Industry Committee on May 28th, 2019

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Yes. We talked about that last time. You asked me specifically about this pilot project, and I said I was made aware roughly at the same time that you were made aware and the public was made aware.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I would just hope, Minister, that StatsCan would be listening to this conversation and would not proceed. I think it's important that Canadians know that their information is theirs.

I'll pass the rest of my time over to Mr. Lloyd.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you, Minister and officials, for coming.

Minister, my question is on a similar vein. You noted that the StatsCan collection of private banking information is on hold. Are there any plans to move forward, after the election or before the election, with collecting Canadians' banking data?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

As I mentioned, this is a pilot project that has been put on hold. The Privacy Commissioner is looking into the matter. We'll see what recommendation and feedback we get from the Privacy Commissioner. We'll make sure that any steps that are taken take into consideration any of those proposed changes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

So you're not ruling out continuing with this pilot project in the future?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

What I'm fundamentally saying is that we need good quality, reliable data, but we need to do it in a manner that protects people's privacy. That's the way we should proceed.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

I'm sure you're aware that in 2016 there were news reports that the Liberal caucus research bureau paid a Cambridge Analytica associate $100,000 for a collection of information from Canadians.

I'm wondering if anything in your digital charter or digital guidelines takes into account the possible abuse of Canadians' data in this manner. Is your department taking action on this file?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I'm responsible for PIPEDA, which oversees commercial activities. The changes I propose relate to commercial activities, not non-commercial activities.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Okay. It's very important when we're looking at things such as election interference, which the digital guidelines do bring up, that we hold our political actors accountable on these matters as well.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Absolutely, and you may recall that my colleague Karina Gould talked yesterday about how we can hold platforms more accountable for fake news as well, and for the spread of hate online, for example, or extremism or terrorism.

You'll see in the coming weeks and months that this is really a cross-government approach. Many of my colleagues will speak to the different aspects of the charter and how we're really improving privacy, safety and security for Canadians.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're going to move to you, Mr. Sheehan. You have five minutes.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Before I begin, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you, the rest of the committee and all members from all parties for the support of the steel and aluminum industry and the tariff lift. The minister referenced a few of the studies and things we've done.

I remember standing with many of you and with your predecessor down in Washington, with a real Team Canada approach. I appreciate that, Mr. Chair.

In that same vein, Minister, you were in Hamilton about a year ago when the government announced $2 billion in aid for the steel and aluminum industry, including $250 million from the SIF, which you referenced during your remarks.

Could you confirm to the committee that the support from this government will continue for the steel and aluminum industries? Although the tariffs are lifted, they're still recovering. Could you please touch on that?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

It was a very important day for Canada. It was a very important day for our economy when we announced that these tariffs had been lifted, both the tariffs imposed by the Americans and our response. You may recollect that we responded very quickly, dollar for dollar, to these unjust and unfair tariffs imposed under section 232 by the administration under the guise of national security.

Above and beyond that, we also put forward a $2-billion support package, which you highlighted. This is to say that until we resolve this issue with the tariffs, we need to continue to support the sector. That was through financing through BDC, particularly for smaller businesses, and also through EDC, to help a lot of the steel and aluminum companies to export and to make sure they had financing.

Also, $250 million was allocated through the strategic innovation fund. The goal there was to help our businesses, particularly our producers, to be more competitive. Of that $250 million, close to $180 million has been committed already for different initiatives and projects. Some have been announced, and we'll continue to announce the remaining ones going forward.

To answer your question more directly, we absolutely will continue to support the steel and aluminum sectors. They're a critical part of our economy. They employ tens of thousands of people directly and tens of thousands of people indirectly in communities across the country. We're very optimistic about the future of the steel and aluminum sector.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much. We appreciate the investment of $90 million for Algoma Steel in the Soo.

Switching gears a bit to CanCode, you referenced this during your remarks. I have two sisters in northern Ontario who are principals, one at a high school and one at a French immersion elementary school up in Wawa. I was looking at the stats for northern Ontario and saw that 2,500 teachers in northern Ontario have accessed CanCode in 160 communities.

Perhaps you could give us some comments about CanCode and some of the funding over the last couple of years for the nation, and some of the benefits that you see coming forward as well.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

One of the key challenges we have is that we want to promote lifelong learning but we also respect provincial jurisdiction when it comes to K-12 education. Recently in Ontario, for example, we saw many cuts to education by the provincial government. One of the areas we felt we needed to invest in was digital skills and digital literacy for young people. It reflects the jobs of today, and ultimately the jobs of tomorrow as well.

We worked with not-for-profit organizations to build capacity that could be utilized by different schools across the country. The uptake has been phenomenal. As I indicated in my remarks, over one million kids have been exposed to coding and have learned different coding skills, which is really important. We've also empowered teachers by making sure they get the necessary tools to teach kids.

We've impacted a lot of rural and smaller communities that are dealing with a lot of challenges with high-speed Internet connectivity. This type of investment in coding has helped those communities as well. We've had a particular focus on indigenous people and girls. We're seeing the tech sector evolving. There's greater participation of women, but far less than the percentage of the population, so we need to make sure we see greater balance and diversity in our tech ecosystem.

Investments in coding are designed to do that as well, targeting younger girls to make sure they are provided more exposure to opportunities to promote STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This has been a very successful program. That's why we added another $60 million in our budget for coding. You've seen the estimates as well, to help an additional one million kids to be exposed to coding going forward. We do this in a way that protects and preserves the provincial jurisdictions' responsibility when it comes to education. We're very proud of the fact that this is part of our overall commitment to the innovation and skills plan.

You can't have innovation without skills. The global skills strategy, the work-integrated learning, the concierge services I talked about and the supercluster, mid-career training grants for people who want to go back to school. All this is designed to make sure that we invest in our number one resource, which is our people, to allow them to succeed going forward, particularly where enormous transition is occurring due to technology.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We'll go back to you again, Mr. Albas, for five minutes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, in number nine of your guidelines, freedom from hate and violent extremism, the Prime Minister has obviously been talking a lot, referring to protecting Canadians from hate, violent extremism as well as disinformation. I believe no one here defends hate speech. All Canadians deserve to feel safe in their communities and online.

How will you enforce this measure? How will you monitor these platforms while also protecting free speech?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Free speech is absolutely essential. It's part of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is why I became a Liberal. This is core to our democracy and what it means to be Canadian.

At the same time there are clear limitations to that when it comes to hate. For example, we see newspapers and broadcasters that hold themselves to account when it comes to not spewing that kind of hate on their platforms. Clearly, these digital platforms that have emerged also have a responsibility. We are all very aware of the 51 individuals who were killed in Christchurch, New Zealand. That prompted this call to action where the Prime Minister was at pains to say that platforms need to step up.

If they have the technology to bring people together, to connect people and they are investing in AI and all these different technologies, they need to deploy those technologies to prevent those platforms from being used as a means to disseminate extremism, terrorism or hate. That's what we're trying to do as the government, to apply pressure to these platforms to hold them to account. Those platforms recognize that they need to step up as well. That's one key mechanism of how we want to deal with this.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

In the last Parliament we passed legislation—your party supported it—to ensure that the promotion of terrorism via website is against the Criminal Code. I'm sure no business like Facebook or others would want to be criminally liable.

But Minister, there's a practical component here; 300 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded every minute; 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day.

How do you intend to monitor and regulate this huge body of material?

Do you intended to hire half of Canadians to monitor the other half?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

No. I think we need to invest in technologies, in solutions that can deal with these issues. There's no doubt that 90% of the total data that has been generated has occurred in the last two years. Clearly vast amounts of data are being generated. You've highlighted some examples through YouTube and the pictures that have gone online as well. We need to recognize that this is going to happen. The platform that generates, that allows for this type of data to be generated, that allows for these types of videos to be posted, also has a responsibility to use technologies, to use human resources where they think it's appropriate and to find solutions to these challenges.

I'm confident they will be able to do so. When you speak to these technology providers, these platforms, these experts, they recognize they can and must do more to prevent their platforms from being a means to promote such hateful stuff.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Minister, the sites that we are speaking about right now—Facebook, etc.—are some of the major web giants. The Internet has billions of pages that government cannot possibly monitor, short of a massive Internet firewall like they have in China. In China, the government sees everything that people get to see, reviews everything that people get to see and pulls it down. I think it's a reasonable question: How, practically, will these guidelines be implemented?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

As I indicated, it's really up to the private sector to step up, and if they fail to do so, we'll look at what options are available. That's what my colleague Karina Gould said. The status quo is unacceptable. We cannot fall for the trap where the platforms have said, “We're simply a platform, we can't control what”—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I'm not talking about the minister.