Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak to Bill C-8 this afternoon.
I have a few comments regarding the substance of the bill, but in light of the previous speeches, I think I can clarify the situation regarding unrecognized parties, although it is a bit complicated.
The reality of it is that we do not have to change our rules, but I share with my other colleagues that we have the right, as members of Parliament in parties with fewer than 12 MPs, under our standing rules and procedures of Parliament to stand in this place at report stage and present and debate substantive amendments. That is as a right, not as a favour on unanimous consent. That right we have at report stage is one that exists in our rules.
Why it does not happen goes back to a long story, and I do not want to lose my time to discuss Bill C-8 by explaining this. Back when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, the governing party objected to my efforts to try to protect environmental legislation in an omnibus budget bill in the spring of 2012. I presented amendments on the floor of the House at report stage. Long story short, the Prime Minister's Office of the day decided it was too much trouble to change the rules to deprive members of Parliament in a situation such as my own, which is now a situation the NDP finds itself in. Not long ago in the past, the Bloc Québécois was in the same situation.
Rather than change the rules, they came up with a simple expedient: Tell every committee to pass an identical motion to say members of Parliament serving in a party of fewer than 12 MPs or as independents would be given a short timeline of 24 hours' notice to present amendments at committee which are deemed to have been tabled. This was because, as non-committee members, we do not have the right to argue for our amendments, except during a one-minute period. We also do not have the right to withdraw our amendments, but the deemed presentation of our amendments occurs.
I have spent days in committees at clause-by-clause, waiting hours for the one chance I have to present one amendment and argue for it for a minute.
This is all to say that this process, in the case of Bill C-8, gave me a front-row seat to really good, strong attempts by Conservative members of Parliament, by the Bloc Québécois, by one NDP member in the same situation I am in and by a number of Green Party amendments that were put forward to try to improve the act. It is worth noting at this point that it represents four of the five parties that serve in this Parliament, working together to try to improve the legislation, with the governing party members opposing.
Even though we got through committee a number of strong amendments, at the end of the day, here in this chamber, an ex post facto change was made to the rulings that the majority of the committee members who had a vote, and, if we had had a vote, the other members of Parliament who were sitting at the table and presenting amendments, would have concurred in.
It is a strange road that leads me to every single committee on almost every piece of legislation when it gets to clause-by-clause to try to improve the legislation. As a right, I should not have to run from committee to committee. I should be able to make my amendments at report stage in one room, rather than sometimes simultaneously running from committee to committee.
I raise this because members of committee now routinely pass a motion sent down to them from on high. They do not question it or realize that what they are doing is reducing my rights as a member of Parliament. I have more rights if they do not pass that motion in committee, but it is now a mindless procedure. They never call me beforehand to ask how it would affect my rights or if they should pass it or not.
Unfortunately, this is the situation facing members of parties with fewer than 12 seats. We are only allowed to present amendments at report stage, here in the House.
The House is now considering Bill C-8 at third reading. Bill C-8, which we are debating in the House this afternoon, is virtually identical to Bill C-26, but it includes certain improvements that were made to that bill, which could not be passed because the House was prorogued.
We know that Bill C-26 was the first attempt to have a cybersecurity framework for this country to protect Canadians and be prepared for the numerous ways in which we need a proper framework for cybersecurity. Bill C-8 is an improvement over Bill C-26. There is more transparency. Improvements have been made, and there is more clarity around the question of what is essential infrastructure for Canadians in this area.
Bill C-8 is an omnibus bill that would create an entirely new act, the critical cyber-systems protection act, and amend many other acts. As much as we can stand here and say it is an improvement, it is also an improvement because at least some of the amendments that were made in clause-by-clause in committee, amendments primarily from the Conservative Party members of committee, improved the legislation and did more to protect privacy for Canadians. However, still, despite some improvements that we welcome, I will be voting against Bill C-8 because there are still too many loopholes and too many flaws.
I am quite certain of the bill's passage, and we do need legislation in this area, but not this. We are not ready yet. I very much hope that the Senate of Canada, in exercising sober second thought, will look at the debates here today and consider the briefs that were presented to the public safety committee from the Canadian Civil Liberties Union; the Citizen Lab, which is part of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy; OpenMedia; and a number of other concerned technical expert groups that, while looking at cybersecurity, think that this bill still has flaws that would create constitutional weaknesses and fail to properly protect encryption and the security of private information.
The concerns fall into a couple of broad categories. Again, when the Senate of Canada looks at this, I would ask it to please consider if the legislation is good enough to pass the tests. Cybersecurity is an interesting area, where Canada, in passing legislation, has an eye on what the U.K. threshold tests looks like for protection of personal information before our products can be used within the U.K. Certainly a number of experts have looked at this and think that Bill C-8 does not get us across the threshold for what privacy protections are required in other countries.
In general, despite improvements in transparency, the reality is that this law, Bill C-8, like other laws passed recently, would give individual ministers too much power. We do not have the requirement for warrants. There is not enough judicial oversight. We still have a situation where many of these orders can be made without the public knowing. The notion is that the minister alone would decide whether they can order a telecommunications company to pull access to their system or an individual Canadian, who will not necessarily know this is happening and not have an opportunity to speak to it.
The ongoing question is not only that this bill has loopholes, but it weakens existing protections that exist under other laws. Those points have been made well. I was going to particularly point to the brief of OpenMedia on Bill C-8, which points out, “A bad loophole you pass in this legislation does not just weaken the law; it will prove far more important than the law's intended purpose.” There are serious loopholes that must be fixed, and they have not been fixed. I certainly hope that the Senate will look at the Bloc Québécois amendment, which would make sure there is mandatory review of how this law is working within a confined and defined period of time.
In conclusion, it is clear that this bill is imperfect. No member of Parliament believes that the bill has been improved enough to make it perfect now.
We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let us hope that the Senate fixes the flaws, that the bill comes back to us and that the government accepts those fixes.
