Bill C-36

An Act to enact the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act, to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and to make amendments to other Acts

This enactment enacts the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act to govern the protection of personal information of individuals while taking into account the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities. Consequently, it repeals Part 1 of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and changes the short title of that Act to the Electronic Documents Act . Finally, it also makes amendments to other Acts.

Safe Social Media Act

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today on Bill C-34, the safe social media act.

Upon taking office, the Prime Minister pledged to protect and strengthen Canada, and that is what we are doing today. We have also remained focused on ensuring that as Canadians, we take control of our own destiny, protect what we believe in and pave the way for future generations. That starts with keeping Canadians safe, not only in their communities but online. Today, I am here to reaffirm our government's unwavering commitment to protecting Canadians and, in particular, young Canadians.

We have all seen how online harms have exploded. These harms have real consequences for our communities. We need only think of the Tumbler Ridge tragedy, which claimed eight lives, including six children, and left many more injured. The perpetrator of the shooting used OpenAI's chatbot to get advice. Another example is the young person who was admitted to Toronto's SickKids hospital in a catatonic state after classmates set up a site just to humiliate them.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection processes more than 100,000 reports of online child sexual abuse every month. Police-reported online child sexual exploitation incidents rose by 347% between 2014 and 2024 alone. Violent online networks are targeting our children on the platforms they use every day, encouraging them to hurt themselves or even take their own lives. If this activity happened on the playground, the playground would be shut down immediately.

One in four young people say they have been cyberbullied. This represents a 500% increase since 2014. We are also witnessing a rise in mental health challenges, including anxiety, low self-esteem and suicidal thoughts. These figures are alarming. Behind every one of these statistics is a child, parents and a family.

Over the summer, my colleagues on this side of the House and on the other side of the House and I met with Canadians, experts, parents and young people. Everywhere we went, we heard the same message: We need to act, and we need to act urgently.

Parents, teachers and caregivers cannot be expected to face these challenges alone, nor can they be expected to take on some of the world's most sophisticated technology companies by themselves. Urgent action is needed to hold online services accountable and to ensure that our children are safe on the platforms they are growing up with.

The reality is that our laws have not kept up and kept pace with technology. Current legislation imposes penalties only after the harm has occurred, rather than preventing it in the first place. This bill, the safe social media act, would establish clear responsibilities for regulated social media services and AI chatbot services operating in Canada. It would place the onus where it belongs: on the platforms themselves. It would ensure their services are safe.

This act is structured around three core duties.

The first is a duty to act responsibly. Social media services would need to assess and mitigate the risks of exposure to seven categories of clear, harmful content, apply labels to synthetically generated content, build safety measures into the design of their platforms, make it easy for Canadians to report and submit complaints, and, finally, provide Canadians with better tools to keep themselves safe, such as blocking and flagging functions. AI chatbot services would have to mitigate the risk of chatbots communicating harmful content, intervene in crisis situations when a user intends to harm themselves or another person, and mitigate the risk of chatbots engaging in harmful behaviour with our children.

Secondly, social media platforms would have a duty to make certain content inaccessible. Platforms would be required to remove the most serious forms of harmful content within 24 hours of it being flagged or reported. This includes content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor and intimate content communicated without consent.

Third, the law would establish the duty to protect children. It would require social media and AI chatbot services to implement age-appropriate safeguards. This means building safety into the design of their services and ensuring that children are not exposed to high-risk interactions or harmful content.

This includes an obligation for regulated services to prevent children from accessing pornographic content on their services.

For regulated social media platforms, this would also mean having a responsibility to prevent children under the age of 16 from having social media accounts. This approach was requested by parents and educators almost unanimously. It is in line with the emerging international approaches to online safety, but this design is made for Canadians.

We expect platforms to adopt age verification and age estimation measures that meet the highest standards of security and privacy protection.

However, the age restriction is just one of the measures in this bill, because we know that the best way to protect young people is to design online spaces to be safe. That is why social media platforms that put sufficient safeguards in place will be able to seek an exemption from the age restriction.

Finally, regulated services will need to be transparent with Canadians and publish digital safety plans detailing how they are meeting their obligations.

We also recognize that Canadians deserve to know how their personal information is being used, shared and protected. That is why my colleague, the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, introduced Bill C-36. It represents the most significant change to Canada's private sector privacy law in over 25 years. This bill establishes clear guardrails to protect Canadians' personal information, with a special focus on children's personal information.

Making Canadians safer online, enhancing platforms' accountability and preventing online harms before they occur must be priorities for us and the House.

The safe social media act would establish conditions necessary for the online services that shape our lives to operate responsibly and, importantly, transparently. It is designed to address current concerns while allowing us to keep pace with technological changes, which often outpace legislation. Finally, it would ensure that our children and Canadians can benefit from new technologies without compromising their safety and privacy.

Canada has been falling behind, and we must ensure that Canadian youth are no less protected than young people elsewhere as our world becomes increasingly digital. We need to act now. Canadians expect action from the House, and we must deliver.

I invite all members to give this bill serious consideration and engage in an open and constructive debate. Our children's safety must be a shared priority that rises above partisan lines. I am committed to working with all members of the House to protect our children online.

Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House this afternoon speaking in support of Bill S-209. I want to begin by looking at the journey of how we arrived here. The bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne. Senator Miville-Dechêne was appointed in 2018. Then, the bill came to the House on two occasions, but because of the calendar, the bill died on the Order Paper.

I am going to focus my comments on the process of how we arrived here and one of two routes this chamber can take for where the bill would go from here. Most would agree we are at a time when Canadians are looking to parliamentarians to come together on certain issues, and this should be one of those issues. All parliamentarians would agree that the House should take steps to prevent very young children from accessing pornography online.

I have been listening to a number of previous speakers. The parliamentary secretary, in his comments, said the government supports the objective of the bill, which is extremely important, and I would expect all members sitting in this chamber do. One of the benefits of Parliament is the diverse basis of opinion that comes to debate in the House and the recognition that each member brings a particular area that they focus on.

When the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake approached me this past spring to say that she was going to sponsor this particular Senate bill in the House and ask if I would consider supporting it, I reflected for a moment. I will acknowledge that there are probably numerous topics that the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake and I do not agree on, but on this matter, I will be clear. One thing the member is very passionate about and uncompromising about is the protection of children, family and her children. I see that from time to time because the member brings her children to the committee room from time to time, so I was not surprised that the member would choose in particular a bill like Bill S-209 as her private member's bill.

The bill gives us all sides. We have heard from one other opposition party in the House that is supportive of the bill's getting to committee. The committee is the process for all legislation to get a thorough analysis and a good review. Changes that are required from time to time can be made there, as members are aware. Therefore, I had no hesitation in indicating that I would be supportive of Bill S-209. Again, I doubt that there would be any member in the chamber who would not be supportive of the objectives of Bill S-209.

At the same time, I am well aware that the government has introduced two pieces of legislation, Bill C-34 and Bill C-36. Some will say they are more comprehensive in the area being addressed by this particular private member's bill, but all are aiming in the same direction of putting real consequences on those who choose to make decisions that allow young people access to pornography.

My sense is that there is a very general understanding of and support for the context of this particular private member's bill. I, for one, as I indicated, will be supporting the bill when it comes back to the House for a vote. I look forward to it getting to committee so that witnesses can appear and the committee can do a very thorough analysis of the bill.

As I indicated in my earlier comments, Bill S-209, Bill C-34 and Bill C-36 are leading in a direction that all members of this chamber, I assume, will be supportive of. However, the ability to be supportive of and have a candid debate on all aspects of the legislation is extremely important. Bill S-209, in my opinion, deserves to get to a stage where it gets a more thorough analysis, which would be in the committee format. That is why I will be supporting it. There will be some discussion about the impact on government legislation versus private members' legislation, but to my earlier comments, this is one subject that all members of this House should come together on and support to ensure that this particular bill gets before a committee so that it might have the opportunity to complement government legislation and make it better in some places.

I believe my time is coming to an end, but the bill speaks for itself. I am in agreement with the commentary made by the speakers who spoke to the bill earlier. I am looking forward to hearing more debate.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

The fact is that the work done in the context of Bill S‑209, as well as the work that was done in the context of Bill S‑210 in the previous Parliament, is represented in these bills. If she had read both bills, she would know that, but such is life.

We believe that this model, that is, enforcement regimes grounded in expertise within a common digital regulatory body, provides a more effective way to address complex and cross-cutting issues involving privacy and digital safety, including age verification, the proliferation of synthetic content in digital spaces and the safety of children online, all of which are closely linked to the objectives of Bill S‑209.

The strengths of the government's approach become clear when we consider age assurance. Parliament's consideration of Bill S-209, to my colleague's comment, and its previous iterations has consistently highlighted the real privacy concerns associated with age verification and age estimation measures, especially when children's personal information is involved, which I am certain the member must care about. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has stated that age assurance can further the goal of creating a safer, more privacy-protective online environment for kids, but that careful attention must be paid to determining the most important appropriate means of verification.

Every age assurance requirement involves trade-offs. The more reliably a measure establishes a user's age, the more sensitive the information is that it tends to collect. Whoever sets and enforces that requirement is making a safety decision and a privacy decision at the same time. Bill S-209 would recognize that and require cabinet to ensure that any age assurance method it prescribes protects users' personal information.

I would submit the member opposite would be very happy to see this in our legislation, but those conditions would be applied by regulation and enforced by an existing federal institution that the bill does not designate, so I am curious how the member opposite would think this would actually be enforced. Under Bill C-34 and Bill C-36, these decisions would sit within a single body. The commission would have oversight of whether an operator is effectively protecting children, while also meeting the strong privacy protection requirements set out in Bill C-36.

Bill S-209, Bill C-34 and Bill C-36 all share a common concern to ensure that children are kept safe online. The government plan includes strong privacy protection and a robust plan for actually carrying these measures out. Bill S-209, while well intended, would leave it to cabinet regulation and an institution yet to be named to iron out all of these details. It is almost as if the opposition wants to put all that trust into cabinet, which is curious given its position on most anything.

Bill C-34 and Bill C-36 together are a strong plan for protecting our kids and their data online, and that has already been laid out.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little concerned, because I understand we are to be debating Bill S-209 right now, and I am hearing about bills that are government bills and are being debated, and it is up to the government to call the calendar. We are debating Bill S-209. We are not debating Bill C-34 or Bill C-36.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill S-209 and the government's work to protect young people from online harms as technology evolves in front of us.

I also want to begin by thanking and recognizing Senator Miville-Dechêne for bringing this initiative to Parliament and for her continued work to better protect children online. I remember the previous iteration of this bill in the last Parliament. I enjoyed very much trying to see how we could learn from what she was seeking to put forward in that bill and how that might inform the work that we were doing.

It is very clear that ensuring young people are safe online is a priority we all share in the House. It is an important thing for us to keep top of mind. As the father of two young boys, it is something I certainly think about every day.

Let me say first that the government supports the objectives of Bill S-209. Children should not be able to access content, including pornographic content, that is inappropriate for their age online. Period. At the same time, our government understands that protecting children from pornographic content is not just about separating it from the protection of their personal information. Bill C-34, the safe social media act, and Bill C-36, the protecting privacy and consumer data act, seek to address both of these critical concerns thoughtfully and place them in the hands of a regulator that would be empowered to protect Canadians online. Indeed, much of what was in Bill S-209 previously has inspired some of this work.

Digital platforms play an important role in the lives of many young Canadians, helping them stay connected to family and friends, access educational resources and discover new interests. At the same time, young people are sometimes exposed to online content that is inappropriate for their age. Recognizing both the benefits of digital technologies and the need to better protect children online, the government introduced Bill C-34, the safe social media act, and Bill C-36, an act to enact the protecting privacy and consumer data act, to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and to make amendments to other acts, in June 2026. Together, these initiatives establish clear rules that promote online safety, strengthen privacy protections and increase accountability and trust across the digital ecosystem.

Bill C-34 addresses directly the risks when children are exposed to pornographic content online. It would require operators of regulated services to implement age assurance measures to mitigate the risk that children would be exposed to adult content on their service.

Bill C-34 would also put strong protections in place to ensure that children's personal information is safeguarded, that it is destroyed once it is no longer needed and that any age verification or estimation measures do not unreasonably or disproportionately limit users' freedom of expression.

Young people can be harmed not only by the content they encounter online but also when their images are misused to create harmful deepfakes. We all know that generative AI has made this material easier to create and spread without consent. Our government is tackling this emerging threat by strengthening protections for victims and holding those responsible to account.

Our government has already taken strong action to address these issues through Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, which expands the Criminal Code definition of an “intimate image” to include sexualized deepfakes and ensures that those who generate, distribute or threaten to distribute such content are held accountable.

Bill C-34 seeks to build on this work by tackling these issues at their source before they have the chance to spread online. Under this bill, operators of regulated chatbot services would be required to put measures in place to mitigate the risk of a chatbot communicating harmful content, which includes generating non-consensual intimate images and content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor.

As technology continues to evolve, online safety and privacy are becoming increasingly interconnected. Protecting young people requires us to address both.

That is why, along with Bill C-34, the government introduced Bill C-36, which represents the most significant modernization of Canada's Privacy Act as it applies to the private sector in over 25 years. Bill C-36 would strengthen individual protections, specifically by recognizing privacy as a fundamental right, strengthening children's privacy and creating a strong right to delete or vanish, to protect the privacy and reputation of Canadians online. These are all challenges that did not exist when the current privacy legislation was enacted.

For children, this matters. Age verification generally relies on the use of personal information. Bill C‑34 sets out privacy safeguards that age verification measures must respect. Bill C‑36 strengthens protections for children's personal information more broadly.

Together, Bill C‑34 and Bill C‑36 would also create a permanent digital safety and privacy commission. The commission's mandate would be to promote online safety in Canada while protecting Canadians' personal information in the marketplace.

Bill C‑34 and Bill C‑36 set out these protections, which are backed by robust enforcement regimes. For example, under the protecting privacy and consumer data act proposed in Bill C‑36, the commission would have the authority to issue compliance orders or impose substantial administrative monetary penalties on regulated entities that fail to meet their obligations to protect Canadians' privacy.

The bill also requires the regulatory body to consider the best interests of children in all policy and enforcement decisions. This means stronger protections for children's data, clear rules for organizations that target or serve young users, and an ongoing commitment—

Spring Economic Update 2026 Implementation Act

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-30, the spring economic update 2026 implementation act. As parliamentarians, our responsibility is to examine not only what the government has chosen to include in an economic update, but also what it has chosen to leave out.

Bill C-30 would implement selected measures announced in the spring economic update, but budgets and economic updates are not technical exercises conducted by the Prime Minister on his own or by his narrow circle of advisers. They are statements of priorities for all Canadians. This is the hope and vision of what our constituents expect of us: to take off our blind spots and look at the bigger picture. What we ask of the Prime Minister today is to review what the government values, where it is prepared to invest and whose needs it is prepared to postpone.

The question before us is not simply whether the measures contained in Bill C-30 should proceed. The question is whether this bill would respond to the realities Canadians are living every day. This is where my concerns lie, which is that this legislation does not not meet the moment of the challenges everyday Canadians face. It does not live up to the hype of the projected progressive Prime Minister that was portrayed during the election or what we have come to read about him. There is a dissonance between words and action, and therein lies the problem. In my constituency of Vancouver East and in communities across this country, the gap between policy and lived experience is widening, and the concerns around the centralizing tendency of the government are being noticed across the country.

In Vancouver East, constituents are facing housing insecurity, food insecurity, gaps in health care coverage. uncertainty in indigenous housing initiatives, delays in compensation programs and rising affordability pressures across every essential service. They are also increasingly concerned about federal priorities shifting toward expanded military spending while social programs remain underfunded or delayed. Across all these areas, a pattern is becoming unmistakable: announcements without delivery, commitments without timelines, programs without certainty sunsetting out of existence, and decisions increasingly centralized in Ottawa, far removed from the communities they affect.

Communities know what they need, municipalities know what they need, indigenous housing providers know what they need and frontline organizations know what they need, yet funding decisions remain concentrated in Ottawa while people on the ground continue to experience delays, uncertainty and shifting eligibility rules. This is not administrative complexity. This is a failure of delivery, and Canadians are living the consequences of this unfortunate reality.

I will begin with first nations education. In B.C., first nations education is supported through the BC Tripartite Education Agreement between first nations leadership, the province and Canada. At the centre of that agreement is the First Nations Education Steering Committee. This is not a symbolic structure. It is the core funding architecture for first nations education in B.C. It determines staffing, curriculum and infrastructure. It determines whether first nations children have stable access to education. It is in effect the backbone of educational stability for first nations students in this province.

Despite early assurances that a renewed long-term agreement would be included in the 2026 spring economic update, first nations partners were instead informed that only a one-year extension would be provided. A one-year extension does not provide for stability. It produces uncertainty, and uncertainty in education is not abstract. It affects staffing, planning and children's outcomes. The First Nations Education Steering Committee and first nations leadership have been clear: What is required is a 10-year renewal agreement that provides predictability, continuity and proper fiscal planning. Reconciliation is not achieved through short-term extensions, but is achieved through durable commitments that governments keep. Right now, that certainty is missing.

The same pattern is evident with support for survivors of residential schools. Many indigenous leaders, survivors and advocates have repeatedly raised stable funding for the Indian Residential School Survivors Society. For decades, survivors have carried the trauma inflicted by Canada's residential school system. They have carried grief, loss and intergenerational harm resulting from policies designed to erase indigenous identities, cultures and communities. Today, many continue to rely on the Indian Residential School Survivors Society for culturally appropriate counselling, crisis support and healing services.

In fact, for 30 years, the Indian Residential School Survivors Society has provided support to indigenous people harmed by Canada's colonial systems, the sixties scoop, the ongoing missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and 2S+ crisis, and more, yet despite repeated commitments to reconciliation, despite having been told by Indigenous Services Canada that the organization would receive confirmation for its two-year funding by mid-May, to date, there is still no action. The funding will end on July 1. This delay is going to have serious operational impacts for the people it serves. The organization continues to seek certainty regarding its long-term core funding.

Reconciliation cannot depend on year-to-year uncertainty. Reconciliation is not a slogan. It is not a press release. It is not a commemorative statement. Reconciliation requires action. It requires resources. It requires government to ensure that organizations serving survivors have the certainty necessary to continue their work. If the government can find fiscal room for subsidies for big oil, it can find the resources necessary to provide stable support to those serving residential school survivors.

Turning to housing, the “for indigenous, by indigenous” urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy was something that the Liberals committed to in the last Parliament. It was something that the NDP prioritized in the confidence and supply agreement. I fought for that. We fought for that and won interim funding of $300 million and long-term funding of $4 billion over seven years for FIBI URN, and an equivalent amount of $4 billion over seven years for distinction-based funding, yet the funding of the long-term component has yet to flow.

Indigenous housing providers continue to face uncertainty about governance, timelines and implementation. Even as funding is referenced in the federal announcements, there remains no clear guarantee that delivery will remain indigenous-led in practice, nor a firm timeline for rollout. While policy frameworks evolve in Ottawa, indigenous communities continue to experience the highest rate of homelessness in Canada. In Vancouver alone, indigenous people represent a disproportionate share of those experiencing homelessness, despite being a far smaller share of the population. They are the predictable result of decades of underinvestment and policy delay.

Housing providers are ready to build. Friendship centres are ready to build. Indigenous-led organizations are ready to build. The problem is not capacity. The problem is execution. People cannot live in promises of affordability. They cannot sleep in frameworks. They cannot raise children in consultations.

Constituents are also increasingly concerned about rental assistance for co-operative housing members. Co-ops work. They provide stability. They provide affordability. They provide community-based housing that has proven effective for decades.

Phase 2 funding under the federal community housing initiative will sunset. This subsidy support is critical to co-op housing members whose household incomes would cause them to pay more than the current 25% rent geared to income. If this program is not renewed, more than 14,400 families across the country will lose their homes. Rising Star and China Creek, for example, in my riding, will be hit hard if the rental assistance subsidy is not renewed. The expiry of the FCHI phase 2 funding without a successor program or extension risks undoing decades of investment in this model and displacing established community members, including families with young children and seniors who depend on it. Access to rental assistance is necessary to enable co-ops to be a deeply affordable housing solution. FCHI cannot, and must not, sunset.

Aside from housing, Van East constituents continue to raise serious concerns about the Canadian dental care plan. I have written to the minister regarding applications for medically necessary procedures, including crowns, that are being rejected using template language that provides no meaningful explanation of what criteria were not met. Patients are left without clarity, providers are left without guidance, and appeals are effectively blocked.

Even more troubling are cases where some of my constituents were previously approved for the Canadian dental care plan, received care in good faith and are now being told that they are not eligible after all. In some cases, they are even being asked to repay benefits that they already received. These are often seniors who opted out of private dental care insurance years ago because premiums were unaffordable on fixed incomes. At the time of approval, they met eligibility criteria and were approved. They acted in good faith. They made irreversible financial decisions based on the government's approval. Retroactive reassessment after reliance undermines trust in public programs. A system cannot function if eligibility is uncertain at the outset and reversible after the fact. This is not fairness. This is instability.

Health care affordability is another glaring omission from this bill. Many Canadians welcomed the promise to establish an expanded universal pharmacare, yet constituents increasingly tell me that they worry that those promises are being quietly abandoned. They see that the Prime Minister is abandoning the provinces and territories that did not sign the pharmacare agreement prior to the last election. People do not care about talking points. They care about whether or not they can afford their medication. They care about whether they must choose between prescriptions and groceries. They care about whether universal pharmacare will actually become universal. The Prime Minister sent a clear message that universal pharmacare is not a priority for him when the spring economic update did not provide additional resources to this key initiative.

On affordability, Canadians are increasingly concerned about surveillance pricing. This is the use of personal data, behavioural tracking and algorithmic systems to charge different prices to different individuals for identical goods and services. It means two Canadians can stand in the same digital marketplace and see different prices based on what a corporation believes they can pay. Even when legislation such as Bill C-36 references algorithmic pricing risks, it does not actually prohibit surveillance pricing. It does not even name it. It does not stop it. Instead, it leaves Canadians exposed to opaque pricing systems that they cannot see and cannot challenge.

Premier Wab Kinew has taken decisive action in Manitoba to stop it. The Prime Minister and this government have refused to take a stand. What side is the Prime Minister on? Unlike the Liberals, who will always be on the side of big corporations, the NDP will stand on the side of the people. That is why I will be introducing a private member's bill this fall to ban surveillance pricing outright.

Food safety is also at stake. Proposed changes to pesticide regulation have raised concerns from environmental and public health organizations, including Ecojustice, which warns that reforms risk weakening scientific oversight and transparency. Canadians expect food safety to be grounded in independent science. They expect precaution where health is at stake. They expect transparency in regulatory decision-making. Anything less undermines public trust.

My constituents have also raised concerns regarding the Prime Minister's intention to privatize ports and airports. Even Stephen Harper would not dare to touch these critical assets. They are strategic national infrastructure essential to supply chains, trade and economic resilience. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission repeatedly flagged concerns over monopoly pricing, noting that user costs, passenger charges and parking fees surged dramatically. Airlines passed escalating landing fees directly to passengers via higher ticket prices when they privatized. The Shipping Australia industry association noted that private port operators prioritized maximizing shareholder returns, implementing heavy rent increases on terminal tenants that trickled down into standard freight and consumer goods. If Canada goes down this track, this is what Canada can expect.

This neo-liberal playbook seems to be from another era. A broad pattern is emerging. We are seeing the increasing centralization of decision-making in Ottawa from the Prime Minister. We are seeing delays in social program delivery and increased military spending, alongside constrained social investments. Budgets are about choices, and choices are about priorities. Canadians are asking, what does increased military spending mean for housing, for pharmacare, for dental care, for indigenous housing, for transit and for disability supports? These are not abstract fiscal questions. They are real-world opportunity costs, and Canadians deserve transparency about them.

In Vancouver East, the consequences are very real and very visible. Seniors are relying on food banks. Families are skipping meals. People are delaying medical care. Housing is increasingly out of reach. Affordability is being eroded not just by prices but by systems that are less transparent and less responsive. One constituent described losing weight because they cannot afford enough food. Another, a 77-year-old senior, said they are relying on a food bank for the first time in their life. These are not isolated cases. They are becoming systemic. As one constituent put it, on the issue of transit, we need our transit to green commutes more than we need another pipeline.

Every budget decision involves trade-offs. Canadians deserve transparency about those trade-offs. We are faced with deep drought conditions across Vancouver Island, the Okanagan, the Chilcotin and the South Thompson regions. Climate change is real. Instead of investing in transit, the spring economic update cuts it by $5 billion, while the Prime Minister signs an agreement with Alberta to build yet another pipeline. Canadians deserve to know why the Prime Minister would prioritize pipelines over funding for transit expansion, especially when B.C. faces the highest and most sustained fire risk in the country.

Similarly, Canadians deserve to know why billions of dollars can be found for military expansion when communities continue to be told to wait for desperately needed social investments. If the government believes military spending must increase, it should explain why the same urgency is absent when it comes to homelessness, poverty, housing and health care. Increased military spending is happening when there has not been a robust public debate on it, during the last election or thereafter. It was just announced by the Prime Minister as a fait accompli.

Many constituents have raised concerns regarding military goods and components exported to the U.S. that may subsequently be transferred elsewhere without the same level of scrutiny that applies to direct Canadian exports. Those concerns were reflected in proposals such as my private member's bill, Bill C-233, the no more loopholes act, which was defeated by the government. Canadians want robust risk assessments. They want transparency. They want accountability. They want assurances that Canadian-made military goods are not contributing to human rights violations or breaches of international humanitarian law. Economic policy and trade policy cannot be separated from human rights obligations.

Many constituents have also written regarding the humanitarian crisis facing the Cuban community. They have called on Canada to increase humanitarian assistance; support access to food, medicine and fuel; and pursue constructive diplomacy. They have urged Canada to work with international partners to ensure that relief reaches those in need and to maintain an independent foreign policy grounded in dialogue, co-operation and respect for self-determination. Canadians understand our international role and Canada's proud history of our commitment to peacebuilding, humanitarian assistance and international solidarity. It is not time to turn our backs on what has historically made Canadians proud.

Let me close with this, Mr. Speaker. This bill reveals clear patterns. Housing is delayed. Indigenous housing remains uncertain. Health care programs lack transparency. Dental eligibility is unstable. Survivors are waiting. Disabled Canadians are waiting. Families are waiting. Waiting has become the default policy, but Canadians cannot wait indefinitely. The crisis is before Canadians. It is time to act for the people, not for corporations.

Combatting Hate Act

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, while the hour is late, it is always a privilege to get up and speak in the House, especially on an issue that is so important.

I rise with a bit of a heavy heart, though, because I realize this will likely be the last time I can speak at substantive length to this bill and express my concern with, first, the government's heavy-handedness in dealing with this debate. It is unfortunate that the government moved to end this debate only a few minutes after it began. The irony of cutting off and censoring debate on a bill that deals with expression is not lost on me, nor is it lost on Canadians.

I want to say at the outset that I understand the laudable goal that exists with Bill C-9. I think it is one that is shared by all members of the House. It is certainly shared by me. However, we know what is said about good intentions and the path that they lead to. The laudable goal, of course, is the elimination of hateful speech and conduct in our society. We all share that goal.

After 11 years, Canadians just do not trust the Liberal government to preserve and protect their liberty. Quite the opposite is true. There is a history and a pattern that proves this suspicion that people of faith across Canada have. There was an ideological test to receive summer jobs funding, which I did not forget, and I do not think Christian communities, Jewish communities or Muslim communities across Canada forgot that either. There was the removal, or proposed removal, of charitable status for organizations that defend and promote life. These are still the avowed positions of the government opposite.

I will note that I am splitting my time.

In the Senate debates, Professor Haskell said, “Past experience shows that when Liberal governments promised that devout Christians would not be harmed by their new laws, those promises were broken.” History has a way of teaching us not to believe the Liberal government when it says, “Just trust us.”

That is why Bill C-9 united Christians across all denominations, from the United Church to the Catholic Church to the Anglican Church to the evangelical churches across Canada, but it was not just Christians who were united against this bill. One of the most fascinating things about this is that the Liberal government succeeded in uniting all faiths against their proposition. We have heard tonight, numerous times, that “Canadians were asking for this” and “Communities were asking for this,” but actually the opposite is true, and we have the letters from those communities to prove it. We have letters from the rabbinical council of Toronto, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada to prove it. The reality, as I understand the evidence, is that every faith community opposed this legislation. Rather than asking for it, they opposed it.

I want to focus a bit on the most troubling part of Bill C-9, which is the removal of long-standing protections for religious freedom and the ability to have civil and substantive discussions about matters that go to the core of belief without the government's interference in that. Unfortunately, a Faustian bargain was struck between the Liberals and the Bloc to remove that protection from the Criminal Code.

Now, it is not my opinion that this is what was taking place. This is the opinion that was held by the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, who said that certain passages of the Torah and the Bible are categorically “hateful” and that prosecutors should have “discretion...to press charges.”

What is deeply troubling about this is that in this whole debate, over the entire months that we have been discussing this, the minister has never resiled from his comments. He has never sought to clarify his comments, and he never sought to add nuance to those comments or explain to religious communities what he meant by them. To add insult to injury, not one member of the Prime Minister's cabinet has said anything about them. In fact, no member, to my knowledge, of the Liberal Party, despite being asked in debate after debate, has resiled from those comments. What should we take from them? The only logical conclusion to take is that they believe them. If that is the case, then our fears are well founded.

The reality is that Canadians should be allowed to discuss and debate controversial issues, even if we do not like them, even if we think they are repugnant. It does not matter. That is what living in a free society allows us. Government should not decide what religious truth is. I do not want the minister of culture being the arbitrary arbiter of whether Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and I do not want them to be the arbiter of whether in fact there is no God other than God, “and Muhammad is his messenger”. That is not the government's role.

However, perhaps one of the most pernicious aspects of this amendment that removed that protection was that it was predicated on a completely false fact. It was predicated on the idea that there was an instance in Quebec that could not be prosecuted because of this religious protection. That is categorically false and, no matter how many times the Bloc want to bring up that example of Mr. Charkaoui , it does not make it true.

I want to note this as well about the Senate amendment, because that of course is part of what we are discussing tonight. The Senate amendment seeks to add an additional symbol to criminalize in the code. Let me start with the obvious. The use of a symbol can, of course, be hateful, but I would respond that if it is, it is already a crime.

There have been several examples where police across Canada have prosecuted individuals for expressing their hateful conduct through the use of a symbol. Of course, a noose could be used as a hate symbol, undoubtedly. However, to me this is a bit of an odd inclusion. To me this sounds like the importation of an American problem into Canada, and the use of that problem to divide and fearmonger. Canada does not have the same history as the United States does with this symbol.

Moreover, discussing symbols opens a Pandora's box. Who would decide what symbols are hateful? Well, according to the bill, the government could decide to add any new entity to a terrorist list, and therefore its symbols would become hate symbols. Is display enough to warrant prosecution, or does intent matter? These questions remain unanswered.

If we were to go down the path of selecting symbols, I would have several to offer. How about the hammer and sickle? If we want to talk about a hateful symbol that Canadians fought and died against, for example in the Korean War, the hammer and sickle would be one of them, but this just proves the point about the selective nature of what the Liberals think hate is. Burning churches is understandable. Conservatives had to drag the government, kicking and screaming, to list Samidoun as a terrorist organization. This tells us that it is not about hate. It is about things the Liberals disagree with, and that is the problem with this type of censorship.

There is a creeping culture of censorship that pervades the Liberal government: Bill C‑9, the Liberal censorship law; Bill C‑22, the Liberal surveillance law; Bill C‑35, the Liberal law on digital ID for all; Bill C‑36, the Liberal digital Stasi commission. We are sliding backwards into self-imposed immaturity, lacking the ability to use our own understanding without the guidance from another, in this case the state. Why is the Liberal government afraid of freedom? When a government lives in fear of its citizens, it seeks to censor them.

Let me close with a quote from the great Frederick Douglass, a great abolitionist, who said:

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence.

We have the beginnings of tyrannical government in Canada, and that is the problem. Bill C‑9 is only the beginning. It is not the end.