Public Safety Committee on April 8th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting 101 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely by using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. To prevent disruptive audio feedback incidents during our meeting, we kindly ask that all participants keep their earpieces away from any microphone. Audio feedback incidents can seriously injure interpreters and disrupt our proceedings. I will remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

I will also quickly remind you of an informal meeting with the Norwegian delegation at 5:30 today, for those interested.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, March 27, 2023, the committee is resuming its study of Bill C-26, an act respecting cybersecurity, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other acts. Today the committee resumes its clause-by-clause consideration, beginning with clause 12.

I will now welcome the officials who are with us. They are available to answer questions regarding the bill, but will not deliver any opening statements.

From the Department of Industry, we have Andre Arbour, director general, strategy and innovation policy sector; from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, we welcome Colin MacSween, director general, national cybersecurity directorate, and William Hartley, acting manager; and from the Communications Security Establishment, we have Stephen Bolton, director general, strategic policy, and Richard Larose, senior technical adviser.

Thank you for joining us today. With that, we will begin—

Yes, Mr. Shipley, please go ahead.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you.

First of all, welcome back, everyone. It's been a couple of weeks. Hopefully everyone remembers where we left off, because I certainly don't remember exactly where we were.

I have a couple of housekeeping items. Could I ask for UC to reopen the items that we need to change, because the legislative drafting folks have informed us that there are a couple of little mistakes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Is there agreement?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you.

Did everybody get these? Yes, they have them.

The first one is that we need to reopen NDP-7 and add, under section 15.21(2)(b), a subparagraph (i) that would read, “the number of times during the previous fiscal year that, under subsection 15.2(6), an order prevailed over a decision of the Commission made under this Act”.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

While we're figuring out the specific language, could I ask the ISED officials if that is just technical, or do they deem it to change in any way the intention of what was passed prior?

[Andre Arbour, Director General, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector, Department of Industry]

No, I don't see an operational problem with this text. It actually had been discussed in the last session, but it might have got lost in some of the line overlap.

It refers to a “for greater clarity” provision in the bill to say that in the event of an inconsistency between an order under this section and a decision of the CRTC, the security order prevails. This just adds an element to the reporting that says it needs to be included in a report if that should happen. It's very unlikely that this will happen, but it's not a problem to report on it if it does.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Chair, I just want to say that I'm very impressed with the coordination of your suit and our witnesses' suits today. I did not get the memo, so I wore a blue suit, and I apologize for that, but I'm very impressed. I haven't seen that degree of coordination in a long time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

You're very attentive today, Mr. Julian. It could be a long day or a good day.

On the first one, the analyst said NDP-7 is fine, so we're good to go.

Go ahead, Mr. Shipley.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you for that. I'm sorry for the delay.

The next one.... I'm sorry.

Thank you again. The next one is to correct also in NDP-7, paragraph 3....

We've been informed that after “Act during the previous fiscal year”, we need to delete “and must cause the report to be tabled before each House of Parliament on any of the first 15 days on which the House is sitting after the report is completed”. We're deleting that part.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Okay. That's considered good.

Do you have one more?

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

We need to reopen G-6.2. We need to add a proposed subsection 15.81(3) to G-6.2, saying that “The report must also state the number of times an order prevailed over a decision of the Commission made under this Act during the previous fiscal year.”

That would be an addition. It would be proposed subsection 15.81(3).

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I'm sorry. Are you proposing a subsection 15.81(3)?

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

With unanimous consent, we'll move on.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

(On clause 12)

We'll move to clause 12.

Go ahead, Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

For G-6.4, I don't know if I'm jumping ahead, but I'm getting ready to withdraw it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

You are, but that's okay. We know you're hungry.

You're withdrawing G-6.4

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Yes, I am. That's all.

(Clause 12 agreed to)

(On clause 13)

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

We're moving to clause 13.

Next is G-7.

Is there any discussion?

We have Mr. Julian, please.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to ask our terrifically coordinated witnesses what the impact would be of taking out “private”.

I understand the need to capture crime corporations in this. I'm wondering if there are unintended consequences that may be of concern in terms of what that means for private companies.

[Colin MacSween, Director General, National Cyber Security Directorate, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you for the question.

No, it was exactly for that reason. The unintended consequence, unfortunately, with including the word “private” in there is that some federally regulated Crown corporations may not be captured, and so we wanted to expand the language to ensure they were included to capture the breadth of all federally regulated sectors.