Information & Ethics Committee on March 24th, 2022

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

I appreciate that. I'd like to dig into that a little deeper, because the truth of the matter is that if we ask the question.... As a kid, my dad used to tell me all the time to ask the question quanto uno: who benefits?

With private sector companies offering this technology to security surveillance, whether it's the police forces or the RCMP, we've entered this grey zone. In your recommendations to the Privacy Commissioner, have you addressed that grey zone of those loopholes in implementing a more...?

The question is, if you're asking for a moratorium, how do we make sure one works? It's so widespread at this point that to make it effective.... I'm asking what the efficacy would be.

[Brenda McPhail]

It's a good question. One of the major gaps in our privacy regime is that our federal commissioner does not have enforcement powers and cannot issue binding orders. One purpose of a moratorium would be to give the government a chance to rectify that gap, should it choose to do so.

There's always the question when you make a law of whether people will follow it. If you issue an order, will people comply? I think we're all very aware of the risks of that kind of equation after living through all these years of this pandemic. The fact that it may or may not be 100% effective in every regard doesn't mean that it's not necessary and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try, because the stakes are so high. We are talking about the charter-protected rights of people across Canada who are at risk every day we allow these technologies to continue to be used without the legal safeguards in place to protect them.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

My question now is to Mr. Labonté. We know that a lot of the AI technology that is out there has issues in discriminating against non-whites. Steve Lohr from The New York Times said at one point—I think it's a low number, actually—there's a 35% inaccuracy when it comes to discriminating against non-whites, women and children. I assume it might be higher than that, especially in light of the 2019 NIST report.

Who is designing this technology? Are we asking those questions and making sure that these algorithms and the design of this technology have a visible minority and racialized lens from where you sit at CRI?

[Françoys Labonté]

We don't have a lot of time, but if we go back many years to when we were doing statistics, normally we were designing experiments to make sure that our samples were representative so that at the end we would get statistically significant results.

Now we're in a world where there is just a lot of data, and you take whatever you have, and it gives what it gives.

The issue of designing systems based on the representativeness of data is a key issue. Very often, when we say that systems are biased, it's just that the initial data samples are not equal or are not representative in an equal way. This is the challenge generally. It's not the technology per se; it's the data that has been provided to the system.

Dr. LaPlante mentioned all the issues with AI. It points to something like our AI system becoming a critical system that should be regulated. It's like when you design cars or airplanes; you have to demonstrate all these issues of reliability, reproducibility and all these elements. A lot of these questions point to this, in fact.

AI is still the new generation—

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

I'm really sorry to interrupt, but that went substantially over time, and I am going to have to conclude that round.

We've completed the first two rounds. We have half an hour to go. We expect bells to ring in probably about 15 minutes, but we'll carry on with more questions.

We will go to Mr. Kurek, for five minutes, followed by Ms. Kayabaga.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

First, let me take this opportunity to thank all of the witnesses, as it's been a very enlightening and I think meaningful conversation. I think all parties would agree that the subject and real substance of what we're getting to here is very valuable for our country.

Mr. Chair, if you would indulge me, I would use these few moments of my time to move the motion that I gave verbal notice of on March 3 of this year. I'll read that into the record once again:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h), the committee undertake a study into issues of conflict of interest and the Lobbying Act in relation to pandemic spending, provided that: (a) the evidence and documentation received by the committee during both sessions of the 43rd Parliament on the subject be taken into consideration by the committee in the current session; (b) the committee adopt the report entitled Questions of Conflict of Interest and Lobbying in Relation to Pandemic Spending, originally adopted as the committee's second report in the second session of the 43rd Parliament; (c) dissenting or supplementary opinions be submitted electronically in both official languages to the clerk of the committee within 48 hours of the adoption of this motion; (d) the chair table this report in the House on or before March 31, 2022.

Mr. Chair, I will keep this very brief, as I hope we will find support among members of the committee to simply do this, not reopen this issue but rather to acknowledge the hard work that was done by members of this committee prior to the election that was called last summer, and to ensure that Canadians have a chance to see the report that all members of this committee worked on. I believe there are members from most parties who are still sitting on this committee from the last Parliament.

With that, Mr. Chair, I would move this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

All right, Mr. Kurek, you have moved the motion.

Are you going to speak further on the motion, because I have other speakers? If you're done, then I am going to go to debate on the motion.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Chair, I would simply say that I have endeavoured to be as uncontroversial as possible. I would leave it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you.

The motion is moved. It was on notice, and given the date there, it's not surprising today that we're going to have to deal with it.

I have Mr. Fergus first. I'll put you on the order. I have several.

Go ahead, Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I'm dumbfounded.

I'm surprised that, during a particularly important discussion we're having on facial recognition, where all parties seem to be expressing some grave concerns on this technology and how it affects especially people of colour, women and young people, we would play this game, and it is a bit of a game.

Mr. Chair, contrary to what my respected colleague had indicated, as far as I can see, I'm the only one who was on the committee from last year when we went through this very long debate, and then we went through, I think, a very substantive report.

May I add, Mr. Chair, for the members, for every other member who was not on the committee at the time, that every recommendation sought by the party of the member opposite was adopted in that report, every single one? It was presented to the House. I am trying to figure out why, almost one year later, we're going back through this again.

We've done some really good work in this Parliament. I sit on this committee. I sit on PROC. I've been impressed by the goodwill of members to try to put down their narrow partisan interest for the benefit of Canadians and get to some really good initiatives.

This discussion on facial recognition has been sitting around for not one year, not two years, but three years. Three years have gone by when we could have acted on this. More scraping of faces from the Internet and more people facing unfair targeting by using this technology have happened over three years. Now we're going to open up something that we have spent countless hours debating, not only debating but coming up with a report on. My friend's party got every single recommendation it sought, unamended. Are we going to go back into this again? That's a waste. It's a disappointment. I have to say, frankly, that it makes me very angry.

We've been trying to get at this study for three years. We finally got here, and every question here today....

Hats off to all my friends here around the table for their serious questions.

So now we're going to play politics with something we settled a year ago, and which has already been presented to the House of Commons?

Mr. Chair, it's ridiculous and it's insulting. It's mind-boggling.

It's really deeply disappointing.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus.

I have quite a speaking list now.

Next I have Ms. Khalid.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I echo the sentiments of my colleague. I thank the witnesses today for appearing and helping our endeavour into this really important legislation.

As Mr. Kurek was reading the words of his motion, I actually had a copy of a motion on December 13 that had been moved by Mr. Brassard in this very committee. It was word for word the exact same motion.

I know that in our House of Commons Procedure and Practice, chapter 20, under “Format and Admissibility” of motions, it says:

A motion that is the same in substance as one already decided in the same session is inadmissible; however, a member may move a motion which, although similar, is sufficiently different as to constitute a new question.

I do see that the only difference between Mr. Kurek's motion as he's presented today and the previous one from Mr. Brassard is that there's a new section, (d), which just adds a timeline to the exact same substance.

Can I humbly request your ruling on this as to whether this motion is actually in order or not?

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

I accepted this motion when it was made. It does contain a couple of differences and I have ruled it in order. That is my ruling.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, in that case, having listened to the words from Mr. Kurek and having compared them to the exact same motion that was voted on and defeated in this committee on December 13, I would appeal your decision.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Ms. Khalid has challenged my ruling that this motion is in order. I'll ask the clerk to commence the vote.

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

To be clear, it's that the ruling of the chair stands, right?

[The Clerk]

Exactly. I will actually explain that.

There was debate on a motion, the chair ruled the motion admissible, and Ms. Khalid is challenging the decision of the chair.

The question is whether the decision of the chair on the motion from Mr. Kurek be sustained.

If you think the decision of the chair that the motion is admissible is correct, you vote yes.

If you think the decision of the chair is incorrect and that the motion should be considered inadmissible, you vote no.

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 6; nays 5)

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Ms. Khalid, you had the floor and you still have the floor if you have anything to add. Otherwise, I will go to the next speaker.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Yes, Mr. Chair.

In that case, I will start by apologizing to our witnesses today for their cut time in the important testimony they had to provide for us today on this very important work that we are doing.

I would ask, through you, Mr. Chair, that if there any additional items that they would like to have highlighted based on the questioning and on what they've heard from each other and members today, then perhaps they could provide those in writing. We would greatly appreciate those submissions. We hope we can get back to this study in a reasonably quick fashion.

I will also say, Mr. Chair, that I am quite disappointed. As I said, these are literally, word for word, the exact same words that on December 13 were already voted on and defeated. We went on to study a lot more important things, as Mr. Fergus very clearly outlined. We are now back to square one. We will now be spending a lot of time, I think, debating the merits of a motion that we had already spent a lot of time debating the merits of.

I would hope that the committee would understand the importance of why we need to move on to this facial recognition study. We are a country that really needs to have strengthened privacy laws and laws around the regulation of industry taking advantage of the privacy of Canadians. We really need to reform PIPEDA. It was put in place a long time before facial recognition and artificial intelligence came into the picture.

I am hoping we'll get back to that and to studying more relevant issues that we haven't already rehashed. As Mr. Fergus said, we have been waiting to start this study for the past three years. I can't begin to really highlight how important it is that we continue to move forward with this study and that we put forward some serious, strong recommendations for reforming how industry and how technologies like artificial intelligence and facial recognition need to be curbed to make sure that we strike that balance. One of our witnesses, I believe it was Mr. Labonté, talked about the balance between privacy, social acceptance and societal benefits—

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

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

There has been a point of order.

Mr. Bezan, state your point that is—

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

The point of order is relevance. Ms. Khalid's comments have nothing to do with the motion. She's talking about the study that we were talking about earlier. We should be getting back to business.

We have a lot of time here. We could get back to the study if we just had the vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan.

I was allowing Ms. Khalid some latitude in her remarks that were straying a little bit outside the motion itself.

It has come to my attention that bells are ringing. At this point, I will require the unanimous consent of the committee to continue.

I see heads shaking.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.