Bill C-63

An Act to enact the Online Harms Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts

Part 1 of this enactment enacts the Online Harms Act , whose purpose is to, among other things, promote the online safety of persons in Canada, reduce harms caused to persons in Canada as a result of harmful content online and ensure that the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies are transparent and accountable with respect to their duties under that Act.
That Act, among other things,
(a) establishes the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, whose mandate is to administer and enforce that Act, ensure that operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies are transparent and accountable with respect to their duties under that Act and contribute to the development of standards with respect to online safety;
(b) creates the position of Digital Safety Ombudsperson of Canada, whose mandate is to provide support to users of social media services in respect of which that Act applies and advocate for the public interest in relation to online safety;
(c) establishes the Digital Safety Office of Canada, whose mandate is to support the Digital Safety Commission of Canada and the Digital Safety Ombudsperson of Canada in the fulfillment of their mandates;
(d) imposes on the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies
(i) a duty to act responsibly in respect of the services that they operate, including by implementing measures that are adequate to mitigate the risk that users will be exposed to harmful content on the services and submitting digital safety plans to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada,
(ii) a duty to protect children in respect of the services that they operate by integrating into the services design features that are provided for by regulations,
(iii) a duty to make content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor and intimate content communicated without consent inaccessible to persons in Canada in certain circumstances, and
(iv) a duty to keep all records that are necessary to determine whether they are complying with their duties under that Act;
(e) authorizes the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to accredit certain persons that conduct research or engage in education, advocacy or awareness activities that are related to that Act for the purposes of enabling those persons to have access to inventories of electronic data and to electronic data of the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies;
(f) provides that persons in Canada may make a complaint to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada that content on a social media service in respect of which that Act applies is content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor or intimate content communicated without consent and authorizes the Commission to make orders requiring the operators of those services to make that content inaccessible to persons in Canada;
(g) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting the payment of charges by the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies, for the purpose of recovering costs incurred in relation to that Act.
Part 1 also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 2 amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create a hate crime offence of committing an offence under that Act or any other Act of Parliament that is motivated by hatred based on certain factors;
(b) create a recognizance to keep the peace relating to hate propaganda and hate crime offences;
(c) define “hatred” for the purposes of the new offence and the hate propaganda offences; and
(d) increase the maximum sentences for the hate propaganda offences.
It also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Part 3 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to provide that it is a discriminatory practice to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by means of the Internet or any other means of telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. It authorizes the Canadian Human Rights Commission to deal with complaints alleging that discriminatory practice and authorizes the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to inquire into such complaints and order remedies.
Part 4 amends An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service to, among other things,
(a) clarify the types of Internet services covered by that Act;
(b) simplify the mandatory notification process set out in section 3 by providing that all notifications be sent to a law enforcement body designated in the regulations;
(c) require that transmission data be provided with the mandatory notice in cases where the content is manifestly child pornography;
(d) extend the period of preservation of data related to an offence;
(e) extend the limitation period for the prosecution of an offence under that Act; and
(f) add certain regulation-making powers.
Part 5 contains a coordinating amendment.

Justice

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, children in Canada need protection from online harm. The abuse that occurs online is endangering our kids, and it is time we acted to prevent more families from being harmed. Our government has risen to this challenge, putting forward a plan to help parents and children. Bill C-63, the online harms act, would create safety measures that would save lives. The Conservatives are now the only roadblock to making the bill a reality in Canada.

The safety of our children should not be political. Can the Minister of Justice please discuss the importance of this critical legislation and why we need it passed now?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, children in Canada are just not safe online. Our government wants to join the many countries that have now adopted online safety regulations, yet the Conservatives are preventing our online harms act from moving forward. Shockingly, they are blocking our efforts to remove child sex abuse material from the Internet. How disgusting.

Can the justice minister please describe the importance of Bill C-63 to parents and children, and explain why Canadians so urgently need this law now?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, our government takes the safety of children seriously. That is why we put forward a comprehensive plan to bring Canada into the 21st century and change our online world, making it safer for kids and better for all. The Conservatives are blocking the plan, and they are standing in the way of a better future for our kids online.

Parents want the online harms act. Experts want the online harms act. Can the Minister of Justice explain why Bill C-63 must be passed to keep our kids safe?

John Horgan

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

Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion, given that Bill C-63, the so-called—

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

Regarding Bill C-63, if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for—

Industry and Technology

[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—

Carbon Pricing

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, a lot of questions have been about what the NDP is doing in terms of supporting parliamentary process. Let me talk about one thing that is very salient for today.

Today is December 6, the anniversary of 35 women being shot down in cold blood at École Polytechnique. What the NDP is doing is supporting a bill on the floor of the chamber that would help tackle the root causes of violence against women. What am I talking about? I am talking about radical misogyny that starts online.

Bill C-63, the online harms act, would help us target misogyny at its core. That is something that every member of Parliament needs to get behind, and we need to do it now because time is wasting on keeping women safe.

Justice

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, on this side of the House, we have a plan to combat hate in our country. That includes a national strategy to combat hate, as well as Bill C‑63, which is on the radicalization that happens online. We know that radicalization starts with feelings and ends with acts of violence in the real world. That is what we are targeting with Bill C‑63.

Bill C‑63 targets the very same sections of the Criminal Code that the Bloc Québécois bill seeks to address. We are perfectly happy to co-operate with the Bloc Québécois to combat hate.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the Bloc Québécois member's question.

We are well aware of what was suggested in the Bloc Québécois's bill. On this side of the House, we are in favour of any effort to combat hatred, particularly the anti-Semitism that we are seeing in Quebec and across Canada.

We could work together to improve or amend our own bill on online harm, Bill C‑63, which is already before the House. We are perfectly willing to work with the Bloc Québécois in that regard.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in the House to talk about SDTC and the green slush fund, because this gives us an opportunity to look at what is happening here in Canada. My friend from York—Simcoe talked about the way the government is working, or not working, I should say, or is working in a bad direction. My speech focuses on where the loss of trust is, how we have this loss of trust and why we have this loss of trust.

Over the last nine years, we see there have been so many things that have made Canadians, who voted for Liberals in 2015, say that they cannot trust the government anymore. The green slush fund is just another example of why Canadians have lost trust and hope.

What is the green slush fund and why was it created in the first place? When we look at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, we have to look at its mandate. Its mandate was to help Canadian companies develop and deploy sustainable technologies by delivering critical funding support at every stage of the journey. This sounds great. It is something we need, and for decades we did have it.

In the last six years, there was $836 million spent on green start-ups. I am not against any of that, but the issue I have here is there were also 186 projects that had conflicts of interest. When I talk about loss of trust in the government, that is where I really want to focus. We, as a party and as opposition, have been asking for these documents for months.

Last December, in 2023, when the whistle-blowers came forward and talked about what was happening and how this money was being distributed, things started happening. We saw a freezing of the slush fund. The money is not available, which, in turn, is causing a lot of problems for people who are actually running legitimate businesses, who are not able to get the payments they expected and are not able to get the assistance from the government that would help them. However, because the government was allowing people to be eligible for truly ineligible reasons, those payments did not move forward.

We can talk about the conflicts of interest. We can talk about whether it was the CEO or board chair, but we can look at the conflicts of interest that were occurring in SDTC as well. This all goes back to looking at accountability and transparency, which is something we have seen very little of over the last nine years. For a Prime Minister who was going to have sunshine and said that everything was going to be fine and that they were going to be clear, accountable and transparent, which is what he was running on in 2015, that is exactly the opposite of what we see here in 2024.

The loss of hope is one of the biggest challenges we are having here in Canada. When I had this opportunity to speak on this motion, I spoke to my friend from Oshawa. He was talking about what we can talk about, because he was looking at the censorship issues here in Canada. There are Bill C-63 and some of the other things the government has come out with, like with Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, which are just a whole bunch of bills that come together that continue to impact Canadians negatively.

My friend from Oshawa was talking about censorship. I thought I would talk about trust and hope and how this is just another example of how Canadians have lost trust in the government and have lost hope for the future. When we look at the data, it is very clear. We see the data between 2014 and 2024. People ask where the hope is and what can they see for their futures. As a mom of five, and I am very proud of being a mom of five, I am now watching my children, who are between the ages of 21 and 30, asking what the world is going to look like for them. How are they going to get ahead? I will add more to that.

I think it comes down to something very simple. If we look as of 11 a.m. today, we had $1.356 trillion in debt here in Canada. This number makes me very queasy, knowing that just 10 years ago, under the Harper government in 2014, our debt was $648 million. That is $648 million compared to $1.3 billion in nine years, which is just absolutely ludicrous. We know that is just wasteful spending and unaccountable spending as well.

Things like the current number of people working in Canada and the GDP are all data points we need to look at when we are talking about the economy and why we are talking about things not working. If we do not have a strong economy, everything starts falling apart. We have to look at the economy as a piece of this puzzle that has created so many drastic problems for people. On employment specifically, we have seen a decrease in employment. In Canada, as of October 2024, we currently have 33,977,000 people working, which is 60.6% of the population.

Just 10 years ago, we had 61.6% of the population working, which was over 28,930,000. This matters because at the end of the day, it is those people who are employed and paying taxes on their employment or pensions or whatever it may be, who are putting back into the system. It is really important that we have people out there working because it also adds to our GDP.

I had a great conversation about this with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. We were talking about what the GDP looks like and why it is important to understand the GDP-to-population ratio. When I talk about the number of people working being down to 60.6% from 61.6% just a decade ago, we then have to look at where our GDP is, and that is where these numbers become astounding. I compared the numbers for Canada, looking at 2014 to 2024, but also looked at GDP in the United States. I am not looking at total GDP, but looking at the increase because that is giving us the hope for prosperity. When people see an increase in our GDP that looks healthy, they know that there is hope for their businesses, for their future, for their employment and for their children's future as well.

In 2014, we saw a 2.87% GDP growth rate. In the United States, it was very similar at 2.52%. Today, when we are looking at the data, it is not a full year, but in 2024, our GDP growth rate right now is 1.34%, compared to the U.S. at 2.77%.

If we want to look at entire years, in 2023, we can look at Canada at 1.25% compared to the U.S. at 2.89% in 2023. When GDP growth rate is down, that is when people start losing great hope. What are they going to do when it comes to employment? How are their businesses going to survive? In the last few weeks, we have had many discussions with the people in my riding talking about how they are going to survive if we cannot have good public policy and legislation and the United States is talking about putting a 25% tariff on items coming from Canada. For people within my constituency, the moment that was announced, the phone started ringing. In my riding and in many areas of Canada, we are exporting 80% of our goods.

I spoke earlier to a gentleman who builds scoreboards, so we can watch some of those great NCAA scoreboards and know that they were built in London, Ontario. Eighty per cent of his markets are U.S. high schools and universities. If there is a 25% tariff, his business will close, so we have to make sure that the government is doing the right thing. That is what we have seen over the last week and a half.

Down in the United States, they talked about our leader, but, honestly, looking at the current government on its last leg, or actually on its last toe, it is really hard to know that it is doing the negotiating for the future of Canada when we do not feel confident in our own economy and our own strength. Therefore, when we are sending team Canada down to the United States, we need to make sure team Canada has some very strong representatives from the Conservative Party. When we become the government, we need to make sure that we have a very strong relationship so people like Jeff in my riding do not lose their entire business because of bad policies and relationships with the United States. It really comes down to the importance of making sure we have those trade relationships, making sure we have good policy, and making sure that our economy will continue to have drive.

Going from those GDP numbers, we have to look at other issues. Here in Canada, we are currently at a birth rate of 1%, which does not replace our Canadian population. We need 2.1% for replacement. For me, I step back and say that I have done my job; I have five kids and I am doing really well. I step back and think, why are other people not having children? For me, it is pretty darn simple. I can sit there and look at my own children. My son, who is 28 years old, is running his own business and I absolutely love what he is doing, but it is difficult starting. As a starter-business owner, he can do a great job, but then he also has to pay for his rent and his food and everything else. For him, it would probably be better right now to get a part-time job and have his actual career on the side so that he can pay for the groceries and pay for rent.

The way that this economy is right now, when people are paying almost $2,000 a month for rent and utilities, it is darn hard to get ahead. I feel bad when I say to my kids that I paid $220 a month in 1991 when I was in university to live in the worst place ever in a London residence when I was at Western University.

I have friends whose children are paying $1,600 a month just to live in a four-bedroom house or apartment. Mine was $220 a month. We have to look at the debt load being applied to our children.

We are seeing a rate of 1% increase. We know that the cost of student debt has increased. In 2014, when people were graduating, it was about $12,800 for student debt. Now in 2024, it is way over $30,000. We are not using the data on the rent increases that we have seen on many of our students who are using the food banks.

Why are we having these issues? It is because we have a government that does not spend wisely and continues to increase our debt for future generations to try to dig out of.

When I am looking at the cost to our students, 10 years ago student debt was a little over $12,000. Now I look at students in 2024 with a $30,000 debt load trying to rent an apartment starting at $2,000. Can members imagine trying to pay off student debt, get food in the cupboards and actually pay the rent. If they want a car and insurance, well, holy cow, they would need to be lucky.

I look at the people who live in my riding, which is very rural. People need a car to drive from home to work. There is no public transportation, nor is there really a business plan for that at this time because of the population and how few people would be using that.

We have to look at our children today, who have these exorbitant costs, whether they are paying taxes, and we have this great debt of $1.3 trillion, or whether they are paying for food, and the cost of inflation. It is very difficult for our children to move forward.

I am going to talk about my son who is hopefully going to be a plumber soon. He had taken a few years off school and then decided to go into plumbing. The opportunities for him in plumbing are endless. People say, “Hey, you're an apprentice? Great, we'd love to take you on.” We are looking, all the time, for people to have these opportunities.

I think of my son and the fact is that he will probably have a job in about six months. Fantastic, but I bet it will take a long time for him to actually get out of my basement. After becoming a plumber, how would he pay to get into a house or to rent something, when he still has to buy his food and all of those things? He will be very fortunate because he is not going to have student debt.

That is very unlikely for the majority of the population in this country. He will still have the extraordinary costs of buying tools and supplies. Plumbing is not a cheap job to start off with, so starting his own business will be very very difficult.

Once again, the idea of being able to say, “I have got a job. I have graduated from school. I am going to go forward. I am going to get married. I am going to have children. I am going to have that white picket fence,” those dreams that we talked about in the 1980s, they are so gone for this group of people that are part of Generation Z.

It is going to be difficult because when we look at productivity, it is one of our greatest challenges. We are going through a mental health crisis. I urge everybody to read this book that I have read called, The Anxious Generation. It is talking about Gen Z and what they are going through. I love to read it and ask myself, what am I doing, and how am I screwing up my kids?

I was listening to one colleague last night who talked about Dallas and Dynasty. He was talking about the government being very much like that, and having amnesia. Those were good years.

I think of the stress that my own children and all of their friends are looking at in 2024. When I graduated from university, my debt load was probably about $6,000 or $7,000, very minimal compared to what people are going out with now. I was also able to buy a house when I was 25 years old for $122,000. I was also able to get a job and, this is the best part, that paid $12 an hour, but that was okay because it actually paid the bills. That $12 an hour, back in 1993, after graduating, paid the bills. It paid for my house.

Now we have lost hope. We have lost hope for this future. I look at my five kids and I love them to pieces. I do not know how many of them will be moving home when it comes to trying to find affordable living.

That is very difficult for me as a parent, thinking about what I did or did not do to set them up properly. It is not that I do not think I have set them up properly. They have been in great school systems. They have had amazing teachers over the years and amazing opportunities, but when it comes to them actually stepping outside the house, going and buying their own things, trying to create their own credit limit and trying to rent a place, mom and dad are very necessary. That is what we are seeing with this generation: Those in generation Z are really having to depend on their families, their parents. We have a generation of people, my generation, who are not only paying for their own bills but also helping their children out. The children cannot afford to pay for bills right now, with the cost of living and with their own student debts. This is something that we did not see 20 and 30 years ago. We now see that hope lost.

Those are the things that I think of when we are looking at the green slush fund and we are looking at where the government is and asking about what has gone wrong. We can say that it is poor direction, poor administration and poor ideas. There are ideas where we are throwing out money, but we should ask what we are actually sometimes getting in return. We have talked about very many social programs. Some have had a positive impact, and some have had a negative impact. I would really love to see what the cost rationale is for some of these things. For every dollar spent, are we actually leveraging a better Canada, or are we just throwing our money away? Those are the concerns I have.

We look at the birth rate of 1%; we are trying to get a new workforce in this country and not being able to do that. We look at our extravagant student debt load. We look at the rate of people being employed in Canada, which is less than 60% right now; many of those are people paying bills so that other people can have benefits. We are looking at our GDP being at less than 1.25% right now. These things do not give us a lot of hope. They do not give the businesses that are trying to get into business more hope either.

That is why I wanted to talk at the last minute on the green slush fund and what it has done to start-ups. We have seen start-ups that have had to drop 30% of their labour force because what they were doing with the government stopped working. Because of the failure of the government on this technology program, which had been existing for over 20 years, we are now seeing technology companies having to decrease. It has actually taken away the competitive nature that was in place for so many years when it comes to technology in Canada. We have taken that away.

Those are some of the greatest concerns that I have moving forward. In the last 20 minutes, I have spoken about how we have seen nine years of the government creating greater debt and less hope for the next generation. We have seen a lot of stress. I do not see it getting better under the government.

We have talked about there needing to be an election. As everybody knows, I plan on retiring. If there is an election tomorrow, I am praying that we win with a Conservative majority. At the end of the day, we need to ensure that we have good programs and fiscal responsibility to get on track. These are things that I have great concerns about. I do not know whether that will be the case if we continue under the government for the next year that we are scheduled for. I can see that our GDP will only continue to decline, our debt will only increase and our hope will only decrease as well.

Justice

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, the numbers are astounding. Hate has risen by 130% in the past few years. It is a problem for all Canadians, including Quebeckers. We are perfectly willing to keep discussing the bill put forward by the Bloc Québécois. However, it is important to note that we already have a bill on the table, Bill C‑63, which addresses the same sections of the Criminal Code. It seeks tougher penalties for people who incite hatred.

All of us must do this work together.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, we are well aware of how much hate exists in our communities and the anti-Semitism that exists across Canada right now.

The Bloc Québécois's suggestion is quite welcome. It is a good suggestion, and we would like to study it thoroughly. I do want to emphasize, as I have already mentioned several times, that we have already introduced legislation that would help combat hate in Canada, namely Bill C-63.

If the Bloc Québécois would support us on that, it will help all Canadians.

Public Safety

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our track record on protecting women from violence, from violent firearms, speaks for itself, with respect to assault rifles and with respect to handguns. What I find actually quite appalling is that party's ability to stand up and talk about what women want in this chamber. Today, Barbie Lavers, at the justice committee, said, on Bill C-63, “We must work together as communities, families and governments to reduce the online abuse of our children.... Social media platforms must be held accountable. They must...keep our children safe. Children like our Harry are dying.”

Her son is dead because of online safety issues that party opposes. That is unconscionable.

Justice

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I will do everything in my power to protect children. That is what splitting this bill is about.

At committee this morning, Carol Todd, the mother of Amanda, said, “I have waited 12 years for this, because on day one of Amanda's death, I knew that things needed to change in terms of law, legislation and online safety. I can't bring my child back, but we can certainly keep other children safe.”

Parents need our help. Children need our help. Bill C-63 is about protecting kids and saving lives. Every party in this chamber has a vested interest in doing just that. Will everyone find the courage to back this bill?

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the government announced its intention to split the online harms act into two parts, to move quickly, to act now and to advance child protection measures. We have lost too much time because of Conservative stalling tactics. I find it unconscionable that the Conservatives are opposed to forcing the removal of child sexual abuse material from the Internet.

Can the Minister of Justice explain why the updated Bill C-63 is essential for the safety of Canadians, especially our kids?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, as we have indicated, we are very open to discussing, debating and moving forward on this issue. We recognize that there is no simple or easy solution to this. This is a partial solution, but we must continue to work together.

That is why we introduced Bill C‑63, which addresses online hate, protects our children and will be part of the solutions across the country to combat hate and discrimination, especially online.

We have work to do in the House. Why will the Bloc Québécois not stop the Conservatives from continuing their filibuster?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc has just demonstrated its openness. We would like to see a similar openness extend to initiatives to protect the health care system for the most vulnerable, but this work is being blocked by the Conservative filibuster. We would like to expand dental care, but that work is being blocked by the Conservative filibuster. We would also like the Bloc Québécois to unblock Parliament so we can work on our online harms bill, Bill C‑63, which will protect people across the country, especially children.

We would love to have all these debates in Parliament, but unfortunately, the Bloc Québécois continues to allow the Conservatives to obstruct the work—

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the outstanding constituents of Oshawa and to speak to the question of privilege. I just want to take the opportunity as well to wish members of the House and my constituents in Oshawa a very Merry Christmas. I do not know whether I will have an opportunity to rise in the House again before the break, but certainly we need some more Christmas spirit around here. I think the best Christmas gift we could get the people of Oshawa would be a carbon tax election, because the government is not worth the cost or the corruption.

My speech this evening is going to be more or less about censorship, disinformation and misinformation. The Liberal government is moving down a spiral of authoritarianism. It is a very deceptive government that is definitely not about transparency as it originally promised it would be. It is a government using every single legislative tool to censor and to control.

Around the world, government censorship is constantly being used to silence opposing opinions, suppress transparency and accountability, and consolidate power. We see this form of government censorship in several countries: Russia, China, North Korea and, yes, Canada. After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, we are witnessing a new level of government censorship more than ever before in Canada. The issue today is about contempt of Parliament and about fraud.

The government's censorship threatens the very foundations of our democracy. Without the ability to demand production of documents, speak our mind, express our views and challenge the status quo, we are left with nothing but the hollow illusion of freedom. The government censorship we are witnessing here today is not about protecting Canadians from harm or ensuring public safety. Instead it is about silencing dissent, shutting down debate and consolidating power. It is about covering up corruption and fraud.

With respect to the question of privilege, we are addressing government censorship regarding the failure to produce documents ordered by the House on the scandal involving Sustainable Development Technology Canada, otherwise known as the Liberal billion-dollar green slush fund. However, while the power of the House is supposed to be supreme, the Prime Minister's personal department, the Privy Council Office, decided to execute the order by telling departments to send in documents and censor them through redaction to cover up corruption and to cover up fraud.

This form of government censorship completely breaches a member's privilege because the order from the House did not say to redact. The government has opted to defy the House and to censor information in the SDTC documents at every single step of the way, as it does not want Canadians to know that through the green slush fund, $400 million has gone to Liberal insiders. It may be twice that amount because the Auditor General could not complete the full audit.

The scandal as well, it is really important to recognize, compromises two current cabinet ministers and one former cabinet minister. I would like to say that it is a surprise that the government would behave in this manner, but based on the government's track record, government censorship and fraud are nothing but the expected. In other words, for the government, it is business as usual.

Perhaps this is a very good time for my colleagues to talk a little bit about a history lesson. Remember the Liberal sponsorship scandal? The last time the Liberals were in power, they funnelled $40 million to their friends and orchestrated a sophisticated kickback scheme. Then they got caught at fraud, corruption and cover-ups.

The best predictor of future behaviour, I would suggest, is past behaviour. Is the SDTC scandal part of the latest Liberal kickback scandal? Where did the money go? This one scandal is at least 10 times greater than the sponsorship scandal. It is another in a long list of scandals that the Liberals are trying to cover up through censorship.

I should probably define what I mean by censorship. Censorship is “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.” I would suggest “politically unacceptable” is why the Liberal-NDP government champions censorship. I should probably define a few other terms. Misinformation is “the inadvertent spread of false information without intent to harm”. Disinformation is “false information designed to mislead others and is deliberately spread with the intent to confuse fact and fiction.”

Another word is a controversial new term, malinformation, used to describe the NDP-Liberal government, a “term for information which is based on fact, but removed from its original context in order to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” In other words, malinformation is “true but inconvenient” for the government and its narrative.

Under the guise of combatting disinformation and hate speech, the government has implemented policies that give it the power to silence voices, censor information and withhold documents that do not conform to its own woke ideological agenda. This censorship is spreading across Canada, through our institutions, not just here in the House of Commons.

We saw this last week when independent journalist Ezra Levant was arrested for simply filming and reporting on a pro-Hamas rally occurring in his own neighbourhood. Instead of arresting provocative pro-Hamas supporters who spewed hate, celebrating genocide while chanting “from the river to the sea”, an independent member of the press was arrested for simply doing his job, arrested by the very police who have sworn to protect his charter rights.

We wonder why Canadians are questioning whether this is the country they grew up in. When a Jewish man gets arrested by Toronto police in his own neighbourhood while supporting a vigil for families whose loved ones were massacred and kidnapped on October 7, while members of the hateful mob are allowed to continue their mockery of the victims' suffering, we have to ask ourselves why the government condones this hateful behaviour, censors first-hand accounts of cruel anti-Semitism and supports police who discriminate. When governments and our institutions condone this behaviour, it is as if they give a stamp of approval, and that definitely is not okay.

What about the government's history of pushing through authoritative legislation? Let us take a look at that. Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, according to the NDP-Liberals, aims to modernize the Broadcasting Act. However, it harms Canadian digital creators by limiting their services and ability to reach global audiences. It also allows the government boundless powers to regulate digital content and gives it the authority to control what Canadians can and cannot access online.

This is a direct assault on the freedoms of expression and access to information that have flourished in this digital age. Instead of letting Canadians choose for themselves what to watch and listen to, the government seeks to impose its own narrative, prioritizing state-approved content over independent voices and diverse viewpoints. Our young, bright Canadian content creators are being stifled. If other jurisdictions also decide to put forward legislation like this, it will mean Canadian content will be a lower priority for the rest of the world and that could damage our entertainment exports.

The government's censorship does not stop there. Bill C-18, the Online News Act, also allows the government to get in the way of what people can see and share online. This bill requires Internet companies to distribute royalties to newspapers whose content is shared on a site. It demonstrates the government choosing to side with large corporate media while shutting down small, local and independent news, as well as giving far too much power to the government to regulate without limitation. As a result, local and independent media outlets that might challenge the government's narrative are left vulnerable, and those that conform are rewarded.

Common-sense Conservatives believe we need to find a solution in which Canadians can continue to freely access news content online, in addition to fairly compensating Canadian news outlets. However, when we offered amendments to the bill that would address these several issues, the NDP and the Liberals voted them down.

Bill C-63 is another testament to this government's continuous commitment to censorship. The online harms act would create costly censorship bureaucracy that would not make it easier for people experiencing legitimate online harassment to access justice. Instead, it would act as a regulatory process that would not start for years and would happen behind closed doors where big-tech lobbyists could pull the strings.

The common-sense Conservative alternative to the online harms act is Bill C-412, proposed by my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill. It would keep Canadians safe online without infringing on their civil liberties. It would give Canadians more protections online through existing regulators and the justice system, and would outline a duty of care for online operators to keep kids safe online while prohibiting a digital ID and giving parents more tools.

For another outrageous example of withholding documents and censoring information, let us not forget the cover-up at the Winnipeg lab. The Liberals allowed scientists loyal to the Chinese Communist Party to work at our most secure lab. The Liberals gave them a Canadian taxpayer-funded salary and allowed them to send dangerous pathogens back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they work on gain-of-function research. When exposed, the Liberals, whom we know admire the basic dictatorship of China, let these scientists escape the country without proper investigation. When Parliament asked for these documents, the Liberals actually took their own Liberal Speaker to court and then censored our ability to disclose those documents by calling an early election. We still have not found out what happened there.

On top of censoring Parliament, let us not forget about the NDP-Liberal government's track record of censoring individual expression. We have seen countless individuals, physicians, scientists and organizations being punished for simply speaking out against the current government's policies. The government froze bank accounts. People were labelled as promoting hate speech and disinformation, or as conspiracy theorists, racists and misogynists, by their own Prime Minister.

We were warned that this could happen. In one of his final interviews, esteemed scientist Carl Sagan noted, “We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces.”

Who is running science and technology in a democracy if the people do not know anything about it? We have seen this technocracy weaponized by governments during the COVID pandemic through various unjustifiable mandates and government censorship surrounding medical research. Now, the new head of the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, Marty Makary, has said on the record that the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic was the United States government, and it is the same here in Canada.

The weaponization of medical research is not just an American issue. Dr. Regina Watteel, a Ph.D. in statistics, has written, an excellent exposé on the rise of Canadian hate science. Her books expose how the Liberal government, through repeated grants from CIHR, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, hired Dr. David Fisman, a researcher for hire from the University of Toronto medical school, to manipulate COVID statistics to support a failing government policy.

He was touted as an expert, but his only expertise was manipulating statistics to support government overreach. His sham studies were used to justify some of the most draconian COVID policies in the world and were quoted extensively by the Liberal-friendly media. Any criticism of Fisman's fraudulent statistical analysis has been shut down and censored. Again, this is a Canadian example of a result that Carl Sagan warned us about decades ago: the fall into technocracy, where government-sanctioned expert opinion trumps hard scientific data.

Sadly, the government's censorship has now extended to our judicial systems and other institutions, including the Parole Board of Canada.

While the Liberal justice minister brags about appointing 800 judges out of the 957 positions, we can see the soft-on-crime consequences of his woke ideological agenda. We saw an outrageous example of this last week when the French and Mahaffy families desired to participate in the parole hearing of their daughters' brutal murderer. Locally, Lisa Freeman, a constituent in Oshawa and the inspiration behind my private member's bill, Bill C-320, was recently informed by the Parole Board of Canada that the axe murderer who brutally murdered her father while on parole at the time will be subject to a closed-door review.

In the past, Ms. Freeman has been denied her rights as a registered victim and, as a result, has been continually revictimized, only this time by the very institutions that should be putting her mental health and safety and the safety of victims first. Attending and meaningfully participating in an in-person hearing to deliver a victim statement is not only fair and reasonable, but well within Ms. Freeman's rights, as per the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights under the right of participation. It is crucial that Ms. Freeman be able to express the emotional pain and turmoil the murder of her father caused and continues to cause. She also deserves to be able to gauge for herself the accountability of the offender. This is something she has previously been unable to ascertain.

The brutal murder of her father has not only vastly impacted her life and the lives of her loved ones, but also continues to cause post-traumatic stress, which is exacerbated by the complete lack of care by the Parole Board of Canada for her rights as a victim. It is completely unacceptable that Ms. Freeman is once again being censored by the Parole Board of Canada as they plan to make a closed-door decision regarding the offender's continuation of day parole and full parole without holding a hearing.

It is shameful that the NDP-Liberal government seems to care more about censoring victims than keeping repeat offenders off the streets. What they do not understand is that government censorship does not fulfill the requirement of protecting people from harm in society. Instead, government censorship is the harm to society. It threatens our fundamental democratic values, which we should be championing. To quote the famous author, George Orwell, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

The Marxist communist Vladimir Lenin once said, “Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?”

More and more we are seeing these quotes and Marxist ideas implemented under the NDP-Liberal government. We must stand up for the idea that truth is not something that can be determined by the state. We must insist that Canadian citizens, not censoring politicians, should be the ones who decide what information they believe, what opinions and values they hold and with what content they engage. We must continue to reject the government's idea that censorship is the solution to every problem, though it may be the solution to their problems, and instead embrace the idea that freedom of expression and freedom of conscience are part of the solution of a more free and prosperous Canadian society.

Justice Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritative regime”. That is what we see with the tired, divisive, Liberal government of today. Canadians have indeed lost confidence in the weak Prime Minister and the corrupt Liberal Party. If we allow government to censor the rights of the people's elected representatives and the Internet; squash individuality, opinions and expression; and curtail our freedom of movement, then indeed the Marxists have won the ideological war.

In closing, Canada is not the greatest country in the world simply because I say it is. Canada is the greatest country in the world because we care and fight for our fundamental, democratic values. We have a history of that people from around the world in other countries would love to have, so these values must not be taken for granted. When we, in Oshawa, sing our national anthem, we take “The True North strong and free” to heart.

The current SDTC scandal, with the refusal of the NDP-Liberal government to release the requested unredacted documents to the people's representatives, threatens the very essence of our democracy, which generations of Canadians died to protect and must be respected and fought for. At our cenotaphs, service clubs and in the sacred House of Commons, the people's voices will be heard.

Canadians are listening today, and they have a core identity. We are proud Canadians. We are not the first post-national state. When people ask us which country we admire the most, we do not say that we admire the basic dictatorship of China. We say we admire Canada.

Hopefully, like most things that criticize the government, such as this speech, the Liberal-NDPs do not decide to censor it. Let us see what they have to say.

Justice

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with the Bloc Québécois's suggestion. This bill addresses a terrible situation in Canada, with hate and hate crimes on the rise across the country, both in Quebec and the rest of Canada.

To free up the House so that we can advance our debate on this bill, we would like the Bloc Québécois's help. I also want to point out that Bill C‑63 already addresses the aspects and sections of the Criminal Code targeted by this bill. If Bloc members are interested in co-operating with us on efforts to combat hate, we are all with them all the way.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege and a pleasure to rise in this place. On this particular issue, I rose last in early October to speak to the House about the Liberals' failure to turn over documents on the green slush fund as requested by the House of Commons' duly elected members and agreed to by the Speaker.

Two months later, it is pretty obvious the government is more concerned about what damage might emerge from handing over these documents and the consequences that may follow. Instead of moving ahead with its own agenda, as flawed as it may be, it is choosing to let this place live in gridlock. Then, from its ivory tower, it stands and lectures us on how our quest for transparency is impeding the business of this place.

There is a pretty easy solution to this. The Liberals could just hand over the documents, as requested by the elected members of this place. If they had done that by now, we would not be here today. I would not be speaking on this privilege debate today. They could do it today. Recognizing that my time will run short at adjournment, I will come back Monday morning to conclude my speech and take hopefully decent questions from members of the NDP-Liberal government. However, I am willing to sacrifice and cede that time if the government were to just do the right thing and hand over the documents. It is a Friday afternoon. It is a dump. The government can get rid of it. Maybe nobody will notice. The reason that it is obviously hiding the documents and refusing to do so is because it is very worried about those consequences.

I mentioned the legislative agenda of the government, if we want to call it that. Let us review where we are at to perhaps understand why it might not want to move forward with its own agenda.

Of course, the Minister of Justice has the Orwellian bill, Bill C-63, a widely panned piece of legislation that would see Canadians arrested for speech the Liberals deem impermissible, speech that they do not like. George Orwell's dystopian future is proving eerily correct under the Liberal government, with thought crime set to be added to our legal books should that bill ever pass.

Then we have Bill C-65, the electoral participation act, that is also under way in theory. Maybe we should call it by what it more appropriately would be, the “ensuring the leader of the NDP's pension act”. Since the NDP and the Liberals got together and cut some backroom deals to get another payout on the backs of hard-working Canadian taxpayers—

Justice

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, who often acts as the conscience of this chamber.

I would simply appeal to all parliamentarians: The issue of protecting kids from child sex predators should not be a partisan issue. Getting this bill into committee is of paramount importance for all of us who want to combat online sex predation by people who take vulnerable children and spread revenge porn about them. If we all simply listen to Amanda Todd's mother and Rehtaeh Parsons's mother, we can get behind this bill, get it to committee, get it off to the Senate and protect children. That is what Bill C-63 is about. I hope everyone in this chamber can support it.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to raise with the Minister of Justice Bill C-63. We finally see some movement. It has gone from prestudy to committee. Legal groups that have looked at it and the many people who have reached me say that this four-part bill would help protect children from sexual predation online. Parts 1 and 4 have large degrees of consensus; parts 2 and 3 remain problematic.

Can the minister tell us what he will do to improve and expedite passage of this bill to protect our children and other vulnerable people from online sexual predators?

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not like asking questions about this, but the trend of the NDP-Liberal government is toward greater obstruction and censorship. We are looking at the censorship bills Bill C-11, Bill C-18 and Bill C-63, and we cannot forget the Winnipeg lab. Do members remember when we were requesting those documents and the Prime Minister went as far as to take the Speaker to court? He actually called an election to keep Canadians from having that knowledge. I am extremely worried about the precedent we would set if we do not challenge the government on this point.

Could my colleague please talk about the importance of precedent? Enough is enough for the Canadian people with the government. Let us call an election.

Canadian Heritage

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a dissenting report, in both official languages, on harms caused to children, women and men by the ease of access to, and online viewing of, illegal sexually explicit material. It was a Conservative motion that led to this important study to bring understanding to the real harm experienced by many Canadians within virtual spaces.

Conservative members of this committee believe that the report fell short in a number of areas, notably that women are overwhelmingly the primary targets of online harms. Current legislation fails to include deepfakes. Existing legislation must be amended to address the criminal nature of online harms. A victim-centric approach and more effort are needed to prevent uploading of illegal sexually explicit material. There is a growing need to protect Canadians from the threat of online harms, and the Liberal government's online harms legislation, Bill C-63, will not satisfy the need for protection and will only limit the freedoms of Canadians.

It is my honour to table this dissenting opinion on behalf of members of the Conservative Party.

Public Safety

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I reject that out of hand. What I would say on this side of the House is that we are working to ease tensions in our communities. We are looking at the statistics on hate crimes and seeking to address them.

What is the proof positive? When I announced Bill C-63 in the chamber, who was standing by my side? It was people from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Why is that? They know that a Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue attack does not happen unless people are radicalized online. Radicalization online is causing anti-Semitism. It is what we will combat through the bill and through every measure on this side of the House.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, all Canadians in the House and all Canadians around the country detest and render unacceptable what we saw on the streets of Montreal. That kind of violence, unlawful behaviour and anti-Semitism is unacceptable and will never be countenanced.

While we are talking about the fight against anti-Semitism, I will put it to the member that there is legislation on the floor of the chamber that would, with respect to the ban on willful promotion of anti-Semitism, accentuate the penalties, taking them from two to five years.

Will the member support the bill? It is called Bill C-63 and it targets online radicalisation, which is the root cause of what we are seeing.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am an advocate for free speech. We have laws in this country that address the issue of hate speech. If one crosses the line, they should expect to be visited by law enforcement.

I listened to the answer of the hon. member for Thornhill, and I agree with her. Are we going to get to a point, which we would through Bill C-63, but hopefully with a change in government we would not, when we would be starting to censor the freedom of speech of Canadians? I believe, and it is an ideological belief on my part, that free speech is paramount in our democracy. It is paramount in our democratic institutions. If we as a government are restricting that in any way, save and except for what constitutes hate speech as identified in the Criminal Code, then we are doing a disservice to not just our freedoms, but also our institutions.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is not going to like what I say about this, but we have been entirely consistent that the solution to bad speech is not necessarily to stop speech. That is what we have seen from the Liberals with Bill C-11, Bill C-63 and, to some extent, Bill C-18. The solution is both more speech and having the consequences in place to actually arrest people who break the law. There are plenty of laws that currently exist in our Criminal Code that have been broken time after time and that would create more civil rest in this country rather than the unrest, the rioting and the behaviour that we have been seeing in the streets. I do not think the solution is stopping Canadians from having their point of view; it is stopping the lawbreakers from breaking the law.

Business of the House

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague well knows, it is him and his party members who are keeping Parliament paralyzed because they are obstructing their own motion of instruction. The Speaker very clearly ruled that this matter should be sent to the procedure and House affairs committee for further study. We agree with that. We are just waiting for the Conservative Party of Canada members of Parliament to do the same. In the interim, they continue to filibuster their own filibuster, and we have seen that, because they continue to amend their amendments on this matter, but when they are ready to get back to work, we are here to work for Canadians, and we look forward to that.

As I mentioned last week, we look forward to the Conservatives putting an end to their political games so that the House can move on to studying Bill C-71 on citizenship, Bill C‑66 on military justice, Bill C‑63 on online harms, the ways and means motion on capital gains and the ways and means motion on charities.

I also want to inform the House of our government's announcement regarding upcoming legislation to put more money in the pockets of Canadians through a tax break and a working Canadians rebate. We would be giving a tax break to all Canadians and putting more money directly into the pockets of the middle class. These are important measures to help Canadians pay their bills. We encourage Parliament and all parties to get this legislation passed quickly and unanimously, so workers and working families can get more money in their pockets. We are committed to getting things done for Canadians in Parliament. Important legislation is before the House, and we believe the Conservatives should stop playing obstructionist, partisan games so that MPs can debate those bills.

I would also like to inform the House that the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth will deliver a ministerial statement on Monday, November 25, which is the first day of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence.

Request for Witness to Attend at the Bar of the House

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one member across the way said “yay”, but there are other issues, and not just government issues.

The Conservatives have opposition day motions, and when they bring them forward, they like to say the motions are confidence motions. However, I think Canadians would love to see an opposition day motion that deals with the housing accelerator fund. We have 17 Conservative members across the way who are scared because the leader of the Conservative Party is saying the party opposes it. The party is going to kill that particular fund. Therefore, we have Conservative MPs who are having a difficult time trying to justify their very existence on such an important issue. We should have a vote on that particular issue, but we cannot do so. The Conservatives know full well that all they have to do is continue to put up speaker after speaker on matters of privilege, and then nothing else can take place on the floor for debate.

The housing accelerator fund is providing thousands of housing units, or homes, in every region of our country, but we have the official opposition opposing it. Actually, that is not fair to say. We have the leader of the official opposition saying that the program is bad and needs to be cut. However, a dozen or more Conservative members are saying they like the program. They are writing to the Minister of Housing to say that they want this program to be applied in our communities. We have mayors in different areas of the country saying that this is a good program. However, there is this division within the Conservative Party. In order to avoid that sort of a division, why not continue to talk about privilege? It is a privilege motion for which everyone is saying yes to having the member come before the bar, but the Conservatives have no interest in voting on it. As I have indicated very clearly, it is a fairly straightforward motion that Mr. Anderson be called before the bar to answer questions. If everyone believes that, fine, we will accept that and allow it to come to a vote. However, what is the purpose of the Conservative Party not only continuing to debate the motion but now also actually moving an amendment to the motion, which means that we could see dozens speak to it?

What happened on the previous motion? We saw over 100 Conservatives speak to it. Weeks and weeks of potential debate on other issues were left to the wayside and never dealt with, such as Bill C-71, an act to amend the Citizenship Act; Bill C-66, which would transfer issues related to sexual abuse from military courts to civil courts; Bill C-33, strengthening the port system and railway safety in Canada act, which deals with our supply lines; and Bill C-63, the proposed online harms act to protect children on the Internet. This is not to mention the fall economic statement or the many opposition days that are being lost because the Conservatives are filling the time on issues of privilege, even though the very motions they are bringing forward are ones that we are okay with actually seeing pass. The reason, as I started off by saying, is that it is a multi-million dollar game, and it is all about character assassination. This is why I posed the question to the member opposite: What is the issue?

The issue is that we have a minister representing an Edmonton riding, and there have been concerns in regard to some text messaging and how that could have had an impact on the issue at hand. As I have pointed out, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has looked at this issue not once, not twice, but three times and cleared the minister responsible each time.

When I posed that particular question to the member, his response was that it is not true. It is true. Members of the Conservative Party know it is true, but they continue to push. Why is that? It is because, as I pointed out in my question, even when the Prime Minister was the leader of the Liberal Party in third party, the Conservative Party continued to attack the individual. Nothing has changed. The wonderful thing about Hansard is that everything said inside the chamber is actually recorded and there for people to read. People do not have to believe me; they can just read the Hansards. We can go back to the time when the leader of the Liberal Party was in third party. We will find personal attacks on the leader, especially in member statements.

We have witnessed it of other ministers inside the chamber. It is the type of thing where I could enter into that same field, talk about personalities and start to look at the leader of the Conservative Party. I referred to an interesting document. By the way, the relevance of this is in regard to the issue of attacking the character of an individual. It is some sort of a report that was published. The title is “Stephen Harper, Serial Abuser of Power: The Evidence Compiled”. Actually, not all the evidence is compiled, because there are a number of things I am aware of that are not actually included in this document. However, it is about abuse of power, scandals and corruption.

There are 70 of them listed, for anyone who is interested, but one of them that is really interesting is that Stephen Harper was actually found in contempt of Parliament. We can think about that. He is the only prime minister in the British Commonwealth, which includes Canada, to ever be found in contempt of Parliament. Can we guess who his parliamentary secretary was? It was the leader of the Conservative Party.

That is one, but I am a little off topic there. I go through this article, and the leader of the Conservative Party's name comes up on more than one occasion. Let us go to page 9, to something called the vanity video; the article reads, “The Globe and Mail revealed that Harper’s chosen Minister for Democratic Reform [the now leader of the Conservative Party] commissioned a team of public servants for overtime work on a Sunday to film him glad-handing constituents.”

It goes on, but he was promoting using civil servants and wearing his Conservative Party uniform, and of course, we cannot do that. If the Ethics Commissioner was to look into that, I suspect maybe they would have found some sort of fine or a penalty, or he would have been found offside.

However, one of the ones Harper is really well known for is the “Elections bill [that] strips power from Elections Canada”. The story says, “The Fair Elections Act also makes it harder for Canadians to vote as more ID is required. Nationwide protests in which more than 400 academics took part forced [the leader of the Conservative Party] to withdraw some measures in the bill because of their alleged anti-democratic bent.”

Anti-democratic: I think there could be some relevancy here. It goes on to say, the “Democratic Reform Minister [the leader of the Conservative Party] accused the Elections Canada CEO Marc Mayrand of being a power monger and wearing a team jersey.”

Here we have the Conservative Party now calling into question the Ethics Commissioner, but when the leader of the Conservative Party was the minister responsible for democratic reform, he labelled the chief of our electoral system, Elections Canada. That is why I do not say it lightly. We have a leader of the Conservative Party who is in borderline contempt, in terms of what we are witnessing in Parliament today. He has no qualms doing that. It is demonstrated.

Not only that, but if we take a look at the issue of security clearance, I do not know how many times I have asked the question of Conservative MP after Conservative MP: Why does the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada not get the security clearance so that he can better understand foreign interference? That is a very real issue. We have all sorts of things that are taking place in our community. An individual has been murdered; individuals are being held in many different ways for financial purposes. We have all sorts of interference in political parties, in the leader of the Conservative Party's own leadership.

When he was elected as leader, there were issues related to foreign interference and how that influenced the leadership that he ultimately won. The Bloc, the Green, the NDP and the Prime Minister all have the security clearance. He is the only leader who does not. Why will the leader of the Conservative Party not do likewise? The arguments he uses are bogus. He knows that. We have experts clearly indicating that the leader of the Conservative Party has nothing to worry about in terms of being able to get the security clearance, from a perspective of being able to listen and talk about the issue of the day. That is not the concern. However, it does raise an issue. What is in the background of the leader of the Conservative Party regarding which, ultimately, he is scared to get that security clearance? I believe there is something there.

There is something that the leader of the Conservative Party does not want Canadians to know. I think we should find that out. That is why, whether it is me or other members of the government, we will continue to call upon the leader of the Conservative Party to get that security clearance.

Instead of playing this multi-million dollar game, let us start dealing with the issues that are important to Canadians. Let us talk about the fall economic statement and the legislation before the House that the Conservatives do not want to have discussions on. Let us have opposition days and private members' bills. We should allow the chamber to do the work that Canadians want us to do.

As the Conservative Party, and the leader of the Conservative Party in particular, is so focused on them, I can assure people following the debate that the Government of Canada and the Prime Minister will always continue to be focused on Canadians first and foremost. Unfortunately, we have to participate in this game; however, at the end of the day, we will continue to push a Canadian agenda, an agenda that reflects what we believe Canadians want.

That is something we will continue to advocate for. I would ask that, if Conservatives across the way understand the cost of the game they are playing, they stop with the character assassination they began back in 2011. Let us get down to business and do some good things for Canadians. We can do so much more if we start working together. Not only were all the other parties given a responsibility to do some good things inside the chamber, but the Conservative Party was too.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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

Madam Speaker, it will be a real joy to see all our Olympians, of whom we are so proud.

I will get back to the green slush fund scandal, which began with Navdeep Bains, who was then the minister of industry, science and economic development. He was involved in some questionable things. I want to read from one of the newspapers about the time when he stepped down:

...Bains was implicated in a questionable real estate transaction, when former Brampton mayor Linda Jeffrey's chief of staff [Mr.] Punia, shared confidential details about a land purchase with Bains and former Liberal MP Raj Grewal. When Brampton council learned about the behaviour it sent details of a third-party investigation into the matter to the RCMP, because the force was already looking into Grewal's activities involving chronic gambling in Ottawa while he served as an MP.

The City eventually paid about $1 million extra for the land it was trying to acquire, after a group of local businessmen with ties to the Liberals purchased it, then flipped it to the City, after Punia had passed on details of the original offer the City had planned to make for the property, which was owned by the Province.

There is no evidence Bains has any ties to the [business]....

Just because we could not find evidence does not mean that nothing happened. The article continues:

Grewal was charged in September by the RCMP with five counts of fraud and breach of trust for alleged misuse of his constituency office budget while he was an MP, after an extensive investigation.

This was the kind of people who started the fund and then went forward with it. It then got a bit worse, because in 2019, the current Minister of Environment and Climate Change came along. He was one of the people who approved the money for the fund in 2021. He was a member of cabinet, which approved the billion dollars going into the slush fund.

I have one other thing to say about Navdeep Bains. The article reads:

Bains was in the news again when questions were raised last year about his father's involvement with individuals implicated in a Fort Erie Gurdwara scandal. There is no evidence Bains has any ties with the plan and he denies any link.... The Sikh temple had sponsored three priests from India who were given special visas by Ottawa. It turned out the Gurdwara was not even operating and the three men disappeared after arriving in Canada.

We do not have any evidence of wrongdoing, but there is always suspicion. Here we are again with the same thing because the Minister of Environment and Climate Change was part of the cabinet that approved the billion dollars. One of the board members was a lady named Andrée-Lise Méthot. She was the founder and managing partner of Cycle Capital, a company that the Minister of Environment and Climate Change is invested in.

Section 119 of the Criminal Code says that no holder of public office, for example someone like the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, can take an action, for example giving a billion dollars to a slush fund that would be of benefit for themselves, for example his investment in Cycle Capital, which tripled its value through the money given to it from the green slush fund.

I certainly think that when the RCMP finishes its investigation and is able to see the documents, it could be that the Minister of Environment and Climate Change will be back in his orange pajamas again. He, as we know, was a convicted felon. In 2001 he was charged and convicted. He served a year's probation plus 100 hours of community service and paid $1,000 of restitution.

This is the calibre of corruption in the Liberal government and cabinet. It is no wonder things go awry when these kinds of people are involved. The Liberals have been trying to suggest that they need to stand up for the charter rights of Canadians. I certainly wish they would, because they have not.

One is what their record says they are, and if we look at the record of the Liberal government on the matter, we see the chill the Liberals have put on freedom of speech in this country with Bill C-11, the censorship bill. With Bill C-18, the freedom of the press was compromised. Bill C-63, the online harms bill that I just talked about, once again would violate everyone's charter rights happily.

Then there is freedom of religion. I spoke about this before, but since then, things have escalated even further in our country. Have members heard about the persecution that Hindus are facing in Brampton? People were out with knives. There were violent attacks on temples. The government has done nothing about it. Liberals wring their pearls and say that it is unacceptable, but they have done nothing to ensure that the rule of law in this country is enforced.

What is the point of having rules to protect Canadians if they are not enforced, and why has the federal government, which has the highest authority to make sure that rights are protected, done nothing? A hundred or more Christian churches were burned in our country, and again, it is crickets from the Liberals on this. It goes on and on. What has happened to Jewish Canadians is heartbreaking. They have been constantly harassed, and their synagogues and their businesses are vandalized. They have been given death treats and nothing has been done. Certainly freedom of religion in this country is in serious jeopardy.

Furthermore, there is discrimination that happens. We are supposed to be free from discrimination in this country, but it happens even in the Liberal benches. The Liberals are discriminating based on age. They decided to give seniors who are older than 75 more money than the seniors who are between 65 and 75. Similarly, there are violations in the minority language rights; the government has been proven several times in court to not have done what it should have done to protect the minority language rights of Canadians.

Let me sidebar for a moment and say how proud I am to announce that Sarnia—Lambton has the official francophone designation of Ontario.

I am very happy. I worked hard with the francophones of Sarnia—Lambton and I am very proud of our work.

The other argument we will hear from the Liberal benches is that the RCMP does not want the documents. Is it really the case that the RCMP does not want to see evidence of potential crime? The whistle-blower was clear that there was criminality going on, and it is possible that it was with more than one minister. I talked about the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, but actually there is also the current minister who was overseeing the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund.

There is an agreement that says the board members had to disclose any conflicts of interest to ISED, so the minister would have known about them and not acted. Perhaps that is what would be uncovered when the documents are released. Certainly there is an issue there.

I think that what happened in the slush fund is just another example, and we keep racking up dollars. I think about the number of scandals that have happened in the government since I came here in 2015. This one is $400 million. There was the $372 million the Liberals gave to Frank Baylis to make ventilators when he had never made ventilators before, and they never ended up using any of them. It goes on and on with the different scandals. There was the WE Charity scandal and the huge waste of money there.

Canadians are finding the current scandal particularly obscene, at a time when the number of people going to food banks is the highest it has ever been. There are also 1,400 tent encampments in Ontario alone, and they are spread across the country. At a time when people are struggling, cannot afford food and cannot afford to feed their family and heat their house, there is an incredible waste of money and people lining the pockets of insiders. It is just unacceptable.

When I look at some of the previous things that have happened, I ask myself what we need to do to put in place some accountability so that this sort of thing does not happen. What kind of protection can we provide to whistle-blowers? If it is going on in one department, what is going on in all the other funds?

It is said that the fish rots from the head. The Prime Minister has already been violating ethics laws in the billionaire island fiasco, and he is also under suspicion in the SNC-Lavalin scandal for pressuring a criminal prosecution, which the RCMP is investigating. In the WE Charity scandal, the Prime Minister took an action, by awarding money to the organization, that benefited himself and his family: his brother, his mother and his wife. As I said before, under subsection 119(1) of the Criminal Code, that is illegal. It is not just a mistake.

Therefore we really have to clean up the government, and it does not look to me like we can change the spots on the leopards. Over here on the Conservative benches, we believe in the rule of law. We believe in transparency. We believe in accountability and we believe in trying to be prudent with the use of taxpayer dollars for the benefit of all Canadians.

I think that Canadians are looking for a change. They cannot take the continual rise in taxes that they have seen under the current government, such as the carbon tax, which it is going to increase to 61¢ a litre at a time when people are already struggling. The Liberals want to quadruple it and quadruple the misery.

EI premiums, CPP premiums and all of these things are going in the wrong direction at a time when there is going to be increasing competitiveness from the U.S.; President-elect Trump has clearly put America as a priority, and we are not on competitive ground. We have taxes and a regulatory burden that are going to drive millions of dollars and millions of jobs to the U.S.

The Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund is the tip of the iceberg. We have to get to the bottom of it. As much as everybody would like to move on from this, until the documents are produced unredacted and we can give them to the RCMP so we can get to the bottom of what happened, the Conservatives are going to continue to do what is our job. We are His Majesty's loyal opposition, and our job is to hold the government to account, which means not just saying, “Oh, there's nothing to see here.” It means asking for the documents, doing the hard work to get to the bottom of it and going to committees.

I understand that once the documents are produced, the PROC committee is supposed to look at them. However, I have a little bit of skepticism about that, because with every other scandal that has gone to any committee, NDP members, partners of the Liberals, work together with them. They are still doing it, even though the leader of the NDP made a big deal of ripping up the agreement, effectively saying, “Oh, the Liberals are too weak and they can't be trusted. We're not going work with them anymore.”

The New Democrats are still supporting the Liberals today at committee. What they do is shut down the committee. They filibuster so they do not have to produce the documents, and that is exactly what would happen if this thing went to committee, which is why we have to hold on and wait until the Liberals deliver the documents.

Why will they not deliver the documents? The Auditor General has seen them, although she was not auditing criminality. The documents exist and need to be produced, but what are they hiding? Are people going to go to jail? That is what it is starting to look like. However, we will not know until we see the documents, so the Liberals need to produce them, the sooner the better.

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

Madam Speaker, before I begin my comments about the Sustainable Development Technology Canada scandal, knowing that we are coming into Remembrance Week, I want to share with the House a poem. It is called We Remain, and it was written by T.S. Bedford:

We remain.
We stand between the living and the lost;
Between memory and tomorrow.
We give voice to the silent;
Presence to the missed.
We share yesterday with the parted
And today with the loved.
No one knows the shape of the future
Or where the path will lead.
But the lost will always walk with us;
So long as
We remain.

I have to say, at the start of this speech today, that I cannot believe we are still here. I cannot believe that we talked about this topic in September and for all of October, and that it is November and we are still talking about it. For those at home who do not know what this privilege motion is about, it all started with Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a fund that was supposed to support sustainable technology development. The fund was created in 2001 and worked fine under both Liberal and Conservative governments until the current corrupt Liberal government.

Basically, it appointed people to the committee that was going to decide who got the money, and all its members gave it to their own companies. The Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest, a whistle-blower implied that there was criminality involved and Parliament voted to have the documents related to this scandal produced. Of course, the Liberals did what they always do: They delayed and then produced the documents all blacked out without anything useful. The Speaker has correctly ruled that they need to produce the documents unredacted and that no government business or private member's business is going to take place in the House until that happens. We have been waiting for five weeks for the Liberals to produce the documents.

Bills are not coming forward, but there are some bills that I am glad are not coming forward, like the online harms bill, Bill C-63, which would do absolutely nothing to help children being sexually exploited online. Everybody wants that to be dealt with, but it would create a parallel system with no criminal consequences, and that would not help anyone. It would also put a person in jail for life if someone thinks they might commit a hate crime in the future. That is a chill on freedom of speech in this country. I am also happy that we do not have Bill C-65 coming forward, the bill that would give all Liberal and NDP members who are going to lose their seat in the next election their pensions by moving the election date out a week.

One of the bills that I would like to see come forward is unfortunately not happening. As part of the federal redistribution process, my riding was renamed Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. The new chief of Bkejwanong, which is Walpole Island, objects to the use of that name. As soon as I heard that he objected to it, I asked it to be part of a bill to alter riding names that need to be changed, which is done regularly in the House. I am very disappointed that this bill is not coming forward, because now I am not able to do what the chief asked me to do and what I said I would do, which is bring it forward here.

The reason we are here is that the Liberals continue to block us by not producing the documents. Let us talk about some of the arguments that have been made.

The Liberals are saying they do not want to give the documents to the RCMP because that would be a violation of people's charter rights. I want to be clear that the RCMP gets tips all the time, like from Crime Stoppers. It follows up on them. Nothing is a violation of anybody's charter rights with respect to that. What would happen is that RCMP members would look into the documents, especially if we give some indication of where they should be looking, and if they found evidence of criminality and wanted to pursue criminal charges, they would go to a judge and order those documents to be produced so they could be officially used in a criminal trial. That is where we are at today.

I just want to recap a bit of the history of how this fund went so wrong.

Business of the House

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague knows, the motion that the Speaker presented actually said to refer this matter to the procedure and House affairs committee. That is exactly what we support.

We look forward to the Conservatives ending their silly games, starting to respect the charter rights of Canadians and the independence of the police, and moving this to committee to make sure that we respect the independence of powers in this country. I will also note that thousands of pages have indeed been tabled. They have just been done so in a way that respects the charter rights of Canadians.

We are looking forward to debating, once the Conservatives stop freezing the work of this place, important legislation, such as Bill C-71, concerning citizenship; Bill C-66 on military justice; Bill C-63, the online harms legislation; and two ways and means motions, one related to capital gains and one that would require more transparency from charities that use deceptive tactics to push women away from making their own reproductive decisions.

On this side of the House, we will continue to work for Canadians and represent their interests. I wish all members would do the same.

As it is Remembrance Week, and we are coming up to Remembrance Day, I would like to take a moment to thank every service member and every veteran who has served our country, both in times of conflict and in times of peace. I know that every member in the House will be taking a moment on Remembrance Day to remember the sacrifices of our veterans and of those who continue to serve in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Lest we forget.

Industry and Technology

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

Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting process over the last number of weeks. For those who are trying to follow what is taking place, allow me to attempt to summarize it. What they are really witnessing is what I would suggest is a multi-million dollar political game that is being led by the leader of the Conservative Party because he has determined that it is in his self-interest and the interests of the Conservative Party of Canada to continue playing this silly, expensive game at a substantial cost. As opposed to participating in this filibuster, what we are actually witnessing is an opposition party that, I would ultimately argue, is in contempt, or nearing contempt, of the House of Commons today.

It should not surprise people because the leader of the Conservative Party was the parliamentary secretary to former prime minister Stephen Harper, who was held in contempt of Parliament, the first prime minister in the history of the Commonwealth and the only one to this very day to have been held in contempt. It speaks volumes, in terms of the character and the personality of the leader of the Conservative Party today.

Let us look at what the Conservatives are doing, and I do not say it lightly. In fact, I have recommended that every member of the Conservative caucus read the Hill Times story that was published on October 31. It was written by Steven Chaplin. Steven Chaplin is the former senior legal counsel in the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel. Let me just quote two very important things that should be highlighted because that is why we have the debate that we are having today, and I am going to get into that very shortly. Here is what Steven Chaplin has to say about the multi-million dollar game that the leader of the Conservative Party is playing:

It’s time for the House [of Commons] to admit it was wrong, and to move on....

There has now been three weeks of debate on a questionable matter of privilege based on the misuse of the House’ power to order producing documents....

The article goes on, and here is where people really need to understand this point because we get Conservative after Conservative talking, whether about this motion or the matter of privilege that the Conservatives introduced over four weeks ago. The Conservative Party says, “just produce the papers and then the issue will end.” We cannot produce the papers. The Conservatives know that. Here is what Steven Chaplin has to say on the issue, in terms of the game that the Conservatives are playing:

It is time for the House to admit its overreach before the matter inevitably finds it[s] way to the courts which do have the ability to determine and limit the House’s powers, often beyond what the House may like.

This is not me. This is a professional; someone who understands what is taking place in the House of Commons. It is the leader of the Conservative Party today who is using his opposition powers to prevent important things from taking place in the House because it is his self-interest and the interests of the Conservative Party and not the interests of Canadians that are being served by this tactic; not to mention the millions of dollars being thrown away.

The deputy House leader, earlier today, talked about legislation. Take a look at what is on the Order Paper and has been on the Order Paper for days now: the Canadian Citizenship Act. Citizenship is important to Canadians. By not passing this legislation, some individuals are being denied their citizenship.

There is Bill C-66, the military court reforms, which would take sexual abuse issues out of military courts and put them into the civil courts. Also, we have Bill C-33, on the rail and marine safety issue, which is talking about economic supply lines. If we want to talk about improving the economy, this is one of the things that we should be discussing. My colleague emphasized Bill C-63, the online harms act. We can think of pictures being posted on the Internet without consent from individuals over 18, as well as the harm that is being caused to children. These are the types of substantial issues that we should be talking about and voting on to see them go to committee, but instead, we are playing this game.

Fast-forward to today, when we have a motion about banking and banking fees. I can assure members that banking fees are a very serious issue. My constituents are concerned about banking fees, whether they are for using an ATM machine or the monthly charges. There is also the interest that is applied in many different ways. There is a litany of issues with banking fees. I would love the opportunity to talk for 20-plus minutes on that issue.

The problem is that this feeds into what the Conservatives are wanting us to do. The Conservatives, and this is coming from the leader of the Conservative's office, are not only saying that they want to take control of what is taking place on the floor of the House of Commons, but also wanting to start dipping more and more into instructing standing committees on what they should be doing. They have the Bloc completely fooled on this. It will be interesting to see who votes in favour of it.

Members can think about this: The Conservatives, not once but twice, as Mark Carney was brought up late last week, have brought in an amendment to a concurrence motion to send the report back to committee for it to be further studied while calling for certain witnesses, and they have each had a deadline to get back to the House. However, these standing committees can determine their own agendas and who they want to call before them. They do not have to be instructed by the leader of the Conservative Party on what they should be doing. This is a very disturbing pattern, which we have now seen with two concurrence motions that were brought forward by the Conservative Party.

I would argue that, ultimately, the leader of the Conservative Party is not only trying to dictate what we can and cannot talk about on the floor of the House of Commons, but also starting to reach into the different standing committees. He could have just advised, and said, “Well, look, send this back to the committee”. We could also do what we usually do, which is to vote concurrence on a report, so it would go on its way, and just allow the standing committee to do what it wants. However, there is an agenda there. It is a very selfish agenda that is being driven by the leader of the Conservative Party and the Conservative House leadership team, at a substantial cost. As I said, it is a multi-million dollar game that is being played.

The Conservative leader needs to start putting the interests of Canadians ahead of his own self-serving interests and the interests of the Conservative Party. There is a lot more work that we can be doing on the floor of the House of Commons.

We need to respect that standing committees do have the ability to do what is being proposed here. We need the leader of the Conservative Party to stop abusing his authority as the leader of the opposition and reflect on when he was a parliamentary secretary and his prime minister was held in contempt of Parliament.

Online Harm

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-63, the online harms act, is seeking to create a safer online space for all Canadians in this increasingly digital age. Online harms have real-world impacts with tragic, even fatal consequences, and the delays in our Parliament are putting more Canadians at risk every day.

I think of the important work of Carol Todd, the mother of Amanda Todd, the 15-year-old girl who so tragically took her life 12 years ago after being victimized online. Carol stated in an interview, “The filibuster that is happening right now and holding everything up, it's so frustrating. It's just wasting time...I've waited 12 years for this.”

Unfortunately, the important work the House undertakes has been held up due to Conservative delay tactics, with support from opposition parties. We are working every day to pass important legislation for Canadians from coast to coast to coast, and the Conservatives are working every day to make sure this is not the case.

Environment and Sustainable Development

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to rise to address this issue in two ways. We all, or at least, the government and a number of other members, recognize the true value of nuclear power and having that discussion. Having said that, I am going to tag on to that after a few opening remarks about what I believe are legitimate concerns of Canadians about what is taking place in the House of Commons.

This report we are debating today has been around for a couple of years, but it was a decision made by the Bloc party to bring it forward. I suspect, as we have witnessed more and more concurrence reports being brought to the floor of the House of Commons, it is because members are upset with the Conservative Party and the multi-million dollar game the leader of the Conservative Party is playing. That is the reason we are debating nuclear power today.

I will be sharing my time, by the way, with one of my friends from the Bloc. This is a wonderful compromise, I must say.

I received a letter from someone who has been mailing a number of members of Parliament. This email was a plea to all members of the House of Commons, and it was signed off by some very impressive groups that are in support of Bill C-63. One might wonder why that is relevant; it is relevant because the Bloc has brought forward a motion. It brought forward that motion because of frustration with the Conservative game being played. As opposed to debating the game, members want to talk about the importance of the nuclear industry here in Canada. If everyone stopped playing the game and we dealt with the concerns Canadians have, like the concerns in the email I have received from a long list of organizations, we would actually talk about what it is they are asking us to deal with, and that is Bill C-63, the online harms act.

The lengthy list of organizations includes the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the Association of School System Administrators, Children's Healthcare, Canadian Medical Association, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario and Empowered Kids Ontario.

What Canadians want us to be talking about is issues they know we can actually deal with, legislation that is before the House. Instead of dealing with that, we are talking about nuclear power. Nuclear power is an important issue, I do not question that. What I question is the motivation in the House to change the channel of what we should be dealing with. We should be dealing with issues Canadians want us to deal with, not the desires of the leader of the Conservative Party to become the prime minister or the filibustering the Conservatives do day in and day out.

That is something that I believe ultimately does need to be addressed. When I think of the issue of nuclear power, I think it is important for us to recognize that it does have a role to play as an industry. We hear a great deal about the benefits of nuclear power; I do not know to what degree people realize there are actually tens of thousands of Canadians directly employed.

We have two provinces, Ontario and New Brunswick, where nuclear power plays an important role in their economies and their communities as a whole. Ontario's consumption of nuclear power has increased over the years, as we have seen a shift away from emissions-sourced power generation to nuclear power generation. Ontarians have been a great beneficiary of it.

Even though my province and the province of Quebec, which I care very much about, have hydroelectricity in common, and I support green energy sources, there is absolutely nothing wrong in recognizing that nuclear power does have a role here in Canada. We should recognize and support it. When people think of nuclear power, they often think of power stations and that is it, when in fact, we have all sorts of uses for nuclear technology out there and how it is developed.

I would encourage members to reflect on health care, whether it is isotopes or how radioactive materials ultimately advance medicine here in Canada, it is an area of technological advancement using science that will do wonderful things in medicine into the future.

I recognize many ways that Canada could lead the world. CANDU reactors have been of great benefit not only to Canada, but also outside of Canada, where we have seen other countries look to us to see how we have been successful at generating energy through nuclear power production with these small, modular reactors. We have the technology and the expertise for Canada to play a very strong leading role. It is interesting to see the Bloc and their opposition to it.

Bill C-49 was the offshore wind energy legislation, which was huge for Atlantic Canada, and it is green energy. It is something the Prime Minister and the government have put right up front through supporting legislation. Now we have Atlantic provinces that are bringing in, or have brought in, mirror legislation because we have recognized that it is not only better for our environment but also good for the economy and the communities in which we live. It will generate millions, if not billions, of dollars of investment.

Whether it is looking to the future of green energy or taking a look at how it has benefited some of our provinces, in particular Ontario and New Brunswick, nuclear power is a major contributor to our economy in a very real and tangible way. It contributes immensely to our GDP, both directly and indirectly.

Whether it is members from the Bloc or the Conservatives, especially the Conservatives in their destructive approach to the House, rest assured that the Prime Minister and the government will continue to be focused on the interests of Canadians. That is why I would ask, again, about the concerns to stop the filibuster and let us start dealing with the important legislation that needs to be dealt with, along with other issues.

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

Madam Speaker, we are having this debate today because ultimately there is a question of privilege, which is being filibustered by the member's party, as it has now had well over 100 people stand up to speak to it.

Interesting enough, I received an email with a list of many organizations whose members are quite concerned about the fact that we have legislation, Bill C-63, that is on the Order Paper. We have attempted to get the bill debated, but it is not being debated because of the ongoing filibustering by the Conservative Party. Can the member provide her thoughts as to why it is that—

Justice

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, our kids need help. The Internet is not a safe place for them right now. We need to hold online platforms accountable and put the safety of our children first by passing the online harms act. Unfortunately, we cannot debate this bill because all business in the House is stalled by a Conservative delay tactic. Amanda Todd's mother Carol, one of my constituents, recently spoke to The Globe and Mail and called for us to debate and pass Bill C-63.

Can the Minister of Justice and Attorney General explain why parents across the country, including Carol, are urging us to to pass the online harms act.

Business of the House

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, as I have shared many times in this chamber, the government supports the motion that the Conservatives moved, and that they continue to filibuster, to refer the matter to committee.

Let us be clear that the Conservatives have decided that they want to grind the House to a halt rather than work for Canadians, which is preventing the House from debating and voting on important business that we would like to get back to, including Bill C-71 relating to citizenship, Bill C-66 on military justice, Bill C-63 concerning online harms, the ways and means motion related to capital gains, and the ways and means motion tabled this week, which contains our plan to require more transparency from charities that use deceptive tactics to push women away from making their own reproductive decisions.

In conclusion, while the Conservatives shake their fists saying that they are holding the government to account, what they are showing Canadians is just how reckless they can be in their relentless pursuit of power.

We, on this side, will continue to work for Canadians.

Medical Assistance in Dying

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

Madam Speaker, before I get under way, I would like to comment on the member's last statement. He pointed out the Conservative Party's resistance to the issue. I believe it is Bill C-390 that the Bloc is advocating for and advancing, which attempts to deal with the issue. This is the first time I am hearing it on the floor of the House. I would have thought Bloc members would have raised the issue with the leadership teams in the hope that we might be able to work together on Bill C-390 and, at the very least, how it might be incorporated into some of the consultations.

There is absolutely no doubt this is a very important issue. Since 2015, when the Supreme Court decided on the issue, it has been a hot topic for parliamentarians on all sides of the House. We have seen a great deal of compassion and emotion, and understandably so.

Before I get into the substance of the report, I want to refer to why we find ourselves again talking about this concurrence report. For issues of the day that are really important to caucus strategies, or the desire to have a public discussion, we have what we call opposition days. We need to contrast concurrence reports, including the one today that the Bloc has brought forward, with opposition day motions that are brought forward. We will find there is a stark difference. The Bloc is not alone. It will bring forward a motion or a concurrence report and say how important it is that we debate it, yet it is never given any attention on opposition days, when not only could the concurrence report be debated, but the opposition day motion could instruct an action of some form or another.

Why are we debating it today? I would suggest it is because of an action taken a number of weeks ago. We need to ask ourselves why there has been no discussion on Bill C-71, the Citizenship Act, which we started the session with. Everyone but the Conservatives supports that act. There is Bill C-66, where sexual abuses taking place within the military could be shifted over to the civil courts. My understanding is that every political party supports that legislation.

There is Bill C-33 regarding rail and marine safety and supply lines, which is very important to Canada's economy. There is Bill C-63, the online harms bill. Last night, members talked about the importance of protecting children from the Internet, and yet the government introduced Bill C-63, the online harms act. We are trying to have debates in the House of Commons on the legislation I just listed. It does not take away from the importance of many other issues, such as the one today regarding MAID. MAID is an important issue, and I know that. We all know that.

Yesterday, a concurrence report on housing was debated. Housing is also a very important issue, I do not question that, but we have well over 100 reports in committees at report stage. If we were to deal with every one of those reports, not only would we not have time for government legislation, but we would not have time for opposition days either, not to mention confidence votes. I am okay with that, as long as we get the budget passed through. We have to ask why we are preventing the House of Commons from being able to do the things that are important to Canadians. That can be easily amplified by looking at the behaviour of the Conservative Party.

The Conservatives will stand up today and talk about MAID, as well they should; I will too. However, there is no doubt that they are happy to talk about that issue today only because it feeds into their desire to prevent the government from having any sort of debate on legislation, let alone attempting to see legislation pass to committee. The Conservative Party is more concerned about its leader and the Conservative Party agenda than the agenda of Canadians and the types of things we could be doing if the official opposition party would, for example, allow its motion to actually come to a vote.

We are debating this concurrence motion because the Conservatives have frustrated the other opposition parties to the degree that we are sick and tired of hearing Conservatives stand up repeatedly, over 100 of them now, on the privilege issue, preventing any and all types of debate. So, as opposed to listening to Conservatives speak on something that is absolutely useless, we are ensuring that at least there is some debate taking place on important issues, such as MAID and housing.

Members of all political stripes need to realize the games the Conservatives are playing come at great expense to Canadians. The motion of privilege is to send the issue to PROC. Every member in the House supports that except for the Conservatives, yet it is a Conservative motion. They are filibustering and bringing the House to standstill, unless we are prepared to think outside the box and bring in a motion for concurrence. The concurrence motion, no doubt, is better than listening to the Conservatives continue to repeat speeches.

I attempted to address their speeches in great detail weeks ago. It is time we change the channel. It is time the Leader of the Opposition started putting Canadians and the nation's best interests ahead of his own personal interests and the Conservative Party of Canada's interests. We need to start talking about issues that Canadians want to hear about.

I was pleased when the member from the Bloc made reference to indications that the Province of Quebec wants to move forward on this issue. My understanding is that the province is even taking substantial actions towards it. Advance requests for MAID have been on the table and been discussed. We need to recognize it is not only Ottawa that plays a role in regard to MAID and its implementation. Our primary role is with the Criminal Code and how we might be able to make changes to it.

Members, no matter what region they come from, have to appreciate that Canada is a vast country in which there is an obligation to consult with the different provinces, territories, indigenous leaders, community advocates, health care professionals and Canadians. There is an obligation to do that, especially around the type of legislation the member of the Bloc is trying to change.

I was hoping to get a second question from the member, because he made reference to Bill C-390. I am not familiar with its background. It is probably completely related to the advance requests for MAID. The member, in his question to me, could maybe expand on what exactly the bill is proposing. I would ask, in regard to it, to what degree the member has done his homework. Doing the homework means going outside the province of Quebec. All provinces have something to say about the issue. Many people who were born in Quebec live in other jurisdictions, just as many people who were born in other parts of the country now call Quebec home.

We have an obligation to not take legislation dealing with issues like MAID lightly. Just because one jurisdiction is advancing it more quickly than another jurisdiction, or because one jurisdiction is demanding it, it does not necessarily mean Ottawa can buy into it at the snap of its fingers. That is not to take anything away from Quebec. On a number of fronts, Quebec has led the nation. I could talk about issues like $10-a-day child care, a national program that the Prime Minister and government, with solid support from the Liberal caucus, have advanced and put into place, and every province has now agreed to it. The MAID file is a good example where Quebec is probably leading, in pushing the envelope, more than any other province, as it did with child care. Other jurisdictions take a look at other aspects.

Health care, today, is a national program that was implemented by a national Liberal government, but the idea that predated it came from Tommy Douglas. Its practical implementation was demonstrated in the province of Saskatchewan. As a government, we continue to support health care in a very real and tangible way. By contrast, we can take a look at the Conservatives on health care and the concerns we have in terms of a threat to health care. We have invested $198 billion in health care. That ensures future generations can feel comfortable in knowing the federal government will continue to play a strong role in health care. Why is that relevant to the debate today? For many of the individuals who are, ultimately, recipients of MAID, it is an issue of long-term care, hospice care.

When my grandmother passed away in the 1990s, in St. Boniface Hospital, it was a very difficult situation. We would have loved to have had hospice care provided for her, but it did not happen. That does not take anything away from the fantastic work that health care workers provide in our system, but there she sat in a hospital setting, which was was questionable in terms of dying with dignity.

Health care and long-term care matter. With respect to my father's passing, it was Riverview and it was a totally different atmosphere because it provided hospice care. Health care matters when we talk about MAID. What the Government of Canada is bringing forward is recognition that we cannot change things overnight, but at least we are moving forward.

Back in 2015, when the Supreme Court made a decision, former prime minister Stephen Harper did absolutely nothing in terms of dealing with the issue of MAID, and the current leader of the Conservative Party was a major player during that whole Stephen Harper era. It put us into a position where, virtually immediately after the federal election, we had to take action, and we did. I remember vividly when members of Parliament shared stories in Centre Block. I remember the emotions. I remember many of my colleagues sitting on the committee that listened to Canadians from across the country with respect to the issue. We all talked to constituents and conveyed their thoughts in Ottawa. We were able to bring in and pass legislation, the first ever for Canada, that dealt with the issue.

In 2021, we actually updated the legislation that dealt with persons whose death was not reasonably foreseeable. We are making changes, but it has to be done in a fashion that is fair, reasonable and responsible.

We want to hear from Canadians. We want to hear what the different provinces, territories, indigenous leaders, stakeholders, doctors, nurses, those who are providing that direct care and the families have to say. This is a very personal decision that people have to make at very difficult times in their lives. We should not be taking it for granted in any fashion whatsoever.

That is the reason, once again, we have another special joint standing committee that hopefully will be starting its work in November, with the idea of doing something tangible over six or eight weeks, whatever it takes, so it can bring something back to the House to deal with advance requests for MAID. That seems to be the focal point of what the Bloc is talking about today.

I want to come back to some of my other comments in regard to the government's recognition of the importance of the issue of MAID. We have done that since 2015. We continue to recognize it and work with Canadians and the many different stakeholders, and we are committed to continuing to do that. It is unfortunate that because of the games being played by the leader of the Conservative Party and by members of the Conservative Party of Canada, the government is not able to continue to have important legislation debated, legislation like the Citizenship Act, the issue of military court to civil court with respect to sexual abuse, online harms act and the rail and marine safety act. All of these are so important.

I am asking the Conservative Party of Canada to stop focusing on its leader's best interests and to start thinking of Canadians' best interests. I am asking it to stop the filibuster and allow legislation, at the very least, to get to committee so Canadians can have their say.

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.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, based on what the member just said about putting the child first, Bill C-63, the bill I was referring to, talks about “content that sexually victimizes a child” and ensures that we can take it off the Internet. Does the member support the bill?

[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.

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

Madam Speaker, the member just said that we cannot afford to neglect legislation about children and protecting children. That is what the member just said, yet for the last many weeks, we have seen the Conservative Party of Canada put the interests of their leader and the Conservative Party ahead of the nation's interests, to the degree to which they will not even allow legislation to be debated, let alone get passed to committee.

We have before the House Bill C-63, the online harms act. Why are the Conservatives filibustering to the degree that we cannot debate this bill regarding content and sexually victimized children on the Internet? Are they allowing it to continue to this degree because they want to filibuster?

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

Madam Speaker, it is a bit ironic that the Conservatives are expressing concern about legislation, yet they continue to play a game. It has lasted for well over three weeks; they are wasting time on the floor of the House of Commons because they made the decision to put their party and their leader ahead of the interest of Canadians.

The example I would use is Bill C-63, which is a bill that deals with intimate images communicated without consent. It also deals with content that sexually victimizes children. The Conservatives are holding up that legislation. They are preventing it from ultimately even going to committee. They are more interested in the leadership of the Conservative Party and the Conservative Party's interest than that of Canadians. Can he explain why they do not support that particular bill?

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to do a quick recap for anyone who missed the first part of my speech before QP. I started by saying why we have been here for three weeks debating a parliamentary privilege motion. I explained that it is because the Liberals will not produce the documents the Speaker ordered and that it is related to the green slush fund and the $400-million scandal, so no government business or private members' business can come forward until they produce the documents. That is what we are waiting for.

I started to debunk the myths of the weak reasons the Liberals have given for why they cannot produce the documents, beginning with their claim that giving the documents to the RCMP would be a violation of people's charter rights. This is absolutely not true. The police and the RCMP get tips all the time, for example through Crime Stoppers, phone calls and documents about criminal activity, and they have to exercise due diligence by looking into the evidence that is presented. If they do find evidence of criminality, then they need to go to the courts and request the documents formally so they can be used in a court case.

That is the law, so the argument is just a total red herring from the Liberals.

I talked about the Liberals' hypocrisy in even talking about charter rights, since they have violated every one of them, and I went down the whole list. I did not get to indigenous rights because if we started talking about the way they have violated those, we would be here all day. Therefore I will move along to my second point.

The Liberals have claimed that there needs to be more separation between Parliament and the RCMP. Certainly I agree that there should be separation. The job of the RCMP is to enforce the rule of law for everybody equally. I think that we are what our record says we are, so let us look at the record of the relationship and the separation between the RCMP and the Liberal government.

Let us start with the billionaire's island fiasco. Members may remember that the Prime Minister wasted 215,000 dollars' worth of taxpayer money. It was alleged that if he did not give himself written permission, it was actually fraud. The internal RCMP documents showed that the force considered opening a fraud investigation after details of the trip came to light, but it cited numerous reasons why it did not, including the fact that neither Parliament nor the Ethics Commissioner chose to refer the case to the police.

We can see from that, first of all, that the RCMP does accept documents from Parliament. We can also see that there was no evidence of whether or not the Prime Minister granted himself permission to go on the billionaire's island trip. If he did not, he definitely had committed fraud. The RCMP did not even bother to investigate.

Next is the SNC-Lavalin scandal. We know that Jody Wilson-Raybould was clear with the Prime Minister and Elder Marques that they absolutely could not talk to the prosecutor about getting SNC-Lavalin the deal to get it off the hook. The Prime Minister kicked Jody Wilson-Raybould to the curb and put his buddy David Lametti in place, and voila, SNC-Lavalin had the agreement it needed in order to get off the hook.

Did the RCMP investigate this? No, it did not, until four years after the fact, after Brenda Lucki retired, when the RCMP decided it was going to start investigating. Interestingly, as soon as it announced that, David Lametti was kicked out of cabinet and ended up stepping down as an MP.

Let us talk about the Brenda Lucki situation. In the Nova Scotia massacre, it was clear that the RCMP was working on behalf of Parliament, with the Liberal government. An article from the National Post says:

In June, the Mass Casualty Commission revealed disputes between RCMP investigators in Nova Scotia and the commissioner, with allegations Lucki let the politics interfere with the probe.

Notes from the Mountie in charge of the massacre investigation said that on a conference call, Lucki expressed disappointment the types of guns used by the killer had not been released to the public because she had promised the Prime Minister's Office and the public safety minister the guns would be detailed, tied to pending gun control legislation.

There is not a lot of separation there.

Now let us talk about the WE Charity scandal. Subsection 119(1) of the Criminal Code outlines that it is illegal for a holder of public office to take an action that benefits themself or their family. It is clear to everyone that the Prime Minister took an action by approving nearly a billion dollars for the WE Charity scandal.

We all know that his mother, his brother and his wife were paid by the WE Charity to do speaking engagements. According to a BBC News article, the Prime Minister said, “I made a mistake for not recusing myself from the discussions immediately, given my family's history”. He did not make a mistake; he broke the law. Again, the RCMP did nothing. If we look at the history, we see that there is not enough separation; there needs to be more.

If we go on to the next thing, they are claiming there is really nothing to see. However, a whistle-blower said there was criminal activity. We should at least get the documents the Speaker correctly ordered, and we should get to work on that.

However, it is a pattern of corruption. We have seen that with the government from the beginning. Since I was elected in 2015, there has been a history of corruption, not just at the Prime Minister's level but throughout the Liberal Party.

If we recall, there was Raj Grewal, a former MP, who was charged with fraud; Joe Peschisolido, a former Liberal MP, whose company was involved in and charged with a money laundering scam; Hunter Tootoo and Darshan Singh Kang, who were charged with sexual misconduct; the current Minister of Public Safety, in the clam scam, who gave a $25-million clam quota to his relative and a company that did not even own a boat, which was terrible; and the Minister of Transport, who gave money to her husband's company. It is a total conflict of interest.

The government is showing that it has this pattern of behaviour, and whenever the Liberals are caught, they do the obvious: They delay and refuse to release documents, or they release them all redacted. That needs to stop. Canadians have a right to know what happened to the $400 million and to get to the bottom of it.

The good news is that, while we continue to debate the parliamentary privilege part of this situation, no government bills can come forward. Therefore, the awful legislation the Liberals are trying to bring forward is not going to happen. For example, Bill C-63, which would put someone in jail for life if the government thought they might commit a hate crime in the future, is not going to come forward, nor is Bill C-71, which would take the children of Canadian citizens who live abroad, children who have never lived in Canada, and grant them Canadian citizenship. When they turned 18, they would be able to vote and decide, on their honour, where they wanted their vote to count. That is a new level of foreign interference, so I am happy that one is not coming forward.

Of course, we will also not see the bill that changes the date of the election so that MPs who lose their seat still get their pension. That will not be coming forward either. Nevertheless, it is an absolute disgrace to Canadians that money, $400 million, has basically been given out with 186 conflicts of interest. They act as though there is nothing to see here. It is totally unacceptable, and if the government wants to get back to work, the Liberals should do the right thing. They should produce the unredacted documents as the Speaker has requested.

Mr. Speaker, is there quorum?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise and speak in the House, but I am disappointed that we are on week three of speaking about parliamentary privilege.

Those who are watching at home want to know why we are here and how we got here. It all started with Sustainable Development Technology Canada. This is a fund that was designed to support initiatives for green technology, emissions reduction and things like that. The fund started in 2001, and under Liberal and Conservative governments, it went along just fine until this corrupt bunch of Liberals got involved.

Cabinet ministers decided to give a billion dollars to the fund. They picked their friends to be on the committee to decide who was going to get the money, and the friends gave the money to their own businesses. The Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest; 80% of the projects had conflicts of interest, and there was a whistle-blower within the Sustainable Development Technology Canada department who said that there was criminal activity involved.

As such, as parliamentarians, we wanted to look into the matter. The documents related to this fund were requested in June, but the government, the Liberals, did what they normally do: They delayed. Then, when they sent the documents, they blacked out all the useful parts. The member for Regina—Qu'Appelle stood up on a question of privilege because it is our right, as parliamentarians, to get whatever documents we need to do our good work. The Speaker absolutely correctly ruled that, yes, this was a violation of our privilege, and he ordered the Liberals to deliver the unredacted documents so that we can turn them over to the RCMP.

We have been waiting for three weeks and debating this matter of privilege every day. No documents have been delivered. That is why we are here.

I am going to spend my time today talking and pushing back against the Liberals' very weak arguments about why they cannot bring the documents forward. I will start with one of the myths they are spreading. They say that they cannot produce the papers, because giving them to the RCMP would violate the charter rights of Canadians. This is not true at all. The police and the RCMP get tips all the time: They get tips from Crime Stoppers, as well as phone calls and documents alleging criminal activity.

The law says that the RCMP must do due diligence by looking at the evidence presented. If they find evidence of criminality, then they have to go to the court and order those documents through the court in order for them to be used at a trial. That is the law, so it is ridiculous to suggest that the government cannot produce the papers for that reason.

The other thing I would say is that it is very hypocritical of the Liberals to say that they are concerned about the charter rights of Canadians. They have violated nearly every charter right. They are what their record says they are, so let us look at their record.

First, let us start with freedom of expression. There is Bill C-11, the censorship bill, by which the government-appointed CRTC can take down an individual's content if it finds the content objectionable. Let us also talk about Bill C-63, which is the online harms bill. It would put someone in jail for life if the government thought that person might commit a hate crime in the future. That is utterly chill on freedom of expression.

Let us talk about freedom of religion. There are people crying “death to Jews” from coast to coast to coast. The government has done nothing to stem the flow of vandalism and harassment that is happening at synagogues and at Jewish businesses in our country. The Hindus are being persecuted by the Khalistanis; again, the government has done nothing. There are 112 Christian churches that have burned. The government has said nothing. Therefore, there is no protection for freedom of religion from the Liberal government.

If we want to go down the list of other freedoms, let us talk about mobility rights. Every Canadian has the right to freely enter and leave Canada. That is in the Charter of Rights. However, during the pandemic, Liberals trapped four million people in the country for over two years, even after it was medically proven that people who were vaccinated could get and transmit COVID in the same way as the unvaccinated. Therefore, 90% of vaccinated people were allowed to go wherever they wanted, to leave and enter Canada. However, 10% of people, who were not a higher risk, were trapped in the country. This separated them from their families and caused a lot of trauma.

Then we get to the Emergencies Act, which was ruled by the courts to be illegal. I am not sure why there were no consequences for that. If I were convicted of something, I could appeal, but I would have to appeal from prison; therefore, I am not sure why there has been no action on that. However, Liberals froze people's bank accounts. That is unlawful search and seizure, so they violated another charter right.

When it comes to freedom from discrimination, people are not supposed to discriminate against anybody based on race, religion, age, etc., but we have seen that the Liberals do. The Canada summer jobs program discriminated against people of faith who would not sign the attestation. Moreover, the Liberals discriminated based on age when they decided to give an increase in OAS to people over 75, but not those between 65 and 74.

Business of the House

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, as my colleague is well aware, we are complying with the ruling of the Speaker of the House, which indicated that this matter must be referred to committee. As the Speaker said, the Conservatives are obstructing their own obstruction. I cannot help but think that that is because they do not want to know the truth. Doing what they are asking would be an abuse of the House's power. We will always stand up for Canadians' rights and freedoms.

I also want to illustrate the fact that his question is totally fake, much like the tacky slogans Conservatives hide behind because they have no actual ideas or policies for the country. That is probably why they continue to filibuster their own motion: to distract Canadians from the fact that they are nothing more than an empty shell. It must be pretty embarrassing for Conservative MPs, having to filibuster their own motion day after day to protect their leader from any real accountability. It must also be kind of embarrassing for Conservative MPs to sit in a caucus with a leader who refuses to get a security clearance, because he clearly has something to hide. It is expected of a leader of a political party to do this, but beyond his little performances in the House, their leader does very little that comes close to leadership.

Despite the games being played by the Conservatives, on this side of the House, we are going to continue to work hard for Canadians. When the House does get back to debating legislation, the priorities will be Bill C-71 on citizenship, Bill C-66 on military justice, Bill C-63 on online harms and the ways and means motion related to capital gains.

Online Harm

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, online harm to children is a very important issue for our government. Today, I have the honour of presenting a petition signed by many people from the riding of Sherbrooke. Given the growing number of reports of Canadian children being exposed to online sextortion and other serious harm, the petitioners are calling on the House of Commons to continue working on Bill C-63 and to pass it as quickly as possible. I thank the people of Sherbrooke for their commitment to this important issue.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on the Friday before Thanksgiving, I talked about the culture of secrecy and the corruption in the form of conflicts of interest that was obvious right from the very beginning of the Liberal government. In the time I have left, I will talk about the situation we are in right now.

Parliament is paralyzed because the government has refused an order for the production of documents, which was passed by the House some time ago. That is why we are here. The Conservatives are not interested in simply letting debate on this motion collapse so the House can fob this off to a parliamentary committee, where the government and its NDP partners can buy more time, maybe delay a final report or maybe avoid a further vote finding the government once again in contempt of Parliament. The Conservatives want the government to comply with the order. The Conservatives want the government to produce the documents that the House voted for.

The Liberals are stuck in the old debate, which the House has already settled. That debate was whether the House should order that documents be turned over to the RCMP, but that ship has sailed. That question is academic. The House has already voted on that question. The House voted to produce documents, so the government's refusal to do so now is a contempt of Parliament. You, Mr. Speaker, have ruled that this refusal is prima facie evidence of contempt of Parliament, which is why this question is being debated to the exclusion of all business of the House.

I would like to address the two main points the government House Leader and her parliamentary secretary keep making over and over again during debate in the House, to the media outside the House and during question period.

First, government members have repeatedly claimed that the government's contempt for Parliament is somehow justified because the order for the production of documents threatens the charter rights of accused persons and prosecutorial independence, while of course ignoring that it is violating section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is the guarantor of democracy. This argument is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard in the House of Commons, and in nine years in the House, I have heard some pretty dumb things come from the government. Before addressing that argument, it has to be pointed out that Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and Jody Wilson-Raybould might have something to say about the government's track record on prosecutorial independence, but I do not have time to go into the old scandals. I will deal with the argument that government members have made.

Ordering the production of documents that belong to the Crown in order to give them to another agency of the Crown, the RCMP, has nothing to do with directing prosecutions. Saying so is just plain dumb. Does the order the House has voted for say that the House instructs the RCMP to arrest a particular Liberal insider who took the public's money and gave it to themselves? No, the order does not say that. Does the order direct Crown prosecution services to prosecute somebody in particular, one of the Liberal insiders who, again, took the public's money and voted to give it to themselves? No, it does not direct anybody to do any such thing.

There is nothing in this production order that compels anyone to do anything besides release the documents and provide them to members of the RCMP so they can have evidence that may be potentially relevant to a case that they acknowledge they are already investigating. That is all this order does. It does not say anything about directing law enforcement or Crown prosecutors to do anything, so this bizarre charter argument is complete and total nonsense.

The vigour and enthusiasm with which the government House Leader and her parliamentary secretary advance this argument can only be explained by blind faith in insipid talking points or by functional civic illiteracy. The House of Commons is the embodiment of Canadian democracy, Canada's grand inquisitive body that, on behalf of the people of Canada, who elect members, holds the executive branch, the most powerful people in Canada, to account. It is the will of elected members of Parliament, the will of Canadians, that must be respected.

The second main argument that I have heard from the government, and I am now starting to hear it creep into the other opposition parties propping up the government, is that continuing debate on this motion when all parties have said they will support it is paralyzing the House and preventing it from moving on to other business. However, this argument is a bit too clever. It is victim blaming and it is gaslighting. The Liberals are trying to say of elected members of Parliament that it is their fault for debating the government's corruption, and not the government's fault for refusing an order of the House. When they say this, they are missing the point altogether. Instead of studying contempt of Parliament at a parliamentary committee, the government could end its contempt of Parliament by releasing the documents. It could solve the problem rather than study the problem, and that is why we will continue to debate this motion until the documents are released.

As for the other business of the House, I have no interest in moving on from dealing with this corruption just so the government can introduce more bills and laws that are going to harm Canadians. I am not interested in allowing the government to get over the debate so it can introduce the long-anticipated ways and means motions on a capital gains tax increase that will punish thousands of small business owners in my riding, with few companies receiving the exemption being carved out for other Canadians. I am not interested in that.

I do not want to give the Liberals a chance to increase taxes on Canadians, to further sap the productivity of Canada and to further decrease per capita GDP, as we have observed under the Liberals. I am not interested in the rest of their agenda either. For example, a bill they may want to debate, Bill C-63, would create a new, big bureaucracy without doing anything to address online harms, and would give them a new group of insiders they could appoint to that board.

The only reservation I have about the time that has gone into this debate is that there is another urgent matter. We need to address the other contempt problem we have with the government, wherein the minister from Edmonton was engaging in private business while a minister of the Crown. The evidence could not be more clear on that. His business associate, who was involved in, among other things, shady pandemic profiteering, claimed that there was some other guy named “Randy”, who we are supposed to believe is not the Minister of Employment. We need to get to the bottom of that as well.

There is another solution available: The government, if it thinks that Parliament is paralyzed, that we have other business we need to get to and that Parliament has become dysfunctional, has a remedy. The Liberals could call an election immediately. That is the solution. When Parliament is paralyzed, if they think Parliament is not functioning, they can call an election. That is the beauty of the parliamentary system. The government always has recourse directly to the voters of Canada.

If the Liberals really think the opposition is irresponsible, that other things are more important, that critical parliamentary business is being stymied and that Canadians are on their side with the refusal to comply with an order of elected members of Parliament, they can call an election and let the people of Canada decide.

Business of the House

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, here we are again. We will remember, at this time last week, I stood in this place and listed the following business for the upcoming week: Bill C-71, on citizenship; Bill C-66, on military justice; Bill C-63, on online harms; and the ways and means motion related to capital gains. I am sorry to say that all we saw this week was more Conservative procedural games. I can only imagine that this is because they do not want to debate this important legislation as they are opposed to it for Canadians. Again, for a second week in a row, they have offered nothing constructive and have instead focused on bringing dysfunction to the chamber.

As I have said many time, the government is supportive of the Speaker's ruling and of the Conservative motion, actually, to refer the privilege matter to the Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs. Why can they not take yes for an answer?

The Conservatives are effectively spinning their own obstruction because they do not want this matter to be referred to committee. The funniest part about it is that they not only amended their own motion, but also, today, amended their own amendment. They are trying really hard to avoid this going to committee for further study. Perhaps that is because they will hear expert after expert talking about the egregious abuse of power being displayed by the official opposition, their interference in police work, their obstruction of police investigation and the fact that this shows complete disregard for democracy and the rights of Canadian citizens.

They clearly do not want to debate government legislation. All they want to do is serve themselves and their own partisan interests. We will continue to be here to work for Canadians.

Let me take this opportunity, as I know this weekend Canadian families will be together giving thanks for what they have, to wish all members in the House, as well as all Canadians, a very happy Thanksgiving.

Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

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

Madam Speaker, the government has failed on the fronts that my colleague mentioned in two ways: action and omission. On action, the government has censored Canadians through Bill C-11, which has had a massive effect on YouTube creators, censoring who gets seen and who does not. Bill C-18 has resulted in a news ban for online media platforms, so Canadians cannot get the news. It has also put many newsrooms out of work, so now the government cannot be held to account. Now the government is proposing Bill C-63, which will lead to a kangaroo court, wherein any Canadian could be dragged through with vexatious complaints based on their political opinions.

As well, through omission, by not putting limits on facial recognition software, the government can overreach and use Canadians' biometric data without any limitation. All of that leads to a police state, a censorship state, and something that every Canadian, regardless of political stripe, should be absolutely opposing with every fibre of their being.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Madam Speaker, we need to get back to who is watching the watchers. What is going on with the instructional handbook of Nineteen Eighty-Four? It is bizarre what is happening with this regime, but we have seen this before. Failing regimes during their dying days always reach for the power of the state, the fist of the government to crush opposition. I think there are some similarities with what the government is doing right now with censorship in Bill C-63 and all the censorship bills the government is trying to use to control our society.

I would like to hear my colleague's comments on that. Is this a failure of the government to react to this report, which clearly spells out some recommendations?

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

Madam Speaker, it was former prime minister Harper's government that introduced legislation to stop revenge porn. That was the first law that passed in the House of Commons in response to many terrible incidents. That was a Conservative bill that was passed. Bill C-63 does not do that.

The bill that would do what the member opposite was talking about is a bill that I wrote, Bill C-412. My bill, Bill C-412, would protect people from the non-consensual distribution of intimate images created by artificial intelligence. It includes a digital restraining order for women who are being stalked by people online and a regulated duty of care for how online operators must treat children. We would do all of that without a $200-million bureaucracy, which C-63 proposes, and without a massive impingement on Canadian speech through the reiteration of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

We in opposition did what the government should have done a long time ago. I am very proud of that. I am proud of my caucus colleagues. It is more of what Canadians can have, with the hope that they can look forward to when the Conservatives form government after the next election.

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

Madam Speaker, we have just seen a demonstration of what Stephen Harper did, which was absolutely nothing for modernization whatsoever. In fact, it is a continuation of that because the Conservatives still do not want anything to do with it. That is the reason why they do not even advance the legislation.

The member was just critical of Bill C-63. In essence, Bill C-63 says that, if someone's partner or ex puts inappropriate pictures onto the Internet without their consent, that is wrong. They should not be able to do that.

The Conservative Party says, “Who cares?” It is not even going to let Bill C-63 be debated to get it to the end of second reading. It will never make it to committee if it is left up to the Conservative Party. They are stonewalling it. They are taking a Stephen Harper approach to the issue, and that is to do nothing but complain.

[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.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I suspect there is no one in the chamber who has read all the reports. There are literally pages and pages of concurrence reports, hundreds of reports. There are actually more reports than there are sitting days left.

The issue is important, as are other issues raised through concurrence reports. There is no doubt they are important, but they are never important enough to raise on opposition days. The issues are raised only on government business days, which seems to be a way to prevent us from being able to talk about, for example, Bill C-63, the online harms act, which would advance something our constituents want.

My Conservative friends specifically, instead of playing party politics and trying to serve themselves, should be thinking about serving Canadians by dealing with the legislative agenda and allowing for it to move forward.

[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—

Transport, Infrastructure and Communities

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House once again to speak to the Bloc Québécois motion on shoreline erosion. I will be splitting my time with the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry.

I would like to speak to the transportation committee study for a bit and talk about the government's response to it. Then I will share some of the factors that are affecting shoreline erosion and the urgency of the situation in my own riding. As always, I will come with helpful solutions that might be a good path forward.

First, the study identifies that the speed of vehicles is a factor, which is true. My riding of Sarnia—Lambton certainly experienced that, when the Coast Guard sped through the channel, broke the ice and broke the whole Sombra ferry. Instead of fixing it for $2 million, the government, the member at the time, who is now in charge of public safety but was in charge of DFO, decided not to fix it. Instead it was decided to lose $4 million a year of CBSA revenue, lose a border crossing and eventually lose $6 million in a lawsuit over the whole thing. Speed is an issue and it needs to be brought down. Not everyone complies with the speed.

With the other factors, the government's response was delayed by 18 months. This is typical of the government. It does not really know how to do the business of government well. In the response, it is talking a lot about research and studies that need to be done. However, when the House is on fire, that is not the time to begin research on the accelerating factors in burning of different materials. That would be the time to take urgent action to put the fire out. That is where we are.

All day long we have heard members from different ridings talk about the urgency of shoreline erosion in their areas, and the government has been very deaf on this point. I hear all the time that it is climate change. When we talk about climate change, we need to understand what part of that is playing into shoreline erosion. From my engineering background, water levels increasing and decreasing makes a big difference in shoreline erosion.

In design engineering principles, we look at the 100-year cycle of water levels in places like the St. Clair River and the St. Lawrence Seaway. We look at 100-year storms. The problem is now we are seeing 100-year storms every couple of weeks, so that has greatly exacerbated the problem. In addition to that, we are not able to deal with it.

In the Great Lakes area, we have the infrastructure in place in Niagara that is supposed to maintain the water levels in the Great Lakes. However, that infrastructure only has the capacity of changing the level by one inch per month. With the inches and inches of rainwater that we are seeing and the fluctuations there, we just do not simply have the infrastructure to address water levels, and that is making the situation worse.

In addition to that, there is not always good engineering design put in place. In my riding of Sarnia—Lambton, there is a stretch of beach between Canatara Park and Brights Grove. It is all very homogeneous. In the stretch from Canatara Park to the midpoint at Murphy, the shoreline protection has been properly engineered. The groins are 100 feet apart. They are long enough, tall enough and made of adequate materials, so there is no shoreline erosion in evidence there. However, what has happened on the next stretch of beach is that people, as they built their property, decided to put something in place that was not properly engineered. They have huge issues to the point that in Brights Grove the road was falling down right next to Lake Huron. They had to close it and do an emergency repair.

Since 2015, when I was elected, I have been trying to negotiate to get the $150 million that is needed in Sarnia—Lambton to address its issues. With three levels of government, the revolving door of ministers who have handled infrastructure and the lack of funding that somebody could actually apply for and get funding for shoreline erosion, the government has been all talk and no action on this file.

There are issues downriver in my riding, in St. Clair township, with a lot of low-level housing getting flooded. It is not just a St. Clair township thing. We see it in Gatineau every year with the Gatineau floods. There is a huge issue there.

It is not that the solutions are unknown. We know how to put in aggregate rock. We know what the better things are to put in some areas versus others and what to do for people, but we need to have a holistic solution. In one area in my riding, which is a rather wealthy area, landowners are losing 30 feet to 50 feet of their land every year from shoreline erosion. Owners are spending $50,000 and $100,000 apiece to put in their own seawall, but then that passes the problem down to the next neighbour. What is needed is a holistic solution, which could be funded jointly with municipalities, individuals and the federal government. The province has a role to play, but doing nothing and letting this piecemeal thing continue to happen is certainly not a solution.

When it comes to what we ought to do, we oftentimes hear the Liberal government say that it is “seized” with this solution. Again from an engineering perspective, a motor that is seized means it is not moving. That is exactly what we are seeing from the Liberal government, which is that it is not moving and not taking any action. It is not acceptable.

If we look to the solutions that the Liberals want to put in place, they have decided, again, that we need another committee to distribute another fund. I do not know how many times they have to repeat the same behaviour before they recognize that putting a whole bunch of Liberal appointees onto a committee to administer a fund is a disaster.

Let us start with the Infrastructure Bank: $35 billion of infrastructure money was taken from municipalities and put into a committee to administer it. No projects came out the other end, but everybody was getting a great salary. It was a terrible idea.

On the sustainable green fund, the Liberals wanted another committee to distribute the billion dollars in funds. Here we are today not able to do any government business because of the scandalous 186 conflicts of interest, people giving money from the committee to their own companies, as well potentially to the companies of cabinet ministers. It is a disaster.

The suggestion that we should do this is a bad idea. The Liberals are suggesting the same thing for Bill C-63. Instead of addressing the exploitation of children online, which is a serious offence, they want to create a parallel Liberal-appointed committee that would look at these issues. The committee would not have the ability to do anything in terms of criminal consequence, but it would make everybody feel better, and everybody would get better paid. That is not a solution, and I do not recommend it here at all.

This increase in people does not necessarily give us a better result. We have seen a 40% increase in public sector employees, but we do not see a corresponding improvement in response times from CRA or from immigration, from any of these things. In fact, we actually see worse results.

None of the solutions that have been put forward are the right ones. There is urgency, not just in my riding. We heard of other ridings for which this is urgent. I would be remiss if I did not speak up for former MP Bill Casey, who, when he was here, always talked about the linkage between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. This is critical infrastructure, and it is going to be washed away. This will be a huge issue for all the people living in those regions, and it is not being tackled with the urgency needed.

We need to use the funds we have. We have an infrastructure fund. Could we use it to build things? Could we use it for shoreline erosion? Every time someone applies for one of these funds, it is like the fund is a little boutique, where people need to have this, that or something else. Each riding has its own needs and each riding knows what to do about it. Why do we not take the existing infrastructure money we have and work with the municipalities to address shoreline erosion?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member opposite asked three questions. I know the dates: May 2019, November 2022 and March 2023. It would be interesting to find out when the actual report was tabled. It might have been after March 2023; we will have to get confirmation.

I am glad the member realizes it is an issue. I am going to go to the first part of the question. The member talked about hundreds of individuals in his riding who are interested. I can assure him that thousands of his constituents would have been interested in Bill C-63, the online harms act. I understand that the Bloc supports it, as do the NDP and Green members.

The government has been trying to get the bill passed, but those darn Conservatives will not let it pass. They can be a mean group of people. They bring up concurrence reports all the time. Now they are using questions of privilege. They are going out of their way to prevent the legislation from passing.

What would the member's constituents want? Would they want the legislation passed today, or would they rather have another day of debate on this specific issue? That is why I would encourage the members of the Bloc to look at an opposition day. Let us talk about shorelines but also allow for some of the important legislation, some of which even the Bloc party supports. However, it is participating in supporting the Conservatives by allowing concurrence reports.

Foreign Affairs

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I will agree with one thing the independent member just said: “The safety of our citizens is the only priority.” That is why we have a national action plan to combat hatred. That is why there is a bill on the legislature floor right now, Bill C-63, that would target online radicalization that leads to anti-Semitism.

How does somebody get to the point where they are targeting a Jewish day school, a Jewish day care or a Jewish synagogue? They are radicalized online. The same bill has augmentation of penalties for willful promotion of anti-Semitism, public incitement of hatred and advocating genocide. It is a bill that not every party in the chamber supports, and it is what we need to get behind.

Business of the House

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, that was cute, and I saw that the Conservative House leader was having a hard time not laughing at how ridiculous his statement was.

As the fourth week of fall in the House of Commons approaches, we have made good progress. For one thing, we passed Bill C‑76 to give Jasper the tools it needs to rebuild.

We also debated bills that are important to Canadians, such as Bill C‑71, which extends citizenship by descent beyond the first generation in an inclusive way, protects the value of Canadian citizenship and restores citizenship to Canadians who lost or never acquired it because of outdated provisions under a previous citizenship act.

We debated Bill C‑66, which recognizes that members of the Canadian Armed Forces are always there to protect Canada's security and that we have a duty to protect them from harassment and inappropriate behaviour. This landmark legislation would transform military justice in Canada and respond to outside recommendations by former justices Arbour and Fish of the Supreme Court of Canada.

We also debated Bill C‑63 on online harms, which seeks to provide stronger protection to children online and better protect Canadians from online hate and other types of harmful content.

I would like to thank members of Parliament who have been working constructively to advance these bills. The Conservatives, on the other hand, continue to do everything they can to block the important work of the House and prevent debate on legislation that will help Canadians. They have offered nothing constructive and instead have focused on cheap political stunts and obstruction for the sake of obstruction. They have lost two confidence votes already and continue to paralyze the business of the House.

The government supports debates on the privilege motions concluding quickly so that we can get back to the important work of the House. I extend my hand to any party that wants to work constructively to advance legislation that will help Canadians. Once debate has concluded on both privilege motions, our priority will be resuming debate on the bills I have listed.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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

Mr. Speaker, it is unbelievable to me that the government House leader is worried about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when the government has violated every single Charter right there is. It has violated the freedom of expression with Bill C-11 and Bill C-63. It has violated the mobility rights of millions of Canadians, as well as life and security of the person. I could go on and on.

Then the member says she is concerned with making sure there is separation from the RCMP. When has the RCMP been separated from the government? In the WE Charity scandal, the Prime Minister took an action that benefited him, his wife, his brother and his mother, which is against subsection 119(1) of the Criminal Code. What about SNC-Lavalin? When did the government start taking action? It was four years after the event.

How can the member look herself in the mirror and not see the problem on that side?

Finance

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

One of them is saying, “Hear, hear!”

Madam Speaker, now the Conservatives are saying that they do not want to be accountable through media like the CTVs or the CBCs of Canada because they do not have confidence in those national news broadcasters. It is because they do not want to answer the questions that are being posed to them. Instead, they want to rely on social media.

There is a reference to the leader of the Conservative Party being very similar to Trump. That might be a bit of a disservice to Donald Trump. Quite frankly, I am very disappointed in the direction the far-right Conservative Party is going today. There is also no sign of its members changing their attitudes. Look at the attitude of hate that Conservatives are promoting and the information they are providing to people.

Today, Conservatives brought forward a motion, and that motion is in keeping with their slogans. I will give them that much. Darn, they are good at slogans. They have slogans; they have bumper stickers. They are ready and itching to get them out there. The problem is that everything is based on a foundation of sand. At the end of the day, there is nothing to it but slogans and bumper stickers, which are supported by misinformation.

One of the examples I could give is related to what Conservative members have been talking a lot about already today. If someone were to do a Hansard search, how many Conservative members of Parliament would we find who have actually said anything about cutting the carbon rebates? I suspect we would not find any. How many have said, “cut the carbon tax”? I suspect, on average, each one has said it 10 times. Some have said it a couple hundred times, and others have not said it because they have not spoken.

I can suggest to members that, when Conservatives go to Canadians and say that they are going to save Canadians money, as they have said inside the chamber, by cutting the carbon tax, that is not true. More than 80% of the constituents that I represent get a carbon rebate. That rebate amount is more than the carbon tax that they pay. That means that their net income, their disposable income, is increased. That is the reality. Members do not have to believe me. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is independent, will tell us that.

Conservatives will spread misinformation because it sounds good. Some provinces do not even have the carbon tax, yet they will go to those provinces and say that they are going to cut the carbon tax, giving a false impression. The other day in debate, there was one member in the Conservative Party who stood up and said that a 34% cost increase on food is a direct result of the carbon tax. What a bunch of garbage. That is absolutely ridiculous. I challenged the member on that statement, and then I challenged a couple of other members on the statement this particular member made. They do not change their opinions on it, even if they are confronted with facts.

They do not change their opinions because they are so focused on that thirst for power. At the end of the day, they are not concerned about what is happening for Canadians, the day-to-day living that Canadians have to put up with, let alone the important issues that the House of Commons deals with on a daily basis.

Today, we were supposed to debate Bill C-71. Bill C-71 is a bill to ensure that individuals who should have never have lost their citizenship will be given their Canadian citizenship. Every political party, except for the Conservatives, supports that legislation. Conservatives do not even want to debate it now. They will not allow it to be debated. They do not want it to go to committee.

Members will say that the Conservatives do not support that one, but they do support Bill C-66. They say that they support it. That bill takes sexual harassment and rape victims who are going through military courts and transfers them into civil courts. Every member of the House of Commons, the Conservatives, the Bloc, New Democrats, Greens and, of course, Liberals, supports that legislation. Members would think that the Conservatives would allow that bill to go to committee, but no. Instead, they want to filibuster. They brought forward another concurrence report.

They say that they are concerned about the economy. Members can take a look at Bill C-33, which we were supposed to be debating last week, to enhance our trading opportunities. What did the Conservative members do? They did not want to debate that either, so they brought in another concurrence report, which prevented the government from being able to debate that legislation.

The members opposite, in criticizing the government today, were talking about issues of crime. They say that this is what they want to talk about. I will remind them of Bill C-63, the online harms act. That is to protect children being extorted, being bullied. The whole issue of exploitation of our young children, we were supposed to debate that last week, but no, the Conservatives said no to that too, and they brought forward a concurrence report. The Conservative Party is going out of its way to prevent any legislation from going to committee.

Prior to getting up, I had a member of one of the opposition parties approach me, asking why we do not just move to orders of the day. I think there was a great deal of effort and thought to move towards orders of the day because then maybe we could get on with actually providing movement on some of this legislation. The problem is that we are a minority government. In a minority government, we cannot go to orders of the day unless we get an opposition party that says it will support the government moving to orders of the day so that we can get rid of the games that the Conservative party has been playing.

Let there be no doubt that, no matter how critical the Conservative Party is, how much of a roadblock the Conservatives want to present or how much of a character assassination that they are after for those in the government, the Prime Minister and the government will continue to be focused on the interests of Canadians in all regions of our country. That is something we will continue to focus on day in and day out. That means that, whether the Conservatives want it or not, we will continue to develop policy ideas that will transform into budgetary measures and legislative measures. There will come a time when Canadians will, in fact, evaluate and take a look at what the Conservative Party has been doing between now and whenever the next election is, and what other political entities have done.

I think there is a sense of responsibility for all of us to be able to accomplish good things for Canadians. That is what I liked about the agreement that was achieved between the Liberals and the New Democrats. I have always been a big fan of the pharmacare plan. I have always been a very strong advocate for a national health care system that supports our provinces, which administer health care. For over 30 years as a parliamentarian, those are the types of issues that have been important for me. As a government, those issues have been important for us.

We were able to get support from the New Democrats to advance a number of wonderful health care initiatives. That is what it means to put people first, putting the constituents of Canada ahead of partisan politics. By doing that, the government has invested $198 billion over 10 years in health care. That is for future generations. We have developed a dental care program. To date, over 700,000 people have had access to it. Members can think of diabetes, or of contraceptives, and how, as a government working with an opposition party, we are, in fact, making a difference. In fact, I have suggested that one of the other things we should possibly be looking at is shingles and how pharmacare might be able to deal with that particular issue.

These are the types of ideas that we are talking about within the Liberal Party to build a stronger, healthier health care system, while the Conservative Party wants to tear it down. That is a part of the Conservative far-right hidden agenda. People need to be aware of that. By the time we get to the election, I believe that throughout that election, we will see the Conservative sand fade away. There is no foundation to what they are saying. It is just bumper stickers and slogans. That is all they have. We can contrast that to the many progressive measures we have taken as a government, in good part because of the cooperation of opposition parties.

I ask the Conservatives to stop playing the games, stop bringing in Conservative motions of concurrence and allow debate on government legislation. A responsible Conservative opposition could still bring in the motions it wants, while at least allowing debates to occur on legislation. Allow these important pieces of legislation to go to committee where they can be studied, where they can come back and where they can provide hope for many. That is the very least that Conservatives can do: put Canadians ahead of their own political party.

Public Safety

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, parents across Canada are worried about their children's safety online. As a parent, I share their fear. That is why it is crucial that we implement laws dedicated to keeping our kids safe. That is why I introduced the online harms act. Bill C-63 introduces the first-ever safety standards for online platforms. It couples duties to protect kids with significant penalties for platforms that do not comply.

We have rigorous safety laws to protect our kids from harm in the physical world; they need to be safe online as well. We are creating a safer online world for our kids. It is really unfortunate that Conservatives cannot get onside with this important legislation.

Agriculture and Agri-Food

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

Madam Speaker, here we are again, just the second week into the fall session, and this is the fourth concurrence report brought in by the official opposition. This once again reinforces, for anyone who follows the debate via CPAC and wants an understanding of what is taking place in Ottawa, that the Conservatives are going out of their way to quench their thirst for power, as opposed to trying to deliver in a very real and tangible way for Canadians.

Today, the Conservatives brought forward this motion for concurrence to talk about farmers, the carbon rebate and interest in regard to the price on food. I find it interesting that they have chosen to debate that today. If my memory serves me correctly, I cannot recall once when the Conservative Party of Canada, the far right, thought this issue was important enough to bring forward to the House for debate on an opposition day. We have had dozens of opposition days, and not once have the Conservatives raised the issue that is the focus of the concurrence report.

The Conservatives like to say that this is about farmers and Canadians. Well, I do not believe it. If any of the Conservatives have the courage to debate me in any university or other post-secondary facility, I would welcome it, just to show how abusive the Conservatives are when we are trying to be there in a very real and tangible way for Canadians. In fact, the Conservatives have had two members speak about the report. They are the ones who thought it was so important to debate this report. However, did either member who spoke even make reference to the response to the report that was provided by the department and the minister? No.

We are already half an hour into discussion, and while the Conservatives had a detailed response to the report, no reference has been made to it whatsoever. It does not surprise me, because as every member of the House of Commons knows, this is not about the issue the Conservatives have raised today. They are using an issue that Canadians are genuinely concerned about, which I agree is a concern, to sidestep legislation and prevent the government from being able to pass it.

My colleague and friend from Waterloo referenced that she was hoping to debate Bill C-63, which we started this morning. The Conservatives have said that if this bill passes and we get a Conservative government, they will repeal the law. We understand that they do not support the legislation, even though the interests of Canadians are represented in it, but this is what we were supposed to be debating today.

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

Madam Speaker, today we were supposed to be debating Bill C-63. It is interesting that, once again, after four days and four different pieces of legislation being introduced, the “hungry and thirsty for power” Conservatives have brought in a concurrence motion to try to change the channel. This is the fourth time.

Why does the Conservative Party have such a lack of respect for Canadians that it is prepared to do whatever it takes to play a destructive role here on the floor of the House of Commons in not allowing legislation to even be debated?

Business of the House

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Yes, Madam Speaker, by popular demand, I am back. I really missed these exchanges. Some of our great moments are on Thursdays, not just for CPAC viewers, but also for you and me personally, I know. Therefore it is wonderful to exchange and wonderful to be back. I want to wish members a good return. I hope everybody had a productive and happy time with their families and their constituents in their ridings.

This afternoon, we will resume second reading debate of Bill C-66, the military justice system modernization act.

Tomorrow, we will begin the report stage debate of Bill C-33, the strengthening the port system and railway safety in Canada act.

On Monday, we will begin second reading debate of Bill C-63, the online harms act.

Madam Speaker, you will be very happy to know that next Wednesday we will also be resuming second reading debate of Bill C-71, which would amend the Citizenship Act.

I would also like to take the opportunity to inform the House that both next Tuesday and next Thursday shall be allotted days.

Furthermore, on Monday, the Minister of Finance will table a ways and means motion on capital gains taxation that incorporates the feedback received during consultations over the summer. The vote will take place on Wednesday of next week during Government Orders.

Diversity and Inclusion

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the Leader of the Opposition recognizing the divisive rhetoric and the division that is occurring in Canadian society right now. We have a problem with hatred. We have to address that problem. We know that the statistics show that hate crimes are on the rise 130% in the last five years.

That is why I was proud to stand with CIJA when we tabled Bill C-63, the online harms legislation that would improve penalties for hate crimes, provide a definition of hatred and ensure that we are keeping Canadian communities safe. The special envoy on anti-Semitism supports the bill. CIJA supports the bill. I am just wondering why the Leader of the Opposition does not.

Criminal Code

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

Madam Speaker, I rise to debate this bill today, and I would like to focus my comments on a specific aspect of coercive control, for which there remains very few easy-to-access and easy-to-deploy de-escalation tools for victims. It is my hope that parliamentarians in the other place will consider the addition of these components to this bill, particularly as it pertains to specific tools to assist law enforcement officials in stopping coercive control from happening.

To set the context for this issue, I would like to refer to the Women's Legal Education & Access Fund, or LEAF. It developed a position paper on the criminalization of coercive control in response to this bill. In it, it defines “coercive control” as follows:

Coercive control is a concept used to describe a pattern of abusive behaviors in intimate partner relationships, based on tactics of intimidation, subordination, and control. This can include, among others, behaviors such as isolation, stalking, threats, surveillance, psychological abuse, online harassment, and sexual violence.

Other sources discussed threats of extortion, including so-called revenge porn, as one of the abusive behaviours also used to exert coercive control.

In its paper, LEAF raises the concern that the process of criminalizing coercive control may encounter significant challenges to legal success and that it may be “difficult to translate clearly into actionable criminal law.” One of the recommendations it makes to at least partially address this issue reads as follows: “Federal, provincial and territorial governments should take a proactive approach in focusing on the prevention of intimate partner violence.”

I would like to focus on two actionable, concrete ways to prevent two specific behaviours or components of coercive control: online harassment and revenge porn. In nearly nine years of power, the Liberal government has not taken material action to address the growing threat and breadth of online harassment, particularly as it relates to coercive control. The government's recently introduced and widely criticized Bill C-63, which many experts say would force Canadians to make trade-offs between their charter rights and their safety, does not adequately address the issue of women who are subject to a pattern of abusive behaviour online. Even if it did, today the minister admitted in the Toronto Star that the bill's provisions, which rely on the creation of an onerous new three-headed bureaucracy, would take years to functionally come into force.

Canadian women do not have time to wait for the minister's foot-dragging. Online harassment has been an issue for years, and the government has not ensured that our laws have kept pace with this issue. For evidence of this, I encourage colleagues to read the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime's guide to cyberstalking, which admits as much, saying that, when victims seek to report incidents of cyberstalking, “individual officers may be unfamiliar with the crimes or technology in question and may be uncertain about how to proceed.”

Indeed, last month, an article was released that was headlined, “RCMP boss calls for new politician anti-threats law”. It cited the need for more provision to protect politicians from online harassment. I asked myself, if the RCMP cannot protect me, how are they going to protect anyone in my community from the same threat? We should all reflect upon this issue because across Canada, at this very moment, women are receiving repeated, unwanted, harassing digital communications, and the best that many victim services groups can do to help, because of government inaction, is offer advice on how they can attempt to be less of a victim.

Women should not have to alter their behaviour. Potential harassers should be held to account, and their behaviour should be de-escalated before it escalates into physical violence. To do this, I encourage parliamentarians in the other place to consider the following in their review of this bill. They should ask the government to create a new criminal offence of online harassment that would update the existing crime of criminal harassment to address the ease and anonymity of online criminal harassment, which groups, in the deliberation of this bill, have noted as a component of coercive control.

Specifically, this new provision would apply to those who repeatedly send threatening or sexually explicit messages or content to people across the Internet and social media when they know, or should know, that it is not welcome. This could include aggravating factors for repeatedly sending such material anonymously and be accompanied by a so-called digital restraining order, which would allow victims of online criminal harassment to apply to a judge to identify the harasser and end the harassment. This would give police and victims clear and easy-to-understand tools to prevent online harassment and also prevent the escalation of this abuse to physical violence.

It would also allow for national awareness and education campaigns to be developed on what happens when someone criminally harasses somebody online. This would address a major issue of intimate partner violence and make it easier to materially and concretely stop coercive control. Members of the governing Liberal Party agreed to the need for these measures in a recent meeting of PROC related to the online harassment of elected officials.

In addition, the government must do more to address so-called revenge porn as a component of coercive control. An academic article entitled “Image-Based Sexual Abuse as a Means of Coercive Control: Victim-Survivor Experiences” states:

Victim-support advocates and domestic violence sector workers have increasingly acknowledged the role that image-based sexual abuse plays in the perpetuation of intimate partner abuse.... Image-based sexual abuse refers to the non-consensual taking or sharing of nude or sexual images (photos or videos), including making threats to share intimate images.... In the context of an intimate relationship, image-based sexual abuse can include any of the following acts: taking or sharing nude or sexual images without consent; threats to share intimate images to coerce a partner into sharing more intimate images or engage them in an unwanted act; and/or recording and or disseminating of sexual assault imagery.

However, colleagues, this has become even more of a concern given the advent of deepfake intimate images. I have been raising this issue in the House for over a year, and the government has still not moved to update the definition of “intimate images” in Canada's Criminal Code to specifically include deepfake intimate images. This component is not in Bill C-63.

This inaction is already harming women. A Winnipeg high school student had deepfaked intimate images circulated against her; no charges were filed, likely because of the gap in our law. As it relates to coercive control, can members imagine how easy it would be for an abuser to create so-called revenge porn to use against their victim using online technology? The government must act now, but if it will not, we parliamentarians must. Therefore, I ask members of the other place to consider the following in the review of their bill.

They should consider updating Canada's existing laws on the non-consensual distribution of intimate images to ensure that the distribution of intimate deepfakes is also criminalized via a simple definition update in the Criminal Code. This could be done easily and likely with all-party support in this place. It is shameful that the government has not moved to do that to date. In addition, the government admitted today in the Toronto Star that it is committed to dogmatically sticking with Bill C-63 as its only way to address online harms. This is despite widespread criticism and despite admitting that even the few supportable provisions in the bill would not come into force for years. Therefore, we in the opposition must look for ways to address these issues outside the government, particularly since online harm is a growing component of coercive control.

In addition to what I have already suggested, as parliamentarians, we should address the broader issue of online harms by doing things such as precisely specifying the duty of care required by online platforms. This should be done through legislation and not backroom regulation. The duty of care could include mechanisms to provide parents with the safeguards, controls and transparency to prevent harm to their kids when they are online; mechanisms to prevent and mitigate self-harm, mental health disorders, addictive behaviour, bullying and harassment, sexual violence and exploitation, and the promotion and marketing of products or services that are unlawful for minors; and mechanisms to implement privacy-preserving and trustworthy age verification methods, which many platforms have already built, to restrict access to any content that is inappropriate for minors while prohibiting the use of a digital ID in any of these mechanisms.

As well, we require mechanisms to give adults a clear and easy-to-use way to opt out of any default parental controls that a duty of care might provide for. Then, through legislation, we should ensure the appropriate enforcement of such measures through a system of administrative penalties and consequences by government agencies and bodies that already exist. In addition, the enforcement mechanisms could provide for the allowance of civil action when duties of care are violated in an injurious way.

To address coercive control, we need to address online harassment. I hope that colleagues in the other place will consider the suggestions I have made to do just that.

Business of the House

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, there is indeed a secret in the House, and that is the Conservative Party's true intentions when it comes to cuts. “Chop, chop, chop,” as my colleague from Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine so aptly puts it. That party wants to cut social programs and the programs that are so dear to Quebeckers and Canadians: women's rights, the right to abortion, the right to contraception. The Conservatives want to scrap our government's dental care and pharmacare plans. The secret is the Conservative Party's hidden agenda, which will do great harm to all Canadians.

With our government's usual transparency, this evening we will proceed to report stage consideration of Bill C-20, an act establishing the public complaints and review commission and amending certain acts and statutory instruments, and Bill C-40, an act to amend the Criminal Code, to make consequential amendments to other acts and to repeal a regulation regarding miscarriage of justice reviews, also known as David and Joyce Milgaard's law.

Tomorrow, we will begin second reading of Bill C-63, an act to enact the online harms act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

I would like to inform the House that next Monday and Thursday shall be allotted days. On Tuesday, we will start report stage of Bill C-69, the budget implementation act. On Wednesday, we will deal with Bill C-70, concerning foreign interference, as per the special order adopted last Thursday. I wish all members and the House staff a good weekend.

Department of Justice—Main Estimates, 2024-25

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the track record of the previous Harper government, in which the Leader of the Opposition played a part in its cabinet, is demonstrably curious with respect to that barbaric cultural practices hotline suggestion, with respect to interdictions on the citizenship ceremonies and what people could wear, and with respect to approaches towards settlement of Syrian refugees and who would be selected for settlement in Canada and who would not. The track record is not an enviable one.

On this side of the House, we stand completely opposed to such policies and have implemented policies that are vastly different. That includes challenging Islamophobia. That includes funding for the security infrastructure program to protect places of worship. That includes Bill C-63, which would tackle Islamophobia head-on and help keep all Canadians safe.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is actually appalling, given where we are with the alarming rise in anti-Semitism post October 7. We need to be doing everything we can to shore up the Jewish community and its need for safety and security at this time.

Apropos of that, I find it very troubling that the opposition articulated by the Leader of the Opposition to a bill that I am shepherding through this chamber, Bill C-63, was so vociferous that he did not even wait to read the document. He came out against it before it was even tabled. This is the very same document that groups like CIJA have gone on record about, saying that if we tackle online hatred, we will help them stop anti-Semitism online from turning into real-world consequences in the physical world.

Bill C-63 is critical for the safety of the Jewish community, as it is critical for many vulnerable groups, including Muslims and Arabs in the LGBTQ community, the Black community and the indigenous community. That is what we need to stand for as Canadians. That is what the opposition leader is standing against.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be very open to looking at what is transpiring in California. Centring victims at the heart of our criminal justice strategy is important, and we have been attempting to do that with respect to victims of hatred, through the online hate bill; victims of child sex predation, through Bill C-63; victims of intimate partner violence, through our changes to the bail regime, not once but twice, through Bill C-48 and Bill C-75; and fundamentally, victims of gun violence in this country, through bills like Bill C-21, which would put a freeze on handgun sales and ensure tougher penalties with respect to things like gun trafficking. These are important provisions, but I am definitely willing to entertain suggestions about what California is doing and look at whether the model could be brought over.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few responses. First of all, Bill C-63 contemplates a responsibility to file a digital safety plan with the new commissioner to indicate how one is going to moderate risk for one's users, and lastly, to be vetted against that moderation and to be subject to penalties or orders by the digital safety commissioner.

It also contemplates the idea that the digital safety commissioner could green-light researchers at universities around the country to get access to some of the inner workings of the platforms. This has been hailed by people like Frances Haugen, the famous Facebook whistle-blower, as internationally leading legislation on promoting some of the transparency the member opposite is seeking, which I seek as well.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to turn to Bill C-63. I support Bill C-63, the online hate bill, but I do not think it adequately gets to some of the questions of algorithms.

I think we have a real problem with rage farming. Some of the examples I have raised tonight are specifically useful because they raise ire and quick reaction and can be used to change public opinion through the manufacturing of a degree of rage that might otherwise not exist if all the facts were thoroughly discussed.

Does the minister believe that Bill C-63 could get at something like rage farming without getting at the algorithms?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to point out that Meta's response was also surprising, because there are a lot of penalties set out in Bill C-63, but Meta is still comfortable working with us.

With regard to the second question, I want to say that we stand up for the protection of both official languages across Canada under the Official Languages Act.

If that means giving the courts and the federal court administration across Canada more funding, then we are there to listen to those concerns and provide the resources necessary to improve access to justice in both official languages, including French, for all Canadians.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will move on to another subject that I think is extremely important: Bill C-63.

Earlier this evening, my colleague, the member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, addressed this issue, among others, regarding the Bloc Québécois's suggestion to split part 1 of Bill C‑63 from the other parts so that the digital safety commission can be created as quickly as possible.

My concern is that we are all witnessing and aware of an appalling proliferation of hateful content on social media, including disinformation and aggressive fake accounts, often directed at vulnerable individuals or groups. This should be very worrisome not just to individuals, but to society as a whole.

How does the minister intend to pass a bill that is already being challenged, in a time frame that reflects the urgency of the situation?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, we have tabled that legislation. We are looking forward to having it voted on in the House and proceeding to committee as fast as possible because the luring she mentioned is child predation. It is something that she and I hopefully can agree that we need to cure. That is one of the things that would be tackled through this legislation, among other things.

She has been spending a lot of time talking about women's rights. Women who are cowered through revenge porn would also be addressed through Bill C-63 because it is a second form of content that would be subject to a 24-hour takedown requirement. Surely we can agree on the necessity of prioritizing—

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

Madam Chair, we have an increase of 815% under this minister's watch involving online sexual luring. He is trying to distract. He does not want to answer the questions. He is the one who brought up his proverbial Bill C-63 that is going to solve all these problems. He said Canada is not unsafe, yet we have stats that show an increase of 101% increase in gun crime.

Why, if Bill C-63 is so important and he is so worried about public safety and so worried about victims, has he not brought it forward to the House?

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

Madam Chair, it is absolutely desperate and pathetic, and that is a shameful response.

This is my last question. The minister says he is so concerned about Bill C-63, which he is in charge of bringing forward to the House. If it so important to protect children, why has he not done it?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, I would say that we can start by moving with pace on Bill C-63. It talks about the fact that hate crimes are up 130% over the last five years in this country. We know that the hatred people are exposed to online has real-world consequences. Look no further than the trials of the individuals who were killed at the Quebec City mosque and the trials of the Afzaal family, who were killed in London, Ontario.

How do we cure this? We take a Supreme Court definition of hatred and entrench it in law. That is something that law enforcement has asked us for. Again, I hope the members opposite are listening. Law enforcement and police officers have asked us for these changes because they want to facilitate the work of their hate crimes units in identifying what is happening and laying charges for what is happening. By enhancing penalties under the Criminal Code, by entrenching a definition of hatred in the Canadian Human Rights Act that facilitates discrimination complaints for online hate speech and by ensuring that we are having this content addressed by social media platforms, we can address this at multiple angles.

This is critical toward keeping people safe, now more than ever, when hatred is on the rise, whether it is the anti-Semitism the member just spoke about, whether it is the Islamophobia we have seen with such fatal consequences, whether it is attacks towards the LGBTQ2 community or whether it is attacks against indigenous people in the Prairies. This is rife right now. The time to act is now, not at some future date, to keep Canadians safe. This must to be a priority for every parliamentarian here. Does that mean that we have the perfect bill? Absolutely, it does not mean that. I am open to amendments. We need to get this bill to the justice committee so that we can hear from experts about how a good bill can be strengthened further.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, what I said at that committee, I will say again here: the Lego in my basement is subject to more restrictions than the screens my children are on. That has to change.

We need to change the incentivization on social media companies from monetary incentivization to safety incentivization. This legislation would create a duty to protect children and a duty to remove content. I hope the opposition is listening. The prosecution would be facilitated, in terms of child sex predators, by making changes to the Mandatory Reporting Act, such that the evidence must be preserved for one year. Someone will have up to five years to lay a charge. All entities, including social media companies, must report, and they must report to a central clearing facility. That is critical to facilitating the prosecutions. That is what law enforcement has asked us for. That is what the mothers and fathers affected by things like sextortion around this country have asked us for. That is what will help keep kids from being induced to self-harm, which includes, sadly and tragically, suicide in the case of Carson Cleland in Prince George, B.C., and so many other children around this country.

What we understand from the Centre for Child Protection is that 70 times per week they get notifications of sextortion, and that is only the kids who are coming forward. It is critical to address this issue with haste. We need to pass Bill C-63 at second reading and get it to committee to hear from experts about the pressing need for this bill.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Chair, I want the minister to speak a little more on this specific topic. I actually received a number of communications in my constituency from parents and grandparents who are very concerned about their children and about the fact that they are so preoccupied these days with online platforms. In fact, my recollection is that the justice minister was at our Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, and he said that the most dangerous toys that Canadian families have are the screens their children use.

Can the minister explain that a little further and speak a little more about the measures in Bill C-63? I think that fundamentally it is a very alarming topic to many in my constituency and across the country.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Chair, by way of addressing a couple of points on extortion, what I would indicate for the benefit of the House is that we have announced an RCMP national coordination and support team to help coordinate investigations of extortion, and that extortion remains subject to a maximum life imprisonment penalty, which the Supreme Court has indicated demonstrates the seriousness of the offence.

With respect to the question about Bill C-63, I welcome this question. Keeping kids safe is everyone's responsibility in this chamber. This legislation, Bill C-63, would require a takedown within 24 hours of any material that constitutes child sex exploitative material. It would require a risk analysis and a risk reduction of material that induces a child to self-harm or bullies or intimidates a child. That is about doing right by people like Amanda Todd's mother and Rehtaeh Parsons' mother and so many kids who are being sextorted and exploited online.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Chair, it is a pleasure to rise today in the chamber. I will be providing remarks and using the remainder of my minutes, after my remarks, with some questions for the minister.

I am pleased to speak this evening to an important keystone of access to justice, and that is legal aid. There are so many things one can speak on, but I have to limit what I can say here tonight in the minutes I have available.

While legal aid is not covered in the appropriations requested under the main estimates, budget 2024 includes measures to increase funding to criminal legal aid as well as legal aid for immigrants and refugees. It also includes new funding for impact of race and culture assessments. These proposed increases are contained within Bill C-69, the budget implementation act, which is now going through Parliament.

I want to give a short preamble to my comments on legal aid.

Our work on access to justice is aligned with broader Government of Canada work to achieve the sustainable development goals, including SDG 16, which speaks to a peaceful, just and inclusive society.

Our government is moving forward on this objective thanks to a person-centred approach. That means that we are focusing on the various needs of people with justice issues. The system must take into account people's situations.

This includes any history of victimization, mental health or substance use. In this vein, we are committed to addressing the root causes of crime, recognizing that this is the most effective way to build safer communities. Fair and equal access to justice also means ensuring respectful and timely processing without discrimination or bias.

We recognize that racism and systemic discrimination exist in our institutions. We know indigenous people, Black people and members of other racialized communities are grossly overrepresented in Canada's criminal justice system as both victims and offenders. In fact, we have heard plenty of testimony on that aspect at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

This brings me to the topic of legal aid.

A strong legal aid system is one of the pillars that advances access to justice in our justice system. However, not everyone has equal access to legal aid and representation. Lawyers are costly and the courtroom can be a confusing place.

Legal aid assists economically disadvantaged people in obtaining legal assistance and fair representation. We are committed, together with our provincial and territorial counterparts, to ensuring stable and predictable funding for legal aid so that Canadians can access justice.

Funding for criminal legal aid is marked as a decrease in the main estimates. While it is reflected as such, Bill C-69, and the justice minister addressed this in a previous question, proposes to renew this funding to provide $440 million over five years starting in 2024-25. The renewed funds would support access to justice for Canadians who are unable to pay for legal support.

We know that would be particularly helpful for indigenous people, Black people, members of other racialized communities and people with mental health problems, who are all overrepresented in Canada's criminal justice system.

As I mentioned, improving access to legal aid is possible only with continued collaboration between our governments, the provinces and the territories. The proposed renewed federal contribution will assist them in paving the way to greater access to justice, especially for vulnerable groups. We are also committed to ensuring the ongoing delivery of legal aid in immigration and refugee matters with eight provincial partners. That includes Nova Scotia.

The world is facing an unparalleled flow of migrants and refugees, and Canada is no exception. I have heard their stories, heard about the lives they left behind and heard about the challenges that they have to face in a new country, no matter how welcoming it may be, particularly when they have to deal with unfamiliar, complicated legal processes.

That is why our government is firmly committed to upholding a fair and compassionate refugee protection system. Part of this work is making sure that refugees have access to legal representation, information and advice. That is why budget 2024 proposes to provide $273.7 million over five years, starting in 2024-25, and $43.5 million ongoing to maintain federal support for immigration and refugee legal aid services in eight provinces where services are available. This includes an additional $71.6 million this fiscal year.

The funding will improve access to justice for asylum seekers and others involved in certain immigration proceedings who may not have the means to hire legal representation. Immigration and refugee legal aid supports fair, effective and efficient decision-making on asylum and certain immigration claims by helping individuals present the relevant facts of their case in a clear and comprehensive manner.

To improve these specific legal aid services, Justice Canada works in tandem with provincial governments and legal aid service providers, as well as with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. We want to collectively ensure that we have stable and predictable ongoing funding for these important services.

Before I conclude, I also want to touch on another important item that would be supported by Bill C-69, impact of race and culture assessments, which would help the courts understand how racism and discrimination have contributed to a Black or racialized person's interactions with the criminal justice system. Budget 2024 proposes to provide an additional $8 million over five years and $1.6 million ongoing to expand these assessments in more jurisdictions.

On access to justice for all Canadians, we are committing to ensuring that the justice system is fairer for all. I will now continue with the time that I have left to pose a couple of questions to the minister.

My first question is going to centre on the online harms act, Bill C-63. I just want to preface it by saying that the online harms act is something that many of us are very concerned about these days. Obviously, we always were, but the concern is heightened. It is to combat online hate, but it is also to protect our children from sexual exploitation and other harms. One cannot happen without the other.

Can the minister please comment on this, and, specifically, can he explain to Canadians and to the House why is it essential to raise Bill C-63 in the context of protecting our children?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, I am pleased to see any efforts that deal with combatting hatred, which is unfortunately spiralling in terms of anti-Semitic incidents and Islamophobic incidents. There is a 130% rise in hate crimes in this country in the last five years. That informs the necessity for bills such as Bill C-63, the online harms bill, which will tackle things like hatred and its festering online, which has real-world consequences. It is very unfortunate that Canada ranks number one in the G7 for the number of deaths of Muslims in the last seven years, 11 in total, due to Islamophobic acts of hate.

What I would say, with respect to this bill, is that we are looking at it closely. I would also reiterate for the member's edification that we amended the hate propaganda provisions to include Holocaust denialism and willful promotion of anti-Semitism within the fold of sections 318 and 319, the hate propaganda offences. That was done within the last two years, I believe.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, I think that the suggestion about hate, the Bloc Québécois's private member's bill and our Bill C-63 highlight the fact that we need to pass this bill at second reading and send it to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights so that we can study it, hear from experts and witnesses and propose amendments, if a few turn out to be appropriate.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Chair, the government is completely ignoring Bill S‑210. Bill C‑63 is a huge bill that has received some criticism. It is likely to take a long time to study.

However, we think the proposal to set up a digital safety commission is a good idea that should be implemented quickly. That is why we are proposing that the bill be split, quite simply, so that we can take the time to properly study all harmful content while still setting up the digital safety commission quickly. I understand that the proposal has not been accepted, but I still think it is a good idea.

The topic of harmful content brings me to hate speech. Will the minister commit to abolishing the Criminal Code exemption that allows hate speech in the name of religion? In fact, that would be a great addition to his Bill C‑63.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, I have several answers to give on this matter. The big difference between the senator's bill and Bill C‑63 is that our bill had the benefit of a five-year consultation. That is the first thing.

The second thing is that, although we agree with some aspects, we want to work in close collaboration with the big digital companies to resolve the situation and protect the public and children from pornography. Taking down that information and content within a mandatory 24-hour period is a much stronger measure than what was proposed in the bill introduced by the senator.

The last thing is that we are targeting a situation where all harmful online content needs to be addressed. This concerns children, teenagers and adults. We want a big solution to a big problem. Australia started nine years ago with children only. Nine years later, protecting children only is no longer appropriate—

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Chair, I politely beg to differ. I feel that Bill C‑63 is extremely important, but it is not exactly the same thing. Yes, it contains elements that make it possible to regulate or, at least, be warned before consuming certain types of content, but there is nothing that really makes it possible to verify the consumer's age.

I would therefore advise the government to support a bill like Bill S‑210. Obviously, it is not easy to implement this type of safeguard, and other countries are currently looking at that. However, it is an extremely important bill.

To return to Bill C‑63, would the minister agree that the first part of the bill could be split from the rest so that the digital security commission could be created as quickly as possible? That would enable us to protect female victims of intimate content communicated without consent, including deepfakes.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, with all due respect, I want to correct the member opposite.

First, Bill C‑63 deals mainly with types of content that are appropriate for children. Second, it addresses the obligation to protect children. There is also a provision of Bill C‑63 that talks about age appropriate design features.

We are targeting the same problem. We want to work with social media platforms to resolve this situation in a way that will enable us to protect people's privacy and personal information and protect children.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Chair, I think that the minister is well aware that those are two completely different missions. Both are commendable.

Bill C‑63 has its good points, but Bill S‑210 really seeks to check the age of pornography users to limit young people's access to it. The Liberal Party seems to disagree with this bill, and yet other countries, like Germany, France and the United Kingdom, as well as some states in the U.S. are looking into this way of verifying the age of users.

Why does Canada not want to move forward in this way to limit the access of children under the age of 18 to pornography?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, that is a great question, but I believe that the senator's bill, Bill S‑210, addresses only one aspect of our broader bill, C‑63.

Protecting children from pornography and sexual predators is a priority for both me and the senator. However, we have different ways of tackling the problem. We are dealing with a much bigger and broader problem in our own Bill C-63. We are also different when it comes to the mandates and the modus operandi that the senator proposes to use.

We are concerned about how to verify someone's age. Does it have to be a piece of government-issued ID? Will this cause other problems or lead to the possibility of other crimes, such as financial fraud, at the international level?

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Chair, I would point out to the minister that he does not want to give Quebec an exemption from the Criminal Code, but he is giving one to British Columbia. In my view, this is something that is possible for the people in this situation in Quebec.

Now, I would like to hear his comments on all the issues related to child pornography, children's access to pornography and the sharing of non-consensual content. To my eyes, the purpose of Bill S‑210, which was introduced by Senator Julie Miville‑Dechêne and which seeks to prevent minors from accessing pornography, is completely different from the purpose of Bill C‑63, which the minister introduced and which seeks to protect the public from harmful content streamed on social media, such as intimate content communicated without consent and content that sexually victimizes a child.

Does he agree with me that these two bills have completely different purposes?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I will be providing 10 minutes of remarks, and I will be welcoming questions from my parliamentary secretary, the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. I will be using my time to discuss measures in the recent budget to combat crime, especially auto theft and money laundering. I will also touch on legal aid investments and provide an update of our work on online safety.

Auto theft is a serious problem that affects communities across the country. Not only does it affect people's wallets, it also causes them to feel unsafe. The number of these thefts has risen and, in some areas, they are growing more violent. These criminals are increasingly emboldened. Our government is committed to ensuring that police and prosecutors have the tools they need to respond to cases of auto theft, including thefts related to organized crime.

We also want to ensure that the legislation provides courts with the wherewithal to impose sentences commensurate with the seriousness of the crime. The Criminal Code already contains useful provisions for fighting auto theft, but we can do more.

This is why we are amending the Criminal Code to provide additional measures for law enforcement and for prosecutors to address auto theft. Bill C-69, the budget implementation act, sets out these proposed measures. These amendments would include new offences targeting auto theft and its links to violence and organized crime; new offences for possession and distribution of a device used for committing auto theft, such as key-programming machines; and a new offence for laundering proceeds of crime for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with, a criminal organization. We are proposing a new aggravating factor at sentencing, which would be applied to an adult offender who involves a young person in the commission of the crime. These changes are part of the larger federal action plan on combatting auto theft that was just released on May 20.

Auto theft is a complex crime, and fighting it involves many partners: the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments, industry leaders and law enforcement agencies.

I will now turn to the related issue of money laundering. Addressing money laundering will help us to combat organized crime, including its involvement in automobile theft. However, the challenges associated with money laundering and organized crime go beyond auto theft.

That is why we are continually reviewing our laws so that Canada can better combat money laundering, organized crime and terrorist activity financing.

Bill C-69 would give us more tools to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. These new measures would allow courts to issue an order that requires a person to keep an account open to assist in the investigation of a suspected criminal offence. Currently, financial service providers often unilaterally close accounts where they suspect criminal activity, which can actually hinder police investigations. This new proposed order would help in that regard.

I hope to see non-partisan support from all parties, including the official opposition, on these measures to address organized crime. It would be nice to see its members support something, rather than simply use empty slogans or block actual solutions. We see this as well in their efforts to block Bill C-59, the fall economic statement, which has been in this chamber for literally months. That also contains a range of measures to combat money laundering, which have been asked for by law enforcement. For a party that prides itself on having a close relationship with law enforcement, I find this obstruction puzzling.

What is more, under Bill C-69, the courts will also be authorized to make an order for the production of documents for specific dates thanks to a repetitive production order. That will enable law enforcement to ask a person to provide specific information to support a criminal investigation on several pre-determined dates over a defined period. That means that the individual will be required to produce specific information to support a criminal investigation on several pre-determined dates.

These two proposals resulted from the public consultations that our government held last summer. We are committed to getting Bill C-69 passed by Parliament in a timely manner so that the new measures can be put in place as quickly as possible and so that we can crack down on these serious crimes as soon as possible.

I would now like to discuss our investments in legal aid. Just as we need to protect Canadians from crime, we also need to ensure that people have equitable access to justice, which is an integral part of a fair and just society, and a strong legal aid system is a key aspect of this. It strengthens the overall justice system. Budget 2024 includes measures to increase funding to criminal legal aid as well as legal aid for immigrants and for refugees to Canada.

For criminal legal aid, budget 2024 provides $440 million over five years, starting in 2024-25. This would support access to justice for Canadians who are unable to pay for legal support, in particular, indigenous people, individuals who are Black and other racialized communities who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Indeed, legal representation helps to clear backlogs and delays in our court system as well.

This essential work is only possible with continued collaboration between federal, provincial and territorial governments. The proposed increase to the federal contribution will assist provinces and territories to take further actions to increase access to justice. This legal aid will help with the backlogs I just mentioned. Unrepresented and poorly represented litigants cause delays in our justice system. Making sure that these individuals have proper support and representation will help ensure access to a speedy trial. This, in combination with our unprecedented pace of judicial appointments, 106 appointments in my first nine months in office, will also address backlogs. In comparison, the previous Harper government would appoint 65 judges per year on average. I exceeded that amount in six months.

For immigration and refugee legal aid, budget 2024 would provide $273.7 million over five years, starting in 2024-25, and $43.5 million per year ongoing after that. This funding would help support access to justice for economically disadvantaged asylum seekers and others involved in immigration proceedings. This investment would help maintain the confidence of Canadians in the government's ability to manage immigration levels, and to resettle and integrate refugees into Canadian society. To do this very important work, Justice Canada continues to collaborate with provincial governments and with legal aid service providers, as well as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Together, we are exploring solutions to support sustainable access to immigration and refugee legal aid services.

Before I conclude, I would like to talk a little about Bill C-63, which was raised by the member for Fundy Royal. The bill addresses online harms and the safety of our communities online. Much has already been said about this very important legislation, which would create stronger protections for children online and better safeguards for everyone in Canada from online hate and other types of harmful content. What is critical about this bill is that it is dedicated to promoting people's participation online and not to limiting it.

This legislation is informed by what we have heard over five-plus years of consultations with diverse stakeholders, community groups, law enforcement and other Canadians. This bill focuses on the baseline responsibilities of social media platforms to manage the content they are hosting and their duty to keep children safe, which means removing certain types of harmful content and entrenching a duty to act responsibly.

This bill is about keeping Canadians safe, which is my fundamental priority and my fundamental duty as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of this country. It is about ensuring that there is actually a takedown requirement on the two types of most harmful material: child pornography and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, also known as revenge pornography.

There are five other categories of material that would be dealt with under this bill, including material that includes inciting violence, incitements to terrorism, hatred as defined by the Supreme Court of Canada, bullying a child and also inducing a child to self-harm. I am speaking now not only as the Minister of Justice but also as a father. I think that there is nothing more basic in this country for any parent or parliamentarian than keeping our children safe.

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak about how we are making Canada safer and making our justice system stronger, more accessible and more inclusive for all people.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I find this line of questioning quite fascinating, given that the main charter issue that is at issue in Bill C-63 deals with very sensitive issues about the protection of freedom of speech, which is protected under section 2(b).

What I will do is always maintain my oath under the Constitution to uphold the Constitution and people's charter rights. This individual works under a leader who has brandished the idea of using the notwithstanding clause to deprive people of their charter rights. Section 2(b) is subject to the notwithstanding clause.

If we are talking about who is actually committed to protecting people's freedoms, including freedom of speech, people on that side of the House should be looking at themselves in the mirror.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I notice once again that I have given the minister a lot of opportunities, and he has not answered any of my questions directly.

He knows the answer to this one, and he is not going to give it, so I will have to give it on his behalf. The Victoria Police Department statement says, “Bill C-75, which came into effect nationally in 2019, legislated a 'principle of restraint' that requires police to release an accused person at the earliest possible opportunity”.

The police laid the blame for this individual being released three times in a row to revictimize Canadians squarely at the feet of the minister. A woman was injured in the process of one of the thefts.

On the issue of the Liberals' draconian Bill C-63, which Margaret Atwood has described as “Orwellian”, has he completed a charter statement for this bill that clearly threatens the rights of Canadians?

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to wrap up the debate on the SISE act at second reading.

I have appreciated listening to the members give their speeches. At the outset, I want to briefly urge members to use the term “child sexual abuse material”, or CSAM, rather than “child pornography”. As we heard from the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, the latter term is being replaced with CSAM because pornography allows for the idea that this could be consensual. That is why the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo has put forward a bill that would change this in the Criminal Code as well.

During the first hour of debate, we heard from the member for Laurentides—Labelle, who gave a passionate speech outlining the many serious issues of the impact of the pornography industry on women and youth. I simply do not have the time to include all of that in my speech, but we both sat on the ethics committee during the Pornhub study and heard directly from the survivors who testified.

It was the speech, however, from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons that left me scratching my head. I do not think he actually read Bill C-270 or even the Liberals' own bill, Bill C-63. The parliamentary secretary fixated on the 24-hour takedown requirement in Bill C-63 as the solution to this issue. However, I do not think anyone is opposed to a 24-hour takedown for this exploitative intimate content sharing without consent or the child sexual abuse material. In fact, a bill that was solely focused on the 24-hour takedown would pass very quickly through this House with the support of everyone, but that does not take into account what Bill C-270 is trying to do. It is completely missing the point.

The 24-hour takedown has effect only after harmful content has been put up, such as CSAM, deepfakes and intimate images that have been shared. Bill C-270 is a preventative upstream approach. While the takedown mechanism should be available to victims, the goal of Bill C-270 is to go upstream and stop this abusive content from ever ending up on the Internet in the first place.

As I shared at the beginning of the debate, many survivors do not know that their images are online for years. They do not know that this exploitative content has been uploaded. What good would a 24-hour takedown be if they do not even know the content is there? I will repeat the words of one survivor that I shared during the first hour of debate: “I was 17 when videos of me on Pornhub came to my knowledge, and I was only 15 in the videos they've been profiting from.” She did not know for two years that exploitative content of her was being circulated online and sold. That is why Bill C-270 requires age verification and consent of individuals in pornographic material before it is posted.

I would also point out that the primary focus of the government's bill is not to reduce harm to victims. The government's bill requires services “to mitigate the risk that users of the regulated service will be exposed to harmful content”. It talks about users of the platform, not the folks depicted in it. The focus of Bill C-270 is the other side of the screen. Bill C-270 seeks to protect survivors and vulnerable populations from being the harmful content. The two goals could not be more different, and I hope the government is supportive of preventing victims of exploitation from further exploitation online.

My colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke also noted that the narrow focus of the SISE act is targeted at people and companies that profit from sexual exploitative content. This is, indeed, one of the primary aims of this bill. I hope, as with many things, that the spread of this exploitative content online will be diminished, as it is driven by profit. The Privacy Commissioner's investigation into Canada's MindGeek found that “MindGeek surely benefits commercially from these non-compliant privacy practices, which result in a larger content volume/stream and library of intimate content on its websites.”

For years, pornography companies have been just turning a blind eye, and it is time to end that. Bill C-270 is a fulfillment of a key recommendation made by the ethics committee three years ago and supported by all parties, including the government. I hope to have the support from all of my colleagues in this place for Bill C-270, and I hope to see it at committee, where we can hear from survivors and experts.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words in support of Bill C-270, which is an excellent bill from my colleague from Peace River—Westlock, who has been working so hard over his nine years in Parliament to defend the interests of his constituents on important issues like firearms, forestry and fracking, but also to stand up for justice and the recognition of the universal human dignity of all people, including and especially the most vulnerable.

Bill C-270 seeks to create mechanisms for the effective enforcement of substantively already existing legal provisions that prohibit non-consensual distribution of intimate images and child pornography. Right now, as the law stands, it is a criminal offence to produce this type of horrific material, but there are not the appropriate legal mechanisms to prevent the distribution of this material by, for instance, large pornography websites.

It has come to light that Pornhub, which is headquartered in Canada, has completely failed to prevent the presence on its platform of non-consensual and child-depicting pornographic images. This has been a matter that has been studied in great detail at parliamentary committees. My colleague for Peace River—Westlock has played a central role, but other members from other parties have as well, in identifying the fact that Pornhub and other websites have not only failed but have shown no interest in meaningfully protecting potential victims of non-consensual and child pornographic images.

It is already illegal to produce these images. Why, therefore, should it not also be clearly illegal to distribute those images without having the necessary proof of consent? This bill would require that there be verification of age and consent associated with images that are distributed. It is a common-sense legal change that would require and affect greater compliance with existing criminal prohibitions on the creation of these images. It is based on the evidence heard at committee and based on the reality that major pornography websites, many of which are headquartered in Canada, are continuing to allow this material to exist. To clarify, the fact that those images are on those websites means that we desperately need stronger legal tools to protect children and stronger legal tools to protect people who are victims of the non-consensual sharing of their images.

Further, in response to the recognition of the potential harms on children associated with exposure to pornography or associated with having images taken of them and published online, there has been discussion in Parliament and a number of different bills put forward designed to protect children in vulnerable situations. These bills are, most notably, Bill C-270 and Bill S-210.

Bill S-210 would protect children by requiring meaningful age verification for those who are viewing pornography. It is recognized that exposing children to sexual images is a form of child abuse. If an adult were to show videos or pictures to a child of a sexual nature, that would be considered child abuse. However, when websites fail to have meaningful age verification and, therefore, very young children are accessing pornography, there are not currently the legal tools to hold them accountable for that. We need to recognize that exposing young children to sexual images is a form of child abuse, and therefore it is an urgent matter that we pass legislation requiring meaningful age verification. That is Bill S-210.

Then we have Bill C-270, which would protect children in a different context. It would protect children from having their images depicted as part of child pornography. Bill C-270 takes those existing prohibitions further by requiring that those distributing images also have proof of age and consent.

This is common sense; the use of criminal law is appropriate here because we are talking about instances of child sexual abuse. Both Bill S-210 and Bill C-270 deal with child sexual abuse. It should be clear that the criminal law, not some complicated nebulous regulatory regime, is the appropriate mechanism for dealing with child abuse.

In that context, we also have a government bill that has been put forward, Bill C-63, which it calls the online harms act. The proposed bill is kind of a bizarre combination of talking about issues of radically different natures; there are some issues around speech, changes to human rights law and, potentially, attempts to protect children, as we have talked about.

The freedom of speech issues raised by the bill have been well discussed. The government has been denounced from a broad range of quarters, including some of their traditional supporters, for the failures of Bill C-63 on speech.

However, Bill C-63 also profoundly fails to be effective when it comes to child protection and the removal of non-consensual images. It would create a new bureaucratic structure, and it is based on a 24-hour takedown model; it says that if something is identified, it should be taken down within 24 hours. Anybody involved in this area will tell us that 24-hour takedown is totally ineffective, because once something is on the Internet, it is likely to be downloaded and reshared over and over again. The traumatization, the revictimization that happens, continues to happen in the face of a 24-hour takedown model.

This is why we need strong Criminal Code measures to protect children. The Conservative bills, Bill S-210 and Bill C-270, would provide the strong criminal tools to protect children without all the additional problems associated with Bill C-63. I encourage the House to pass these proposed strong child protection Criminal Code-amending bills, Bill S-210 and Bill C-270. They would protect children from child abuse, and given the legal vacuums that exist in this area, there can be no greater, more important objective than protecting children from the kind of violence and sexualization they are currently exposed to.

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

Mr. Speaker, the subject that we are dealing with this evening is a sensitive one. My colleagues have clearly demonstrated that in the last couple of minutes.

We all have access to the Internet and we basically use it for three reasons: for personal reasons, for professional reasons and for leisure, which can sometimes overlap with personal reasons. Pornography is one of those uses that is both for leisure and for personal reasons. To each their own.

The use of pornography is a personal choice that is not illegal. Some people might question that. We might agree or disagree, but it is a personal decision. However, the choice that one person makes for their own pleasure may be the cause of another person's or many other people's nightmare. Basically, that is what Bill C-270 seeks to prevent, what it seeks to sanction. The purpose of the bill is to ensure that people do not have to go through hell because of pornography. This bill seeks to criminalize the fact that, under the guise of legality, some of the images that are being viewed were taken or are being used illegally.

I want to talk briefly about the problem this bill addresses and the solutions that it proposes. Then, to wrap up, I will share some of my own thoughts about it.

For context for this bill and two others that are being studied, Bill S‑210 and C‑63, it was a newspaper article that sounded the alarm. After the article came out, a House of Commons committee that my esteemed colleague from Laurentides—Labelle sits on looked at the issue. At that time, the media informed the public that videos of women and children were available on websites even though these women and, naturally, these children never gave their consent to be filmed or for their video to be shared. We also learned that this included youths under 18. As I said, a committee looked at the issue. The images and testimonies received by the committee members were so shocking that several bills that I mentioned earlier were introduced to try to tackle the issue in whole or in part.

I want to be clear: watching pornography is not the problem—to each their own. If someone likes watching others have sex, that is none of my concern or anyone else's. However, the problem is the lack of consent of the people involved in the video and the use of children, as I have already said.

I am sure that the vast majority of consumers of pornography were horrified to find out that some of the videos they watched may have involved young people under the age of 18. These children sometimes wear makeup to look older. Women could be filmed without their knowledge by a partner or former partner, who then released the video. These are intimate interactions. People have forgotten what intimacy means. If a person agrees to be filmed in an intimate situation because it is kind of exciting or whatever, that is fine, but intimacy, as the word itself implies, does not mean public.

When a young person or an adult decides to show the video to friends to prove how cool it is that they got someone else to do something, that is degrading. It is beyond the pale. It gets to me because I saw that kind of thing in schools. Kids were so pleased with themselves. I am sorry, but it is rarely the girls who are so pleased with themselves. They are the ones who suffer the negative consequences. At the end of the day, they are the ones who get dragged through the mud. Porn sites were no better. They tried to absolve themselves by saying that they just broadcast the stuff and it is not up to them to find out if the person consented or was at least 18. Broadcasting is just as bad as producing without consent. It encourages these illegal, degrading, utterly dehumanizing acts.

I am going back to my notes now. The problem is that everyone is blaming everyone else. The producer says it is fine. The platform says it is fine. Ultimately, governments say the same thing. This is 2024. The Internet is not new. Man being man—and I am talking about humankind, humans in general—we were bound to find ourselves in degrading situations. The government waited far too long to legislate on this issue.

In fact, the committee that looked into the matter could only observe the failure of content moderation practices, as well as the failure to protect people's privacy. Even if the video was taken down, it would resurface because a consumer had downloaded it and thought it was a good idea to upload it again and watch it again. This is unspeakable. It seems to me that people need to use some brain cells. If a video can no longer be found, perhaps there is a reason for that, and the video should not be uploaded again. Thinking and using one's head is not something governments can control, but we have to do everything we can.

What is the purpose of this bill and the other two bills? We want to fight against all forms of sexual exploitation and violence online, end the streaming and marketing of all pornographic material involving minors, prevent and prohibit the streaming of non-consensual explicit content, force adult content companies and streaming services to control the streaming of this content and make them accountable and criminally responsible for the presence of this content on their online sites. Enough with shirking responsibility. Enough with saying: it is not my fault if she feels degraded, if her reputation is ruined and if, at the end of the day, she feels like throwing herself off a bridge. Yes, the person who distributes pornographic material and the person who makes it are equally responsible.

Bill C‑270 defines the word “consent” and the expression “pornographic material”, which is good. It adds two new penalties. Essentially, a person who makes or distributes the material must ensure that the person involved in the video is 18 and has given their express consent. If the distributor does not ask for it and does not require it, they are at fault.

We must also think about some of the terms, such as “privacy”, “education”, but also the definition of “distributor” because Bill C-270 focuses primarily on distributors for commercial purposes. However, there are other distributors who are not in this for commercial purposes. That is not nearly as pretty. I believe we need to think about that aspect. Perhaps legal consumers of pornography would like to see their rights protected.

I will end with just one sentence: A real statesperson protects the dignity of the weak. That is our role.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-270, an act to amend the Criminal Code (pornographic material), at second reading.

I would like to begin my remarks by stressing the bill's important objective. It is to ensure that those who make, distribute or advertise pornographic material verify that those depicted in that material are at least 18 years of age and have consented to its production and distribution.

As the sponsor has explained, the bill's objective is to implement recommendation number two of the 2021 report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Specifically, that report recommends that the government “mandate that content-hosting platforms operating in Canada require affirmation from all persons depicted in pornographic content, before it can be uploaded, that they are 18 years old or older and that they consent to its distribution”.

This recommendation responds to ongoing concerns that corporations like Pornhub have made available pornographic images of persons who did not consent or were underage. I want to recognize and acknowledge that this conduct has caused those depicted in that material extreme suffering. I agree that we must do everything we can to protect those who have been subjected to this trauma and to prevent it from occurring in the first place. I fully support the objective of the committee's recommendation.

I want to say at the outset that the government will be supporting this bill, Bill C-270, at second reading, but with some serious reservations. I have some concerns about the bill's ability to achieve the objective of the committee's recommendation. I look forward, at committee, to where we can hear from experts on whether this bill would be useful in combatting child pornography.

The bill proposes Criminal Code offences that would prohibit making, distributing or advertising pornographic material, without first verifying the age and consent of those depicted by examining legal documentation and securing formal written consent. These offences would not just apply to corporations. They would also apply to individuals who make or distribute pornographic material of themselves and others to generate income, a practice that is legal and that we know has increased in recent years due to financial hardship, including that caused by the pandemic.

Individuals who informally make or distribute pornographic material of themselves and of people they know are unlikely to verify age by examining legal documentation, especially if they already know the age of those participating in the creation of the material. They are also unlikely to secure formal written consent. It concerns me that such people would be criminalized by the bill's proposed offences, where they knew that everyone implicated was consenting and of age, merely because they did not comply with the bill's proposed regulatory regime governing how age and consent must be verified.

Who is most likely to engage in this conduct? The marginalized people who have been most impacted by the pandemic, in particular sex workers, who are disproportionately women and members of the 2SLGBTQI+ communities. Notably, the privacy and ethics committee clearly stated that its goal was “in no way to challenge the legality of pornography involving consenting adults or to negatively impact sex workers.” However, I fear that the bill's proposed reforms could very well have this effect.

I am also concerned that this approach is not consistent with the basic principles of criminal law. Such principles require criminal offences to have a fault or a mental element, for example, that the accused knew or was reckless as to whether those depicted in the pornographic material did not consent or were not of age. This concern is exacerbated by the fact that the bill would place the burden on the accused to establish that they took the necessary steps to verify age and consent to avoid criminal liability. However, basic principles of criminal law specify that persons accused of criminal offences need only raise a reasonable doubt as to whether they committed the offence to avoid criminal liability.

I would also note that the committee did not specifically contemplate a criminal law response to its concerns. In fact, a regulatory response that applies to corporations that make, distribute or advertise pornographic material may be better positioned to achieve the objectives of the bill. For example, our government's bill, Bill C-63, which would enact the online harms act, would achieve many of Bill C-270's objectives. In particular, the online harms act would target seven types of harmful content, including content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, and intimate content communicated without consent.

Social media services would be subjected to three duties: to act responsibly, to protect children and to make content inaccessible that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, as well as intimate images posted without consent.

These duties would apply to social media services, including livestreaming and user-uploaded adult content services. They would require social media services to actively reduce the risk of exposure to harmful content on their services; provide clear and accessible ways to flag harmful content and block users; put in place special protections for children; take action to address child sexual exploitation and the non-consensual posting of intimate content, including deepfake sexual images; and publish transparency reports.

Bill C-63 would also create a new digital safety commission to administer this regulatory framework and to improve the investigation of child pornography cases through amendments to the Mandatory Reporting Act. That act requires Internet service providers to report to police when they have reasonable grounds to believe their service is being used to commit a child pornography offence. Failure to comply with this obligation can result in severe penalties.

As I know we are all aware, the Criminal Code also covers a range of offences that address aspects of the concerns animating the proposed bill. Of course, making and distributing child pornography are both already offences under the Criminal Code. As well, making pornography without the depicted person's knowledge can constitute voyeurism, and filming or distributing a recording of a sexual assault constitutes obscenity. Also, distributing intimate images without the consent of the person depicted in those images constitutes non-consensual distribution of intimate images, and the Criminal Code authorizes courts to order the takedown or removal of non-consensual intimate images and child pornography.

All these offences apply to both individuals and organizations, including corporations, as set out in section 2 of the Criminal Code. Should parliamentarians choose to pursue a criminal response to the concerns the proposed bill seeks to address, we may want to reflect upon whether the bill's objectives should be construed differently and its provisions amended accordingly.

I look forward to further studying such an important bill at committee.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as the member for Shefford and the Bloc Québécois critic for the status of women, I want to say that we support Bill C-270 in principle. We would like to examine this bill in committee. The Bloc Québécois fully supports the bill's stated objective, which is to combat child pornography and the distribution and commercialization of non-consensual pornography.

Since the first warning about the tragedy of women and girls whose sexual exploitation is the source of profits for major online porn companies, the Bloc Québécois has been involved at every stage and at all times in the public process to expose the extent of this public problem, which goes to our core values, including the right to dignity, safety and equality.

On this subject of online sexual exploitation, as on all facets and forms of the sexual exploitation of women, we want to stand as allies not only of the victims, but also of all the women who are taking action to combat violence and exploitation. I will begin by giving a little background on the topic, then I will explain the bill and, in closing, I will expand on some of the other problems that exist in Canada.

First, let us not forget that the public was alerted to the presence of non-consensual child pornography by an article that was published in the New York Times on December 4, 2020. The article reported the poignant story of 14-year old Serena K. Fleites. Explicit videos of her were posted on the website Pornhub without her consent.

This Parliament has already heard the devastating, distressing and appalling testimony of young Serena, which helped us understand the sensitive nature and gravity of the issue, but also the perverse mechanisms that porn streaming platforms use to get rich by exploiting the flaws of a technological system that, far from successfully controlling the content that is broadcast, is built and designed to promote and yet conceal the criminal practices of sexual exploitation.

Reports regarding the presence of child sexual abuse material and other non-consensual content on the adult platform Pornhub led the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to undertake a study on the protection of privacy and reputation on online platforms such as Pornhub. My colleague from Laurentides—Labelle has followed this issue closely.

The committee noted that these platforms' content moderation practices had failed to protect privacy and reputation and had failed to prevent child sexual abuse material from being uploaded, despite statements by representatives of MindGeek and Pornhub who testified before the committee.

That same committee looked at regulating adult sites and online pornography, without challenging the legality. The committee heard testimony from survivors, critics of MindGeek's practices, child protection organizations, members of law enforcement, the federal government, academics, experts and support organizations, and it received many briefs.

The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics made 14 recommendations regarding the problems it had studied. The committee's 2021 report was clear and it recommended that the government introduce a bill to create a new regulator to ensure that online platforms remove harmful content, including depictions of child sexual exploitation and non-consensual images.

We know that sexually explicit content is being uploaded to Pornhub without the consent of the individuals involved, including minors, and that these individuals have tried and failed to get Pornhub to remove that content. We know that these survivors have been traumatized and harassed and that most of them have thought about suicide. That is the type of testimony that we heard at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women with regard to cases of sexual exploitation.

We know that even if content is finally removed, users just re-upload it shortly afterward. We know that the corporate structure of MindGeek, which was renamed Aylo last August, is the quintessential model for avoiding accountability, transparency and liability. We know that investigations are under way and that there has been a surge in online child sexual exploitation reports.

We must now legislate to respond to these crimes and deal with these problems. We also need to keep in mind the magnitude of the criminal allegations and the misconduct of which these companies are accused. Just recently, a new class action lawsuit was filed in the United States against MindGeek and many of the sites it owns, including Pornhub, over allegations of sex trafficking involving tens of thousands of children.

Let us not forget that these companies are headquartered right in Montreal. The fact that our country is home to mafia-style companies that profit from sexual exploitation is nothing to be proud of. The international community is well aware of this, and it reflects poorly on us. For these reasons, we have an additional obligation to take action, to find solutions that will put an end to sexual exploitation, and to implement those solutions through legislation.

With that in mind, we must use the following questions to guide our thinking. Are legislative proposals on this subject putting forward the right solutions? Will they be effective at controlling online sexual exploitation and, specifically, preventing the distribution of non-consensual content and pornographic content involving minors?

Second, let us talk a little more about Bill C‑270. This bill forces producers of pornographic material to obtain the consent of individuals and to ensure that they are of age. In addition, distributors will have to obtain written confirmation from producers that the individuals' consent has been obtained and that they are of age before the material is distributed. These new Criminal Code provisions will require large platforms and producers to have a process for verifying individuals' age and consent, without which they will be subject to fines or imprisonment.

The House will be considering two bills simultaneously. The first is Bill C-270, from the member for Peace River—Westlock, with whom I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. The second is Bill C-63, introduced by the Minister of Justice, which also enacts new online harms legislation and aims to combat the sexual victimization of children and to make intimate content communicated without consent inaccessible.

We will need to achieve our goals, which are to combat all forms of online sexual exploitation and violence, stop the distribution and marketing of all pornographic material involving minors, prevent and prohibit the distribution of explicit non-consensual content, force adult content companies and platforms to control the distribution of such content, and make them accountable and criminally responsible for the presence of such content on their online platforms.

There is a debate about the law's ability to make platforms accountable for hosted content. It also raises questions about the relevance of self-regulation in the pornography industry.

Third, let us talk about what we can do here. Due to the high volume of complaints it receives, the RCMP often reacts to matters relating to child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, rather than acting proactively to prevent them. Canada's criminal legislation prohibits child pornography, but also other behaviours aimed at facilitating the commission of a sexual offence against a minor. It prohibits voyeurism and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Other offences of general application such as criminal harassment and human trafficking may also apply depending on the circumstances.

In closing, I will provide a few figures to illustrate the scope of this problem. Between 2014 and 2022, there were 15,630 incidents of police-reported online sexual offences against children and 45,816 incidents of online child pornography. The overall rate of police-reported online child sexual exploitation incidents has also risen since 2014. The rate of online child pornography increased 290% between 2014 and 2022. Girls were overrepresented as victims for all offence types over that nine-year period. The majority of victims of police-reported online sexual offences against children were girls, particularly girls between the ages of 12 and 17, who accounted for 71% of victims.

Incidents of non-consensual distribution of intimate images most often involved a youth victim and a youth accused. Nearly all child and youth victims, 97% to be exact, between 2015 to 2022 were aged 12 to 17 years, with a median age of 15 years for girls and 14 years for boys. Overall, nine in 10 accused persons, or 90%, were youth aged 12 to 17. For one-third of youth victims, or 33%, a casual acquaintance had shared the victim's intimate images with others.

Here is a quote from the Montreal Council of Women: “On behalf of the members of the Montreal Council of Women, I wish to confirm our profound concern for those whose lives have been turned upside down by the involuntary and/or non-consensual sharing of their images on websites and other platforms such as the Montreal-based Pornhub. The ‘stopping Internet sexual exploitation act’ will make much-needed amendments to the Criminal Code to protect children and those who have not given consent for their images and other content to be shared and commercialized.”

We must act. It is a question of safety for our women and girls. Young women and girls are depending on it.

Public Safety

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation]

Madam Speaker, the member certainly could consider supporting the government's online harms bill, which I think is a major piece of legislation that certainly will help to protect minors and children when they are interacting online.

I appreciate this opportunity to speak about the ongoing threat of extortion in Canada. The Government of Canada is deeply concerned about Canadians who are victimized by acts of extortion and related violence. The Government of Canada is aware of growing concerns related to extortion across the country and, indeed, the government has heard directly from the mayors of Surrey, British Columbia; Edmonton, Alberta; and Brampton, Ontario, about how this is impacting their communities.

The recent increase in the number and severity of extortion attempts, particularly targeting members of Canada's South Asian community are alarming. The Government of Canada and the RCMP encourage anyone experiencing or witnessing extortion to report it to their local police of jurisdiction and discourage anyone from complying with demands for money.

Rest assured, the Government of Canada is committed to protecting the safety of Canadians and Canadian interests against these threats. We are taking concrete action to protect all affected communities across Canada.

As Canada's national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is mandated to prevent, detect and investigate serious organized crime, in order to protect Canadians and Canadian interests. In doing so, the RCMP works closely with domestic and international law enforcement partners to share information and target shared threats. The RCMP and its law enforcement partners across the country have observed an increase in the number of extortion crimes taking place and are working collaboratively to investigate these incidents.

While the RCMP cannot comment on specific investigations, I can confirm that significant coordination is under way across the country to address similar types of extortion attempts directed at the South Asian communities in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. While many investigations remain ongoing, a number of arrests have been made, and information sharing across agencies, I would say, is imperative, as coordinated efforts are under way to identify cases that may be related to one another.

To this end, the RCMP is actively sharing information with local law enforcement to support their ongoing efforts.

Rest assured, law enforcement agencies across the country are utilizing the required tools and resources to combat these serious incidents in order to keep Canadians safe.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address budget 2024. I propose to deliver my remarks in two contexts: first, to address how this budget resonates with the residents whom I am privileged to represent in Parkdale—High Park in Toronto; second, to look more largely at some of the very important components that relate to the administration of justice in this country and are touched on in this budget document.

I am proud to have represented, for almost nine years now, the constituents in Parkdale—High Park. What those constituents have talked to me repeatedly about is the need to address housing. In budget 2024, we find some very key provisions that relate to housing. I cannot list them all, but some deal with the pressing issue of building more housing, increasing housing supply. That is fundamental in terms of what we are trying to do as a government, and it is empowered and advanced by this important budget document. What I am speaking of here is, for example, $15 billion in additional contributions to Canada's apartment construction loan program, which will help to build more than 30,000 additional new homes.

What I also take a lot of pride in is the fact that we are addressing the acute needs of renters. I say that in two respects. This budget document outlines, for example, how renters can be empowered to get to the point of home ownership by virtue of having a proper rental payment history. This can contribute to building up one's credit worthiness with credit ratings agencies; when the time comes to actually apply for a mortgage, one will have built up that credit worthiness by demonstrating that one has made regular rent payments over a period of years. This is truly empowering for the renters in my community and communities right around the country. I have already heard that feedback from the renters whom I represent.

Lastly, I would simply point out what we are doing with respect to the tenants' bill of rights. This is a really important document that talks about ensuring that tenants have rights they can vindicate, including in front of tribunals and, potentially, courts of law. We are coupling that with a $15-million investment that would empower and unlock advocates who assist those renters. That is fundamental. In that respect, it actually relates to the two hats that I wear in this chamber, in both my roles as a representative of individual renters and as Minister of Justice.

Another component that my constituents have been speaking to me about regularly since 2015 is our commitment to advancing meaningful reconciliation with indigenous peoples. Again, this document has a number of components that relate to indigenous peoples in budget 2024. There are two that I would highlight for the purpose of these remarks. First, there is the idea about what we are doing to settle litigation against indigenous peoples and ensure that we are proceeding on a better and more conciliatory path forward. We talk about a $23-billion settlement with respect to indigenous groups who are litigating discriminatory underfunding of children and child family services and the fact that this historic settlement was ratified by the federal court. That is critical.

Second, in this document we also talk about funding a project that is near and dear to my heart. Why do I say that? It is because, in 2017, I had the privilege of serving as the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Heritage. At that time, I helped to co-develop, along with Métis, first nations and Inuit leaders, the legislation that has now become the Indigenous Languages Act. That is coupled with an indigenous languages commission. In this very budget document, we talk about $225 million to ensure the continued success of that commission and the important work it is doing to promote, enhance and revitalize indigenous languages in this country.

Those are fundamental investments. I think it is really important to highlight them in the context of this discussion.

I would also highlight that my riding, I am proud to say, is full of a lot of people who care about women. They care about feminism; they care about social and economic policies that empower women. I would highlight just two. First of all, we talk about pharmacare in this budget. The first volley of pharmaceutical products that will be covered includes contraceptive devices that would assist, as I understand it, as many as nine million Canadians through access to contraception. This would allow women, particularly young women and older women, to ensure that they have control over their reproductive function. That is fundamental to me as a representative, and it is fundamental to our government and what our government prioritizes in this country. I would also say that, with $10-a-day child care, there are affordable and robust means of ensuring that people's children are looked after in this country; that empowers women to do such things as participate in the workforce.

What I am speaking about here is that we are hitting levels of women's participation in the workforce that have never been seen before, with women's labour force participation of 85.4%. That is an incredible social policy that is translating into a terrific economic policy.

We can also talk about the $6.1-billion Canada disability benefit. I am proud to say that the constituents of Parkdale—High Park care meaningfully about inclusive policies, policies that alleviate poverty and are addressed to those who are vulnerable and those who are in need. People have been asking me about the disability benefit, including when we will see it and when it will come to the fore. We are seeing it right now with this document. The very document that we will be voting on in this chamber includes a $6.1-billion funding model to empower Canadians who are disabled and to ensure that we are addressing their needs.

This budget also represents a bit of a catch-up, meaning that we are catching up to the rest of the G7. Until this budget was delivered, we remained the only G7 country in the world not to have a national school food program. It goes without saying that not a single one of the 338 members privileged to serve in this House would think it is good for a child to arrive at school hungry, in any of their communities or in this country as a whole. I do not think this is a partisan statement whatsoever. We would acutely address child hunger. Through a national school food program, we would ensure that children do not arrive at school hungry, which would impede their productivity and certainly limit their education. Through a $1-billion investment, we would cure school poverty and school hunger.

We are also introducing legislation to reduce cellphone and banking fees, which is fundamental.

With respect to the hat I wear as Minister of Justice, which I have done for about eight months, I firmly believe that one of my pivotal roles is ensuring access to justice. I would say that this document really rings true to the commitment that I have personally and that our government and the Prime Minister have to this. Here, I am speaking about the notion of our commitment to legal aid. Legal aid has multiple components, but it is fundamental to ensuring that people can have their rights vindicated with the assistance of counsel. This helps address things such as court backlogs and court delays; it is also fundamental for the individual litigants before the courts. There is a criminal legal aid package in this budget that includes $440 million over five years.

There is also immigration and refugee legal aid. Unfortunately, since the provinces have wholesale resiled from their involvement in this portfolio, since 2019, we have been stepping in with annual funding. We are making that funding no longer simply annual; we are projecting it over a five-year term, which gives certainty and predictability to the people who rely on immigration and refugee legal aid, to the tune of $273 million. That is fundamental.

Members heard in question period about efforts we are making to address workplace sexual harassment. I will pivot again here to the fact that this dovetails with both my ministerial role and my role of devoted constituency representative as the MP for Parkdale—High Park. I hear a great deal from my constituents about speaking to women's needs in terms of addressing harassment and sexual harassment. With this budget, we would provide $30 million over three years to address workplace sexual harassment. That is also fundamental.

Likewise, what we are doing on hatred is fundamental. Three full pages of the budget document are dedicated to addressing hatred. Some points dovetail with legislation that I have tabled in this House, including Bill C-63, regarding what we would do to curb online hatred and its propensity to spread. However, there are also concrete investments here that talk about Canada's action plan on combatting hate and empowering such bodies as the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, with the important work it is doing in terms of promoting better understanding and the knowledge base of hate crimes units. Also, fundamentally, there is money dedicated in this very budget to ensuring that both law enforcement agencies and Crown prosecutors are better trained and provided better information about how to identify hate and potentially prosecute it. With where we are as a country right now, this is a pressing need; I am very proud to see budget 2024 addressing it directly.

For the reasons I outlined earlier, in terms of how this addresses the particular needs of my constituents and for the very replete justice investments that are made to ensuring access to justice and tackling pernicious issues, such as sexual harassment and hatred, I believe this is a budget that all 338 of us should get behind and support.

Alleged Premature Disclosure of Bill C-63—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

I am now ready to rule on the question of privilege raised on February 26, 2024, by the House leader of the official opposition, concerning the alleged premature disclosure of Bill C-63, an act to enact the online harms act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

The opposition House leader claimed that the bill's contents had been leaked to the media, as evidenced in two separate reports from CBC and CTV News. Pointing to the anonymous quotes in the news reports, he concluded his remarks by positing that the information was leaked intentionally, knowing that it was wrong. In doing so, it breached the rights of members of Parliament and the House.

For his part, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader countered that the envisioned legislation's objectives were widely known and already in the public domain long before the bill was placed on notice and introduced, given the government's prior commitments and extensive public consultations. Furthermore, the parliamentary secretary emphatically rejected the allegations that the government had shared the bill before it was introduced.

The House leader of the official opposition is correct in asserting that there are abundant precedents that once a bill is placed on notice, its contents are not to be disclosed prior to introduction, thus ensuring that members have the first opportunity to take note of the bill. The premature disclosure of bills has usually been seen as a contempt of the House.

I will invite MPs to please take their conversations outside of the House, including the member for Scarborough—Guildwood.

In a ruling on October 4, 2010, which can be found at page 4711 of the Debates, Speaker Milliken stated, and I quote:

It is indisputable that it is a well-established practice and accepted convention that this House has the right of first access to the text of bills it will consider.

On the substantive matter raised in this question of privilege, as members know, the policy direction leading to a government bill is not typically developed in the strict isolation of a government department. Prior to the putting on notice and introduction of most modern legislation, extensive consultations and public debate frequently occur for months or even years. Past precedents from the Chair address this reality, and Bill C-63 seems to be another example of that pattern.

On June 8, 2017, Speaker Regan emphasized the need for balance between members' right to have the first opportunity to see the bill and the need for prior public consultation. He said, at page 12320 of the Debates:

The right of the House to first access to legislation is one of our oldest conventions. It does and must, however, coexist with the need of governments to consult widely, with the public and stakeholders alike, on issues and policies in the preparation of legislation.

In the same ruling, Speaker Regan indicated that the denial of a premature disclosure of the bill by the government, and the absence of evidence that members were impeded in the performance of their parliamentary duties, had led him to find that the matter was not a prima facie case of privilege.

Having reviewed the contents of the bill against what was reported in the media, and considering the assurance given by the parliamentary secretary that the government did not share the text of the bill between its placement on notice and its introduction, it cannot be determined that the information that appeared in the news media necessarily came from a premature disclosure of the bill by so-called senior government sources.

The title of the bill, combined with the various sources of information mentioned above, such as background information provided during the consultation process, could have easily informed as to the specific objectives of the bill. There is a plausible argument to be made that the scope, objectives and targets of the bill were known prior to its being placed on notice and introduced.

Not being able to say with certainty that the information in the media reports came from the bill itself, I cannot determine that any member was impeded in the carrying out of their parliamentary duties, or that the dignity of the House was transgressed. As such, the Chair cannot find that there is a prima facie question of privilege.

That being said, the Chair shares the members' concerns when detailed information on proposed legislation, whether accurate or not, appears in media stories prior to their introduction.

It casts doubt on the role and predominance of Parliament in the legislative process and may lead to—

Order. I am going to remind all members that one of the fundamental rules of being a member and being a Speaker in this House is that members are not to question or to insult the Speaker, unless they are doing it through a motion which would call into question the Speaker's role. I would like to remind all members about this fundamental rule. I know that I have had some conversations with members in the past about this.

I will continue.

It casts doubt on the role and predominance of Parliament in the legislative process and may lead to understandable frustration.

I thank all members for their attention.

National Defence

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member is so sensitive to us calling out what the Conservative Party is doing. I just finished saying that the most important reality of our Canadian Forces is the families, and he is standing up on a point of order. Does he not realize that the families of the Canadian Forces members are, in fact, what this report is all about?

As someone who was in the Canadian Forces and who was posted in Edmonton, I understand the issue of housing. I understand the pros and cons, the dips and so forth that take place, the waiting list for PMQs, for barracks and the whole process in which housing has evolved in the Canadian Forces, and I understand how important the issue is. I knew this not only today, and it did not necessarily take the report coming to the floor to be debated. This is not new. There has always been waiting lists to get into PMQs since the days when I was in the forces. I had to wait, and I actually lived in a PMQ. There have always been waiting lists.

Why did the Conservative Party wait until today to introduce this motion? If, in fact, Conservatives were genuine and really cared about the families and the Canadian Forces, they could have introduced some form of a motion on an opposition day. They should have done that if they genuinely cared about families and those in the forces representing our country and doing a phenomenal job, whether in Canada or abroad.

The Government of Canada has the backs of those members in the Canadian Forces and their families a lot more than Stephen Harper ever did. When I was first elected to the House of Commons in 2010, Stephen Harper literally closed down veterans offices, not two or three, but nine all over the country.

Members can imagine the veterans who already served in the forces in many different capacities and were going into private homes and facilities, some even in the non-profit area, when Stephen Harper shut down those access offices. In Manitoba, it was in Brandon. I was glad that when we took over the reins of power, we actually reopened those offices to continue to support our veterans.

There are two issues here that really need to be talked about. First and foremost is the motivating factor of the Conservative Party today and why the Conservatives are moving this motion. As the NDP House leader clearly attempted to get this motion passed, the Conservatives said no. It was not because of interest for members of the forces but rather to prevent legislation from being debated.

Just yesterday, I was in the House and had the opportunity to speak to a private member's bill, Bill C-270, which dealt with the issues of child porn and non-consensual porn. I stood in my place and provided commentary on how serious and important that issue is, not only to the government but also to every member inside this chamber. Throughout the debate, we found out that the Conservative Party was actually going to be voting against Bill C-63, which is the online harms act.

That was important to mention because the Conservatives were criticizing the government for not calling the legislation. They were heckling from their seats and were asking why we did not call the legislation if it was so important.

The Conservatives realize that when they bring in motions, as they have done today, they are preventing the government from bringing in legislation and from having debates on legislation. Then, they cry to anyone who will listen. They will tell lies and will do all sorts of things on social media. They spread misinformation to Canadians to try to give the impression that the House and Canada are broken.

There is no entity in the country that causes more dysfunction in the House of Commons, or even outside of the Ottawa bubble, than the Conservative Party of Canada under the leadership of the far right MAGA leader today. That is the core of the problem. They have a leader who genuinely believes and who wants to demonstrate that this chamber is dysfunctional. The only thing that is dysfunctional in this chamber is the Conservative Party. It does not understand what Canadians want to see.

If we look at some of the commitments we are making to the Canadian Armed Forces, we are talking about billions of dollars in the coming years. We have a target, and a lot depends on economic factors, but we are looking at 1.7% by 2030.

Let us contrast that to the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, who was the prime minister when the current Conservative leader was a parliamentary secretary and was a part of that government in a couple of roles. We saw a substantial decrease in funding. I made reference to the veterans and to shutting them down. What about the lack of general funding toward the Canadian Forces? We hit an all-time low under the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper. It was 1% of the GDP. That would be awfully embarrassing to go abroad and to start talking to people in the United States or to any of our ally countries in NATO. They were laughing at the Harper regime.

The Liberal government had to straighten out the problems of the Conservatives' inability to get a jet fighter. For years, they tried and failed. The Liberal government is now delivering on getting the jet fighters. The Liberal government continues to look at ways we can enhance our Canadian Forces, not only for today but also into the future. We will have new search and rescue aircraft that will be operating out of places like the city of Winnipeg.

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act

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

Madam Speaker, I have a lot to say about the bill. I will just start with a brief personal anecdote. I want to be very clear when I say this: I do not do this as victim porn or looking for sympathy. It is an example of how if somebody like myself, in a position of privilege, has a hard time accessing the justice system, what about others?

When I was a minister of the Crown, over 10 years ago, I received very explicit sexualized online threats, very graphic descriptions of how somebody was going to rape me, with what instruments, and how they were going to kill me. I was alone in a hotel room. My schedule had been published the day before, and I was terrified. The response at that time from law enforcement, and the process I had to go through as a minister of the Crown, to attempt to get justice in a situation that did not involve intimate images, sticks with me to this day. If I had to go through that at that time, what hope is there for somebody who does not have my position of privilege?

What the bill would do is recognize that the forms of discrimination and harassment that, as my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke says, disproportionately impact women, sexual minorities and other persons, have outpaced Parliament's ability to change the law. Here we are today.

Briefly, I want to respond to some of the points of debate. First of all, my colleague from the Liberals suggested that we expedite Bill C-63. That bill has been so widely panned by such a variety of disparate stakeholders that the government has not even scheduled it for debate in the House yet.

Second, and this is particularly for my colleagues who are looking to support this, to send the bill through to second reading, Bill C-63 would not provide criminal provisions either for any of the activities that are in the bill or for some of the other instances that have been brought up in the House for debate tonight, particularly the non-consensual distribution of deepnudes and deepfake pornography.

I raised the issue in the House over seven months ago. The intimate image distribution laws that are currently in the Criminal Code were only put in place in 2014, about a decade after social media came into play, and after Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd tragically died due to an absence in the law. Seven months have passed, and the government could have dealt with updating the Criminal Code with a very narrow provision that the Canadian Bar Association and multiple victims' rights groups have asked for, yet it has chosen not to.

There are so many articles that have been written about what is wrong with what is in Bill C-63 that we now need to start paying attention to what is wrong with it because of what is not in there. There is no update to Canada's Criminal Code provisions on the distribution of intimate images produced by artificial intelligence that are known as deepnudes.

I want to be very clear about this. There are websites right now where anyone in this place can download an app to their phone, upload any image of any person, including any person in here, and imagine what that looks like during an election campaign, erase people's clothes, and make it look like legitimate pornography. Imagine, then, that being distributed on social media without consent. Our Criminal Code, the Canadian Bar Association, as well as law professors, and I could read case after case, say that our laws do not update that.

At the beginning of February, there was a Canadian Press article that said that the government would update the law in Bill C-63, but it did not. Instead, what it chose to do was put in place a three-headed bureaucracy, an entirely extrajudicial process that amounts to a victim of these crimes being told to go to a bureaucratic complaints department instead of being able to get restitution under the law. Do we know what that says to a perpetrator? It says, “Go ahead; do it. There is no justice for you.” It boggles my mind that the government has spent all of this time while countless women and vulnerable Canadians are being harassed right now.

I also want to highlight something my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke said, which is that there is a lack of resources for law enforcement across the country. While everybody had a nice couple of years talking about defunding the police, how many thousands of women across this country, tens of thousands or maybe even millions, experienced online harassment and were told, when they finally got the courage to go to the police, that it was in their head?

One of those women was killed in Calgary recently. Another of those women is Mercedes Stephenson, who talked about her story about trying to get justice for online harassment. If women like Mercedes Stephenson and I have a hard time getting justice, how is a teenager in Winnipeg in a high school supposed to get any sort of justice without clarity in the Criminal Code if there are deepnudes spread about her?

I will tell members how it goes, because it happened in a high school in Winnipeg after I raised this in the House of Commons. I said it was going to happen and it happened. Kids were posting artificial intelligence-generated deepnudes and deepfakes. They were harassing peers, harassing young women. Do members know what happened? No charges were laid. Why were no charges laid? According to the article, it was because of ambiguity in the Criminal Code around artificial intelligence-created deepnudes. Imagine that. Seven months have passed. It is not in Bill C-63.

At least the bill before us is looking at both sides of the coin on the Criminal Code provisions that we need to start looking at. I want to ensure that the government is immediately updating the Criminal Code to say that if it is illegal to distribute intimate images of a person that have been taken with a camera, it should be the exact same thing if it has been generated by a deepnude artificial intelligence. This should have been done a long time ago.

Before Bill C-63 came out, Peter Menzies, the former head of the CRTC, talked about the need to have non-partisan consensus and narrowly scoped bills so it could pass the House, but what the government has chosen to do with Bill C-63 is put in place a broad regulatory system with even more nebulousness on Criminal Code provisions. A lot of people have raised concerns about what the regulatory system would do and whether or not it would actually be able to address these things, and the government has not even allowed the House to debate that yet.

What we have in front of us, from my perspective, is a clear call to action to update the Criminal Code where we can, in narrow provisions, so law enforcement has the tools it needs to ensure that victims of these types of crimes can receive justice. What is happening is that technology is rapidly outpacing our ability to keep up with the law, and women are dying.

I am very pleased to hear the multipartisan nature of debate on these types of issues, and that there is at least a willingness to bring forward these types of initiatives to committee to have the discussions, but it does concern me that the government has eschewed any sort of update of the Criminal Code on a life-versus-life basis for regulators. Essentially what I am worried about is that it is telling victims to go to the complaints department, an extrajudicial process, as opposed to giving law enforcement the tools it needs.

I am sure there will be much more debate on this, but at the end of the day, seven months have passed since I asked the government to update the Criminal Code to ensure that deepnudes and deepfakes are in the Criminal Code under the non-consensual intimate image distribution laws. Certainly what we are talking about here is ensuring that law enforcement has every tool it needs to ensure that women and, as some of my colleagues have raised here, other sexual minorities are not victimized online through these types of technologies.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, New Democrats support, as all parties do, tackling the important issues that the bill before us seeks to tackle. We also know that there has been an explosion of sexual exploitation of individuals online without their consent and an explosion of child pornography. What we have to do is find those measures that would be effective in bringing an end to these heinous practices.

Like the member for Peace River—Westlock, I would like to support and salute the survivors who have told their tales, at much personal sacrifice and much personal anguish, publicly acknowledging what has happened to them and the impact it has had on their lives. We would not be making progress on these issues without that work by those survivors, so I think we all want to salute them for their bravery in taking up this problem.

However, the challenge with these issues is to find what will actually work to end sexual exploitation. We know that a lack of resources for enforcement is almost always at least equally important to any gaps in legislation. What we need to see is dedicated funding to specific and skilled police units to tackle these questions because it can become highly complex and highly convoluted in trying to bring these cases to prosecution, and we know that is one of the problems with the existing legislation. It is difficult to prosecute for these offences under the Criminal Code as it now stands.

We look forward, as New Democrats, to hearing from expert witnesses in committee on what measures will actually be the most effective in bringing an end to these practices, and whether and how the measures proposed in Bill C-270 would contribute to bringing an end to online sexual exploitation. The bill, in some senses, is very simple. It would require checking ID and keeping records of consent. Some would argue that the existing law already implicitly requires that, so is this a step that would make it easier to prosecute? I do not know the answer to that, but I am looking forward to hearing expert testimony on it.

While this legislation is not specific to women, it is important to acknowledge the disproportionate representation of women as victims of both child pornography and of sexual exploitation online without consent. However, I would also note that we have had a recent rash of cases of sexploitation or sextortion of young men who thought they had been speaking to other partners their own age online. They later find out that they were being threatened with the images they had shared being posted online and being asked for money or sexual favours to avoid that. Yes, it is primarily women, but we have seen this other phenomenon occurring where men pose as young women to get young boys to share those images.

Obviously, we need more education for young people on the dangers of sharing intimate images, although I am under no illusion that we can change the way young people relate to each other online and through their phones. Education would be important, but some measures to deal with these things when they happen are also important.

If we look at the Criminal Code, paragraph 162.1(1) already makes it illegal to distribute an intimate image without consent. Of course, child pornography, under a succeeding subsection, is also already illegal. This was first brought forward and added to the Criminal Code 11 years ago. I was a member of Parliament at that time, and the member for Peace River—Westlock joined us shortly after. It came in an omnibus bill brought forward by the Conservatives. In that bill, there were a number of things, to be honest, that New Democrats objected to, but when the bill, which was Bill C-13 at the time, was brought forward, our spokesperson Françoise Boivin offered to the government to split the bill, take out the section on online exploitation without consent and pass it through all stages in a single day. The Conservatives refused, at that point, to do that, and it took another year and a half to get that passed into law.

New Democrats have been supportive in taking these actions and have recognized its urgency for more than a decade. We are on board with getting the bill before us to committee and making sure that we find what is most effective in tackling these problems.

What are the problems? I see that there are principally two.

One, as I have mentioned before, is the difficulty of prosecution and the difficulty of making those who profit from this pay a price. All the prosecutors I have talked to have said that it is difficult to make these cases. It is difficult to investigate, and it is difficult to get convictions. Are there things we can do that would help make prosecution easier, and are the things suggested in the bill going to do that? I look forward to finding that out in committee.

The second problem is the problem of takedown, and we all know that once the images are uploaded, they are there forever. They are hard to get rid of. As members of the government's side have pointed out, there are measures in government Bill C-63 that would help with warrants of seizure, forfeiture, restitution and peace bonds in trying to get more effective action to take down the images once they have been posted. I am not an optimist about the ability to do that, but we seem to lack the tools we need now to make a stab at taking the images off-line. It is also important to remember that whatever we do here has to make our law more effective at getting those who are profiting from the images. That is really what the bill is aimed at, and I salute the member for Peace River—Westlock for that singular focus because I think that is really key.

We also have to be aware of unintended consequences. When subsection 162.1(1) became law, in court we ran into a problem fairly early on of minors who share private images between each other, because technically, under the law as it is written, that is illegal; it is child pornography, and it certainly was not the intention to capture 15-year-olds who share intimate images with each other.

Whenever we make these kinds of changes, we have to make sure they do not have unintended consequences. Whether we like the practices that young people engage in online or not is not the question. We just have to make sure we do not capture innocent people when we are trying to capture those who profit from exploitation. The second part, in terms of unintended consequences, is I think we have to keep in mind there are those who are engaged in lawful forms of sex work online, and we have to make sure they are not captured under the broad strokes of the bill.

Again, I am looking forward to hearing the testimony about what will work to tackle these problems. We know the images are already illegal, but we know we lack effective tools in the legal system both to prosecute and to get the images taken down. New Democrats are broadly supportive of the principles in the bill. We are looking forward to the expert testimony I am certain we will hear at committee about what will actually work in tackling the problem. I look forward to the early passage of the bill through to committee.

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

Madam Speaker, to be very clear, with regard to the issue of non-consensual pornography and child pornography, I like to believe that every member in the House would be deeply offended by any activity that would ultimately lead to, encourage or promote, in any fashion whatsoever, those two issues. It angers a great number of us, to the degree that it causes all forms of emotions. We all want to do what we can to play an important role in making our online world experience a safer place.

I must say that I was a little surprised when the member for Peace River—Westlock responded to the issue of Bill C-63. I did have some concerns.

When one thinks of non-consensual pornography and child pornography, they are already illegal today in Canada. We know that. I appreciate what is being suggested in the private member's legislation, but he was asked a question in regard to Bill C-63, the government legislation dealing with the online harms act. It is something that is very specific and will actually have a very tangible impact. I do not know 100%, because this is the first time that I heard that members of the Conservative Party might be voting against that legislation. That would go against everything, I would suggest, in principle, that the member opposite talked about in his speech.

The greatest threat today is once that information gets uploaded. How can we possibly contain it? That is, in part, what we should be attempting to deal with as quickly as possible. There was a great deal of consultation and work with stakeholders in all forms to try to deal with that. That is why we have the online harms act before us today.

I wanted to ask the member a question. The question I was going to ask the member is this: Given the very nature of his comments, would he not agree that the House should look at a way in which we could expedite the passage of Bill C-63?

By doing that, we are going to be directly helping some of the individuals the member addressed in his opening comments. The essence of what Bill C-63 does is that it provides an obligation, a legal obligation, for online platforms to take off of their platforms child pornography and non-consensual pornography. For example, the victims of these horrific actions can make contact and see justice because these platforms would have 24 hours to take it off. It brings some justice to the victims.

I do not understand, based on his sincerity and how genuine the member was when he made the presentation of his bill. I have a basic understanding of what the member is trying to accomplish in the legislation, and I think that there are some questions in regard to getting some clarification.

As I indicated, in terms of the idea of child pornography not being illegal, it is illegal today. We need to make that statement very clear. Non-consensual pornography is as well. Both are illegal. There is a consequence to perpetrators today if they are found out. What is missing is how we get those platforms to get rid of those images once those perpetrators start uploading the information and platforms start using the material. That is what the government legislation would provide.

Hopefully before we end the two hours of debate the member can, in his concluding remarks, because he will be afforded that opportunity, provide some thoughts in regard to making sure people understand that this is illegal today and the importance of getting at those platforms. If we do not get at those platforms, the problem is not going to go away.

There was a question posed by I believe a New Democratic member asking about countries around the world. People would be surprised at the motivation used to get child pornography on the net and livestreamed. I have seen some eye-opening presentations that show that in some countries in the world the person who is putting the child on the Internet is a parent or a guardian. They do it as a way to source revenue. They do it for income for the family. How sad is that?

How angering is it to see the criminal element in North America that exploits these individuals, and children in particular. This is not to mention of course the importance of non-consensual pornography, but think of the trauma created as a direct result of a child going through things a child should never, ever have to experience. This will have a lifetime effect on that child. We know that. We see generational issues as a direct result of it.

That is the reason I like to think that every member of the House of Commons would look at the issue at hand and the principles of what we are talking about and want to take some initiative to minimize it. Members need to talk to the stakeholders. I have had the opportunity in different ways over the last number of years to do so. It is one the reasons I was very glad to see the government legislation come forward.

I was hoping to get clarification from the member on Bill C-270. He may be thrown off a little because of Bill C-63, which I believe will be of greater benefit than Bill C-270. After listening to the member speak though, I found out that the Conservative Party is apparently looking at voting against Bill C-63.

We come up with things collectively as a House to recognize important issues and put forward legislation that would have a positive impact, and I would suggest that Bill C-63 is one of those things. I would hope the member who introduced this private member's bill will not only be an advocate for his bill but be the strongest voice and advocate within his own caucus for the online harms act, Bill C-63, so we can get the support for that bill. It would literally save lives and take ungodly things off the Internet. It would save the lives of children.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for bringing forward this private member's bill, which directs our attention to some really important problems.

Is the member familiar with the report from the Department of Justice on cyber-bullying and non-consensual distribution of images from just a year ago, which takes quite a different approach from his bill and says we need to rewrite the existing offence so it is easier to prosecute and include measures, which are now in Bill C-63, to allow forfeiture, seizure, restitution and peace bonds in connection with these kinds of things?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-63 has no criminal offences around the uploading of this kind of content. In this bill, it would be a criminal offence to upload. We want to make sure this content never hits the Internet. A 24-hour takedown period is not good enough. We want to ensure that companies are doing their due diligence to ensure that their content is of people who are of age and that people consent to it.

An important piece of this bill is also that, if somebody has made a written request saying they revoke their consent, immediately that content must come down.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing]

Madam Speaker, the topic that the member is dealing with is particularly important. One of the arguments that he is making is with respect to taking down this heinous material online. I agree with him. However, the bill does not make any provisions for it.

Bill C-63, which is government legislation, does make provisions for taking down these types of heinous materials. The member's leader has said that he would vote against it. I wonder if the hon. member will be supporting Bill C-63 or if he is going to stick with what is here that would not accomplish the objectives that he is seeking, which I hope we would all be in favour of.

Government Responses to Order Paper Questions

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I support this question of privilege in light of the violation of government's obligation to answer an Order Paper question, but I also add to it, considering how the government has taken steps to take control of the Internet in Canada.

It has done this through legislation like Bill C-11, which centralizes regulatory control of what Canadians can see, hear and post online based on what the government deems “Canadian”.

In addition, I highlight Bill C-18, which has resulted in the government being one of the biggest gatekeepers of news in Canada. This is a major conflict of interest and a direct attack on journalistic integrity in this country.

Now, most recently, through Bill C-63, the government proposes to establish an entire commission, yet another arm of the government, that would regulate online harm.

How can Canadians trust the government to police various aspects of the Internet if it cannot even be honest and tell the truth about the content requested to be taken down? Trust is pinnacle and frankly the government has not earned any of it. The truth must prevail.

Mr. Speaker, you have the opportunity to look into this and to get to the bottom of it, or you can keep us in the dark and allow secrecy and injustice to reign. I understand that you are the one to make this decision, and we are putting our trust in you to make sure that this place is upheld and democracy is kept strong.

Alleged Premature Disclosure of Bill C-63

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make a very brief intervention in response to the government House leader's parliamentary secretary's response to my question of privilege on Bill C-63 and the leak that occurred.

The parliamentary secretary's 25-minute submission extensively quoted the Internet. What it did not do, however, was explain exactly how the sources whom Travis Dhanraj and Rachel Aiello spoke to were lucky enough to state precisely which of the options the government consulted on would make it into the bill.

Had the reporting been based on the published consultation documents, the media reports would have said so, but they did not. They quoted “sources” who were “not authorized to speak publicly on the matter before the bill is tabled in Parliament.” The parliamentary secretary's implication that the sources were all stakeholders uninformed about the ways of Parliament is demonstrably untrue. CTV's source was “a senior government source”. The CBC attributed its article to “two sources, including one with the federal government”. Besides, had these sources actually all been stakeholders speaking about previous consultations, why would they have sought anonymity to begin with, let alone specify the need for anonymity, because the bill had not yet been introduced?

As I said back on February 26, the leakers knew what they were doing. They knew it was wrong, and they knew why it was wrong. We are not talking about general aspects of the bill that might have been shared with stakeholders during consultation processes. We are talking about very detailed information that was in the legislation and was leaked to the media before it was tabled in the House. That is the issue we are asking you to rule on, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to respond to a question of privilege raised by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle on February 26 regarding the alleged premature disclosure of the content of Bill C-63, the online harms act.

I would like to begin by stating that the member is incorrect in asserting that there has been a leak of the legislation, and I will outline a comprehensive process of consultation and information being in the public domain on this issue long before the bill was placed on notice.

Online harms legislation is something that the government has been talking about for years. In 2015, the government promised to make ministerial mandate letters public, a significant departure from the secrecy around those key policy commitment documents from previous governments. As a result of the publication of the mandate letters, reporters are able to use the language from these letters to try to telegraph what the government bill on notice may contain.

In the 2021 Liberal election platform entitled “Forward. For Everyone.”, the party committed to the following:

Introduce legislation within its first 100 days to combat serious forms of harmful online content, specifically hate speech, terrorist content, content that incites violence, child sexual abuse material and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. This would make sure that social media platforms and other online services are held accountable for the content that they host. Our legislation will recognize the importance of freedom of expression for all Canadians and will take a balanced and targeted approach to tackle extreme and harmful speech.

Strengthen the Canada Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to more effectively combat online hate.

The December 16, 2021, mandate letter from the Prime Minister to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada asked the minister to achieve results for Canadians by delivering on the following commitment:

Continue efforts with the Minister of Canadian Heritage to develop and introduce legislation as soon as possible to combat serious forms of harmful online content to protect Canadians and hold social media platforms and other online services accountable for the content they host, including by strengthening the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to more effectively combat online hate and reintroduce measures to strengthen hate speech provisions, including the re-enactment of the former Section 13 provision. This legislation should be reflective of the feedback received during the recent consultations.

Furthermore, the December 16, 2021, mandate letter from the Prime Minister to the Minister of Canadian Heritage also asked the minister to achieve results for Canadians by delivering on the following commitment:

Continue efforts with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada to develop and introduce legislation as soon as possible to combat serious forms of harmful online content to protect Canadians and hold social media platforms and other online services accountable for the content they host. This legislation should be reflective of the feedback received during the recent consultations.

As we can see, the government publicly stated its intention to move ahead with online harms legislation, provided information on its plan and consulted widely on the proposal long before any bill was placed on the Notice Paper.

I will now draw to the attention of the House just how broadly the government has consulted on proposed online harms legislation.

Firstly, with regard to online consultations, from July 29 to September 25, 2021, the government published a proposed approach to address harmful content online for consultation and feedback. Two documents were presented for consultation: a discussion guide that summarized and outlined an overall approach, and a technical paper that summarized drafting instructions that could inform legislation.

I think it is worth repeating here that the government published a technical paper with the proposed framework for this legislation back in July 2021. This technical paper outlined the categories of proposed regulated harmful content; it addressed the establishment of a digital safety commissioner, a digital safety commission, regulatory powers and enforcement, etc.

Second is the round table on online safety. From July to November 2022, the Minister of Canadian Heritage conducted 19 virtual and in-person round tables across the country on the key elements of a legislative and regulatory framework on online safety. Virtual sessions were also held on the following topics: anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, anti-Asian racism, women and gender-based violence, and the tech industry.

Participants received an information document in advance of each session to prepare for the discussion. This document sought comments on the advice from the expert advisory group on online safety, which concluded its meetings on June 10. The feedback gathered from participants touched upon several key areas related to online safety.

Third is the citizens' assembly on democratic expression. The Department of Canadian Heritage, through the digital citizen initiative, is providing financial support to the Public Policy Forum's digital democracy project, which brings together academics, civil society and policy professionals to support research and policy development on disinformation and online harms. One component of this multi-year project is an annual citizens' assembly on democratic expression, which considers the impacts of digital technologies on Canadian society.

The assembly took place between June 15 and 19, 2023, in Ottawa, and focused on online safety. Participants heard views from a representative group of citizens on the core elements of a successful legislative and regulatory framework for online safety.

Furthermore, in March 2022, the government established an expert advisory group on online safety, mandated to provide advice to the Minister of Canadian Heritage on how to design the legislative and regulatory framework to address harmful content online and how to best incorporate the feedback received during the national consultation held from July to September 2021.

The expert advisory group, composed of 12 individuals, participated in 10 weekly workshops on the components of a legislative and regulatory framework for online safety. These included an introductory workshop and a summary concluding workshop.

The government undertook its work with the expert advisory group in an open and transparent manner. A Government of Canada web page, entitled “The Government's commitment to address online safety”, has been online for more than a year. It outlines all of this in great detail.

I now want to address the specific areas that the opposition House leader raised in his intervention. The member pointed to a quote from a CBC report referencing the intention to create a new regulator that would hold online platforms accountable for harmful content they host. The same website that I just referenced states the following: “The Government of Canada is committed to putting in place a transparent and accountable regulatory framework for online safety in Canada. Now, more than ever, online services must be held responsible for addressing harmful content on their platforms and creating a safe online space that protects all Canadians.”

Again, this website has been online for more than a year, long before the bill was actually placed on notice. The creation of a regulator to hold online services to account is something the government has been talking about, consulting on and committing to for a long period of time.

The member further cites a CBC article that talks about a new regulatory body to oversee a digital safety office. I would draw to the attention of the House the “Summary of Session Four: Regulatory Powers” of the expert advisory group on online safety, which states:

There was consensus on the need for a regulatory body, which could be in the form of a Digital Safety Commissioner. Experts agreed that the Commissioner should have audit powers, powers to inspect, have the powers to administer financial penalties and the powers to launch investigations to seek compliance if a systems-based approach is taken—but views differed on the extent of these powers. A few mentioned that it would be important to think about what would be practical and achievable for the role of the Commissioner. Some indicated they were reluctant to give too much power to the Commissioner, but others noted that the regulator would need to have “teeth” to force compliance.

This web page has been online for months.

I also reject the premise of what the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle stated when quoting the CBC story in question as it relates to the claim that the bill will be modelled on the European Union's Digital Services Act. This legislation is a made-in-Canada approach. The European Union model regulates more than social media and targets the marketplace and sellers. It also covers election disinformation and certain targeted ads, which our online harms legislation does not.

The member also referenced a CTV story regarding the types of online harms that the legislation would target. I would refer to the 2021 Liberal election platform, which contained the following areas as targets for the proposed legislation: “hate speech, terrorist content, content that incites violence, child sexual abuse material and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images.” These five items were the subject of the broad-based and extensive consultations I referenced earlier in my intervention.

Based on these consultations, a further two were added to the list to be considered. I would draw the attention of the House to an excerpt from the consultation entitled, “What We Heard: The Government’s proposed approach to address harmful content online”, which states, “Participants also suggested the inclusion of deep fake technology in online safety legislation”. It continues, “Many noted how child pornography and cyber blackmailing can originate from outside of Canada. Participants expressed frustration over the lack of recourse and tools available to victims to handle such instances and mentioned the need for a collaborative international effort to address online safety.”

It goes on to state:

Some respondents appreciated the proposal going beyond the Criminal Code definitions for certain types of content. They supported the decision to include material relating to child sexual exploitation in the definition that might not constitute a criminal offence, but which would nevertheless significantly harm children. A few stakeholders said that the proposal did not go far enough and that legislation could be broader by capturing content such as images of labour exploitation and domestic servitude of children. Support was also voiced for a concept of non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

It also notes:

A few respondents stated that additional types of content, such as doxing (i.e., the non-consensual disclosure of an individual’s private information), disinformation, bullying, harassment, defamation, conspiracy theories and illicit online opioid sales should also be captured by the legislative and regulatory framework.

This document has been online for more than a year.

I would also point to the expert advisory group's “Concluding Workshop Summary” web page, which states:

They emphasized the importance of preventing the same copies of some videos, like live-streamed atrocities, and child sexual abuse, from being shared again. Experts stressed that many file sharing services allow content to spread very quickly.

It goes on to say:

Experts emphasized that particularly egregious content like child sexual exploitation content would require its own solution. They explained that the equities associated with the removal of child pornography are different than other kinds of content, in that context simply does not matter with such material. In comparison, other types of content like hate speech may enjoy Charter protection in certain contexts. Some experts explained that a takedown obligation with a specific timeframe would make the most sense for child sexual exploitation content.

It also notes:

Experts disagreed on the usefulness of the five categories of harmful content previously identified in the Government’s 2021 proposal. These five categories include hate speech, terrorist content, incitement to violence, child sexual exploitation, and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

Another point is as follows:

A few participants pointed out how the anonymous nature of social media gives users more freedom to spread online harm such as bullying, death threats and online hate. A few participants noted that this can cause greater strain on the mental health of youth and could contribute to a feeling of loneliness, which, if unchecked, could lead to self-harm.

Again, this web page has been online for more than a year.

The member further cites the CTV article's reference to a new digital safety ombudsperson. I would point to the web page of the expert advisory group for the “Summary of Session Four: Regulatory Powers”, which states:

The Expert Group discussed the idea of an Ombudsperson and how it could relate to a Digital Safety Commissioner. Experts proposed that an Ombudsperson could be more focused on individual complaints ex post, should users not be satisfied with how a given service was responding to their concerns, flags and/or complaints. In this scheme, the Commissioner would assume the role of the regulator ex ante, with a mandate devoted to oversight and enforcement powers. Many argued that an Ombudsperson role should be embedded in the Commissioner’s office, and that information sharing between these functions would be useful. A few experts noted that the term “Ombudsperson” would be recognizable across the country as it is a common term and [has] meaning across other regimes in Canada.

It was mentioned that the Ombudsperson could play more of an adjudicative role, as distinguished from...the Commissioner’s oversight role, and would have some authority to have certain content removed off of platforms. Some experts noted that this would provide a level of comfort to victims. A few experts raised questions about where the line would be drawn between a private complaint and resolution versus the need for public authorities to be involved.

That web page has been online for months.

Additionally, during the round table on online safety and anti-Black racism, as the following summary states:

Participants were supportive of establishing a digital safety ombudsperson to hold social media platforms accountable and to be a venue for victims to report online harms. It was suggested the ombudsperson could act as a body that takes in victim complaints and works with the corresponding platform or governmental body to resolve the complaint. Some participants expressed concern over the ombudsperson's ability to process and respond to user complaints in a timely manner. To ensure the effectiveness of the ombudsperson, participants believe the body needs to have enough resources to keep pace with the complaints it receives. A few participants also noted the importance for the ombudsperson to be trained in cultural nuances to understand the cultural contexts behind content that is reported to them.

That web page has been online for more than a year.

Finally, I would draw the attention of the House to a Canadian Press article of February 21, 2024, which states, “The upcoming legislation is now expected to pave the way for a new ombudsperson to field public concerns about online content, as well as a new regulatory role that would oversee the conduct of internet platforms.” This appeared online before the bill was placed on notice.

Mr. Speaker, as your predecessor reiterated in his ruling on March 9, 2021, “it is a recognized principle that the House must be the first to learn the details of new legislative measures.” He went on to say, “...when the Chair is called on to determine whether there is a prima facie case of privilege, it must take into consideration the extent to which a member was hampered in performing their parliamentary functions and whether the alleged facts are an offence against the dignity of Parliament.” The Chair also indicated:

When it is determined that there is a prima facie case of privilege, the usual work of the House is immediately set aside in order to debate the question of privilege and decide on the response. Given the serious consequences for proceedings, it is not enough to say that the breach of privilege or contempt may have occurred, nor to cite precedence in the matter while implying that the government is presumably in the habit of acting in this way. The allegations must be clear and convincing for the Chair.

The government understands and respects the well-established practice that members have a right of first access to the legislation. It is clear that the government has been talking about and consulting widely on its plan to introduce online harms legislation for the past two years. As I have demonstrated, the public consultations have been wide-ranging and in-depth with documents and technical papers provided. All of this occurred prior to the bill's being placed on notice.

Some of the information provided by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle is not even in the bill, most notably the reference to its being modelled on the European Union's Digital Services Act, which is simply false, as I have clearly demonstrated. The member also hangs his arguments on the usage of the vernacular “not authorized to speak publicly” in the media reports he cites. It is certainly not proof of a leak, especially when the government consulted widely and publicly released details on the content of the legislative proposal for years before any bill was actually placed on notice.

The development of the legislation has been characterized by open, public and wide-ranging consultations with specific proposals consulted on. This is how the Leader of the Opposition was able to proclaim, on February 21, before the bill was even placed on notice, that he and his party were vehemently opposed to the bill. He was able to make this statement because of the public consultation and the information that the government has shared about its plan over the last two years. I want to be clear that the government did not share the bill before it was introduced in the House, and the evidence demonstrates that there was no premature disclosure of the bill.

I would submit to the House that consulting Canadians this widely is a healthy way to produce legislation and that the evidence I have presented clearly demonstrates that there is no prima facie question of privilege. It is our view that this does not give way for the Chair to conclude that there was a breach of privilege of the House nor to give the matter precedence over all other business of the House.

Premature Disclosure of Bill C-63

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising this afternoon on a question of privilege concerning the leak of key details of Bill C-63, the so-called online harms bill, which was tabled in the House earlier today.

While a lot will be said in the days, weeks and months ahead about the bill in the House, its parliamentary journey is not off to a good start. Yesterday afternoon, the CBC published on its website an article entitled “Ottawa to create regulator to hold online platforms accountable for harmful content: sources”. The article, written by Naama Weingarten and Travis Dhanraj, outlined several aspects of the bill with the information attributed to two sources “with knowledge of Monday's legislation”.

I will read brief excerpts of the CBC's report revealing details of the bill before it was tabled in Parliament.

“The Online Harms Act, expected to be introduced by the federal government on Monday, will include the creation of a new regulator that would hold online platforms accountable for harmful content they host, CBC News has confirmed.”

“The new regulatory body is expected to oversee a digital safety office with the mandate of reducing online harm and will be separate from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), sources say.”

“Sources say some components of the new bill will be modelled on the European Union's Digital Services Act. According to the European Commission, its act “regulates online intermediaries and platforms such as marketplaces, social networks, content-sharing platforms, app stores, and online travel and accommodation platforms.””

Then, today, CTV News published a second report entitled “Justice Minister to Introduce New Bill to Tackle Harmful Online Content”. In Rachel Aiello's article, she says, “According to a senior government source [Bill C-63] would be expected to put an emphasis on harms to youth including specific child protection obligations for social media and other online platforms, including enhanced preservation requirements. It targets seven types of online harms: hate speech, terrorist content, incitement to violence, the sharing of non-consensual intimate images, child exploitation, cyberbullying, and inciting self-harm, and includes measures to crack down on non-consensual artificial intelligence pornography, deepfakes and require takedown provisions for what's become known as 'revenge porn'. Further, while the sources suggested there will be no new powers for law enforcement, multiple reports have indicated the bill will propose creating a new digital safety ombudsperson to field Canadians' concerns about platform decisions around content moderation.”

As explained in footnote 125 on page 84 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, on March 19, 2001: “Speaker Milliken ruled that the provision of information concerning legislation to the media without any effective measures to secure the rights of the House constituted a prima facie case of contempt.”

The subsequent report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs concluded: “This case should serve as a warning that our House will insist on the full recognition of its constitutional function and historic privileges across the full spectrum of government.”

Sadly, Mr. Speaker, the warning has had to be sounded multiple times since. Following rulings by your predecessors finding similar prima facie contempt on October 15, 2001, April 19, 2016 and March 10, 2020, not to mention several other close-call rulings that fell short of the necessary threshold yet saw the Chair sound cautionary notes for future reference, a number of those close-call rulings occurred under the present government that would often answer questions of privilege with claims that no one could be certain who had leaked the bill or even when it had been leaked, citing advanced policy consultations with stakeholders.

Mr. Speaker, your immediate predecessor explained, on March 10, 2020, on page 1,892 of the Debates, the balancing act that must be observed. He said:

The rule on the confidentiality of bills on notice exists to ensure that members, in their role as legislators, are the first to know their content when they are introduced. Although it is completely legitimate to carry out consultations when developing a bill or to announce one’s intention to introduce a bill by referring to its public title available on the Notice Paper and Order Paper, it is forbidden to reveal specific measures contained in a bill at the time it is put on notice.

In the present circumstances, no such defence about stakeholders talking about their consultations can be offered. The two sources the CBC relied upon for its reporting were, according to the CBC itself, granted anonymity “because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter before the bill is tabled in Parliament.”

As for the CTV report, its senior government source “was not authorized to speak publicly about details yet to be made public.”

When similar comments were made by the Canadian Press in its report on the leak of the former Bill C-7 respecting medical assistance in dying, Mr. Speaker, your immediate predecessor had this to say when finding a prima facie contempt in his March 10, 2020 ruling:

Everything indicates that the act was deliberate. It is difficult to posit a misunderstanding or ignorance of the rules in this case.

Just as in 2020, the leakers knew what they were doing. They knew it was wrong and they knew why it was wrong. The House must stand up for its rights, especially against a government that appears happy to trample over them in the pursuit of legislating the curtailing of Canadians' rights.

Mr. Speaker, if you agree with me that there is a prima facie contempt, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.