Industry Committee on Sept. 26th, 2023

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

So there are higher industry standards for data protection. We are very anxious to see your amendments in that regard. I will agree with my colleague Mr. Masse, because the exercise is much more difficult today without that information.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Once again, the intent is really to move the debate forward. If we plan to do certain things but do not say so, we will only talk about things that we already agree on.

I do understand though that you need my remarks and a draft of the amendments that we will be presenting and that I already have. At the same time, we can provide you the official wording of the bill as quickly as possible for your clause-by-clause consideration.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

No one was expecting that Bill C‑27 would be passed in its entirety.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Masse, you have the floor.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The one good thing is that we are good at robotic repetition. We know that here, especially at two o'clock or three o'clock in Ottawa with question period, so I'm hoping we should be able to fix that problem.

The tribunal knee-capped the Competition Bureau in these past few weeks. Do this tribunal and the bill as written right now have the same capability to do the same thing to the Privacy Commissioner?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

First of all, let me comment on that, and then I'll turn to the officials for the very specific parts.

Like you, I was pretty surprised, I would say, to see that decision. Obviously, as we're looking at competition reform in this country, we have to think about some of the things that we may do to address that.

With respect to the Privacy Commissioner, I'm happy to defer to the officials on your specific questions.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I have only a couple of minutes, and I have a quick follow-up question.

[Mark Schaan]

Very quickly, the tribunal has two functions. One is, upon the recommendation of the Privacy Commissioner, to issue an administrative monetary penalty in relation to the violation of the consumer privacy protection act. The second is to ensure that there's an appeal mechanism for any decisions of the Privacy Commissioner, and it's on the basis of law that the determination would be made, such that there would be a review or an appeal of the decision. That's also reviewable.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's the cost allocation that is the issue.

I have only a brief time here. I want to know—and you can take this away—whether they can do the same thing in terms of the financial penalty on this tribunal process.

Second to that, if we have a fix in this bill for that, are you agreeable to doing the same thing for Bill C-56 right now in order to protect the Competition Bureau and make them consistent, so that we don't have the Competition Bureau having to pay a financial penalty in the courts while the Privacy Commissioner doesn't?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

It's a very good point, Mr. Masse. As I told you, when I saw that, I was already thinking about how we want to look at it in terms of competition reform. Your point is well taken that whatever provisions we have in one tribunal should be reflected in the other.

Looking at international best practices, which is what I'm doing now to see what's being done in other jurisdictions, the reason why the tribunal.... It was because they didn't want to be the judge and the executioner at the same time, so we needed to provide an appeal level. In the case of the Privacy Commissioner, you could have monetary penalties, so you need to have due process, either through a court of general jurisdiction or a tribunal.

However, your point about what we've seen recently is something that's on my mind and we're looking at.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I hope there's openness to making sure that doesn't happen here, because I will have no business with this tribunal process if it's the case that they can do that.

Second of all, if we have a fix, I'd like to see if we can do it in Bill C-56 to have consistency, because it's an affront to the offices and it detracts from the whole point.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Let me just say, to the point from the member—just briefly, Chair—I want to be clear with every member and with Canadians who are watching that Bill C-56 deals with a number of things on competition that are focused on groceries. However, I want people to be clear that this is not the end of the road. We're still looking at competition and bringing reforms to competition.

Whether it's going to be included in Bill C-56 or not, I think it's probably part of the general thing we're looking at with competition. Bill C-56 is really to deal with things that matter to Canadians immediately, which are around affordability and groceries.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I agree, but if there's consent, we can open up a chapter of any bill, so I'm hoping—

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

If we had unanimous consent, we could approve it tonight.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

There we go. I'm in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Minister, we have two five-minute periods left in this second round, which should bring us to 5:40. Is that okay for you?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

You are the boss.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I am not in charge of your schedule, but I'll take that as a yes.

Mr. Généreux, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Minister, I have a lot of respect for you, but I have trouble understanding that the government, knowing that the act has not been updated for 20 years, comes along nearly a year and a half after introducing its privacy and artificial intelligence bill, and tells us about amendments that will essentially define the bill, without providing a copy to us. We will be meeting with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada on Thursday to ask questions about aspects of privacy and the bill, but we do not have the amendments. This is completely inconceivable. I don't know how you can justify that. That is my first point.

Secondly, to my knowledge, the public consultations included 300 individuals, organizations, universities, etc. Canada has a population of 40 million, and those people are already being affected by information technologies to some extent, including artificial intelligence. The government consulted 300 individuals, essentially about privacy, if I am not mistaken. The people I have had the opportunity to speak with to date were not consulted. You say you held public consultations on the bill, but shouldn't they have been broader? That is my first question.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

First, on your point about the amendments, Mr. Généreux, you know how much I respect you, but you cannot blame us for listening to you. We took this approach in order to come up with something concrete. The worst thing would be to wait for clause-by-clause consideration to propose our amendments. We listened to you and that is why we are proposing amendments in the direction you suggested. There are two ways of looking at it, one of which is “good, a minister is listening”. That's a good thing, at least we are going in the same direction as you requested.

Regarding the public consultations, you will see tomorrow that I am in contact with many people in the field of artificial intelligence. There are of course many people with something to say about it, but we do consult broadly. We already have a good relationship with the artificial intelligence companies in Canada; we know them very well. We have a national strategy, we consulted experts, including Yoshua Bengio, one of the founders of artificial intelligence, who has a group around him and was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Council established by the UN secretary general. So there are quite a number of people who have stated their views. We are in contact with people who are world leaders in the field of artificial intelligence.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I agree with you.

I started by reminding everyone that this is the end of September 2023. Yet the government tabled this bill in June 2022 and we are learning today that there will be substantial amendments. They are not minor amendments because they involve the privacy of Canadians. The government just told us today that, finally, this will be addressed within the bill and not in the preamble. These are absolutely fundamental aspects of the bill, and we are just learning about them today.

As soon as you decided to make the amendments that you are tabling today, we should have had a copy of them then. How do you expect us to work with the witnesses and ask them questions? I have a question for Mr. Schaan because we would normally have been here at 3:30 this afternoon. We would have had questions for the government officials. But how would they have been able to answer without having the amendments in front of them? That's not how it works.

I have a lot of difficulty understanding the process that led to such fundamental amendments being tabled today, a year and a half after the bill was introduced. On Thursday, in two days, we will be talking to witnesses about amendments that we don't even have. That's not going to work.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I hear you and am listening carefully, Mr. Généreux, but at the same time, these are amendments that people wanted. So I think we are moving in the right direction.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I understand that people wanted them.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Not just you; all the stakeholders wanted them. So we are moving in the right direction, we are doing what people suggested and putting them forward. This will allow us to move more quickly and say it has already been done.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Minister, did you write these amendments on a paper napkin or somewhere else? They exist, have already been drafted. If you have them, that's because they are fundamental to the bill. If they have already been drafted, table them. What are you waiting for to table them?