Information & Ethics Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2025

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you.

I want to pick up on the point about the change we've seen around standards and how we have struggled to adapt, in many respects, from an era of physical products.

We've had witnesses to the committee here who offered a couple of different perspectives, particularly around the issue of liability. On the one hand, some witnesses have spoken about existing laws being able to be interpreted to adjust for AI and digital platforms and some of the harms that we've talked about today. We've had others who have said that more specific laws may be useful here, even if it is difficult to capture a general purpose AI system, for the harms that a different user might explore or experience using that platform.

What's your perspective? Should we be looking at some sort of greater form of liability for an AI system? Where can we look for guidance on the type of framework we should create to capture that?

[Vasiliki Bednar]

I think it's very important. In something I wrote earlier this year, I said that if the toaster burns you or if something happens, you have recourse. You have a warranty. You can sue. There are standards. What do you do when a chatbot encourages you to hurt yourself or hurt someone else?

That question of liability probably comes back to a lot of the platform regulation questions that have been so difficult for Canada because, through trade law, we enshrined the U.S.'s section 230, so we've accepted that it's very difficult or not appropriate for us to hold digital platforms accountable for the material that they put forward. Now, with LLMs, we see this accelerated.

In terms of jurisdictions for inspiration, do you just want to jump in?

[Matthew da Mota]

In terms of specific jurisdictions, I don't know if there's an example that I could jump to right away.

One suggestion that I've heard previously is to attach training to licensing programs, like engineering. Make sure there's a licensed engineer in the jurisdiction attached to training or attached to deployment that makes sure that person now takes on liability for the deployment of that tool.

That's one example. It's making sure that you are ensuring that individuals involved in the development and deployment of these tools are actually going to be held accountable under existing programs, like licensing and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you.

I want to say to the members of the committee, and I made this point the other night, that I think it's critical that we get the minister in front of this committee. We have, through the clerk, reached out to him and his office 11 times. We got the final answer on Monday that he isn't going to appear before the committee.

I'm really encouraging members of the Liberal Party to get the minister here. I think it's a critical step. We've heard a lot of great information as a result of this study. I think the minister needs to come before this committee and answer questions on some of the things that we've heard and other issues related to his mandate.

I'm extremely disappointed that we have not been able to get the minister here.

Madame Lapointe, I'm going to ask you to weigh in on this, please.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I think that he’s appearing before a committee today. Next week, I believe he’s going to be travelling for the G7. That’s why he hasn’t been able to come here.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

We've been very flexible in our time. We've asked 11 times for him to come before this committee. Each time, he's not been able to do that.

Please encourage him to come. We're going to be continuing this study for a bit more, perhaps after we come back. We need the minister here. We can't have no as an answer.

I want to thank our witnesses, Ms. Bednar, Mr. Gonzalo and Dr. da Mota, for coming here today. You've really added a lot of value to this study.

Dr. da Mota, for your first time here, we appreciate your expertise on this issue.

Ms. Bednar, if you want to mark your calendar for December 3, 2026, we'll be glad to have you back in another year.

That's all I have for today. The meeting is adjourned.