Public Safety Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 21 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Before we begin clause-by-clause consideration, I would like to ask the committee to consider the two budgets members received from the clerk, distributed just a few hours ago and last Friday. The first budget in the amount of $31,500 is for the study of Canada's capacity to remove nationals with criminal records, and the second budget in the amount of $6,500 is for the study on the purpose of clause 371 (division 19) and clauses 380 to 385 (division 21) of Bill C‑15, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025.

Please note that those are estimated amounts and that the committee may spend less than expected on these studies. Any unspent funds will be returned to the Liaison Committee. If there are any questions, we can put them to the clerk, who can answer them.

Is it the will of the committee to adopt these budgets?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

We'll move on to the next item.

Pursuant to the House order of October 3, 2025, the committee is now meeting on its study of Bill C‑8, an act respecting cyber security, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other acts. I would like to provide committee members with a few opening remarks on how we'll proceed with the clause-by-clause consideration of this bill.

As the name suggests, this is a consideration of all Bill C‑8 clauses in the order in which they appear. I will call each clause successively, and each is subject to debate before moving to a vote.

If an amendment to the clause in question is proposed, I will recognize the member proposing the amendment so they can explain it, if they wish to. Amendments will be considered in the order in which they appear on the list committee members received from the clerk. Amendments have been given a number, indicated in the top right corner, to show which party submitted them. During debate on an amendment, members can move subamendments. Amendments and subamendments must be properly drafted in a legal sense, but they must also be procedurally admissible. The chair, that would be me, may be called upon to rule amendments inadmissible if they go against the principle of the bill, beyond the scope of the bill—both the principle and the scope were adopted at the same time as the bill at second reading in the House—or if they infringe the financial prerogatives of the Crown.

I thank the members for their attention, and I wish the committee and all its members a productive clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C‑8.

I would now like to welcome the witnesses, who are here to answer questions, if necessary.

From the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, we welcome Mr. Colin MacSween, director general, national cybersecurity directorate; and Ms. Kelly-Anne Gibson, director, national cybersecurity directorate. From the Department of Industry, we welcome Mr. Andre Arbour, director general, telecommunications and Internet policy branch; and Mr. Wen Kwan, director general, spectrum and telecommunications sector.

We will now move to clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. First, we're going to proceed more slowly to make sure we establish a dynamic and a pace that suits everyone. We'll begin, then, by calling clause 1.

Is it the will of the committee to adopt clause 1?

Mr. Ramsay, you have the floor.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

We agree on the second part of the clause. It doesn't cover the impacts of lawful expression of opinion, persuasion or political debate, so we're fine with that.

What we don't like as much is the first paragraph—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Mr. Ramsay, we are talking about clause 1. Soon, we'll get to the amendment you're probably talking about, the CPC‑1 amendment, for which a notice has been filed and which deals with clause 2.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

I apologize.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

It's confusing, because they both have the number 1. In this case, we're talking about clause 1.

Is it the will of the committee to adopt clause 1?

(Motion agreed to)

(On clause 2)

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Let's move on to clause 2.

Is there a proposed amendment for clause 2?

Mr. Caputo, you have the floor.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the officials and my colleagues Ms. May and Ms. Kwan.

I am moving CPC-1, please, and I'd like to explain why. I'm mindful of the fact that we may not have agreement, but this is quite important to me.

The language in this bill carries not only a lot of responsibility but also an ability for the government to do a great deal of things. The language, in my view, is somewhat ambiguous in places. I know sometimes we get legislation that's drafted to catch everything and then our job, as legislators, is to bring it together.

We've heard all sorts of testimony, but I think when the courts go to interpret this, they will interpret the plain meaning. That's the basis of statutory interpretation. That's the start.

I'm greatly concerned that if we do not include that certain things are excluded—namely, appropriate speech, lawful expression, debate, persuasion—from the definition of interference and explicitly exclude the content of the communication from the definition of “telecommunications system”.... It's my view that we need to narrow this down in order to clarify that we are only attempting to catch material threats to a telecommunications system. With the language we have now, we are casting too broad of a net.

I will listen with intent to what my colleagues from the Bloc and the Liberals say, because my hope is that we can come to an agreement, if they're not agreeable to this section, to carry out our intent.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, MP Caputo.

Does anyone else want to intervene?

Madame Acan, go ahead.

[Sima Acan, Liberal, Oakville West, ON]

Unfortunately, I am against that amendment.

One reason is that this amendment, to my understanding, attempts to clarify that “telecommunications system” does not include the actual content of information being sent and that secret orders cannot interfere with lawful expression. The experts are here as well. There's a technical danger behind this amendment if it goes through. This is highly problematic, because the definition of “content” is technically ambiguous. In a cybersecurity context, the technical signalling information, which is vital for monitoring system health, could be legally interpreted as content.

Furthermore, malicious code, such as malware or computer worms, is technically part of the data content and we cannot separate these two. If the government is prohibited from regulating anything classified as content, it will be legally powerless to stop these technical threats from moving through the systems.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, MP Acan.

Mr. Ramsay, you have the floor.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

I would agree with Ms. Acan. I would just like to move a subamendment to remove the first paragraph of Mr. Caputo's proposed amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Since this is a subamendment, we'll have to suspend the meeting for a few moments to make sure that everyone has the right information, including the clerks and legislative clerks.

I will therefore suspend the meeting for a few moments to make sure everyone gets a copy of the proposed subamendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

We are resuming the meeting.

Mr. Ramsay, just to make sure everyone clearly understands, do you want to explain again the nature of your subamendment?

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

The amendment proposed by Mr. Caputo has two paragraphs. We're proposing to completely remove the first paragraph and simply keep the second paragraph.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Okay.

I think it's fairly clearly stated. The subamendment is to remove the first paragraph of the amendment.

I'll now turn to MP Caputo, and then to MP Lloyd.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

I'll let MP Lloyd go first, please.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Parkland, AB]

Thank you.

The claim was made by my colleague, Ms. Acan, that it would create a technical risk if proposed section 15.01 were included, because we would be saying that we can't deal with any of the content.

I just want to ask the officials, can you provide some background for that?

[Andre Arbour, Director General, Telecommunications and Internet Policy Branch, Department of Industry]

Thank you for the question.

The language refers to “the content of the intelligence that is emitted, transmitted or received”, so it's not referring just to content in a generalized, colloquial sense.

The other thing is that it further.... I don't think this is the intent of the amendment, to be clear, but in conjunction with proposed section 15.02, which is very clearly about speech issues.... Normally, you don't have text added unless it's there for a purpose. Proposed section 15.01 has, very much, the risk of communicating that it's actually not about speech, because that's what proposed section 15.02 is about, so proposed section 15.01 is about something different, presumably.

When we get into the content of the intelligence, in terms of what is actually being transmitted, in a technical sense it's all zeros and ones, ultimately, with how it gets converted into signalling. When we're talking about the actual intelligence that's being transmitted, some zeros and ones could be malware, and some zeros and ones could be expressive speech. The telecom act already does not allow for government control of expressive speech. That has no bearing on the telecom act, so it's already not captured.

I totally appreciate the concern for greater certainty, but that is the reason why.... Proposed section 15.02 is just consistent with the overall scheme.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Parkland, AB]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you for that.

Do you have any other questions or input, MP Caputo?

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Thank you very much for that.

Now, I think I understand your concern. Is there any way that proposed section 15.01 could be tweaked—to use the colloquial term—in order to not run afoul of the issues you just mentioned?

[Andre Arbour]

We struggled, and part of the issue is that it's in conjunction with proposed section 15.02, which already gets into the issues of speech. We couldn't think of an alternative formulation that wasn't already captured by proposed section 15.02 in some shape or form.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

To be clear, proposed section 15.01 is nugatory, unnecessary, in your view. Just to be very clear, proposed section 15.01 is unnecessary, given proposed section 15.02, and proposed section 15.02 gets us to the point that we are trying to get to, given my prior intervention. Is that accurate?