cookies. We've all heard about cookies on websites, and 10 years ago cookies were very new, something that people didn't understand. Now, 10 years later—or more like 15 to 20 years later, actually—I think this is something that is well known by reasonable persons. Just to be clear, the fact that it's evolving is not bad. I think our laws are built on a notion like this, that essentially we are making things evolve.

What I see in proposed section 18, to be frank, is the assessment. The assessment makes me feel more comfortable in being able to say that this is rational and it's been explained. It's been detailed, and it's not just somebody saying, “You know what? I think I have a legitimate interest.”

Again, I understand that those are valid concerns. I hear you, but at the same time the world is changing fast. I think we can do tremendous work, and I think Bill C-27 is full of potential, but we need to accept as well that technology is going so fast that those kinds of concepts need to be embedded in the law.

That's my position.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Order, colleagues. We will resume the discussion.

We're on the motion that was just tabled by Mr. Perkins.

After considering Mr. Perkins' arguments and consulting with the clerk as well, I'll note that our routine motions—which the committee voted on at the beginning of this legislature and which were agreed on by all parties—state clearly, “That a 48-hour notice, interpreted as two nights, be required for any substantive motion to be moved in committee, unless the substantive motion relates directly to business then under consideration”.

I don't think the motion before the committee right now, which Mr. Perkins submitted, substantively deals with the matter at hand, which is Bill C-27. I understand, then, that this is notice given for this motion, and it will be receivable at our next committee meeting on Tuesday.

On that note, Mr. Perkins, you still have a minute for our witnesses. Otherwise, we can move to our next speaker.

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

I appreciate that, but we are studying Bill C-27 now. That is the discussion we're having. We can ask any question we want of witnesses on Bill C-27, a very large bill. This is about the relationship of two studies and Bill C-27. I could point you to the procedures book—“the big green book”, as we all call it—and page 1061. The reference there allows us to reference the topic at hand that we're discussing. It would be in order.

Perhaps the clerk could take a look at that page. I know she knows this book inside out, because I've talked to her a lot about it in the past. She's very knowledgeable about it.

If you'd like, I could take a minute, or I could read it in. I don't think that's necessary, probably, since the clerk has it. It's on page 1061.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Procedurally, Mr. Perkins, I understand you're giving notice of the motion. You're not tabling it, because, if notice was not given, to table-drop a motion, it has to be on the topic discussed. We're on Bill C-27.

I understand there's one sentence at the end that would pause Bill C-27. It's not precisely on the topic. I'm tempted to say this cannot be discussed right now, because notice was not given, but I'll hear you out, Mr. Perkins, on that.

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

Thank you, Dr. Guilmain.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to propose a motion, because I was poked by the bear. I wasn't going to do this, but I'll do it now, anyway.

I move that, pursuant to the request for documents passed by the committee on November 21, 2023, the committee order the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to produce unredacted copies of the Stellantis-LGES battery plant contracts to members of the committee in both official languages—in other words, get it translated—by Tuesday, November 28; further, that the committee pause the study of Bill C-27 until the contracts have been circulated.

The reason, Mr. Chair, for doing so is that we all know the government has hired, over the last few years, another hundred thousand officials. Surely, they can get it translated if the contracts weren't presented in both official languages. It surprises me that the government would not have contracts in both official languages before signing them.

I request that all efforts be made on this critical issue, where such a large government subsidy is involved and where there are such conflicting public reports about what's going on, so that we get access, as committee members, to the terms outlined—as MP Turnbull amended and as the Liberals voted for, ultimately—in the motion at our last meeting. Get the French quickly. It should not take some undefined period of time for the government to present it. We can't get on with the urgent nature of what we passed at the last meeting without, justifiably, a French version and an English version of the contracts.

I think the government should treat this with the most expediency and put all the resources it can into addressing the needs of this committee. I'm asking that they produce the translated documents very quickly. Once we get them, we'll pause for the day or two we need to look at the contracts. This isn't an indefinite pause. It's to give us the opportunity. Let's say we had them by Thursday. Instead of Thursday's meeting, we would have the day on Thursday to take a look at the contracts, if that's the way it works out.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Antoine Guilmain]

If I may, I'll answer in three parts.

First, there is Bill C‑27 in and of itself. I grant you, in my humble opinion, that part 3 and parts 1 and 2 are probably unrelated. That's a real problem. I won't hide the fact that, when I talk about the aspect of Bill C‑27 that I like—it's always like that in a relationship, we like or we like less—I'm talking about parts 1 and 2, to be quite honest with you. That's the first thing. I think part 1 is a very good start. There are gaps. As I told you, it's not perfect in terms of compensation and the flexibility of consent, among other things. However, in my opinion, the bill is a very good foundation.

Second—and I go back to my earlier comment—I think there's a common sense rule with respect to this piece of legislation. It's just a matter of looking at the obligations in a very cold way. We have to ask ourselves some questions. I would like to come back to the example of the famous La Tuque convenience store, which, by the way, is being well advertised. I don't know if there are two, though. In any case, if I were the owner of this famous convenience store and I saw this text, I would wonder if it would help me in how I operate. Is this piece of legislation really going to change the way I do things? That is the objective. We really have to show businesses that we don't want to create problems for them for the sake of creating problems for them. We have to tell them that we want to help them focus their attention on the right things.

I gave you the example of the privacy officer. I don't personally believe that our convenience store needs a privacy officer. I think it's that kind of analysis that could really help small and medium-sized businesses. We have to put ourselves in their shoes and ask ourselves whether, based on what we see, based on non-sensitive data…. Again, I think this is an important element, because small and medium-sized businesses have a voice that is heard, obviously, but it will depend on the data. Data is really the key. However, I think you have to look at some of those things, and obviously that has been taken into account in some provisions and not in others.

Perhaps we need to make an effort to be consistent and to ensure that this aspect is truly taken into account. That could help, I think.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses. Their comments are really very interesting.

Mr. Guilmain, I'll turn to you.

I'll go back to the example you gave, the convenience store in La Tuque. We all understand that you chose that location, since the convenience store is in Minister François-Philippe Champagne's riding. Up until now, he probably thought he had a little private life, but with the convenience store story, his life has now become public.

I'm using your example to talk about small businesses across Canada. We know that 95% of businesses in Canada are the backbone of our economy. With this bill, we are addressing both individuals and businesses and entrepreneurs who will have to adapt to this legislation.

Earlier, you referred to a survey you conducted on Quebec's Bill 25. Nearly 70% of respondents needed more information or clarification on the act.

Do you think the process will possibly be the same for Bill C‑27?

We're talking about consultations. You think this is a good bill, from what I understand. However, I must say that this isn't exactly what we've heard since the beginning of the consultations.

A number of people have told us that they weren't consulted. Representatives of organizations, who have appeared before our committee so far, have said that they weren't consulted. Some have told us that it would be preferable for them to be consulted. I think one of the witnesses said so earlier. He said that it would be good if there were more consultations.

Do you think it would be a good idea to hold more consultations?

We've been told on a number of occasions that we should normally, at the outset, separate the whole issue of artificial intelligence from that of privacy, because they are two completely different things.

What are the real or possible consequences of the elements that will, in a way, bury SMEs in bureaucracy?

[Antoine Guilmain]

Yes. I think there are two sub-aspects from my perspective.

The first aspect is the transition period. I think we should not undermine the fact that, even though there are already processes in place with PIPEDA and potentially with law 25, it does take time to have something that is meaningful.

I'm a lawyer, so I wish I could tell you that it's only a question of the papering aspect and just giving some policies and moving on. The fact is that privacy is much more than only legal professionals. I think there's an understanding internally in any organization to understand what is going on in terms of data flows and what we do to protect the information we have.

That's the reason why I tend to think that 36 months is the bare minimum. As a matter of fact, when we look around the world, that's what we are seeing. We saw with law 25 that 24 months was not sufficient. At the moment, companies are struggling very much to comply even with law 25, most of which came into force.

On the second aspect of your question, regarding what we can change, I will give you a simple example. If we go to proposed section 8 of the CPPA, it says, “An organization must designate one or more individuals to be responsible for matters related to its obligations under this Act.” I'll go back to my example of the convenience store in La Tuque. They have very little personal information. Their first question when they come to me would be, “Whom do I appoint? Who is my privacy officer?”

I think this is where it is problematic. It's not based on the size of the company; it's more a question of the volume and sensitivity of the information, the good news being that this threshold is present in Bill C-27 in some disposition. In particular, when I look at the privacy management program in proposed section 9, there is a caveat: depending on the “volume and sensitivity” of the information. I think the key aspect would be just to look at those absolute requirements and say, do we have a threshold based on the volume and sensitivity of the information? I think this could be a good exercise in the full version of the CPPA at least.

[Michelle Gordon]

That's a really good question.

I generally support the new exceptions to consent in Bill C-27 , which are similar—slightly different—to the GDPR. I agree that the application of the legitimate interest exception, whether as a stand-alone right or as an exception to applied consent, will help a contextual analysis and will help nurture innovation and allow for a difference between...how organizations look at their programs and at accountability and transparency.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to stay in the same vein. I think this is a great discussion.

We obviously believe in privacy as a fundamental right, but at the same time, businesses have to be able to collect and use data. We're in a unique situation right now with Bill C-27 because the GDPR has just come into place with some of their.... I hate to call it red tape, but it's the processes in which businesses, small and otherwise, have to follow those rules.

We're trying to look for good amendments in this bill that obviously make sure that privacy is held as a fundamental human right, but also protect businesses from the overburden and the policies and procedures that are going to weigh on businesses' ability to do business as well as collect and use data for good.

I'm going to start with Ms. Gordon.

What can we do in this bill to ensure that this collection and the consent models are easy for businesses while also protecting privacy? What have we learned from the GDPR?

[Antoine Guilmain]

In terms of aligning with the European Union, I must say that it will require an analysis that may take years. Japan recently received a suitability decision and is considered a good country for the transfer of personal information. This is the result of years of work by the European Commission.

I think Bill C‑27 is a very good bill in terms of complying with European standards, in this case the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. There are a lot of “Canadianized” concepts, if I may say so. It's worded a little differently, particularly when it comes to sensitive data. I still think that Bill C‑27 is a good bill in that regard, apart from certain aspects on anonymization and the legal basis for handling personal information, as I mentioned.

[Antoine Guilmain]

I'd first like to mention that our federal legislation, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, is a quality piece of legislation. I wouldn't say that there's an urgent need to act, but that's a very personal opinion. There are fairly broad concepts in PIPEDA that already allow companies to do very good things. We aren't in a vacuum at the moment.

That said, Bill C‑27 is very ambitious. I'm talking about the part that deals with the protection of personal information. We shouldn't underestimate the time it will take to adjust the processes. Let's not forget that companies had to grapple with Quebec's Bill 25 a few months ago and complied with it last September. It was a real in-house effort.

I think there's an interest in avoiding a duplication of resources, at the risk of creating a kind of fatigue on the part of companies with regard to requirements. Businesses will no longer understand the message being sent to them. I think it's important to keep in mind the significant transition period.

I don't think there's an urgent need to act, but that's my very personal opinion.

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

I'd like to ask you some brief questions about the delays in passing Bill C‑27, since you've opened the door in that regard. Is there an urgency to act? What would the consequences of that be, if we took our time, in a parliamentary context like ours? What do you think about the government's delay in enforcing the act?

[Antoine Guilmain]

There's a fairly fundamental difference. As you know, when it comes to privacy, the notion of consent is central. It's all about consent. We're talking about either express consent implicitly or an exception to consent. That's how Bill C‑27, the current federal act and the Quebec act are built.

Currently, Quebec's approach is very different from the rest of Canada. In fact, it decided to enshrine in law that, when it comes to the collection of personal information, consent isn't always required, provided that the reasons for collecting, using or communicating personal information are disclosed. This was recently confirmed in the guidelines of the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec.

What does that mean in concrete terms? It's very theoretical, but it's not that theoretical. When you visit a website, you are “attacked” by various methods of consent. That's what we want to impose on children. As adults, our ability to concentrate is very limited. Personally, I have a full-time interest in this, and I don't read everything.

Quebec has decided to take a different approach: we don't force people to give express consent, to click, we just give them the information, and then they can continue with the process. This aspect of transparency is unique to Quebec.

At the moment, the federal legislation, as drafted, seems to indicate that a positive gesture should always be made in certain cases. I think that's a pretty significant difference. Again, not a bad thing. In fact, we're a different approach to the problem. We're providing a little more transparency, a little more control, instead of forcing people to consent in an almost fictitious way.

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

Thank you for your answer.

In that case, what amendments would it be worthwhile to make to Bill C‑27 to ensure better compatibility?

I'm particularly sensitive to the need to have an environment conducive to innovation and investment. In the current context, is there a risk of establishing standards that could undermine investment and innovation in Quebec?

[Antoine Guilmain]

At the moment, conceptually, Bill C‑27 is quite compatible with Bill 25. I would even say that, in many respects, Bill 25 is stricter than Bill C‑27. I'll go further than that: Bill 25 is one of the strictest laws in the world. That has to be recognized.

In my practice, I work with international clients, whether they are based in the United States, Europe or Latin America, and today, they look at Bill 25 and say that it's really one of the most complicated laws to implement and that it's difficult to comply with it. That's not a good thing.

My position today, quite frankly, is that the two pieces of legislation are compatible. However, I think there are lessons to be learned from Bill 25. I took the liberty of quoting the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, the GDPR, and I think that's a very interesting model for Bill C‑27 to look at. That's really my position.

There are some very good things in Bill C‑27. It should be noted that, from a legislative standpoint, it makes a very different change. Bill 25 amended existing legislation by patching things up a little. We tried to add an act dating back to 1994. The beauty of Bill C‑27 is that it's unified. There really is a collective understanding.

So my comment on this is to say that looking at Bill 25 as a yardstick may not be the best approach, in my humble opinion.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to all the witnesses. I think we're having a very high-quality meeting today, and I'm very grateful to them.

Mr. Guilmain, I'll start with you. I'm going to continue in the same vein as one of my colleague Mr. Sorbara's questions. According to a letter published on the committee's website, although the minister assures that the Quebec legislation will prevail in the province, Jim Balsillie, in particular, expresses concerns that, if Bill C‑27 sets standards that are lower than those of Quebec's Bill 25, it could hinder innovation and jeopardize investments in the Quebec economy.

With that in mind, how do you assess the potential impact of Bill C‑27 on Quebec's economic landscape, particularly on investment and innovation?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Going down that vein, in terms of comparing pieces of legislation in different jurisdictions, how would you characterize the framework in Europe—the GDPR—versus what's contained in Bill C-27 with relevance to the impact on innovation and the economy?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for their testimony on a very important piece of legislation.

If I may, I'll go to Mr. Goldfarb for the first question.

Mr. Goldfarb, you mentioned in your remarks that “Canada is a leader in AI research” and that AI and data-focused tools are promising for economic growth but obviously must be utilized. In that vein, you published an article in September 2023 called “The Economics of Digital Privacy”. I was wondering if you could elaborate in terms of how Bill C-27 would impact innovation, and thus productivity, and thus our standard of living through Canadian businesses and the economy, please.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Okay.

The U.K. model for privacy includes, as I believe the law in California does, certain thresholds. I believe the spirit of the law implies that children at different stages are able to make different types of decisions.

How would you see that type of prescriptive language being included in Bill C-27, which is before us today?

[Luk Arbuckle, Chief Methodologist and Privacy Officer, IQVIA Solutions Canada Inc.]

Thank you.

I'm very pleased to have been invited to participate in the work of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology on Bill C‑27. I hope to be able to answer your questions on privacy and artificial intelligence services and technologies.

Although my opening remarks will be in English, please know that I will be pleased to answer your questions in either French or English.

My name is Luk Arbuckle. I am chief methodologist and privacy officer at Privacy Analytics, an Ottawa-based IQVIA company employing over 100 privacy experts.

My role at Privacy Analytics is to ensure that our company and our global clients are aligned on the practical applications of privacy-enhancing technologies and to inform our practices based on current guidance and emerging methods. I also provide guidance on the practice and risks of applying artificial intelligence in real-life applications. My role has been largely informed by my time as director of technology analysis at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, when I also drafted guidance on anonymization for the office.

Privacy Analytics operates as an independent entity within the global IQVIA group of companies, so that we can provide both IQVIA and our global clients with services and technology for the safe and responsible use and sharing of data. The Privacy Analytics platform has been deployed globally to protect the privacy of close to one billion patients. For example, our software has enabled safe research that improves cancer outcomes for patients through the European oncology evidence network and the American Society of Clinical Oncology's CancerLinQ. We have also worked with multiple government agencies in Canada, Europe, the United States and globally to implement safe data access models that enable faster data access, promote research and innovation and implement data-driven decision-making.

It is against this backdrop that I wish to provide comments today. In particular, I will provide a perspective on the importance of health data and analytics for Canadians. Health care-related research is increasingly driven by analyses that draw from real-world evidence to reveal the effectiveness of treatments beyond the clinical trial phase. The success of that approach is predicated on the availability of the necessary data from various sources within the relevant health care system and on the ability to analyze data across different health care systems.

For Canada to take part in this new frontier of health care research, it is important that we prioritize a responsible data access model that strikes the appropriate balance between privacy and having useful data for the intended purposes. We also need a data protection framework that allows for efficient and effective data sharing and collaboration with stakeholders from all over the world, including the United States and Europe. As COVID-19 has shown, it is crucial that Canada stays active and competitive in life sciences. This means developing an approach to privacy that supports local research and innovation and allows health care research in Canada to align with efforts outside of the country.

I will only summarize three recommendations in my introductory remarks and invite you to consult IQVIA's full-length comment document on Bill C-27 for additional comments and details.

Recommendation one is to consider a reasonableness component within the definition of “anonymize”. The use of anonymized data in health care analytics is a key element in the research and innovation activities that help drive Canada's health care future. Canada's diverse group of health care stakeholders use anonymized information to identify inefficiencies and allocate resources more effectively, to speed up the development and approval of new treatments and to understand the needs of patients and health care professionals. Such uses of anonymized information contribute to better health outcomes and other notable benefits.

Including a reasonableness component within the bill's definition of anonymization would align better to other Canadian frameworks, such as Quebec's law 25 and Ontario's PHIPA. A reasonableness approach would also align better to the growing consensus in the academic and technical literature regarding the need for a realistic framing of risk in describing anonymized information. Take, for example, the risk-based international standard for an anonymization framework, technically known as ISO 27559. This technical standard was developed by experts from around the world and is consistent with the draft guidance I produced while at the OPC.

Recommendation two is to consider expanding the consent exception for “socially beneficial purposes” to include private sector organizations. A more principled approach would be to enable responsible data sharing between a broader range of actors while also mandating adequate oversight and data protection best practices.

Recommendation three is to consider a consent exception for external research, analysis and development purposes. Removing the internal qualifier would be a more beneficial approach, as it aligns with existing guidance and would enable a more useful model for health care research and innovation.

With that, I would like to thank the committee again for your time and for the opportunity to speak with you today. I strongly believe that it is possible to safely and responsibly use and share data in ways that protect privacy while driving innovation for the benefit of Canadians. I look forward to the continued discussions.

I will remain at your disposal during the discussion.

Thank you for your attention.

[Antoine Guilmain, Counsel and Co-Leader, National Cyber Security and Data Protection Practice Group, Gowling WLG, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for inviting me to comment on Bill C‑27.

Although I'll be testifying in English today, I'll answer your questions in either French or English.

I'm co-leader of the national cybersecurity and data protection group at Gowling WLG. I'm a practising lawyer called to the bars of Quebec and Paris. My evidence today represents my own views. I'm here as an individual, not representing my law firm, clients or any third parties.

Much of my legal career has focused on comparative analysis of legal regimes across the globe, advising clients on their compliance obligations in the jurisdictions in which I am qualified to practice.

Bill C-27 presents a tremendous opportunity to modernize Canada's federal privacy regime. It is possible, and indeed essential, that Canada protects the rights and interests of the public while facilitating competition, investment and ambitious innovation.

Many of the proposals in the bill are highly impactful, but I will focus my comments today on the consumer privacy protection act and two areas in particular that I consider to be of great importance. First are lessons learned from Quebec's law 25.

The majority of the provisions under law 25 came into force in September 2023. Over the last summer, Gowling WLG, in collaboration with the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, conducted a readiness survey of over 100 organizations regarding this new law. The results of the survey were clear. Industry was ill-prepared for such an implementation. Specifically, 69% of the respondents expressed a need for greater clarity, and 52% indicated that they lacked sufficient resources. This also highlights that the compliance burden for SMEs is especially high.

There are four specific learnings from Law 25 that I wish to highlight today.

First, Bill C-27 should not exceed standards set by the EU general data protection regulation. For example, legitimate interest is a flexible legal basis for processing, but it must always be justified and documented in a separate assessment under the GDPR and under other global laws. A similar standard could apply in Bill C-27.

Second, Bill C-27 should not rely on future regulations to substantiate each requirement. This is a recipe for delays and uncertainty. For example, in Quebec, anonymization is currently regarded by the regulator as impossible because the regulations are not yet in place.

Third, Bill C-27's timeline for implementation should be sufficiently long. Based on experience from law 25, implementation should be at least 36 months after the bill becomes law.

Finally, Bill C-27 should be aligned with law 25 on key concepts, including around the legal bases for processing data and legitimate business exceptions. This is especially important when it comes to children's privacy.

I'm a father of two young children, so protecting children in the digital economy is important to me personally, and it's a subject that I engage with regularly in the course of my work. I believe amendments to Bill C-27 are necessary to ensure that minors' data is reasonably, meaningfully and consistently protected.

I wish to highlight four key topics for consideration.

First, as opposed to the GDPR, Bill C-27 lacks a threshold for determining when services are intended to target children. Practically, organizations will not be able to remain age-blind and will therefore have to ask the age of users each time they engage with them, to the potential detriment of user privacy interests and data minimization.

Alternative legal bases for processing should be available, depending on the maturity process of the individual. Specifically, legal capacity should be a baseline for assessing legitimate bases as opposed to the age of majority alone.

The process for collecting parental consent can be extremely complicated. Bill C-27 should set a specific age at which parental consent is required. Under 14 years of age seems the most reasonable standard.

Finally, the concept of the best interest of the child should be positioned as a key determinant of how minors' personal information should be treated, rather than relying primarily on the concept of express consent.

With the chair's permission, I would be pleased to submit a copy of the survey report for the committee's consideration, as well as a short written brief in French and English on the issues I've addressed in my opening remarks.

I wish to thank Michael Walsh for his assistance in preparing this material.

Thank you. I look forward to answering the committee's questions.

[Michelle Gordon, Lawyer and Founder, GEM Privacy Consulting, As an Individual]

Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee for its important review of Bill C-27.

I'm a privacy lawyer and consultant based in Toronto. Having worked in the privacy field for over 15 years while raising three sons, I have a passion for children's privacy, and I will focus my remarks on this area today.

My interest in privacy law was sparked when I was a law student down the street at the University of Ottawa, where I did research with Professor Michael Geist and the late Professor Ian Kerr at the time when PIPEDA was a new bill being debated similarly to today's. When Professor Geist appeared here a few weeks ago, he reflected on his first appearance before committee to discuss PIPEDA, noting that it was important to get it right, rather than to get it fast. When Professor Kerr appeared in 2017 to discuss PIPEDA reform, he stated that, at the time, “the dominant metaphor was George Orwell's 1984, 'Big Brother is Watching You'”, noting that technological developments in the years since PIPEDA go well beyond watching.

Both professors Geist and Kerr were right, especially in the context of children's privacy. Given that children are inundated with emerging technologies well beyond Orwell's 1984—from AI tools to ed tech, virtual reality and our current reality of watching war and its accompanying hatred unfold on social media—it is more important than ever to get it right when it comes to children's privacy.

When Bill C-11 was introduced in late 2020, it didn't address children at all. As I argued in a Policy Options article in 2021, this was a missed opportunity, given that the amount of online activity for children was at an all-time high during the pandemic.

I commend the legislators for addressing children's privacy in Bill C-27 by stating that “information of minors is considered to be sensitive” and by including language that could provide minors with a more direct route to delete their personal information, otherwise known as the right to be forgotten. I also understand that Minister Champagne proposes further amendments to include stronger protections for minors.

However, as the first witness stated, I think there is more the law can do to get it right for children's privacy. I will focus on two points: first, creating clear definitions, and second, looking to leading jurisdictions for guidance.

First, the law should define the terms “minor” and “sensitive”. Without these definitions, businesses, which already have the upper hand in this law, are left to decide what is sensitive and appropriate for minors. The CPPA should follow the lead of other leading privacy laws. The California Consumer Privacy Act, the U.S. COPPA, the EU's GDPR and Quebec's law 25 all establish a minimum age for consent ranging from 13 to 16.

Further, the law should explicitly define the term “sensitive”. The current wording recognizes that minors' data is sensitive, which means that other provisions in the statute have to interpret the treatment of sensitive information through a contextual analysis, whether it be for safeguarding, consent or retention. Similar to Quebec's law 25, the law should define “sensitive” and provide non-exhaustive examples of sensitive data so that businesses, regulators and courts will have more guidance in applying the legislative framework.

Second, I recommend that you consider revising the law—as an amendment or regulation—in order to align the CPPA with leading jurisdictions, namely the age-appropriate design code legislation in the U.K. and California. Both of these demonstrate a more prescriptive approach to regulating the personal information of children.

The California kids code requires businesses to prioritize the privacy of children by default and in the design of their products. For example, default settings on apps and platforms for users under 18 must be set to the highest privacy level. This is something that could be considered in the CPPA as well.

Further, the California code establishes a level of fiduciary care for platforms such that, if a conflict of interest arises between what is best for the platform and what is best for a user under 18, the children's best interest must come first. This is consistent with the recommendation of former commissioner Therrien and others in these hearings about including language around the “best interest of the child” in the legislation.

The CPPA should contemplate requirements for how businesses use children's data, considering the child's best interest. For example, use of children's data could be limited to those actions necessary to provide an age-appropriate service.

As I argued in my Policy Options article in January 2023, we need a collaborative approach that includes lawmakers and policy-makers from all levels of government, coordination with global privacy laws, engagement with parents and coordination with educators. For this approach to work, the law needs to strike the balance between privacy and innovation. We want laws that are flexible enough to last so that technology can evolve, new business ideas can succeed, and children can be innovators while growing up in a world that recognizes their special needs and rights.

[Professor Avi Goldfarb, Professor of Marketing and Rotman Chair, Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Thank you for your kind invitation to appear before the committee and discuss Bill C-27.

I'm a professor of marketing at the University of Toronto, where I hold the Rotman chair in artificial intelligence and health care. My research focuses on the economics of information technology, including several papers on privacy regulation and on artificial intelligence.

Canada is a leader in AI research. Many of the core technologies underlying the recent excitement about AI were developed right here at Canadian universities. At the same time, our productivity is lacking. My research has shown that AI and related data-focused tools are particularly promising technologies for accelerating innovation, productivity and economic growth. In my view, a big worry for the Canadian economy going forward is that we do not have enough AI, and so our standard of living, including our ability to fund health care and education, would stagnate. It would be a shame if Canada's research success did not lead to applications that increase Canadian prosperity.

This act is a careful attempt to ensure that Canadians benefit from AI and related data-focused technologies while protecting privacy and reducing the potential for these technologies to harm individuals.

Next, I'll provide specific comments on AI regulation in part 3 and on privacy regulation in part 1. I have specific comments [Technical difficulty—Editor] intelligence and data act.

First, the act correctly recognizes that there is always a human or a team of humans behind decisions enabled by AI. In part 1, proposed subsection 5(2) is commendable for noting that “a person is responsible for an artificial intelligence system”. Proposed sections 7 through 9 make these responsibilities clear. In my experience, such clarity about the role of humans in AI systems is both unusual and commendable.

Second, the act constructively defines explainability and transparency in part 1, proposed sections 11 and 12. By making it clear how and why the high-impact system is being used rather than focusing on the inner workings of the algorithm, it will provide useful information without forcing potentially misleading oversimplification of how the algorithms work.

Third, while the details of the act itself implicitly recognize the role of AI in Canadian prosperity, the preamble to the AI and data act does not recognize that technological progress is fundamental to our prosperity, and instead focuses only on regulation and harms.

Fourth, there are two sections of the act that might create incentives not to adopt beneficial AI because the liability is not explicitly benchmarked around some human performance level [Technical difficulty—Editor] and safety.

In part 1 of the AI act, proposed subsection 5(1) examines bias. The bias definition suggests that any bias would be prohibited. AI systems will almost surely be imperfect, because they're likely to be trained on imperfect and biased human decisions. Therefore, this definition of biased output incentivizes the continued use of biased human decision-making processes over potentially less biased but auditable AI-supported decisions.

In part 2 of the AI act, proposed paragraph 39(a) examines physical and psychological harm or physical damage. As with bias, the benchmark seems to be perfection. For example, autonomous vehicles will almost surely cause serious physical harm and substantial property damage, because vehicles are dangerous. If the autonomous vehicle system, however, generates much less harm than the current human driving systems, then it would be beneficial to enable its adoption.

The fifth comment on the AI and data act is about the definition of an AI system in proposed section 2 of the AI act: “the use of a genetic algorithm, a neural network, machine learning or other technique in order to generate content or make decisions, recommendations, or predictions.” This definition is overly broad. It includes regression analysis and could even be interpreted to include the calculation of averages. For example, if an employer receives thousands of applications for a job, calculates the average score on some standardized test and uses that score to autonomously select above-average applications to be sent to a human resource worker for further examination, that scoring rule would be an AI system, as I understand it, under the current definition.

I have two specific comments about the consumer privacy protection act.

First, the purpose of the act in proposed section 5 clearly lays out the often competing goals of protecting privacy while facilitating economic activity. While I do understand the wishful thinking that there would be no trade-offs between privacy and innovation, research has consistently documented such trade-offs. Privacy is not free, but it is valuable. Individuals care about their privacy. In protecting privacy, this act will require companies [Technical difficulty—Editor] on legal expertise for interpretation. Such expertise is readily available for large, established companies, but onerous for small businesses and start-ups. In the implementation by the commissioner, some direction to reduce any unnecessary burden on small businesses and start-ups would be constructive.

Proposed subsection 15(5) makes the cost of an audit payable by the person audited even if the Privacy Commissioner does not bring a successful case. This creates a large burden on small and new businesses if they get audited unnecessarily.

To conclude, while I have specific suggestions to clarify the language of the act, in my view Bill C-27 is a careful attempt to ensure that Canadians benefit from AI and related data-focused technologies while protecting privacy and reducing the potential of these technologies to harm individuals.

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss my research. I look forward to hearing your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to meeting No. 98 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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'd like to welcome our witnesses today. We have Michael Beauvais, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, by videoconference; Avi Goldfarb, a professor of marketing and the Rotman chair at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management; Michelle Gordon, lawyer and founder of GEM Privacy Consulting; Antoine Guilmain, counsel and co‑leader of National Cyber Security and Data Protection Practice Group at Gowling WLG; and Luk Arbuckle, chief methodologist and privacy officer at IQVIA Solutions Canada Inc.

Each of you will have five minutes for an opening statement.

Thank you all for taking the time to join us in this study this afternoon. Without further ado, I'll give the floor to Mr. Beauvais for five minutes.

Motion That Debate Be Not Further Adjourned

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

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry is very proactive on many files.

However, as the saying goes, the longer we wait, the worse things get. That is what happened with the Competition Act. The government could have taken action years ago. If it had, we would not be stuck with these huge monopolies, especially in the grocery sector, that have pushed prices up with margins that benefit them, rather than producers or processors, and that have doubled prices for consumers.

The same goes for telecommunications, gasoline and banks. Costs have gone up because this government did not act in time. It waited too long to introduce Bill C-27. It also waited too long to introduce the bill to amend the Copyright Act.

When will the government take action? Can the minister assert his legislative power to ensure that these files actually get debated? Right now, it seems to me that there is no movement on his side.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Listen, I don't want to be here. I don't want to have to deal with this issue. I wish it wasn't happening. The reality is that the importance of this is not just for the Windsor area. It's also for the Volkswagen plant. It's also for Quebec, later on, and British Columbia. This is about getting it right. We're doing a massive subsidization for the right reason: to keep up with our challenges from the United States and the challenges of an industry that's transitioning. I'd rather have Canadians trained through this process, so they can be used as specialists in the future.

Like the member from Windsor—Tecumseh, I worked on the shop floor at the Windsor assembly plant. I worked in the tool and die industry and as a job developer for persons with disabilities, placing people in these shops. I know the jobs and how important they are.

There's a serious issue here with regard to the investment we're making and the lack of training opportunities in place. We've had 18 months to get this right. Now we have to get it right. It's falling on the surface here because we haven't put in the time and work necessary. I'd like to know whether anybody knows about the specifics of the jobs we can't actually fill and accommodate. I think it was Mr. Williams who referred to one position that was there, a clerical position. I'd even challenge some of the technical positions.

Lee in Windsor has been building automotive components and vehicles for over 100 years. Facts be told, quite frankly, originally Jim Flaherty was opposed to an intervention on the GM and Chrysler issues of the day. He said he didn't want to “pick winners and losers”. However, the evidence was put in front of him, and he changed. He deserves a lot of credit.

In fact, we made money in the past by doing auto investment for Chrysler in 1985. We invested to save Chrysler at that point in time, and it paid dividends back to taxpayers. I'm not afraid of bringing out some of the highlights in terms of why the investment makes sense and why we have to be in the game, for so many different reasons. If we're going to be in the game and put taxpayers' money on the line, there's every expectation it should be based on transparency and measurables. We've had the Parliamentary Budget Officer in front of us talking about some of those things.

I don't see this as a Conservative witch hunt with regard to a particular issue. I see this as a factual thing we have to bring forward, because it's going to have a pattern that will come after that. Again, would I like to be doing Bill C-27? Absolutely. Do I want to have to deal with this? No, I don't, but the reality is that we don't have a national auto policy that is transparent. We go from Hail Mary pass to Hail Mary pass at the last minute on these deals every single time. That's why people have concerns. I have every confidence that when we shed light on the importance of these jobs and on the importance of the workers who will get these jobs—if they're Canadians—the value will be there for the rest of Canada.

Yes, it's going to be a very difficult thing to go through in some respects, because company officials and others will have to come forward and talk about different things. At the same time, it's responsible of us. We don't need to make other communities go through what we're going through right now. It's not fun for me, as the member for Windsor West—who represents three-fifths of the city of Windsor and comes from an auto tradition—to go through this. However, I still believe in the industry. I believe in the people. I believe in what we're doing. If we can make it better for the other developments and economic investments we're doing, we're all better off at the end of the day, and we're doing our jobs as parliamentarians. Sometimes doing your job is not comfortable. It's not something you want to do, but you have to fight for it.

I'll finish with this: We had to do the same thing with the Gordie Howe bridge. We were building a new bridge in my riding. For years, we were told we couldn't do it and shouldn't do it. It was often put into politics. We faced off against an American billionaire. We faced off against the OMERS company pension fund. We defeated bad proposals to get the right thing done after a lot of work and effort. Do you know what? I'd rather put in some work and effort here, for a few meetings, to make this better for everybody. I'm not afraid to speak about the value of investing in the people of Windsor—Tecumseh and Essex county at any point in time.

We need the support, because it's not our fault that the United States is poaching manufacturing jobs. That's what they've been going after. At the same time, I can't turn my back on my responsibility as a parliamentarian to make sure taxpayers' dollars are being spent in the best way possible.

That's the balance, and that's the balance that I see in the motion that we're looking at and in what we're trying to do. Again, would I rather be doing something else? I would, 100%. Why am I here? It's because we have poor planning and a poor commitment to making sure that taxpayers understand what their dollars are going for.

That's why the NDP has always consistently called for a national auto policy that's also been crafted by the workers. When we get to that point and that day, maybe we won't have meetings like this.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Vis. I know you don't have the floor either, but I appreciate your response. Maybe when you get the floor, you can respond.

I was on that committee, and it's my experience that Conservatives are being inconsistent with the arguments they have made on other committees.

We also know that this particular conversation isn't really about temporary foreign workers at all, because only one has been approved so far. What's interesting, though, is that one of the facts you've conveniently left out of your arguments is that an article today on the CBC has basically elucidated a fact about the trade agreement under Stephen Harper. When your current leader was in power as the employment minister—or I think it was just before that—there was a trade agreement negotiated with South Korea that included labour mobility provisions, which essentially opened the door for South Koreans to work in Canada under those labour mobility provisions. The free trade agreement that the Conservatives set up actually allows individuals to do that.

Now, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, because I think what you need to understand, as my colleague PS Kusmierczyk said very eloquently, is that a battery manufacturing facility in Canada, the first of its kind, is going to require some specialized skill sets to get it up and running.

I think that's common sense. Conservatives talk about common sense. Where's their common sense today? Do you not understand—

That's through you, Chair. I mean to be respectful.

I think common sense says that when you haven't run one of these facilities, you're going to probably have some intercompany transfers at the beginning to help to install equipment and train local workers to run that facility. I think that's what we're seeing here.

The key here is that the job numbers that have been quoted are solid. There are 2,300 local jobs during the construction phase and 2,500 local jobs in the operational phase of the facility. Those are significant numbers of local jobs. We've heard Mr. Kusmierczyk speak to how important that is to his community, how much that represents a truly substantial growth in the local economy and gives people hope.

I think we have been saying all along during our mandate as the governing party that really building the economy of the future.... I get it that Conservatives don't agree on this. They don't see the economy of the future as fighting climate change and drawing in local jobs and investment. In fact, I keep hearing that they don't want direct foreign investment.

We heard today—we heard the finance minister repeat this, and the minister for innovation repeated it as well—that Canada is number one in the world in foreign direct investment when you adjust per capita. It's number three when you don't make that adjustment, but we're number one when you adjust it per capita.

I don't understand why the Conservatives want to kick up dirt on this and try to create the misperception that somehow this is bad for Canada or local jobs. This is not bad for local jobs. I think we know that it's good for local jobs.

The other point that I'll make is that a tweet is not a report. I find it strange that this Standing Order 106(4) emergency debate is the result of a tweet from the Windsor police department. My dad was a detective and inspector for Peel Regional Police, so I don't have anything against police. I would just say that it doesn't make sense to me that you would consider that as factual, versus the very clear job numbers that our government has provided.

I guess the only other thing I want to say is that it feels that Conservatives are opposed to everything. They're opposed to the offshore wind industry in Atlantic Canada. They're blocking the sustainable jobs act, which puts workers at the centre of the energy transition. They're opposed to legislation banning replacement workers, and we saw today in the House that they're opposed to a free trade agreement between Canada and Ukraine.

I don't understand they can oppose all of these things so frequently, things that are good for workers and good for our country, things that bring in investment and are part of that vision of building a stronger, sustainable economy that is prosperous and creates all kinds of good-paying jobs.

I wish we could get to a point here, based on facts, and understand that the work of Bill C-27 that this committee has before it is imperative to getting the legislation through. I just hope we can come to our senses here.

Thanks, Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I have quite a few things to say, but I appreciate the debate.

We're in a situation here on the day of the fall economic statement, which is fine. Members have chosen to call a meeting under Standing Order 106(4), which is normally meant to apply to an emergency meeting. Obviously there are enough members who feel that this an urgent debate that should take precedence over government legislation, which is Bill C-27, which I think we've all agreed is a really high priority for this committee.

I have quite a few concerns with some of the assertions that members opposite have made, which I don't feel are factual, and I will say why.

This feels to me like another delay tactic on Bill C-27, which I think again we have all....

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, committee members, for responding and coming today. I know that some would probably like to be in the chamber right now, but there we go.

For those who are watching us right now, and not the Minister of Finance , perhaps I could start by explaining what we're doing here. It is that we—a number of the opposition members—moved a motion or sent a letter requesting that we have a special meeting to discuss the media reports, which came out late last week, that up to 1,600 jobs at Stellantis, the new EV plant in Windsor, would be filled by residents of South Korea.

I know that some claim that this is not the case, but for some strange reason, the ambassador from South Korea actually thinks it's the case, since the ambassador for South Korea held a number of meetings in Windsor with Windsor officials, saying that they needed to find accommodations in Windsor for 1,600 people from South Korea who are coming to work at the battery plant.

Obviously, this is a great concern. It's a great concern because I go back to the original announcement of the EV battery plant for Stellantis in Windsor. I believe it was back in March. The first one was before President Biden brought out the IRA. It was an agreement from, I believe, the federal government to pay about half a billion dollars of the construction costs of this new plant, under the strategic investment fund, the SIF program of ISED. At that time, the Minister of Industry said that this was great news for Canadian jobs.

Subsequent to that, when the IRA came in from President Biden, the government signed another contract with Volkswagen, as we all know, in southwestern Ontario. This was a contract of $778 million in federal government subsidy to subsidize the building of that plant, and another $15 billion of subsidy for the battery assembly—not manufacturing. These are assembly plants.

Just so people are clear, these are assembly plants that right now are not manufacturing batteries but are actually assembling batteries for EVs. Right now in the world, 80% of the parts for EV batteries are manufactured in China. These parts will be coming over to Canada and will be put into this plant to be assembled into batteries, which would then go, in most cases, into the U.S., where the cars will be assembled.

Contrary to assertions that the minister made today and that others have made, the Conservatives actually have not said whether we support or don't support these, because we haven't seen the contracts. It's hard to make a judgment on whether or not we have a good deal when you haven't seen the contracts, particularly contracts that require $15 billion in taxpayer subsidies.

In essence, what we have is a secret contract that has some sort of job commitments in it, but clearly not job commitments that require Canadians to be hired, since the ambassador from Korea is saying that they're going to bring in 1,600 people from South Korea to assemble the batteries—primarily manufactured in China and assembled here—to go to the U.S. to be assembled in vehicles that will be put together in the U.S., with presumably most of them sold in the U.S.

In the absence of having the details of that contract, it's impossible for taxpayers to understand whether or not there is a contract that compels Stellantis and their subsidiary, now in Windsor, to actually hire Canadians. One would think that if you're going to give that level of subsidy, you would actually put into the contract that the job commitments are for Canadian jobs.

We are here now to discuss doing an urgent meeting, or several meetings, as I think we need, to get to the bottom of this issue of why a contract was signed that allows a Korean car company to bring in workers from South Korea, as the ambassador from South Korea has said publicly they will do, rather than hiring Canadians

With that, Mr. Chair, just to frame the discussion, I'd like to move a study motion, if I could. I believe the clerk has a copy of it, and I'll read the motion:

Given that the Government of Canada gave a multi-billion dollar subsidy for an EV battery manufacturing facility in Windsor, Ontario, and that in recent days it has been revealed that as many as 1600 jobs will be going to foreign workers instead of Canadian workers, the committee undertake a 6 meeting investigation to determine how the Government of Canada structured a deal that prioritizes foreign workers over Canadian jobs and paycheques, and that the committee hears testimony from: the Minister of Industry, for 2 hours, the Minister of Finance, for 2 hours,

—who has obviously been very vocal on this—

the Minister of Employment and Social Development Canada, the Mayor of Windsor, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Officials from the Department of Industry, the CEO of NextStar, Danis Lee, Unifor national president Lana Payne and all other witnesses deemed relevant by the committee, and the committee order the full unredacted contract with Stellantis—LG regarding NextStar EV battery manufacturing facility in Windsor, Ontario, all documents related to government funding and Canadian job creation at the proposed factory, the Labour Market Impact Assessment application from Stellantis and the government’s response, and that these documents be produced within seven days of this motion being adopted.

For the purpose of framing the debate—and I'm sure there will be some discussion from various parties on elements of that—we are putting it on the table as a starting point, as we always do in this committee, as a collegial committee, to discuss how we can go about discussing this urgent thing. I don't think it can wait until the new year or after we are done Bill C-27, which won't be until the new year, because this issue is happening now.

There are 130 people, according to the public reports, now working on this project. The company itself and Minister Wilkinson, in fact, have said that 100 of the people who are already working on this project are from South Korea. Most of the employees to date are not South Koreans who are residents of Canada; they are South Koreans who have come here from South Korea as the starting point of this 1,600-person hiring that the ambassador of South Korea says that Stellantis is doing.

I know there's a speaking list. I'll leave it at that for now, Mr. Chair, and turn it over to others who want to make an intervention.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You mentioned that Bill C-27 is the status quo, and I appreciate that. It's basically making them use plain English, but it's still putting the onus on the person rather than the corporation.

Will more legislation be needed to properly regulate social media platforms, in your opinion?

[Sharon Polsky]

One of the things we see in existing Canadian and foreign legislation is consent that has no granularity. You have to consent to the organization collecting information from you and about you. It'll be shared with its business partners and affiliates. You don't know who those are, where in the world they are or what they're going to do with it.

Bill C-27 maintains the status quo, except it's going to have to be in simple, non-legalese English. It doesn't change anything. It's not granular. We need granularity.

Actually, the Quebec government has a new piece of legislation that was enacted about a year ago. The consent portion of it came into effect in September this year. It is better. It's not what it needs to be. It still gives the organizations the reins.

We need to turn it around so that the organizations are compelled to comply with legislation and be rated on their compliance by an independent organization that creates a publicly available index, if you will. We can then all go to this index and determine whether or not we want to deal with an organization based on its compliance with the legislation. It is then up to us to give our consent.

[Sharon Polsky]

I wouldn't go so far as saying it's fraudulent, but it's perhaps misleading. It's permitted under the current legislation and under Bill C-27, which is going to maintain the status quo of the same vague consent. That's not going to improve the privacy.

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

You said earlier that, despite the efforts expended on C‑27, it did nothing to protect us from those kinds of invasions of privacy, is that not correct?

[Sharon Polsky]

As lawmakers, one thing you could do is not enact Bill C-27, because that's not going to make it better; it's going to make it worse.

What can we do? Is PIPEDA a comfort? No, it is not, because it's not sufficient, as Jennifer Stoddart said when she was in the final days of her role as commissioner. It could use some more teeth. How many years ago was that? It still needs some more teeth. Sure, Canadian organizations are responsible for the proper collection, use, disclosure and all the rest of it under PIPEDA, but when the information goes offshore, they lose control of it. We as Canadians have no recourse when our information is in a foreign nation and goes into the wind, or when we see things that breach our privacy, whether from Equifax, Meta, Google or any other organization.

One commission or another somewhere in the world hammers them with a multi-million dollar fine or hundreds of millions of dollars as a fine. They put it in their financial report as a line item, and it reduces their tax liability—that's sweet, on to the next. That's all. It's lunch money to them. It's to the company, not an individual.

[Sharon Polsky, President, Privacy and Access Council of Canada]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for inviting me to share some views about whether, and how, social media can undermine privacy, safety, security and democracy.

I am Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, which is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organization that is not funded by government or industry. It has members in the public and private sector who routinely use social media in their personal and professional lives.

Many can recall when Google mail was introduced. It was a brilliant marketing manoeuvre that preyed on human nature. Only the chosen few who were selected to have an account could have one. The invitation accorded those few people special status among their peers. This tactic and the media attention created demand. There was no talk about downsides, risk or privacy. People just wanted to have that Google account. It was simple psychology that showed how easily people can be manipulated.

Since then, we have seen countless examples of big tech manipulating us to share the most intimate details of our existence online. Social media continues to leverage human nature, and the lucrative data broker industry is the biggest beneficiary, other than those who would manipulate us for their own benefit, whether they're companies, political parties or governments. With recent geopolitical events, it's easy to think that what people post to social media might be used to coerce, extort or manipulate, but crediting social media alone, or social media from one country or another, is short-sighted.

Online risks reflect society and come from many sources, including familiar communication and collaboration tools that many in this room probably use most days. Every one of them is a real and constant threat. Zoom, Teams, Slack, Facebook and the rest are all foreign.

It's no secret that many companies scrape data and justify their actions by saying they consider the information to be public because their AI systems were able to find it on the web. Maybe the secure location where you posted personal or confidential information, or the Ontario hospital you visited recently, has been breached and now your health condition or sensitive conversations are being sold on the dark web.

If the concern is that people who use social media might disclose information that could make them politically sensitive and at greater risk of being influenced, I look to the recording we hear every time we call our cellphone provider or most other companies that says, “This call will be recorded for training”, which typically means the training of artificial intelligence systems through machine learning. The human side of that training is done in countries around the world by individuals who have access to your sensitive information.

A Finnish tech firm recently started using prison labour to do data labelling. It goes on and on. We have no choice whether the labelling is done by someone in Alberta or in Albania. There is no control over it and there is nothing stopping a company or a government from purchasing information, because it is available largely through the data broker system. It is widely available internationally. I could go on and on.

Yes, certainly education is important. Computers have been on desktops for almost half a century. The education is not there yet, as we see big tech investing tens of billions of dollars a year in objecting to and undermining efforts to regulate the industry, with the claim that it will undermine innovation. It's a red herring that's been disproven many times throughout history.

We see dating sites that people use routinely, which are wonderful for a social life, but when things like the Canadian dating site Ashley Madison are breached, I dare say that many of their customers become politically sensitive.

If children or adults go on any website, usually, before they even see the results, the fact that they have been there—whether it's for mental health, addiction or medical counselling.... That website has already secretly been transmitted to the likes of Facebook and data brokers.

This isn't something Bill C-27 is going to fix, or any of the other legislation. In fact, most of the laws being introduced here and abroad will make the situation much worse for everybody, including children—especially children.

I am happy to take your questions. This is a massive endeavour, and I commend you all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I don't think this will be settled in 15 minutes, however optimistic you are, Mr. Perkins, so if I have your consent, colleagues, I will thank the witnesses for joining us today.

If you wish to hear us debate this motion, you may very well stay. You're more than welcome. However, if you want to leave, know that your testimony has been appreciated, and if there are things that you want to submit to committee members, please do so via the clerk. The documents will be revised as we continue the study of Bill C-27.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Généreux has moved a motion that deals with Bill C-27, which is before the committee today, so the motion is in order.

The motion is up for debate.

Go ahead, Mr. Lemire.

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

I'm going to turn to the other witnesses now.

Did any of you participate in the consultations on Bill C-11 or the bill the committee is currently studying, Bill C-27? Please nod your head if you did.

I see that no one was consulted. All right.

In light of what we've seen since we began our study a few weeks ago, no one seems to have been consulted, but the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry says that 300 individuals and organizations were consulted after the bill was introduced. I'd like to find those individuals and organizations. I don't know where they are.

In a moment, I'll be giving notice of a motion, but I'd like to ask you a question, first, Ms. Piovesan.

Mr. Balsillie appeared before the committee, and I'm sure you read his remarks. He likened the bill to a bucket that has holes. What witnesses have told us so far seems to suggest that the bucket basically has no bottom. That's what it seems like.

You talked about the fact that the committee has heard opposing views from witnesses. Take the tribunal, for instance. Some suggested getting rid of it because we didn't need it, while others argued the opposite, that having a tribunal in the sector was important.

Given how far apart on the spectrum people's views are, do you think the bill should have been split from the beginning? We've heard from the start that the bill is almost monstrous, that it's too big, that the privacy piece and the AI piece should have been dealt with separately.

What do you think?

[Carole Piovesan]

Okay.

I participated in the national consultations on data and digital literacy, I think it was, in 2018. I participated as an innovator—as one of the innovation leads.

I did not participate in the drafting of the digital charter, nor in the white paper to reform PIPEDA that came out at that time. I have not participated in the drafting of any of these laws, neither Bill C-11 nor Bill C-27.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses as well.

Today's discussion is fascinating. I am very interested in what you have to say.

Ms. Piovesan, if I understood correctly, you helped draft Bill C-11, the predecessor to the bill before us today, Bill C-27.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Over the past few months, Ms. Piovesan, in our role as MPs, we've held a number of meetings with businesses that operate in Quebec, including small and medium-sized Quebec start-ups.

Since AIDA contains little in the way of details and imposes criminal liability on companies that use high-impact systems, in a podcast, you called Bill C‑27 an advanced draft. You raised the issue of the criminality component.

Can you explain what the bill is missing, and why that undermines how confident and comfortable businesses are operating both in Quebec and in Canada? How should Bill C‑27 be clarified to take it from a draft bill, as you put it, to a real one?

[Alexander Jarvie]

Yes. If we were to undertake the suggestion to combine or generalize proposed sections 35 and 39, to make it a bit more like the framework in Quebec's Law 25, which begins at section 21 of that law, then it would involve what is styled in that law as “privacy impact assessments”. That isn't a concept that figures, as such, in Bill C-27, but I think it's been discussed to some extent at this committee already. It's been broadly outlined. It's understood. You're examining the disclosure in this case, or the collection.

I suggest that after seeing what kind of privacy impact it has, you do a proportionality analysis and many other things besides that. If an agreement is entered into between the parties to the exchange, it should have certain contractual assurances around how the information is to be handled throughout its life cycle for this purpose. Finally, notice should be given to the commissioner.

As I said, in Quebec's case, you actually submit the agreement to the commissioner, and then you can activate or operationalize that agreement only after 30 days, giving the Quebec commissioner time to respond, presumably. Once the commissioner has notice, they can of course simply request the agreement. They can request the privacy impact assessment and undertake any other steps. The important thing is to provide notice, so that the commissioner is aware.

[Alexander Jarvie]

I agree with many of the other witnesses here today in supporting a change to the definition of anonymization to align more with Quebec's definition and maintain some interoperability there. Given the way it's drafted now, it's an impossible standard.

The other—and I'll make reference to my opening remarks—would be to change the consent exception framework for public interest purposes. That includes proposed sections 35 and 39. I think, in this regard, we could take some inspiration from Law 25, which inserted a new framework for disclosures by private sector entities to other private sector or public sector entities. That includes undertaking a privacy impact assessment and entering into an agreement with the other party. In the case of Quebec, it's actually submitting the agreement to the Commission d’accès à l’information. In the case of Bill C-27, it's adapting the language from proposed paragraph 35(c), which suggests notice to the commissioner at the very least.

In addition to allowing for information exchanges among private sector entities, which could be beneficial, I think it could also be extended to include taking information from the public Internet. As we know, machine learning technologies, in many cases, can benefit from having access to this, provided that some appropriate guardrails are in place, as suggested.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Would it be your position that we should adopt a definition of sensitive information that is similar to the Quebec law and include it in Bill C-27?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you.

You touched upon the GDPR in some of your comments as well. This question relates to a debate that's starting to form—we haven't really touched on it too much—between privacy by design and.... Unlike the European Union's GDPR, the CPPA does not contain an explicit reference to the concept of privacy by design.

In the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's submission on Bill C-27, the commissioner recommends that the CPPA require organizations to implement privacy by design measures for a product, service or initiative from the earliest stages of development.

During their appearance before the committee, however, government representatives indicated that several elements of the CPPA, such as the fact that it requires organizations to develop a privacy management program, mean that the concept of privacy by design is already embedded in the legislation.

Do we need something similar to the GDPR, where it's explicitly stated, or is the current approach of privacy management as contained in proposed section 9 going to work okay?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To continue, I think it was Mr. Young who mentioned Bill C-27 and Quebec's Law 25. Can you give us a little more background as to why it's important to have consistency there?

Also, potentially, could we inadvertently cause some damage to Quebec with regard to this bill if we don't handle this properly? I'm worried. We're looking at neutrality for Quebec at the very least, I think, as an objective, but I'm also worried about inadvertently damaging their system right now.

Perhaps you could start us off on that conversation.

[David Young, Principal, Privacy and Regulatory Law Counsel, David Young Law, As an Individual]

Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee for its important review of Bill C-27.

This bill includes significant proposed amendments to Canada's privacy laws at the same time as it introduces a proposed oversight regime for artificial intelligence. The AIDA component warrants focused study by the committee. Certainly, as you've heard from my co-witnesses, there's a lot to consider there. However, I will restrict my comments to the privacy components.

I am a privacy and regulatory lawyer. My practice over the past 25 years has included advising private sector organizations—both for-profit and non-profit—as well as government and Crown agencies. I address all relevant areas, including individual privacy, employee privacy and health privacy.

In these introductory comments, I will focus on one impactful area of the bill, which you have heard some comments about already: de-identified and anonymized information. I'm hoping to provide some clarification as well as my thoughts on how the proposed provisions can be improved.

The proposed treatment of such information in Bill C-27 is critically important. Firstly, it clarifies a category of information that, while not being fully identifiable and therefore available for specific uses without consent, is still deemed appropriate for protection under the law. Secondly, it provides for a category of anonymized information that can be used more broadly for research purposes, innovation and policy development.

The first category, de-identified information, is governed by all of the law's privacy protections, subject to certain specific exceptions. Conversely, the second category, anonymized information, is stated to not be subject to the law. However, as I will mention, this stipulation—that it's not subject to the law—is not the end of the story. The law will and should continue to provide oversight over anonymized information. This is a point that is sometimes missed. I certainly heard it raised as a concern in previous comments. I think it's very important to understand that, however we define the term—and we've heard a number of comments here—it will continue to be subject to the law.

I have a number of recommendations for improvement.

First, with respect to de-identified information, the definition should be amended to stipulate appropriate processes to ensure no person can be directly identified from the information. Additionally, proposed section 74 of the CPPA, which addresses technical and administrative protections, should be amended to include, as an additional criterion, the risk of re-identification.

Secondly, the definition of anonymized information should be amended to make more explicit the processes required for anonymization. With its law 25, Quebec got it right in this area. I recommend aligning with Quebec's approach, which stipulates that the generally accepted best practices for anonymization should be those set out in appropriate regulations. Such regulations should include transparency, risks of re-identification, accountability and guardrails for downstream uses. The Quebec law also recognizes that it is not possible, from a practical perspective, to say that anonymized information cannot be re-identified. The CPPA provision should reflect the same approach. Additionally, there should be a requirement for the organization performing any anonymization process to conduct a re-identification risk analysis. This is a proposed requirement in Quebec's regulations governing anonymized information.

Thirdly, the applicability of the law's protections for de-identified information is a bit of a complicated area. I can certainly go into it in more detail during questions, if you like. Currently, the CPPA provides that de-identified information is personal information, except for certain provisions, where it will not be considered personal information.

This is the wrong approach. Instead, as recommended by the OPC, a simple statement should be made that all de-identified personal information remains personal information. Also, the list of exceptions in the bill is confusing. To make it simpler and clearer, many of the exceptions should be omitted entirely—they are not needed. I can explain that in more detail if you wish.

My final comment is to address, as I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, a concerned voice by some stakeholders that the statute's anonymization regime should be made expressly subject to oversight by the Privacy Commissioner. I know you've heard that from at least one witness and maybe others here. In my view, such a provision is not required. The commissioner will have oversight over an organization's compliance with the anonymization rules, whatever they are. Also, and very importantly, if anonymized information does become identifiable—and that's this whole risk of reidentification—all of the statute's protective provisions again will apply with full vigour, and the commissioner will have oversight. Actually, there are two routes whereby the commissioner will or may continue to have oversight.

In sum, my recommendations are as follows.

First, the definition of “de-identified” information should be made more rigorous, including addressing the risk of reidentification. Secondly, the definition of anonymized information should be amended to make more explicit the processes required to achieve anonymization, and these should be set out in regulations, including a requirement for risk assessment. Finally, the regime for applicability of the CPPA's protections for de-identified information should be made clearer, in particular, stating that all such information remains personal information.

I will be happy to elaborate and answer any questions you have regarding these comments or any other provisions of the bill.

[Carole Piovesan, Co-founder and Partner, INQ Law, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-27.

I am the managing partner of INQ Law, where my practice focuses on data- and AI-related laws. I’m here in my personal capacity and the views presented are my own.

Every day, we are hearing new stories about the promise and perils of artificial intelligence. AI systems are complex computer programs that process large amounts of data, including large amounts of personal information, for training and output purposes. Those outputs can be very valuable.

There is a possibility that AI can help cure diseases, improve agriculture yields or even help us become more productive, so we can each play to our best talents. That promise is very real, but as you've already heard on this panel, that promise does not come without risk. Complex as these systems are, they are not perfect and they are not neutral. They are being developed at such a speed that those on the front lines of development are some of the loudest voices calling for some regulation.

I appreciate that this committee has heard quite a bit of testimony over the last several weeks. While the testimonies you've heard have certainly run the gamut of opinions, there seem to be at least two points of consistency.

The first is that Canada’s federal private sector privacy law should be updated to reflect the increasing demand for personal information and changes to how that information is collected and processed for commercial purposes. In short, it’s time to modernize PIPEDA.

Second, our laws governing data and AI should strive for interoperability or harmonization across key jurisdictions. Harmonization helps Canadians understand and know how to assert their rights, and it helps Canadian organizations compete more effectively within the global economy.

The committee has also heard opposing views about Bill C-27. The remainder of my submissions will focus on five main points to do with parts 1 and 3 of the bill.

Part 1, which proposes the consumer privacy protection act, or CPPA, proposes some important changes to the governance of personal information in Canada. My submissions focus on the legitimate interest consent exception and the definition of anonymized data, much of which you've already heard on this panel.

First, the new exceptions to consent in the bill are welcome. Not only do they provide flexibility for organizations to use personal data to advance legitimate and beneficial activities, but they also align Canada’s law more closely with those of some of our key allies, including internally within Canada, such as Quebec’s Law 25, more specifically. Critically, they do so in a manner that is reasonably measured. I agree with earlier testimony that you've heard in this committee, that the application of the legitimate interest exception in the CPPA should align more closely with other notable privacy laws, namely Europe's GDPR.

Second, anonymized data can be essential for research, development and innovation purposes. I support the recommendations put to this committee by the Canadian Anonymization Network with respect to the drafting of the definition of “anonymize”. I also agree with Mr. Lamb's submissions as to the insertion of existing notions of reasonable foreseeability or a serious risk of reidentification.

As for part 3 of the bill, the proposed artificial intelligence and data act, first, I support the flexible approach adopted in part 3. I caution and recognize that the current draft contains some major holes, and that there is a need to plug those holes as soon as possible. As well, any future regulation would need to be subject to considerate consultation, as contemplated in the companion document to AIDA.

Our understanding of how to effectively promote the promise of AI and prevent harm associated with its use is evolving with the technology itself. Meaningful regulation will need to benefit from consultation with broad stakeholders, including, importantly, the AI community.

Second, Minister Champagne, in the letter he submitted to this committee, proposes to amend AIDA to define “high impact” by reference to classes of systems. The definition of high impact is the most striking omission in the current draft bill.

The use of a classification approach aligns with the EU's draft artificial intelligence act and supports a risk-based approach to AI governance, which I support. When the definition is ultimately incorporated into the draft, it should parallel the language in the companion document and provide criteria on what “high impact” means, with reference to the classifications as illustrated.

Finally, I support the proposed amendments to align AIDA more closely with OECD guidance on responsible AI. Namely, this is the definition in proposed section 2 of AIDA, which has also been adopted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States in its AI risk management framework.

To the extent that Canada can harmonize with other key jurisdictions where it makes sense for us to do so, we should.

I look forward to the committee's questions, as well as to the comments from my fellow witnesses.

[Scott Lamb, Partner, Clark Wilson LLP, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for having me here today on the important matter of reform of our privacy legislation and Bill C-27.

I'm a partner at the law firm of Clark Wilson in Vancouver, and I'm called to the bar in Ontario and British Columbia. I've been practising in the area of privacy law since approximately 2000. I've advised both private sector organizations in a variety of businesses and public bodies such as universities in the public sector. I've also acted as legal counsel before the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia in investigations, inquiries and judicial review.

With the limited amount of time we have, I'll be confining my remarks to the proposed consumer privacy protection act, specifically the legitimate interest exception, anonymization and de-identification, and the separate review tribunal. Hopefully, I'll have a bit of time to get into the artificial intelligence and data act, AIDA, with respect to high-impact systems.

I will of course be happy to discuss other areas of Bill C-27 and questions you may have. Also, subsequent to my presentation, I'll provide a detailed brief on the areas discussed today.

Starting with the proposed consumer privacy protection act and the legitimate interest exception, it's important to point out that arguably the leading privacy law jurisdiction, the EU with its GDPR, provides for a stand-alone right of an organization to collect, use and disclose personal information if it has a legitimate interest. Accordingly, if Canada is to have an exception to consent based on an organization's legitimate interest, it's important to look, in detail, at how that will operate and the implications of that exception.

First, to reiterate, the draft provisions in proposed subsection 18(3) are an exception to the consent requirements and not a stand-alone right for an organization as set out in the GDPR.

What's the significance of this? A stand-alone right generally is not as restrictively interpreted by the courts as an exception to an obligation from a purely statutory interpretation point of view. In short, the legitimate interest exception is very likely to be a narrower provision in scope than the GDPR's legitimate interest provisions.

A stand-alone right may be a means to circumvent or generally undercut the consent structure of our privacy legislation, which again is at the heart of our legislation and is a part of the inculcated privacy protection culture in Canada. Maintaining the legitimate interest provisions as an exception to the consent structure, on balance, is preferable to a stand-alone right.

Second, the exception is only for the collection or use of personal information and is not permitted for the disclosure of personal information to third parties. The prohibition on application of the exception to disclosure of personal information that is in the legitimate interest of an organization, in my view, doesn't make sense. While I'm in favour of the first instance of an exception over a stand-alone right, I think you have to expand this to cover disclosure as well.

The provisions in proposed subsection 18(3) expressly state that the legitimate interest of an organization “outweighs any potential adverse effect”. This is effectively a high standard of protection. The usefulness of this exception, if limited to only collection and use, is significant for organizations. For example, a business may have a legitimate interest in collection and use of personal information to measure and improve the use of its services or to develop a product. However, proposed subsection 18(3) prevents that organization from actually disclosing that personal information to a business partner or third party vendor to give effect to its legitimate purpose.

Finally, the point is that other jurisdictions allow for a legitimate interest of an organization to apply to disclosure of personal information as well as to collection and use. Specifically, again, that is not only the EU GDPR but also the Singapore law. I note that when you look at those pieces of legislation standing side by side, Singapore also has it as an exception. Singapore also has some case law that has moved forward.

I think it would give a lot of comfort to this committee if it were to examine some of the case law from Singapore, as well as some of the more current case law from the GDPR regime. It does give some sense of what this means as a legitimate interest, which I can appreciate at first instance may seem rather vague and could be seen as a giant loophole. However, my submission is that's not the case.

The next item I'd like to talk about is anonymization and de-identification. Clarity on this issue has been sought for some time, and it's reassuring that the change from Bill C-11 to Bill C-27 introduced this idea, a concept of anonymization, as separate from de-identification. However, technologically and practically speaking, you're never going to reach the standard set out in the definition of anonymization, so why put it in the act in the first place? There's been some commentary on this, and I am generally in support of the recommendation that you should insert into that definition the reasonableness to expect in the circumstances that an individual can be identified after the de-identification process. Then the data is not anonymized and is still caught by the legislation and the specific requirements for the use and disclosure of such data.

In terms of use and disclosure, I also note that proposed section 21 confines the use to internal use by the organization. The utility of this provision could be remarkably limited by this, again compared to what our trading partners have, because in modern research and development you have the idea of data pooling and extensive partnerships in the use of data. If it's strictly for internal purposes, we could lose this important tool in a modern technological economy that relies on this. Therefore, I recommend that it be deleted as well.

Also, proposed section 39 would limit the disclosure of de-identified personal information to, effectively, public sector organizations—this is very restrictive—and consideration should be given to disclosing to private sector organizations that are really fundamentally important to our modern economy and research and development.

In terms of the separate review tribunal, I know that the Privacy Commissioner has been hostile to this and I recognize that the Privacy Commissioner performs an invaluable role in investigating and pursuing compliance with our privacy legislation. However, given the enormous administrative monetary penalties that may be awarded against organizations—the higher of 3% of gross annual revenue or $10 million—for breaches, clear appeal rights to an expert tribunal and review of penalties are required to ensure due process and natural justice standards and, frankly, to develop the law in this area.

It is also noteworthy that judicial oversight of the decision of the tribunal would be according to the Supreme Court of Canada's test in Vavilov, which is limited to a review on the reasonableness standard, which is a very deferential and limited review. It's been suggested that you try to limit these things from going on forever and ever. With judicial review, they would be limited. I know there was one suggestion that the ability to seek judicial review should jump right from the tribunal to the Federal Court of Appeal. I think that's fine if you want to expedite this and meet that concern. I think that's probably right, but I do like the structure of a separate review tribunal.

Finally, on artificial intelligence and the high-impact systems, I think the focus of that, in terms of identifying the concept of high-impact systems, is sound in structure and potentially generally aligned with our trade partners in the EU. However, the concept cannot be left to further development and definition in regulations. This concept needs extensive consultation and parliamentary review.

It is recommended that the government produce a functional analysis of a high-impact system from qualitative and quantitative impact, risk assessment, transparency and safeguards perspectives.

It's further recommended that distinctions be made between artificial intelligence research and development for research purposes only and artificial intelligence that is implemented into the public domain for commercial or other purposes. What I would not want to see come out of our AIDA legislation is that we have some sort of brake on research in artificial intelligence.

We are vulnerable and our allies are vulnerable to other international actors that are at the forefront of research in artificial intelligence. We should not have anything in our legislation to break that. However, we should protect the public when artificial intelligence products are rolled out to the public domain, and ensure that we are protected. I think that's a distinction that is missing in the discussion, and it's very important that we advance that.

Those are my submissions.

Thank you.

[François Joli-Cœur, Partner, Borden Ladner Gervais, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

Thank you for inviting me. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to share my thoughts on Bill C‑27 with the committee.

I am a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais, BLG, and a member of the privacy practice group. I am also the national lead of BLG's artificial intelligence, AI, group. I am appearing today as an individual.

My remarks will focus on the AI provisions in the bill, in both the artificial intelligence and data act, or AIDA, and the consumer privacy protection act, or CPPA.

To start, I want to say how important it is to modernize the federal privacy regime, something Quebec, the European Union and some of the world's largest economies have done recently.

I commend the government's commitment to AI legislation. In spite of the criticisms against AIDA, the bill has the advantage of putting forward a flexible approach. Nevertheless, some key concepts should be provided for in the act, instead of in the regulations. Furthermore, it is imperative that the government consult extensively on the regulations that flow from AIDA.

The first point I want to make has to do with the anonymized data in the CPPA. The use of anonymized personal information is an important building block for AI models, and excluding anonymized information from coverage by the act will allow Canadian businesses to keep innovating.

The definition of anonymization should, however, be more flexible and include a reasonableness standard, as other individuals and groups have recommended. That would bring the definition in line with those in other national and international laws, including recent amendments to Quebec's regime.

The CPPA should explicitly state that organizations can use an individual's personal information without their consent to anonymize the information, as is the case for de‑identified information.

Lastly, AIDA includes references to anonymized data, but it isn't defined in the act. The two acts should be consistent. AIDA, for instance, could refer to the definition of “anonymize” set out in the CPPA.

The second point I want to make concerns another concept in the CPPA, automated decisions. Like most modern privacy laws, the proposed act includes provisions on automated decisions. On request by an individual, organizations would be required to provide an explanation of the organization’s use of any automated decision system to make predictions, recommendations or decisions about individuals that could have a significant impact on them.

An automated decision system is defined as any technology that assists or replaces the judgment of human decision-makers. The definition should be amended to capture only systems with no human intervention at all. That would save organizations the heavy burden of having to identify all of their decision support systems and introduce processes to explain how those systems work, even when the final decision is made by a human. Such a change would increase the act's interoperability with Quebec's regime and the European Union's, which is based on the general data protection regulation.

Turning to AIDA, I want to draw your attention to high-impact systems. The act should include a definition of those systems. Since most of the obligations set out in the act flow from that designation, it's not appropriate for the term to be wholly defined in the regulations. The definition should include a contextual factor, specifically, the risk of harm caused by the system. For example, it could take into account whether the system posed a risk of harm to health and safety or a risk of an adverse impact on fundamental rights. That factor could be combined with the classes of systems that would be considered high-impact systems, as set out in the act.

Including a list of classes of systems that would de facto be considered high-impact systems, as the minister proposed in his letter, could capture too many systems, including those that pose moderate risk.

My last point concerns general purpose AI systems. In his letter, the minister proposed specific obligations for generative AI and other such systems. While generative AI has become wildly popular in the past year, regulating a specific type of AI system could render the act obsolete sooner.

Not all general purpose AI systems pose the same degree of risk, so it would be more appropriate to regulate them as high-impact systems when they meet the criteria to be designated as such.

Thank you very much. I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

[Alexander Jarvie, Partner, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation to share my thoughts on Bill C-27 with the committee.

I am a partner at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, practising as a lawyer in the firm’s technology group. I am appearing today in a personal capacity, presenting my own views.

Recent years have seen significant technological developments related to machine learning. In part, these have come to pass because of another relatively recent development, namely, the vast amount of information, including personal information, that is now generated by our activities and circulates in our economy and our society. Together, these developments hold great promise for future innovation, but they also carry significant risks, such as risks to privacy, risks of bias or discrimination and risks relating to other harms.

I am, therefore, encouraged that a bill has been introduced that seeks to address these risks while supporting innovation. I will begin by making some remarks on the proposed consumer privacy protection act, CPPA, and by suggesting changes to certain provisions of the bill that could better support innovation involving machine learning while introducing important guardrails. I will then share some observations in relation to the proposed artificial intelligence and data act, AIDA.

In my view, there could be improvements made to the CPPA consent exception framework that would facilitate personal information exchange among, and collection by, private sector actors that wish to undertake socially beneficial projects, study or research. In particular, proposed sections 35, 39 and, in part, 51 could be combined and generalized so as to permit private sector actors to disclose and exchange personal information or to collect information from the public Internet for those purposes, study or research, provided that certain conditions are fulfilled.

Those could include conducting a privacy impact assessment, entering into an agreement containing relevant contractual assurances where applicable, and providing notice to the commissioner prior to the disclosure or collection. Noting that de-identified data is sufficient for the training of machine learning models in many cases and noting that de-identification is a requirement in proposed section 39, as currently drafted, but not in proposed section 35, I would note only that whether the information should be de-identified in a given case should be a factor in the proposed privacy impact assessment.

Suitably crafted, these changes could provide material but appropriately circumscribed support for section 21 of the proposed CPPA, which permits the use of personal information that has been de-identified for internal research and analysis purposes, and for proposed subsection 18(3), which permits use of personal information in its native form for legitimate interests, provided that an assessment has been undertaken.

With respect to the AIDA, I begin with the definition of the term “artificial intelligence system”. This definition is of fundamental importance, given that the entire scope of the act depends upon it. The current definition risks being overbroad. The minister’s letter proposes to provide better interoperability by introducing a definition that seeks to align with a definition used by the OECD, but the text provided differs from the OECD formulation and introduces the word “inference” in a suboptimal way. We also do not have the final wording.

There are also different definitions to consider in other instruments, including the European Union’s proposed AI act, the recent U.S. President’s executive order, and the NIST AI risk management framework, among others. Some of these do converge on the OECD’s definition, but in each case the wording differs.

I would recommend to the committee—or, at least, I would urge the committee—when it begins clause-by-clause review, to make a survey of existing definitions to determine the state of the art and to ensure that the definition ultimately chosen indeed maximizes interoperability yet also remains extensible to account for new techniques or technologies.

I would also recommend that the purpose clause of the AIDA, as well as other relevant provisions, be amended to include harms to groups and communities, as these may also be adversely affected by the decisions, recommendations or predictions of AI systems.

Finally, there should be an independent artificial intelligence and data commissioner. The companion document to the AIDA notes that the model whereby the regulator would be a departmental official was chosen in consideration of a number of factors, including the objectives of the regulatory scheme. However, since the scope of what is being left to regulation is so extensive, the creation of an independent regulator to administer and enforce the AIDA will counterbalance skepticism concerning the relative lack of parliamentary oversight and thereby help to instill trust in the overall regulatory scheme.

I will submit a brief for consideration by the committee, elaborating on the matters raised here. Machine learning technologies are poised to play a significant role in future innovation. Through legislation, we can achieve meaningful support for this potential while providing effective protections for individuals, groups and society.

Thank you for your attention. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 96 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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’d like to welcome our witnesses today: Alexander Max Jarvie, partner, Davies Ward Phillips and Vineberg LLP; François Joli-Coeur, partner, Borden Ladner Gervais; Scott Lamb, partner, Clark Wilson LLP; Carole Piovesan, co‑founder and partner, INQ Law; and David Young, principal, privacy and regulatory counsel, David Young Law.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you again for joining us this afternoon.

Without further ado, I yield the floor to Mr. Jarvie for five minutes.

National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act

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

Madam Speaker, I will agree with my colleague from Winnipeg North that our provinces have something in common. I dream of the day when I can go to a Nordiques game in Winnipeg. There is a lot of sharing that we could do.

The economy is changing. I think the member for Winnipeg North would be welcome on the committee because the points he has raised would be very useful around the table. I would like to see him get out of the House sometimes, get his hands dirty, and present these amendments in committee.

I feel that the government has indeed done a diligent job, but within the limits imposed on us by the shackles of Bill C‑34. The law needed to be modernized to meet the realities of a new economy.

Right now, the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology is examining Bill C-27. I think everyone agrees on the fundamental aspect of data protection for all Quebeckers and Canadians, and especially for children. However, when it comes to developing AI and protecting our cultural sovereignty—and here I am thinking in particular of Quebec's cultural sovereignty, our French language and our accent, which CBC values so much—we definitely need to modernize this law and go even further. This is also important for protecting our start-ups and emerging companies that have patents and those that are working on and developing AI. We have some very painstaking work to do. I thank the government for its collaboration on Bill C-34.

[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—

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

In support of what Dr. Ellis said, I think it's really important to have the minister here, because ultimately he was the person who had to sign off as the minister—he's been the minister for 34 months—on these contracts. Officials would have made the recommendations. He's ultimately accountable for the $150 million that's being paid out now to the contract. He's accountable for the $223 million that was committed to go in. While the Minister of Health has a role in the process of whether or not the vaccine works, the industry minister is the one who had to fund it.

Officials aren't accountable for the dollars. Ultimately, it's the minister. I would encourage members to please keep the industry minister there. We won't have a chance, as I said, to look at this in the industry committee. We're going to be dealing with PIPEDA and Bill C-27 until February or March.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for indulging me as an associate member of this committee.

My normal role, besides sitting with Mr. Hanley on fisheries, is as vice-chair of the industry committee. I've had a motion for a study on Medicago on the industry committee since the spring, but legislation takes precedence. We were dealing with Bill C-34 on the Investment Canada Act changes and Bill C-27, the privacy and artificial intelligence bill, so we've not had a chance to get to the motion.

That is why I think the motion here before the committee is so important. The industry committee did an examination, initially—it was tabled in June, since it was started in the last Parliament—of the response to COVID-19 in terms of vaccines, as, I believe, this committee did. I believe there are not only minister of health issues with regard to this study but also a large industry role. Unfortunately, the industry committee doesn't have time to discuss it.

You will note, in the appendix of the report tabled in the House on June 14 by the industry committee, that an agreement with Medicago was signed on October 23, 2020, to purchase up to 76 million doses of the vaccine. This is a vaccine Health Canada had approved and to which the government initially committed. It was up to $223 million through a couple of funds, in order to develop a non-mRNA vaccine, a plant-based vaccine, which they successfully did. I think it got Health Canada approval.

The committee needs to study it for various reasons. It's not clear to us why not a single vaccine was produced, and why that contract was signed for 76 million. A great deal of provincial and federal government money went into creating that vaccine plant in Quebec City 10 years or so ago, in order to produce vaccines. My understanding, from everything I've seen, read and heard, is that, in this case, it was a successful vaccine with a fairly high efficacy rate.

This investment was made and seems to have not gone anywhere, mainly because the World Health Organization has a policy not to endorse products produced by companies that have any kind of tobacco manufacturing involvement. I think Philip Morris had 40% ownership, with Mitsubishi having the remainder. I'd love to ask both the health minister and the industry minister this: Why would you sign such a contract or even invest up to $223 million of taxpayer money to develop a vaccine with a company that you knew the WHO would not endorse for promotion around the world? This would leave it, essentially, a Canadian domestic market vaccine. I think there are a lot of questions to ask around that and the thinking leading up to it.

We know the thinking was about trying to develop, as MP Thériault said, domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity. A lot of money was going into it, at a very intense time in the world and in this country. In choosing to make it with this particular company, it looked to me like it was doomed to failure regarding its ability to, even if successful, be a vaccine acquired by other countries. That would ultimately be the goal in addition to our own use. Without a WHO “good housekeeping” seal of approval, it was unlikely to have any success in its sales.

In business, we call it a “sunk cost”; once it's done, you can't get it back. In this case, the sunk cost is in, so let's buy some of the vaccines and contract with it.

An incredible amount of taxpayer money went into this. Where are the patents? Who owns the patents? Where have they gone?

The inability of this organization, for whatever reason, to produce the vaccines in this plant that was set up, where 400 people worked, looked like it had a ray of light in December last year, when Mitsubishi bought out Philip Morris.

When that happened, I thought, okay, this is good news. Maybe this great taxpayer-funded vaccine can be produced and marketed around the world, now that it no longer has a tobacco company ownership structure. There are rumours out there of what Mitsubishi paid for that. Some have said it's as low as about $14 million, which is incredible, given that it had almost $200 million of federal taxpayer money with patents on a successful vaccine.

Nonetheless, we all lead a public, elected life. We're all optimists by nature, or we wouldn't be doing this job. I think we held out hope that somehow, it would be seen as a step forward.

Lo and behold, what happened six weeks later? Six weeks later, Mitsubishi shut the company down, threw 400 people in Quebec out of work—after all of that taxpayer money—and then started this dance of the questions that we started to ask.

What's happened? There's a contract to produce up to 76 million vaccines. I believe the cost was $20 per vaccine, so what are we on the hook for as a country, to pay for a vaccine that was never produced? Where did all that investment in that IP go?

I suspect we don't know the answers to that or whether or not Mitsubishi has chosen to actually sell the Canadian-financed patents for a plant-based COVID vaccine somewhere in the world. We don't know that. We haven't had it before this committee and we haven't had it before the industry committee. This committee has the opportunity, perhaps, with its agenda to do that, which we don't in the industry committee. I would be urging members to take a look at that, because it seems to me there are at least two flaws in this process.

The first flaw is that there wasn't any protection of Canadian taxpayers when $200 million was committed in a contract to develop the vaccine in the first place. There were no issues around the taxpayers' claim on the patents if something went south.

Somehow, as the financier of this, either through university-owned patents or through the rights of the granting councils through the SIF program—or whichever ISED program paid for this, because I believe the money came out of ISED—we were obviously so poor at negotiating contracts that we didn't get an ownership stake in that or any protection for the taxpayer if, for example.... They must have known going in that it would have had trouble being marketed because of the Philip Morris ownership. There wasn't some protection for the taxpayer from that company in the contract to give us the money back from Philip Morris and Mitsubishi for the investment or, in the case of the situation that arose, the fact that the taxpayer would actually own the patents so that they couldn't leave this country and couldn't be sold by a foreign multinational. However, it appears that's the situation we're in.

If that wasn't bad enough, obviously, the cancellation clauses were non-existent in the contract to buy the 76 million doses of the vaccine that were never produced, because we are now on the hook for another $150 million for something that was never made. It's thin air, it's vapour, it's nothing. It's $150 million for not even an empty vial.

There was $200 million that went into developing the vaccine and $150 million for absolutely nothing. Some 400 people in Quebec City are out of work, and Mitsubishi gets to walk away with all of the patents and all of the potential to sell them for the small price of a few million dollars buying out Philip Morris.

That's the way it appears. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe the witnesses could actually shed some light on these contracts. Maybe officials could explain to us why they signed contracts that appear to leave the Canadian taxpayer with nothing but the bill and leave a Japanese company with an innovative Canadian patented technology.

Again, because we don't have the ability to do this in Industry, we would like to get this committee to examine these things. That's why Dr. Ellis put forward the motion in the first place. I would urge that our committee members not only vote on the amendment as amended. I think that we need not limit ourselves to four meetings or six meetings. I think you have to follow the evidence and then get to the main motion so that the committee gets this on the agenda.

That's my opening. I'll leave it at that for members to consider. The numbers add up to quite a large loss to the Canadian taxpayer. To me, it's a bit of a scandal. I hope it's not. I hope we can actually get those patents back.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Prof. Fenwick McKelvey]

I would say two things briefly. Bill C-27 builds in large exemptions for what types of data can be collected, so if it is anonymized or for legitimate business purposes. I feel like that actually warrants more consideration of what that entails and of the potential impacts it has on workers.

The second part is that, really, what these exemptions do is.... They are backstopped by AIDA—the artificial intelligence and data act, which is at the end—which really causes some notable concerns because it's putting a lot of the investigative powers in a loosely defined data commissioner role. I actually feel as though part of the task, ahead of the legislative agenda, is changing it from AI to being simply a matter of an economic strategy, and also thinking about ways of mitigating its potential negative and positive social impacts.

Yes, I think some ways of addressing how this impacts labour and trying to make sure that there is targeted legislation would be a boon, because I think this is not something that is going to be addressed by an omnibus bill.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

My question is for Mr. McKelvey.

You mentioned Bill C-27 quite a bit. It's quite extensive. I'm wondering if you think that the labour portion, the workers portion, of artificial intelligence should have its own stand-alone legislation or if you think workers will be duly protected in Bill C-27.

[Prof. Fenwick McKelvey]

First, there is a need to consider this around Bill C-27 and the ways in which we're trying to understand privacy and data. Partially what is really important now is recognizing our data power. What AI demonstrates is that there's power in collecting large amounts of data. You can now mobilize it. Really, it's trying to think about privacy law and data as bigger than the traditional concerns about personal information. That's an important broader shift that we've been witnessing, but it just hits it home.

I think the second thing is then trying to understand these uneven and disparate impacts. Certainly we're going to hear ample evidence about the benefits of artificial intelligence. I think it's incumbent on the government to understand and protect those marginalized and precarious workers who might be on the outside of those benefits.

That's certainly part of what's going on with generative AI. We're trying to understand a different class. That's why there's so much attention right now. It's a different class of workers, typically white-collar creative workers, who are potentially now facing greater competition from automated solutions. That's not to say that the effects are going to be easy to predict, but it's also saying that we're seeing a marked shift. That needs to be taken into consideration in how we're going to understand this relationship with AI and the labour market.

Finally, it's to ensure that we are making sure that we have strong protections for workers and making sure that this is something that we value as a society and part of how we frame our legislative agenda.

[Prof. Fenwick McKelvey]

Yes, I've been able to review it briefly, but not in complete depth. I'd say that it certainly demonstrates the clear gaps that I see in Canada's approach to the artificial intelligence and data act. You see much more fulsome treatment of potential harms and willingness to engage in the sector-specific issues around artificial intelligence. I think it's a document worth studying just to demonstrate the complexity of the challenges facing regulators and legislators...and then in comparison to AIDA.

I would agree with Dr. Frank that there is probably a need for a harmonized approach. Canada is quite active in that to some degree, whether it's participating in a global partnership on AI or in some of its bilateral agreements with France or the United Kingdom. I think there is a debate that Canada is going to have to position itself where it's at least working—and I know there are efforts to talk about treaties with the EU around AI—in parallel with the United States.

The one thing I would say is that with Bill C-27 and Quebec's Law 25, I think there is a big test about GDPR compliance. Really, what should be front and centre when we are talking about our legislative agenda for AI is understanding it in relationship to the movement that's happening in Europe around the AI act, and I think to a lesser degree with the United States, although I commend what that order has been able to accomplish.

[Prof. Fenwick McKelvey]

First, some of my comments were also drawn from the forum for AI presentation in Montreal and some of the panel discussions around labour. I actually think it is important to recognize the differences in Quebec's leadership on addressing the social impacts of artificial intelligence. That was an important milestone in trying to push an agenda of trying to think about AI as not simply economic policy but also as social policy.

The challenge, presently, with Bill C-27 is that it's complex enough in itself, and then there is the added AIDA amendment. It's a really challenging moment to make very important legislation work, so having more eyes on it, particularly attention from your committee on the labour impacts of Bill C-27, would be welcome.

Given the time that this committee will have to investigate the multitude of changes, I don't think there is going to be enough time to address those effectively. This is an important way of coordinating AI policy across the government, which in my own research I found lacking.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses.

I was pleased to see Quebec hosting an important forum on framing artificial intelligence last week, with a number of players in attendance. Even though the data is lacking, we're starting to see some interesting impact studies. I wanted to point that out.

My first question is for you, Mr. McKelvey.

In your speech, you talked about Bill C‑27. I should point out that our committee is not studying this bill. Another committee is studying it. One of my colleagues told me that the committee had only reached data protection in its study of the bill. Therefore, the committee hasn't yet gotten into the real challenges posed by artificial intelligence.

You have made us aware that the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities could study the effects of Bill C‑27. In your opinion, should the two committees do it simultaneously rather than one after the other? Can you tell us more about that?

[Professor Fenwick McKelvey, Associate Professor, Information and Communication Technology Policy, Concordia University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak here today.

I'm an associate professor in information and communication technology policy at Concordia University. My research addresses the intersection of algorithms and AI in relation to technology policy. I submit these comments today in my professional capacity, representing my views alone.

I'm speaking from the unceded indigenous lands of Tiohtià:ke or Montreal. The Kanienkehaka nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters from which I join you today.

I want to begin by connecting this study to the broader legislative agenda and then providing some specific comments about the connections between foundational models trained off public data or other large datasets and the growing concentration in the AI industry.

Canada is presently undergoing major changes to its federal data and privacy law through C-27, which grants greater exemptions for data collection as classified for legitimate business purposes. These exemptions enable greater use of machine learning and other data-dependent classes of AI technologies, putting tremendous pressure on a late amendment, the artificial intelligence and data act, to mitigate high-risk applications and plausible harms. Labour, automation, workers' privacy and data rights should be important considerations for this bill as seen in the U.S. AI executive order. I would encourage this committee to study the effects of C-27 on workplace privacy and the consequences of a more permissive data environment.

As for the relationship between labour and artificial intelligence, I wish to make three major observations based on my review of the literature, and a few recommendations. First, AI will affect the labour force, and these effects will be unevenly distributed. Second, AI's effects are not simply about automation but about the quality of work. Third, the current arrangement of AI is concentrating power in a few technology firms.

I grew up in St. John, New Brunswick, under the shadow of global supply chains and a changing workforce. My friends all worked in call centres. Now these same jobs will be automated by chatbots, or at least assisted through generative AI. My own research has shown that a driving theme in discussing AI in telecommunication services focuses on automating customer contact.

I begin with call centres because, as we know through the work of Dr. Enda Brophy, that work is “female, precarious, and mobile.” The example serves as an important reminder that AI's effects may further marginalize workers targeted for automation.

AI's effects seem to already be affecting precarious outsourced workers, according to reporting from Rest of World. Understanding the intersectional effects of AI is critical to understanding its impact on workforce. We are only beginning to see how Canada will fit into these global shifts and how Canada might export more precarious jobs abroad as well as find new sources of job growth across its regions and sectors.

Finally, workers are increasingly finding themselves subjected to algorithmic management. Combined with a growing turn toward workplace surveillance, as being studied by Dr. Adam Molnar, there is an urgent need to understand and protect workers from invasive data-gathering that might reduce their workplace autonomy or even train less skilled workers or automated replacements. According to the OECD, workers subjected to algorithmic management have a larger reported feeling of a loss of autonomy.

All the promises of AI hinge on being able to do work more efficiently, but who benefits from this efficiency? OECD studies have found that “AI may also lead to a higher pace and intensity of work”. The impact seems obvious and well established by past studies of technology like the BlackBerry, which shifted workplace expectations and encouraged an always-on expectation of the worker. Other research suggests that AI has the biggest benefits for new employees. The presumed benefit is that this enables workers to make a contribution more quickly, but the risk is that AI contributes to a devaluing or deskilling of workers. These emphasize the need to consider AI's effects not just on jobs but on the quality of work itself.

The introduction of generative AI marks a change in how important office suites like Microsoft Office, Google Docs and Adobe Creative Cloud function in the workplace. My final comment here is less about AI's particular configuration now, but instead about a growing reliance on a few technology platforms that have become critical infrastructure for workplace productivity and are rapidly integrating generative AI functions. AI might lock in these firms' market power as their access to data and cloud computing might make it difficult to compete, as well as for workers to opt out of these products and services. Past examples demonstrate that communication technology favours monopolies without open standards or efforts to decentralize power.

I am happy to discuss remedies and solutions in the question and answer period, but I encourage the committee to do a few things.

One, investigate better protection of workers and workers' rights, including greater data protection and safeguards and enforcement against invasive workplace surveillance, especially to ensure workers can't train themselves out of a job.

Two, consider arbitration and greater support in bargaining power, especially for contracts between independent contractors and large technology firms.

Three, ensure that efficiency benefits are fairly distributed, such as considering a four-day workweek, raising minimum wage and ensuring a right to disconnect.

Thank you for the time and the opportunity to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Then I will call for a vote.

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 7; nays 4)

We're still under Standing Order 106(4), even though the motion has been adopted to conduct this study.

As per the notice that I've sent and for which I've received absolutely no objection to by any member here, we were supposed to have one hour. Mr. Perkins told me that the 106(4) would take one hour. Then the rest would be committee business. I sent notice for the subcommittee to meet to discuss the rest of C-27 and how we would go forward with C-27.

Are we in agreement to adjourn the meeting and go to the subcommittee?

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

The clerk is just getting a proposed amendment to the main motion, which, essentially, changes the beginning part where it says two meetings. I don't think we want to hold separate meetings outside of this. It changes it to six hours over six meetings concurrent with Bill C-27, beginning on November 14.

The amendment is coming. You can always make amendments to the main motion.

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

Mr. Chair, I think we can all agree that we want to stand up for the whistle-blowers. I think we can all agree that ethics is doing its job with conflict of interest breaches. Our job is to look at the program and the misuse of $150 million so far.

I think the way we're looking at it is that it has to be six hours because of the workers, because of the people who step forward, because of the whistle-blowers. We have to put that time in for them. Hopefully, we get the six meetings. I think that's important. If you look at the calendar, that will only take us to the break. It kind of fits within the schedule. It just means that the committee has to do three hours instead of two for six meetings. I don't think that's out of line. I think that still allows us to do Bill C-27. At the same time, it does the important work that this seems to be. I think six hours is even pretty low. That would only be three normal meetings.

I think we'll probably go against that amendment, just to make sure it is six. It needs to be six hours for the workers. I think that's just fair to them. They put a lot of work into these documents. I can tell you from past experience that any staff who puts their livelihood, quite frankly, on the line to be a whistle-blower has to be commended and protected. We also need to be doing work on their behalf.

Lastly, this is the committee. This minister is responsible to this committee and this committee only, so we should be studying that here—and thoroughly. That's what I think we intended with the first motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

There are a couple of things that come to mind.

First of all, it's not unusual for a same subject to be going concurrently through different committees, including this committee, because it is so overlapping. There are plenty of examples of that.

I was there, because Matthew was actually out of the country, so I happened to be the person who could fill in for him, and it worked out that way.

I'm not willing to cede this responsibility and the workers' lives, basically, to the ethics committee, when we're actually directly responsible for that agency in this chamber right here. I'm not willing to pass that up.

Ethics had its own thing going on. In fact, the meeting had to be suspended. Because of the conduct of certain members, the chair actually had to suspend the meeting. We don't have that problem here—thank goodness, Mr. Chair—but that's what actually took place at ethics. We had to actually cease operations because of the conduct of members there.

To me it's about my doing my job. Also, there's going to be a legislative change. The minister said we can't change the legislation, when the reality is that we can actually change it. If we change the legislation under this framework, it would come from this committee. It would come as a recommendation. It wouldn't come from ethics to change the legislation there, because it's a different set of responsibilities.

I'm not going to let those families down. I'm going to do what I have to do here to make sure that they are actually going to get the proper supports necessary, because they have to go in, again, every single day as this continues to go on, whether it's in public or behind the curtain. If it's not going to be behind the curtain, then I want to make sure that it's going to be done by members of this committee.

This issue was also brought up at science where it was turned down. This issue might go to environment. It might go to other committees. I know it's been shopped around quite a bit.

The bottom line is that I also don't want to have the professional public embarrassment of being part of a committee that turns its back on the responsibility we're mandated to do by virtue of being on this committee. That's what's being asked here—for us to actually turn our backs on our responsibilities and, just because it's convenient to let ethics do their own thing, we don't do our job here. That's critically important to understand.

I understand the importance of Bill C-27, but very few times has a committee basically stopped the sun and the earth from moving and put itself in a position where it can't do anything else, because of a bill.

By the way, the government never brought that bill into the chamber for the longest time, despite being urged to do so. On top of that, we had the minister here and a whole drama that continues to go on with amendments. It's actually led to a public campaign—if you check your emails right now—of people calling on us to stop Bill C-27. That's actually coming not just from ordinary citizens but from NGOs, the academic community and a whole host of different things. It's turned into a giant mess.

What I do know is that the individuals here in this issue are in our wheelhouse. I'm not willing to cede that. I'm not willing to cede that to the ethics committee, to the environment committee or to science committee. To me, it's very important that we do something on this, and for me it's about protecting the whistle-blowers and the workers. If we don't do anything and ethics muddles on this, those workers then have to wait for us to come back and revisit this to try to find another way back to the issue.

I really worry about that for their mental health and the way that they have to deal with this going to work every single day. In ethics they actually debated.... I had an amendment to give the chair some grace to scheduling when the whistle-blowers would come forward, because there were only two dates presented originally at that time. I amended that to give the chair more flexibility, because given my experience here, when you have that flexibility.... They only have one week. If something happens with the whistle-blowers...and it could be things that we don't imagine, where things at work turn because of all these public things that are going on right now and it becomes a different environment than is currently there.

For me, I don't want to let this be dragged out any further, but I also want to make sure that we don't end up basically passively supporting the lengthening of the duration of this, just because we don't do our jobs here, because we're willing to brush it off to ethics. It's a totally different environment.

I'm okay with the four or six hours, as long as we don't.... I'll be quite frank. If we have to do more for the workers, I'll be the one out there putting motions forward to actually increase the hearings. I'd rather not delay Bill C-27. I'd like to do whatever we can to keep going on that, despite all the failings of it, but don't use it as a shield to basically say we won't do our job here.

I'll support the time changes in the amendment to start, but I'll be the first to ask for more time, if necessary, to actually get to the bottom of this if we don't get protection for the workers.

That's what I want from the government. They have done some good things. The minister has done some positive things, but we still don't protect them, because we chose as Parliament to make them vulnerable to the situation. By the way, these boards and the CEO and the ones who have been.... These are political appointee positions.

That's kind of where I see things going. I appreciate that, and I'll end it there.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

My intention is to avoid duplicating the work, for one, and, for another, to use our time wisely to study Bill C‑27 and to hear from witnesses.

Just as an aside, Mr. Chair, I'd like to share part of the actual definition of our committee: “The Standing Committee on Industry and Technology studies and reports on legislation, the activities and spending of Industry Canada and its portfolio members,” among other things.

Today's topic of discussion is squarely within our committee's purview. It is the very essence of our committee. The minister should be speaking to us. I think we need to demonstrate that diligence. However, if someone else does it, I think we can pick up where they leave off, take things a little further, and deal with issues relating to Industry Canada spending.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My sympathies to the translator who has a bad cold, it sounds like. I have been grappling with it for a couple of weeks. Hopefully you will deal with yours more quickly.

On the amendment, on the number of hours, I was trying to provide the committee with a couple of different options. Either we do separate meetings, or we just tag them on. The six meetings I was proposing were six meetings of an additional hour added to each of the existing Bill C-27 meetings. It's about six hours, which is not far off of what I think Mr. Lemire is proposing.

MP Turnbull, in response to the issue of delay, it's not a delay if it's an hour on the end of the existing meetings that we're already having on Bill C-27. I haven't proposed that we stop anything at all on Bill C-27. I agree with you, and I think we're all in agreement, that there's a need to do a thorough examination of what's been, so far, very fascinating testimony from witnesses on that important bill.

In terms of what's not clear to me, first of all, I don't think it's the same work as the ethics committee is doing. I attended just out of general interest. I wasn't invited to go. I just showed up to listen and see what the minister had to say. The line of questioning that I want to ask the minister about is very different from what the members of our side did on the ethics committee. Our work and our responsibility with regard to the estimates and the public accounting of the industry department and all of the billions of dollars it expends each year are different from the ethics committee's, so I think our look at it is a little different.

With regard to the amendment that's here, the only thing that I'm really concerned about is that I'm not clear on when we would start. I believe that we need to have the minister. I believe we need to have the chair. I believe we need to have the president of the SDTC, and I'm not sure that we can hold off to figure out what ethics is doing with the whistle-blowers. I don't even know if the whistle-blowers will agree to attend any committee, because the nature of whistle-blowing is that it's quiet and behind the scenes.

I think we can start our own work, which probably, given this timing since we're coming up to a constituency week next week, would probably not start until we return from the constituency break. I'm not suggesting that it would start this Thursday, and then we're on a riding break. It would probably be two weeks today, I guess, before we would start—at the end of that meeting.

Initially, my thought is that I would probably vote against this amendment if it means that we have to wait until the ethics committee has gone through a number of its witnesses before we do anything. I don't think we can wait. I think we need to get at it, start making the decisions and invite the minister and officials to come to the first meeting when we return from the constituency break, obviously pending his availability. He has a busy travel schedule.

I would think that we could do that, and we would do it over, let's say, six hours in six meetings for now. I think we can get what we need to get done. If there's a way to mash Mr. Lemire's motion together with ours to make sure that's clear, I just provided two options. We can do separate meetings, or we could do it at the end. I understand why it might have been a little confusing about which way to go. My personal preference is not to schedule more meetings. It's to add an hour on to each of the existing meetings we have and certainly not to substitute it for the work that we're already doing on Bill C-27.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

It's okay. I appreciate that, Chair.

The point is this: If another committee or multiple other committees are doing this work, what is the need for this committee to have an emergency meeting to undertake this very same work, which is happening in other committees?

That's what I see, and I am not saying that this isn't an important issue, by the way. I agree that it's important, but why would we have three committees doing the same work in parallel? That seems like a waste of resources and time, and we have important government legislation that everybody has said is very important.

I would say that those are the key points I want to put on the record.

One other thing that I didn't mention is that the redacted report has been provided to committee members at the other committee, I believe at ethics, so they have a redacted copy of the report that has only confidential information taken out. That report has been made available to those committee members.

Key for me is how we ensure that we're not duplicating efforts, because I think we all agree that our time is valuable and that we want to do useful work. This study is being undertaken at ethics, which seems to me to be the most appropriate place for it to happen, to be honest. If members are talking about conflicts of interest, that relates to the ethics committee's work. It seems to me that we don't need three studies going on in parallel.

Maybe others want to comment on that, but I would say that I do appreciate Mr. Lemire's attempts at amending the motion, because I think it would hopefully enable us to alleviate delaying our work on Bill C-27, which I appreciate very much.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I can get you evidence of that if you dispute that, but that's my understanding.

There are two other committees at least that are looking into this, so I am wondering why it is that our committee.... I understand that as many committees as desire to do so can do this work, but, to me, we have important government legislation, Bill C-27, which we have all said is a priority for our country. It's legislation that hasn't been updated in 20 years, so I think we all agree that it's a high priority.

What are we trying to accomplish here by having another committee do the very same work that two other committees are already undertaking in Parliament?

What I would say is that this feels like there is a lot already being done. The government has been very transparent, open, diligent and willing to co-operate with the Auditor General, and it takes the matter seriously. We've said numerous times in the House of Commons.... I've answered many questions about this in the last few weeks and said that we really take the federal agencies and the standards of governance they uphold seriously and that they need to be held to the highest standard and held to account. We think, from our perspective, that we're doing that.

This feels like a bit of a delay tactic for Bill C-27. That's what I am going to say, because, for me, what is it that this committee is going to do over and above those other two committees that have already started to undertake this work? They've heard from key witnesses. Members from this committee have gone over and subbed in and participated in the ethics committee, just as of last night.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Perkins for requesting this meeting. In the interest of transparency, I should add that I would have been happy to add my name to the request had the French version been made available to me earlier. That would have made three parties and six members requesting this meeting to address a worrisome situation involving the use of public funds.

I support what my colleague said about protecting whistle-blowers. That is a crucial aspect of our democracy.

I'd like to propose an amendment to the motion. First, I'd like to suggest that we have two meetings, not six. If they are short, one-hour meetings, we can compromise. However, in the interest of saving time given our very full agenda with our study of Bill C‑27, I suggest changing the wording.

Instead of directing the committee to invite specific witnesses, we could propose that all information obtained in Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics meetings on this matter be shared with the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, including past and future testimony and, in particular, that of Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Mr. François‑Philippe Champagne. I would leave the other four points unchanged.

We can give ourselves the option of inviting witnesses back as needed and inviting any other relevant witness so we don't have to invite them all. The meeting could take place after the whistle-blowers testify at INDU so we can get the supplementary and complementary information that will make our study even more comprehensive because I think our committee is in the best position to study this kind of motion.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, committee members.

Maybe I could do a quick outline. This company, the SDTC, is actually set up at arm's length, as we know, from the government. It's not like a Crown corporation. It's a separate foundation that was set up in 2001.

About 10 or 12 years ago, it was a bit of a mess. The government of the day changed the board and brought in a board chair to clean it up, who hired a new president to try to clean it up, and it got a gold star from the Auditor General in 2017 for governance. In 2019, on a week's notice, the former minister of industry changed the board chair to the current chair, as well as a couple of members. The result of that was a restructuring of a number of the funds and the investment processes.

Now, in my view, the current chair should never have been appointed. She had a conflict of interest going into it in that SDTC had given her company a $9.5-million grant, which had to have continued follow-up from the company. This set a different tone for the organization about conflicts of interest.

As a result of that, a number of whistle-blowers came to the minister and to the Privy Council Office in January to outline a whole series of questionable transactions and relationships between the board and a number of the companies. It wasn't only companies receiving grants from this organization, but also companies that were hired from the outside to do evaluations of each grant proposal and their questionable relationships with board members.

As we know, when you sit on a corporate board—I've sat on private and Crown corporation boards—it's not just about a real conflict of interest; it's about the perceived conflicts of interest. Those are just as important in our business as well. It appears, from what has been reported on by whistle-blowers, that there are many instances not only of conflicts but of restructuring the funds outside of the mandate letter or the mandate agreement they have with the government.

The Liberal government, 35 months ago, gave this organization $750 million more of taxpayer money. The current minister became the minister one month after that, so he's been overseeing this organization for 34 months, yet was totally unaware of the governance changes and the investment process changes in this organization, to which his ministry had just given three-quarters of a billion dollars of taxpayer money.

The result of those whistle-blower comments.... I'll outline that those whistle-blowers are doing something unusual, because they're not protected by government whistle-blower policy, which is an issue. They have come out and put themselves on the line. They are not protected by the Government of Canada's whistle-blower policies.

Because these conflicts are so egregious, as the committee that's responsible for the reporting of the operations of the industry department—otherwise known as ISED—the minister, all its Crown corporations, its agencies and its financial estimates, which includes the financial accounting and public accounts of the expenditures of ISED and all its organizations, including SDTC, we need to take a look at this now.

It is true that the current minister, upon receiving this, asked for what is called a fact-finding report from Grant Thornton, which has been presented. A very narrow mandate was given to it. It was much narrower than the accusations that were made.

However, we also know from the media last week that a number of senior ISED officials called this the greatest scandal of taxpayer money we have had in the government—it may be $100 million or more of taxpayer money allocated in a conflict—since the sponsorship scandal of the Chrétien government.

I believe it's incumbent upon this committee to examine, as is our responsibility to Parliament, the expenditures, processes and impacts of all these management and governance changes at this organization for which the industry department is accountable.

I understand, Mr. Chair, that this requires a motion, which I would like to put forward now. I think the clerk has copies, if she would like to distribute them.

I can read this, and then we'll presumably have a bit of a discussion here in the committee about it.

I move that, in relation to the recent investigation and report on Sustainable Development Technology Canada, otherwise known as SDTC, showing a breach in conflict-of-interest rules and misuse of public funds, the committee undertake a study of up to six meetings to investigate these allegations; that the committee invite the following witnesses to appear before the committee: François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry; Doug McConnachie, chief financial officer and assistant deputy minister of corporate services at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; Annette Verschuren, the current chair of SDTC; whistle-blowers who have come forward; and any other witnesses deemed relevant to the study put forward by parties—I would probably also put forward the president of SDTC as a witness we should hear from—and, subject to the approval of the recognized party whips and the availability of meeting time slots in the House of Commons, that the committee hold additional meetings and/or extend our current committee meetings by one hour on each allotted day for each meeting on this matter with the goal of not delaying the study of Bill C-27.

That's the motion. The idea is to give the committee two options. We could add additional meetings, which I know is more difficult, but I think from our whip's perspective, they would work to find the resources. The easier solution, since we meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, is to add an hour to the meetings after the Bill C-27 testimony for the next number of meetings to consider this.

With that, I will turn it back to you, Mr. Chair, for others to comment.

[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—

[Tim McSorley]

I didn't raise the difference, because in fact it is the same. We simply believe that it shouldn't be continued under this new bill. We raised those concerns in the review, in the consultation around PIPEDA earlier, that this was already a problematic exception. We don't believe.... It's something that this committee could fix in moving forward with Bill C-27.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My next question is for Mr. Lawford.

During certain testimonies and meetings with people in the industry, we heard a great deal of unease about the lack of detail in part 3 of Bill C‑27. I Am talking about the part that enacts the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, as well as the criminal liability it imposes on companies using high-impact AI systems.

To what extent do you think all this will need to be clarified, if we are to promote greater trust and ease among businesses, and SMEs in particular, while maintaining rigorous protection provisions? Where is the balance?

[Sharon Polsky]

I think each country wants to be the first. As was questioned earlier, is that the right choice? Canada is marching forward and pushing this through, but to what benefit and, more concerning, to what harm?

When it comes to the EU and the U.K., yes, they've given thought and lots of consultation, but I think it's important to not consider these pieces of legislation in isolation, because on one hand we have robust AI regulations coming out of the same country that just passed the euphemistically named “Online Safety Act” that requires all content to be monitored, including yours, because the Internet is global.

How do we protect anything when AI is behind the scenes? AI is used in these buildings, in airports and in shopping centres. It's everywhere already.

Yes, they have a jump on Canada. Is it the right direction? It's certainly better than what we have in Bill C-27. There is no disagreement on that, whether from today's meetings or from many of your previous witnesses. We can look to our European counterparts. They are on a better path. That's about as generous as I can get right now.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Polsky, what in your mind are some of the biggest gaps in Bill C-27's protection of children, beyond the sensitive information that I have already raised?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Okay.

Bill C-27 does not include a definition of “sensitive information”, yet it does outline that children's data would be subject to sensitive information. Do you think it's problematic that the government did not include a definition of sensitive information for both general purposes and specifically for children?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hatfield, last year OpenMedia gave Bill C-27 a failing grade of D. Referring specifically to protections for children, how would you grade the protection of children in Bill C-27?

[Sharon Polsky]

Yes, if I may.

I think it's a terrific idea if the law requires that the regulator and others be fully funded so that they can actually do the job they are tasked with doing, and if they are able to write it into AIDA when it's split out from Bill C-27 and becomes its own, please, so that before AI products are allowed to be put on the market—I don't care from where in the world they are—they must go through basically a testing sandbox. It's not the self-interested vendor saying, “Don't worry your pretty little head; it's not biased.” It's an independent officer of Parliament whose office will identify and test the products—confidentially, with no secrets being divulged and no IP worries on behalf of the companies—so that, the same way any other product needs to be fit for purpose before it's released on the market, AI products must also.

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

You said that AI must continue to be adopted responsibly, because it contributes to the prosperity of our people and our economies.

What needs to be incorporated into Bill C‑27 to make that happen?

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

You talked about it. You said that artificial intelligence should be used responsibly and that it is a good tool for prosperity.

What needs to be included in Bill C‑27 so that we can promote the responsible adoption of AI?

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Andrey, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on Bill C-27 and its objectives to address online misinformation and online harm.

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

According to Bill C‑27 as it currently stands, who should consumers turn to if they want to contest a decision made by an automated system or obtain clarification about that decision?

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

You would therefore be in favour of adding provisions to Bill C‑27, provisions similar to those adopted in Europe and Quebec.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the committee for having me here today, even though it's not a committee I usually sit on. It's a pleasure to be here.

I want to thank the witnesses for their presentations.

Mr Konikoff, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk about automated decision systems. As we know, Bill C‑27 grants a new right, namely the right for an individual to receive an explanation about the use of these systems. However, unlike Quebec's Bill 25, Bill C‑27 does not contain provisions that would allow a person to object to the use of an automated decision system or to have a review of the decisions made by such a system.

In your opinion, what are the potential repercussions for consumers and users if Bill C‑27 does not include such provisions?

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

Thank you.

Mr. Konikoff, in your brief to the committee, you recommended deleting proposed paragraph 18(2)(d) in the consumer privacy protection act, which provides an exception to consent for “any other prescribed activity.”

Conversely, in the brief of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada on Bill C-27, the Privacy Commissioner recommends amending this provision to require that all prescribed business activities for the purposes of proposed subsection 18(2) be activities necessary to achieve a specific purpose. What do you think of the Privacy Commissioner's recommendation?

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

In other words, it's not there. There's nothing in Bill C-27 that prevents this practice from continuing, where a business says it's changing the current terms and conditions of consent and complying with the law by posting it. If anyone challenges it, even though they'll never discover it because they don't know it happened, the business can go through a process to appeal and under the CPPA's proposed subsection 18(3) in particular, it can say, “Too bad. We have the right because it's in our business's legitimate interest to do so.”

[John Lawford, Executive Director and General Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre]

Thank you, Chair.

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre is a national, non-profit and registered charity that provides legal and research services on behalf of consumers—in particular, vulnerable consumers. PIAC has been active in the field of consumer privacy law and policy for over 25 years.

My name is John Lawford. I'm the executive director and general counsel. With me today is Yuka Sai, staff lawyer at PIAC.

Bill C-27 reverses 25 years of privacy law in Canada. Businesses can now assume consent, and consumers must prove abuse. If this sounds uncomfortable from an individual rights perspective, that's because it is.

Firstly, with regard to consent, the new business activities exception to consent, which is in proposed subsection 18(1), makes full use of your personal information without your consent, or even your knowledge, legal for business. Business activities are defined so widely and tautologically in proposed subsection 18(2) that only businesses will be able to define what a business is. It's ridiculous. Proposed section 18 completely reverses the default of an individual's informed consent for the collection or use of personal information under PIPEDA. Do Canadians really want that?

The addition of an exception to consent and knowledge in proposed subsection 18(3), for the collection or use of additional personal information for legitimate interests, is an import from European law but without the fundamental right to privacy that it modulates in Europe.

Secondly, with regard to de-identification, under proposed section 20, consumers also lose out on opportunities to scrutinize the use of their personal information when it is de-identified. De-identify is defined as:

to modify personal information so that an individual cannot be directly identified from it, though a risk of the individual being identified remains.

It is akin to saying that to kill means to take the life of a person directly, although a chance of their remaining alive remains. It is contradictory and meaningless.

De-identification was also clearly a “use” of personal information under PIPEDA. What that use approach stops is the indiscriminate filling of databases with personal information with only the most cursory removal of tombstone information identifiers from the data. Reidentification is therefore a real risk, but even de-identified information can harm individuals when they are profiled in databases that are then used to market to them or to deny them services. Bill C-27 supercharges this outcome.

Go ahead, Yuka.

[Sharon Polsky, President, Privacy and Access Council of Canada]

Thank you.

Thank you for inviting me to share some views about Bill C-27 on behalf of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, an independent, non-profit and non-partisan organization that is not funded by government or by industry.

Our members in public, private and non-profit sector organizations work with and assess new technologies every day, as have I through my 30-plus-year career as a privacy adviser. For that entire time, we have all heard the same promise: Technology will provide great benefits. To an extent, it has.

We’ve also been nudged to do everything digitally, and data is now the foundation of many organizations that collect, analyze and monetize data, often without the knowledge, much less the real consent, of the people the data is about.

It's understandable that there's great support for Bill C-27, except that many of the people who support it don't like it. They figure, though, that it's taken 20 years to get this much, and we can't wait another 20 for something better to replace PIPEDA, so it's better than nothing at all.

With respect, we disagree. We do not share the view that settling for the sake of change is better than standing firm for a law that, at its heart, would definitively state that Canadians have a fundamental right to privacy. The minister's concession to add that into the bill itself and not just the preamble is very welcome.

We disagree that settling for bad law is better than nothing, and Bill C-27 is bad law because it would undermine everyone's privacy, including children's—however they're defined in each jurisdiction. It also does nothing to counter the content regulation laws that would undermine encryption, would criminalize children who try to report abuse and would make it impossible for even your private communications to be confidential, whether you consent or not.

Definition determines outcomes, and Bill C-27 starts off by defining us all as “consumers” and not as individuals with a fundamental human right to privacy. It promotes data sharing to foster commerce, jobs and taxes. It adds a new bureaucracy that would be novel among data protection authorities and would delay individuals' recourse by years. It does not require AI transparency or restrict AI use by governments, only by the private sector that has not yet been deputized by government, which then gets sheltered by our current ATIP laws.

It won't slow AI and facial recognition from infiltrating our lives further. It won't slow the monetization of our personal information by a global data broker industry already worth more than $300 billion U.S. It doesn't impose any privacy obligations on political parties. It doesn't allow for executives to be fined—only organizations that then include the fine as a line item in their financials and move on, happy that their tax liabilities have been reduced.

Bill C-27 does allow personal information to be used for research but by whom or where in the world isn't limited. Big pharma using your DNA to research new medicines without your consent is just fine if it's been de-identified, although it can be easily reidentified, and larger and larger AI datasets make that more and more likely every day.

Bill C-27 would require privacy policies to be in plain language, and that would be great if it stated the degree of granularity required, but it doesn't. It allows the same vague language and generalities we now have, yet it still doesn't allow you to control what data about you may be shared or with whom, or give you a way to be forgotten.

It lets organizations collect whatever personal information they can from you and about you, without consent, as long as they say, in their self-interested way, that it's to make sure nothing about you is a threat to their “information, system or network security”, or if they say the collection and use “outweighs any potential adverse effect” on you resulting from that collection or use, and leaves it to you to find out about and to challenge that claim.

We've all heard industry's threat that regulation will hamper innovation. That red herring was invalidated when radio didn't kill newspapers, TV didn't kill radio and the Internet didn't kill either one. Industry adapted and innovated, and tech companies already do that with each new product, update and patch.

Companies that have skirted the edge of privacy compliance can adapt and innovate and can create things that, at their core, have a genuine respect for privacy, human rights, and sound ethics and morality. They can, but in almost a half a century since computers landed on desktops, most haven't. Politely asking organizations to consider the special interests of minors is lovely but hardly compelling, considering that, 20 years after PIPEDA came into force, barely more than half of Canadian companies the OPC surveyed have privacy policies or have even designated someone to be responsible for privacy.

Those are basic and fundamental components of a privacy management program that do not take 20 years to figure out. We don't have time to wait, but we also cannot afford legislation that is inadequate before it's proclaimed, that's not aligned with Quebec's Law 25, the U.S. executive order on AI or other jurisdictions that are well ahead of Canada on this. We also can't afford something that further erodes trust in government and industry as it freely trades away the privacy rights of Canadians for the sake of commercial gain.

I will be happy to answer your questions, and we will be detailing our views in a submission to the committee. I hope you hear us.

[Matthew Hatfield, Executive Director, OpenMedia]

Good afternoon. I'm Matt Hatfield. I'm the executive director of OpenMedia, a grassroots community of nearly 300,000 people in Canada who work together for an open, accessible and surveillance-free Internet.

I'm speaking to you today from the unceded territory of the Tsawout, Saanich, Cowichan and Chemainus nations.

What is there to say about Bill C-27? One part is long-overdue privacy reform, and your task is closing its remaining loopholes and getting the job of protecting our data done. One part is frankly undercooked AI regulation that you should take out of Bill C-27 altogether and take your time to get right. I can't address both at the length they deserve. I shouldn't have to, but we are where the government has forced us to be, so let's talk privacy.

There are some great changes in Bill C-27. These include real penalty powers for the OPC and the minister's promised amendments to entrench privacy as a human right. OpenMedia hopes this change to PIPEDA will clearly signal to the courts that our ownership of our personal data is more important than a corporation's interest in profiting off that data, but any regulatory regime is only as strong as its weakest link. It does no good for Canada to promise the toughest penalties in the world if they're easy to evade in most real-world cases. The weaknesses of Bill C-27 will absolutely be searched for and attacked by companies wishing to do Canadians harm.

That's why it's critical that you remove the consent exceptions in Bill C-27 and give Canadians the right to ongoing, informed and withdrawable consent for all use of our data. While you're fixing consent, you must also broaden Bill C-27's data rules to apply to every non-governmental body. This includes political parties, non-profit organizations like OpenMedia and vendors that sell data tools to any government body. No other advanced democracy tolerates a special exception to respecting privacy rules for the same parties that write privacy law. That's an embarrassing Canada original, and it shouldn't survive your scrutiny of this bill.

Privacy was the happier side of my comments on Bill C-27. Let's talk AI.

I promise you that our community understands the urgency to put some rules in place on AI. Earlier this year, OpenMedia asked our community what they hoped for and were worried about with generative AI. Thousands of people weighed in and told us they believe this is a huge moment for society. Almost 80% think this is bigger than the smart phone, and one in three of us thinks it will be as big or bigger than the Internet itself. “Bigger than the Internet” is the kind of thing you're going to want to get right, but being first to regulate is a very different thing from regulating right.

Minister Champagne is at the U.K.'s AI safety conference this week, telling media the risk is in doing too little, not too much. However, at the same conference, Rishi Sunak used his time to warn that we need to understand the impact of AI systems far more than we currently do, in order to regulate them effectively, and that no regulation will succeed if countries hosting AI developments do not develop their standards in close parallel. That's why the participants of that conference are working through foundational questions about exactly what is at stake and in scope right now. It's an important, necessary project, and I wish them all success with it.

If they're doing that work there, why are we here? Why has this committee been tasked with jamming AIDA through within a critical but unrelated bill? Why is Canada confident that we know more than our peers about how to regulate AI—so confident that we're skipping the basic public consultation that even moderately important legislation normally receives?

I have to ask this: Is AIDA about protecting Canadians, or is it about creating a permissive environment for shady AI development? If we legislate AI first, without learning in tandem with larger and more cautious jurisdictions, we're not going to wind up with the best protections. Instead, we're positioning Canada as a kind of AI dumping ground, where business practices that are not permitted in the U.S. or the EU can be produced here in rights-violating and even dangerous ways. I'm worried that this is not a bug, but rather the point—that our innovation ministry is fast-tracking this legislation precisely to guarantee Canada will have lower AI safety standards than our peers.

If generative AI is a hype cycle whose products will mostly underwhelm, then this is much ado about not much and there is no need to rush the legislation. However, if even a fraction of it is as powerful as its proponents claim, failing to work with experts and our global peers on best-in-class AI legislation is a tremendous mistake.

I urge you to separate AIDA from Bill C-27 and send it back for a full public consultation. If that isn't in your power, at the very least, you cannot allow Canada to become an AI dumping ground. That's why I urge you to make the AI commissioner report directly to you, our Parliament, not to ISED. A ministry whose mandate is to sponsor AI will have a strong temptation to look the other way on shady practices. The commissioner should be charged with reporting to you yearly on the performance of AIDA and on gaps that have been revealed in it. I also urge you to mandate parliamentary review of AIDA within two years of Bill C-27's taking effect, in order to decide whether it must be amended or replaced.

Since PIPEDA reform was first proposed in 2021, OpenMedia's community has sent more than 24,000 messages to our MPs demanding urgent comprehensive privacy protections. In the last few months, we've sent another 4,000 messages asking our Parliament to take the due time to get AIDA right. I hope you will hear us on both points.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[Tim McSorley, National Coordinator, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the invitation to share the perspectives of the ICLMG today regarding Bill C-27.

We're a Canadian coalition that works to defend civil liberties from the impact of national security and anti-terrorism laws. Our concerns regarding Bill C-27 are grounded in this mandate.

While we support efforts to modernize Canadian privacy laws and establish AI regulations, the bill unfortunately contains multiple exemptions for national security purposes that are unacceptable and undermine Bill C-27's stated goal of protecting the rights and privacy of people in Canada.

We have submitted a written brief to the committee with 10 recommendations and accompanying amendments. I'd be happy to speak in more detail about any of these during the question period, but for now, I'd like to make three specific points.

First, in regard to the CPPA, we are opposed to proposed sections 47 and 48 of the act, which create exceptions to consent by allowing an organization to disclose, collect or use personal information if it simply “suspects that the information relates to national security, the defence of Canada or the conduct of international affairs”. This is an incredibly low threshold for circumventing consent.

Proposed section 48 is particularly egregious. It allows for an organization of “its own initiative” to collect, use or disclose an individual's personal information if it simply suspects that the information relates to these three areas. The concern does not even need to be connected to a suspected threat. Again, it only needs to relate, and that's not defined in the bill.

Not only are these sections very broad, they're also unnecessary. Other sections of the law would allow for more targeted disclosure to government departments, institutions and law enforcement agencies. For example, proposed section 45 allows an organization to proactively divulge information if it “has reasonable grounds to believe”—a much higher threshold—“that the information relates to a contravention” of a law that has been, is being or will be committed. We contrast that “reasonable grounds to believe” threshold with simply suspecting that it “relates”.

In that regard, we find proposed sections 47 and 48 unnecessary and overly broad. We propose, then, that proposed sections 47 and 48 simply be removed from the CPPA. Barring that, we've proposed specific language in our brief that would help to establish a more robust threshold for disclosing personal information.

Second, we're deeply concerned with the artificial intelligence and data act overall. In line with other witnesses, we believe it is a deeply flawed piece of legislation that must be withdrawn in favour of a more considered and appropriate framework. We have outlined these concerns in our brief, as well as in a joint letter shared with the committee and the minister, signed by 45 organizations and experts in the fields of AI, civil liberties and human rights.

AIDA was developed without appropriate public consultation or debate. It fails to integrate appropriate human rights protections. It lacks fundamental definitions. Egregiously, it would create an AI and data commissioner operating at the discretion of the Minister of Innovation, resulting in a commissioner with no independence to enforce the provisions of AIDA, as weak as they may be.

Finally, I'd like to address an unacceptable exception for national security that is found in AIDA as well.

Canadian national security agencies have been open regarding their interest and use of artificial intelligence tools for a wide range of purposes, including for facial recognition, surveillance, border security and data analytics. However, no clear framework has been established to regulate the development or use of these tools in order to prevent serious harm.

AIDA should present an opportunity to address this gap. Instead, it does the opposite in proposed subsection 3(2), where it explicitly excludes the application of the act to:

a product, service or activity that is under the direction or control of

(a) the Minister of National Defence;

(b) the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service;

(c) the Chief of the Communications Security Establishment; or

(d) any other person who is responsible for a federal or provincial department or agency and who is prescribed by regulation.

This means that any AI system developed by a private sector actor that falls under the direction or control of this open-ended list of national security agencies would face absolutely no independent regulation or oversight.

It is inconceivable how such a broad exemption can be justified. Under such a rule, companies could create tools for our national security agencies without the need to undergo any assessment or mitigation for harm or bias, creating a human rights and civil liberties black hole. What if such technology were leaked, stolen or even sold to state or private entities outside of Canada's jurisdiction? All AI systems developed by the private sector must face regulation, regardless of their use by national security agencies.

Our brief includes specific examples of the harms that this lack of regulation can cause. I'd be happy to discuss these more with the committee. Overall, if AIDA does go ahead, we believe that proposed subsection 3(2) should simply be removed.

Thank you.

[Daniel Konikoff, Interim Director of the Privacy, Technology & Surveillance program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association]

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting us to appear before you today.

I am the interim director of the privacy, technology and surveillance program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, an organization that has been standing up for the rights, civil liberties and fundamental freedoms of people in Canada since 1964.

Protecting privacy and human rights in our tech-driven present is no small undertaking. We commend the government for trying to modernize Canada's legislative framework for the digital age, and we commend the work that this committee is doing to get this legislation right.

We also acknowledge the procedural hurdles that may make it challenging for us to speak completely to Bill C-27 and its potential amendments. However, I will highlight three amendments from CCLA's written submission that we believe must be adopted to make Bill C-27 more respectful of people's rights in Canada.

First, Bill C-27 does not give fundamental rights their due and frequently puts them in second place, behind commercial interests. It has been said before but CCLA believes that it's worth emphasizing that Bill C-27 must be amended to recognize privacy as a human right, both in the CPPA and in AIDA, since privacy is something that should be respected at all points throughout data's life cycle.

This bill must also be amended to recognize our equality rights in the face of data discrimination and algorithmic bias, risks that grow exponentially as more and more data is gathered and fed into AI systems that make predictions or decisions of resounding consequence.

Privacy, data and AI legislation the world over, such as that in the European Union, already have stronger rights-based framing and protections. Canada simply needs to catch up.

Second, there are concerning gaps in Bill C-27 around the issue of sensitive information. Sensitivity is a concept that appears often throughout the CPPA; however, it is left undefined, allowing private interests to interpret its meaning as they see fit. A lot of personal information does qualify as sensitive, and although information's sensitivity often depends on context, there are special categories of information whose collection, use and disclosure carry inherent and extraordinary risks.

I want to draw your attention to one category in particular, the collection and use of which have implications for both the CPPA and AIDA, and that is biometric data.

Biometric data is perhaps the most vulnerable data we have, and its abuse can be particularly devastating to members of equity-seeking groups. Look no further than the prevalence of facial recognition technology. Facial recognition is used everywhere from law enforcement to shopping malls, and it relies on biometric information that is often collected without people's awareness and without people's consent. Right2YourFace coalition, of which CCLA is a member, has advocated having stronger legislative safeguards with respect to facial recognition and the sensitive biometric data that fuels it. Bill C-27 must be amended to not only explicitly define sensitive information and its many categories but also to unequivocally define biometric information as sensitive information worthy of special care and protection.

Third and finally, we take issue with the number of consent carve-outs in proposed section 18 of the CPPA, and how these can ultimately trickle down to AIDA. These carve-outs are, by and large, an affront to meaningful consent, and so to people's right to privacy. People should be able to meaningfully consent or decline to consent to how private companies gather and handle their personal data. Prioritizing a company's legitimate interest to violate consumer consent over people's privacy is simply inappropriate, as is leaving room for more consent carve-outs to be added in regulations later on. Bill C-27 is, frankly, porous with these exemptions and exceptions, and these gaps come at the expense of people's privacy.

There is no shortage of concerns around this bill, and I haven't really spoken to the issues that CCLA has with AIDA's narrow conception of harm, its lack of transparency requirements and its dangerous exclusions of national security institutions whose public mandates are often performed with privately acquired artificial intelligence technologies. We address these issues in greater depth in our written submission to the committee, but I'd be happy to expand on them in questioning.

I'd also like to direct the committee's attention to our written submission, which flags some of these concerns and includes an AI regulation petition that received over 8,000 signatures.

Bill C-27 overall needs tighter provisions to prioritize people's fundamental rights. The CPPA needs to plug its gaps around information sensitivity and consent, and if AIDA is not to be scrapped outright, reset or just separated from this bill, it needs fundamental rethinking.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

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

Welcome to meeting no. 94 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming 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'd like to welcome our witnesses today: Daniel Konikoff, interim director of the Privacy, Technology & Surveillance program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; Tim McSorley, national coordinator at the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group; Matthew Hatfield, executive director of OpenMedia; Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada; John Lawford, executive director and general counsel at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, who is joined by staff lawyer Yuka Sai; and Sam Andrey, managing director of The Dais at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Thank you for being here today.

I'm pleased that we are able to start on time.

Without further ado, Mr. Konikoff from Canadian Civil Liberties Association, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Laurent Carbonneau]

That's definitely a big question, and I don't think I have a complete answer. I'm not sure that anyone does.

What I would say is that, in a broad sense, I think countries that do well in AI are going to be the ones that are able to develop acceptance for AI adoption and use in societies, and I think that we will have to answer those questions in some format probably sooner rather than later.

We do have a bill before Parliament right now, Bill C-27, that is implementing a legislative framework to develop a regulatory framework around AI. I think there's a lot of scope there, as that comes into force and the regulations are developed, to be quite sensitive to what the future of those kinds of issues looks like.

I will applaud some of CCI's other work here. We released a road map on responsible AI leadership in, I think, early September—time has blurred this fall, as I'm sure it has for many of you—that really gets into some of these issues around public trust.

I think one thing Parliament should strongly consider moving forward is creating a parliamentary science and technology officer who would play an analogous function to what the Parliamentary Budget Officer does and very similar to what the sadly now-defunct Office of Technology Assessment used to do in the U.S. Congress. It would give you as parliamentarians and the public timely, actionable information on emerging technology and science issues that would help inform a lot of these debates and give us all a level ground to understand a lot of these emerging technology issues.

I think that's the kind of social infrastructure, if you will, or parliamentary infrastructure that could play a very helpful function in addressing those kinds of issues and give us, I think, a better basis to do so.