Madam Speaker, I will give my speech in French. I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Trois‑Rivières, who will no doubt be able to give a more relevant speech than me. I am pleased to share my time with him.
Ottawa is finally proposing a law to deal with the issue of cybersecurity. We are pleased to see that the government is finally addressing this issue. I will not say that it is too little, too late, but I will say that we waited a long time for this.
The purpose of the bill is to force Internet service providers to adopt better practices, something on which we all agree. We commend the government for that.
However, why is Ottawa always in reaction mode? We have been talking about the 5G network and Huawei for years. Hydro-Québec has been experiencing cyber-attacks on a daily basis for years. We have known for years about the rise of China, a country that is interfering more and more. In short, we have known for years that Canada is extremely vulnerable and that it is basically a sieve in terms of cybersecurity.
How can it be that, in this postnational system, everything happens reactively, not proactively? That is all I am going to say about that, because there is no changing the fundamentals of a country that is impervious to reform. Instead, we are going to get out. I just wanted to put that out there.
We support the bill in principle, but there are some grey areas that need clarification. That is what committees are for. The legislation is essentially a regulatory framework that, first and foremost, enables the government to make regulations to ensure the security of critical cyber systems. We have to look at the impact this bill could have on Quebec, especially Hydro‑Québec, because it lists interprovincial power line systems under vital services and vital systems. The committee will also have to look at whether the vast regulatory powers provided for in the bill are justified and ensure that they do not needlessly circumvent Parliament.
The threats that weigh on cybersecurity are likely to increase. They are the future, but they are also very much part of our present. In fact, a number of experts on the matter in Quebec talk to us about it. There is someone I really liked to watch when he was on television, although he stopped appearing when he became a deputy minister. I am talking about one of my constituents, Steve Waterhouse, who is always very interesting to listen to. His work helped raise our awareness and raise public awareness. He is from Sainte‑Madeleine, which is in the incredible riding of Saint‑Hyacinthe—Bagot.
Cyber-threats are already a part of our daily lives. Hydro-Québec is attacked every day by what are referred to as denial of service attacks. These are less sophisticated cyber-attacks and are the easiest ones to deal with, but they can cause major disruptions.
Look at Aluminerie Alouette, on the North Shore, which was the victim of a major cyber-attack that led to a serious outage. A Russian group claimed responsibility. Last summer, during the Rogers outage, which also had a serious impact on debit card transactions, a cyber-attack was the first thing that came to mind.
The objective of the bill is to mitigate the risks upstream. The legislation could certainly help Quebeckers, for example by imposing certain standards on Internet service providers, such as the obligation to avoid using products from suspect companies like Huawei.
In 2020, Parliament adopted a motion to force the government to make a decision about Huawei and Chinese interference in general. Recently, Ottawa finally blocked Huawei after years of dithering. What a waste of time. As Proust wrote, we are in search of lost time.
Madam Speaker, please tell my colleagues that they can let me know if I am disturbing them. I would not want to prevent them from having their conversations.