Government Operations Committee on March 22nd, 2018

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I do not want any redundancy. I fully understand the scope of the motion. I have no problem with the principle, but, since we want our committees to be effective, we want to be able to work on multiple files. Like other committees, we have a lot of work to do. Given that this motion is parallel or similar to the one at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, I feel that we are ending up talking about the same things.

Basically, ethics is a matter for all committees. So this could be done in any committee really. I do not think that is effective. We want to have that information and the other committee will be able to get it for us. In this case, I cannot support this request, not because I do not like the principle of it, quite the contrary, but because, in my opinion, we can wait for the conclusions in the report by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Over here, we can be tackling other topics that are just as important and can keep moving forward.

For that reason, I will not be supporting this motion.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I appreciate what you're saying, Mr. Ayoub, but it is relevant, because it's specific to government advertising. We asked the question, when the bureaucrats were here, about the analytics and who had access to it. We were told specifically that non-exempt staff working for the government had access to the analytics, but the public didn't. Obviously, therefore, there is information being kept.

We're talking about a Canadian who has both in the past and since the election been hired by the current government and used this information to meddle in the U.S. election quite significantly. This is a very large story. Assuming therefore that he's had access to the exact same information that the Canadian government has collected, it is important that the Privacy Commissioner come specifically to talk to the issue of Canadian advertising that we studied in committee.

There is a comment here from her. She says that Canada's federal private sector privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, generally requires consent for the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activities. She goes on to say that organizations must identify the reasons for collecting personal information and ensure that these purposes are limited to what a reasonable person would expect under the circumstances.

I don't think a reasonable person in any circumstance would expect, by clicking on a government site—whether about accessing government services or fraud services or any information—that their information would be taken by Facebook and made available to the likes of Christopher Wylie for his use or for political uses.

Again, this was never settled in our study. It is very important, especially with everything that's going on and what this gentleman has done, what parties have done, and what the current government is caught up in based on the fact that it hired Christopher Wylie with taxpayers' money. It is important that she come and address the specific use of Facebook, Twitter, and Google by government for advertising, and the privacy rights of Canadians who are accessing these Facebook sites, etc. The government stated that it is almost exclusively using social media now for advertising.

I'm not done—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, your time is up, Mr. McCauley.

I'm sorry—

Yes, on a point of order.

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

On a point of order, this is debate on the motion. This is not his seven minutes to question the...so you—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I appreciate that, and I'm following what Mr. Lukiwski used to do. I am not making rules as I go along. Mr. Lukiwski is the chair. I am the vice-chair. He never stopped the time, so if your time is up, then your time is up. I am just following due process. I cannot really bypass the process he has established, or I would have allowed it.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We'll refer it to the clerk.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

We can suspend the meeting for a minute.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I only need another 30 seconds, anyway. My gentleman is correct with the point of order, but I only need another 30 seconds. It's just the very fact that the questions were not answered, the very fact that there's this huge scandal going on. I don't believe the ethics...is going to specifically look into the issues of what we brought up in our specific study about Facebook advertising, government advertising. We saw that the government has moved exclusively over to social media for, I think, 85% of their advertising now. They've taken it away from newspapers, local newspapers, radios. Moving all the government advertising over to Facebook, I think, is a very serious issue that we need to address. It comes out of our study, not out of the ethics study.

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

On a point of order, Madam Chair, you had mentioned at the beginning of the debate on the motion that the motion appeared to overlap or perhaps be covered by a motion approved at the ethics committee. My understanding is that the motion that was moved by Mr. Angus at the ethics committee was actually defeated.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

It was unanimously approved.

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

Are we certain about that?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Absolutely. Yes, it was unanimously approved.

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

I will defer to you, Madam Chair, but it would be certainly, I think, upsetting to those at the table if we weren't operating from correct information. So I defer to you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You can double-check. Ask your staff to double-check, but the ethics committee approved it unanimously. It was proposed by Mr. Angus.

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

I will defer to you, Madam Chair, on that point, but it is critical to the debate that we are having on this motion. I think we need to be certain that we're correct.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Just to let the committee know, when Mr. Lukiwski had stopped the debate, and the time of the person talking was utilized as part of the debate, nobody objected to it, so he continued on. I'm not going to object to your wanting to debate, because I think you have the right to, but I guess we will have to tell Tom next time not to do it.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

There's one other thing. I'm happy to invite Facebook as well to discuss how they do collection of their information, and Twitter and Google as well, and how they're collecting private information specifically regarding government advertising. This was not to go past that; it's specifically regarding government advertising. Again, despite the report, the government has not moved toward recognizing the report or following the recommendations of the report to return to more traditional advertising such as our valued local newspapers, our valued local radio stations. The government is continuing to push all the money toward this entity that's involved in this massive scandal.

I'm done. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. Ayoub.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Personally, I recommend holding that debate at the subcommittee to ensure that a broader study is done and to have representatives appear from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all the social media. In that way, we would be able to see the possible and potential repercussions, and we would not have to make assumptions about what is happening, what could be happening, or what did not happen.

At the moment, things are fuzzy. Some information seems to be bandied around by the social media. It is now affecting Canada, but the scope is even wider. Facebook is accessible everywhere on the planet. It is not just the Government of Canada that uses Facebook and social media.

In that context, I am reassured to see that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics is considering a study of this matter. We will see what the result is. The meeting is public, so we will be able to read the blues. No report will be published but we will be able to read the blues.

The subcommittee should consider it and reserve time for people from Facebook, among others, to appear. Personally, I see no problem with that. We will find the time to plan that meeting.

However, this motion asks for the meeting to be held no later than May 10. That is a little quick and does not allow us to plan the meeting. Up to now, the committee has always planned its meetings very consensually and very well. I feel that we should continue in that spirit.

There is no point in rejecting the motion simply out of principle. It is just a matter of not doing the same thing twice.

I propose that we vote now, so that we can move on to something else.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. Ayoub, are you proposing an amendment to Mr. McCauley's motion?

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I am not proposing an amendment; I am just rejecting the motion as it presently stands.

I propose that we meet as a subcommittee, less formally. We could come to an agreement at the subcommittee in order to decide what will happen subsequently. I propose that we call the question and continue the meeting with our witnesses.

If we have to vote on Mr. McCauley's motion, let's do it.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Are you calling the vote?

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Yes, I call the vote.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. McCauley.