Industry and Technology Committee on June 15th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Go ahead, Ms. DeRidder.

[Kelly DeRidder, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

You just did a press release on the data protection act—Bill C-36—and we haven't had any debriefing on this as the opposition. It's very new as I'm hearing about it, but the first question I'd like to ask is about the fact that it looks like you might be putting the onus on industry to protect our data. If we have no sovereign cloud, how are you going to govern that if it would then fall under the U.S. CLOUD Act?

[Evan Solomon, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I appreciate that the honourable member is in a difficult circumstance because we literally just tabled the bill, and I'm happy to have any ongoing conversations. Obviously, we want your feedback. I appreciate that.

There are two things about that. Number one, the piece of legislation, the protecting privacy and consumer data act, is very clear on the regulations for how Canadians' private information is going to be treated, and it will be setting up, as many have called for, a regulator. It's using the same regulator for the safe social media act. That regulator will have enforcement powers to keep Canadians safe and to make sure that private information is safe.

As for the second part of your question about cross-border concerns, I think you were asking about what happens if data crosses the border. The chain of custody is really important, and any company that is.... Data travels. They will have to fill out a privacy impact assessment. The onus is not on the businesses. They have clear rules—privacy impact assessments—for how they treat information, and the regulator can ask for it if there's a complaint.

I think for everybody it's common sense that we want to know, when we're giving our personal information to a company, how they're treating it and that it's safe when it crosses borders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Ms. DeRidder.

I understand that Ms. Begum and Mr. Bardeesy will be splitting their time. I'll leave it for the two of you to sort that out. You'll have five minutes between you.

[Doly Begum, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here.

I want to start by saying congratulations, and thank you for your work in launching the strategy and for taking into consideration Canadians and how we want to be ahead at this time. Another thing I want to also commend you on is not just the three principles but the pillars, which focus on safeguarding our democracy, making sure that we're empowering Canadians and, of course, focusing on sovereignty. All these pieces make this much stronger.

One thing I want to ask about is something we just discussed. Canada's AI for all strategy rightly recognizes that we want Canadian workers, researchers and businesses to benefit from AI. We also need the underlying infrastructure to be right here at home. That means focusing on data sovereignty, which we talked about, which brings us to the concerns around data centres. In my riding of Scarborough Southwest, the proposed expansion of the Stack data centre has raised many important questions and concerns from my constituents about electricity demand, water usage, land usage and, of course, the impact on local communities and community members.

Minister, could you talk about how our government is ensuring that the new AI investments—and you've just announced some as well—are planned in a way that strengthens AI sovereignty and innovation while also being transparent, sustainable and beneficial to the communities that host them?

[Evan Solomon, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thanks for the question. I appreciate your work.

Those are real questions that are coming from communities about this. This is new. Things are moving fast. That's why AI for all starts with trust. Technology moves at the speed of innovation, but citizens move at the speed of trust. That's why the first things we've done are the safe social media act and the protecting privacy and consumer data act.

First, Canadians must know, as the Prime Minister said, that we're going to protect your children, we're going to protect your privacy and we're going to protect your personal information. That's key.

We have to protect our democracy as well. That's why we have Bill C-25, Strong and Free Elections Act, which the transport minister Steve McKinnon tabled. It is really important to keep our elections free from interference from AI.

That's why the Minister of Justice has a piece of legislation to criminalize the non-consensual use of sexualized deepfake images of people and to make that a criminal act. That's why we have safe social media act, and that's why now we have protecting privacy and consumer data act.

There's a suite we're going to protect, but what about protecting our water? What about protecting our electricity rates? First and foremost, on energy use, building the economy of the future is going to require a lot of energy. We have to make sure that ratepayers do not pay for that. This is why we have a national electricity strategy to double our electricity grid by 2050. That was launched before the AI strategy for a reason. We have to invest in our energy systems to have the infrastructure to support the economy of the future.

Then we have to make sure that when we're building, we're doing it transparently, sustainably and in a way that will create jobs. That's why, just to give you an example, when we enter into an agreement through our enabling sovereign data centres and Canadian data centres, we want to build these with Canadian companies so the Canadian jobs are here.

The first one—the one we have done as a government—entered into an agreement in B.C. It's hydroelectric energy, which is clean, and it's closed-loop water. That's a phrase that sounds complicated, but people think that the data centres are just going to keep using water, but “closed loop” means that the water is looped around and reused all the time. There's even a great, big Canadian technology company in Montreal called Hypertec that does immersion cooling. They literally immerse the chips and the stacks in cooling. You don't need reusable water.

Then finally, there's heat reuse. They generate a lot of heat. That heat in the north can be used for greenhouses, as it has been. Hypertec is doing that with a data centre. It can be used, as in the case in B.C., to heat 150,000 homes. Those are really important questions.

Again, the province is the regulator. Provinces allocate power. There are many data centres, and we have to make sure that provinces also understand that ratepayers shouldn't pay for the innovation of others. They want the innovation to benefit them but not on the backs of higher power rates, and that's real.

[Doly Begum, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you so much, Minister.

[Evan Solomon, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Ms. Begum.

Unfortunately, that is the time we have. I'll let the minister's colleagues give him grief for the depth of his answers, which took away from Mr. Bardeesy's ability to ask questions. That's tongue-in-cheek; it's all in jest.

I will note, Ms. DeRidder, that you would certainly be welcome to come back—as would others—when we take a closer look at the piece of legislation that the minister tabled today. This will be the appropriate committee for the oversight of that.

Colleagues, I appreciate, as always, the collaborative nature of this committee. There were good questions, which allowed us to elicit some more information about the work that's being done.

Minister, thank you for taking the time to be here.

With that, colleagues, I'll see everybody tomorrow, as we discussed earlier.

The meeting is adjourned.