House of Commons Hansard #164 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was cybersecurity.

Topics

Telecommunications ActGovernment Orders

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that sending this bill to committee will make some improvements. It is unfortunate that my bill, Bill C-251, did not get the opportunity to get to committee and get improved. My hon. colleague is quite aware of the ill consequences of not allowing legislation to get to committee and to be improved, to seal the deal and have positive outcomes for all Canadians.

Telecommunications ActGovernment Orders

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take this debate from coast to coast. I live on the west coast, and I thank the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame for presenting from the east coast.

Recently, we had a cyber-attack on Okanagan College in my riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap. It is always an honour to rise as the representative from that area.

Does my colleague for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame think that this bill will address the concerns that were obviously brought to light there, when the college was basically shut down for weeks after the Christmas break? Students could not access their files. Basically, the entire college system was shut down.

If this bill is needed, I wonder if the member has a comment as to why it has taken the government seven and a half years to address this, when our party brought to its attention the potential issues with Huawei and its activities in Canada. Maybe the member would like to comment on that.

Telecommunications ActGovernment Orders

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Mr. Speaker, it is great to take a question from my colleague, who has constituents who have had hard times due to cyber-attacks. I hope this bill can stop that from happening. I also hope that my hon. colleague can bring some of these people who were affected by a cyber-attack to committee and let them have their input as the bill is being debated and amended.

I am sure this bill is going to need quite a lot of amendments if it is anything like most of the legislation that has come from the government.

Telecommunications ActGovernment Orders

6:30 p.m.

Conservative

Marc Dalton Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC

Mr. Speaker, I get the impression on this side of the House that the Liberals only come forward with measures to do anything when their feet are put to the fire. We had an example of that today, with the Prime Minister announcing the appointment of a rapporteur, which is a good French word. How many Canadians even know what the word means? He is throwing these measures out to make it look like he is doing something. It is not happening. It is simply not happening. It is to make it look like they are doing something. Canadians see through this.

I wonder if the member could talk about one of the half-measures that the Liberals are doing with this bill.

Telecommunications ActGovernment Orders

6:30 p.m.

Conservative

Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Mr. Speaker, I cannot really concentrate. My hon. colleague came up with that word that I cannot even make sense of. That reminds me of the Prime Minister's dad with his famous “fuddle duddle”. What does “fuddle duddle” mean? I do not know what “rapporteur” is. I am hoping that this bill addresses some of my hon. colleague's concerns.

Telecommunications ActGovernment Orders

6:30 p.m.

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that we have the ability to have this debate in the House of Commons today. It has been lively, and I have enjoyed it, but I am going to remind Canadians, who might be watching at home, and my colleagues who are here, just how rapidly technology has advanced in the course of our lifetimes.

One of the last jobs that I did prior to becoming a member of Parliament here in the chamber was as a tenured faculty member at Red Deer College in Red Deer, Alberta, where I was a member of the computer systems technology department. I taught computing systems to students there for a number of years. It was a great job with brilliant minds of the young people who had come to that college.

I learned all about computing when I was an adult. I did not have the privilege of growing up inside a computer. Those of us in the room who are old enough to know, back in the mid-1990s, an old IBM 386DX used to cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, for computing power that right now would not even match an outdated, obsolete iPhone.

I would remind the people watching what the significance of this debate is and why the legislation we are discussing, and hopefully sending to committee, is so important.

If we go back to the 1960s, the development of ARPANET is where the foundations of the Internet started. The transmission rate of data at ARPANET, which was a military defence network, and as I said, the founder of the Internet, was 56 kilobytes per second. Now, in 2022, we are at 5U, which is 100 megabits per second. This is an absolutely astounding rate of growth in the ability to move information from point A to point B.

The growth since 1983 is based on Nielsen's Law on bandwidth. Basically, every year we increase the capacity to send information over a network by 50%, which is an exponential number that keeps going up. It is not 50% of where we started from. It is 50% from now. If we could do compound interest in the financial system that would give us a 50% compound interest return, we would be doing quite well. However, this is how fast the network processing, or the bandwidth, is growing in the world.

If we take a look at Moore's law, when it comes to the ability of microchip processing, transistors on a microchip double every two years, which is what they said back in the mid-1960s. In 1970, there were just over 1,000 transistors on a microchip. Now, there are 50 billion transistors on a single microchip. That is an insane amount of computational power, and coupled with the bandwidth that I just talked about, leaves us in a situation where parliamentarians and politicians need to be cognizant of the scale of the capacity of what we are talking about.

Let us go back to the early 1990s and a computer at that point in time. We measure computational power in things like FLOPS, or floating point operations per second, and MIPS, or million instructions per second. A computer back in the early 1990s could do under 1,000 calculations per second. Today, we are well over a billion computations per second, and that is floating point operations, which are more complicated than even just the millions of instructions per second. We can just take a look at that efficiency.

When we talk about going back to original computers, we talk about the Harvard Mark II, which I think weighed 23 tonnes. Now, with today's technology, the demand of energy per unit of processing or unit of computing power has actually been cut in half every 18 months, which means that every 18 months, the amount of energy and power that it took to do the same job is now half of what it was. This is allowing for massive growth. We see things springing up all the time. We have Bitcoin mining operations using massive amounts of electricity. Can members imagine if we tried to use that much electricity using older computers? It would have been absolutely astounding.

On storage, I am not talking about memory in the computer, and I already talked about the microchip storage. However, when I was teaching at Red Deer College, we got these hard drives that came in so that we could play around with a hard drive. Now, I am mostly a software guy. I was a programmer and database administrator, but I had to learn a little bit about the hardware.

We had a 420-gigabyte hard drive. It might have been a megabyte, but I think it was a gigabyte, but oh my goodness. I remember we had 20-gigabyte hard drives. Who can remember when they were excited about having a 20-gigabyte hard drive?

In the 1950s, if we go back to early computing, the cost to store one terabyte of data, using that technology and working backwards on the cost of a unit of storage and the evolution of computing, it would have cost over $100 trillion. Today, for less than $100, people can go to a computer store and buy a hard drive or a disk for their computer that contains well over a terabyte of data.

Why is this history lesson so important? It is because we are moving into an age of artificial intelligence. Some of my colleagues have expanded upon the importance of artificial intelligence in their speeches earlier. I listened with great anticipation to what they said.

What does the requirement for computational power and bandwidth require for artificial intelligence? Today's computers, looking at artificial intelligence, are actually using something called petaFLOPS, that is 10 to the 15th, a quadrillion floating point operations per second. That computational power exists in our networks that are out there that are now hooked up with 5G networks that can operate at 100 megabits per second.

The amount of technology and the availability of technology and the ability of that technology in today's standards are absolutely amazing. In fact, because of these advances in technology, we now have some pretty amazing facts. A television today, a software game, any of our intelligence toys, anything that requires computing is 35% lower in cost relative to income than it was just 20 years ago. Meanwhile, college tuition, education and so on have gone up over 150% in the same time frame. That tells us the vast amount of research and technology that has been put in place on the development of this technology.

That is why it is so important. Artificial intelligence is a conversation that we should be having in this House, and cybersecurity is certainly a part of that. Everybody knows, we are watching the news, and we see some great potential uses. That is the thing; everything that is designed to make our lives better, more efficient and more productive could also be used for evil.

I am not accusing anybody of using it for evil. That is not the point I am making. However, everything we want to use for good, somebody else could use with malicious intent.

I will just give a couple of examples. We have had the conversation today about the amount of personal information that has been lost, hacked and held hostage through various cyber-attacks. We know that the People's Liberation Army in China has tens of thousands of people working, just in their cyber-attack divisions alone. Just to keep in mind, for the people who are watching at home, Canada's entire military hovers between 60,000 and 70,000 people. The People's Liberation Army, just in their cyber-intelligence division alone, would have more people than the entire Canadian Armed Forces across all three of our divisions.

These are the folks, coupled with our security establishment, who need to have the tools to defend us, our networks, our infrastructure and all the critical things that we do. We are talking about hospitals, electricity grids and all these things. Imagine something as simple as a driverless or autonomous vehicle. An autonomous vehicle can now drive itself, and the reason it can do it is because we have that 5G technology, and we have the cameras and the ability for that car to make intelligent, informed decisions at the calculation rate, because of the advances in computers that I just talked about. Imagine what somebody with malicious intent could do with an autonomous car, if they wanted to.

That is why we have to get the cybersecurity question right in this debate. If we leave our systems vulnerable, if we leave ourselves open to the possibility, and we are never going to be perfect, and for everything we do, somebody with malicious intent could find a workaround for it, so we have to keep it up to speed.

With all the facts I just talked about, the doubling of technology and computing power and the halving of electricity requirements, we need to be very clear. This is the one piece of advice that I will offer to my friends across the way in the government, because this is too important not to be working together on this. The technology is growing and developing at such a rapid pace that I really do hope that we and the government have the ability to put in some clauses to review this, because it is just so important that we get this right and constantly review our cyber defences and cybersecurity in this country.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

TaxationAdjournment Proceedings

6:40 p.m.

NDP

Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am rising again in this House for what feels like the thousandth time to call on the government to end fossil fuel subsidies, to implement a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies and to invest in climate solutions.

Each time, I draw attention to the fact that we are in a climate emergency and that, in the words of Greta Thunberg, “our house is on fire”. When one's house is on fire, one jumps into action and calls the fire department. Instead, the government not only is continuing business as usual and planning to increase oil and gas production in the coming years, but continues to hand out billions of dollars to profitable oil and gas companies. These are the companies that are literally fuelling the climate crisis, that for decades have been funding disinformation about climate change and that are profiting off increasing emissions. Our house is on fire, and instead of using our financial resources to put that fire out, the government has decided to hand out billions of dollars to the very companies intent on pouring gas on the flames.

The Liberals say, yes, there is a climate emergency and yes, our house is on fire, but let us just wait inside a little longer before we take action, and we should probably listen to the oil and gas lobbyists and CEOs. We should probably listen to the arsonists when we make a plan to put out that fire. They are experts in fire, after all.

This is the reason we are where we are. For over 30 years, the science has been clear, and now we are seeing communities washed away, and Lytton burned to the ground. There are severe hurricanes on the east coast, and on the west coast we are choking on smoke in the summers. Hundreds of people are dying in heat waves. This is happening now, and it is only the beginning.

We know what this means for our children, for the future we are leaving them. My colleagues will excuse me if I am upset and angry and tired of broken Liberal promises. I want to see action, but not the kind of action we have been seeing from the government. It should not give our public money to big polluters. They are making record profits. It should make them pay for their own pollution. They can afford to reduce their own emissions.

The government listened to big oil and gas lobbyists and created massive new subsidies and new handouts for unproven carbon capture and storage technology. According to the world's top climate scientists, carbon capture and storage is one of the most expensive, most risky climate options and unproven at scale, but it is the oil and gas industry's favourite option because it does not involve transitioning to different energy sources. If the oil and gas industry wants to gamble on expensive, unproven technologies, get them to do it with their own money.

Instead of forcing these rich oil and gas CEOs to reduce their own emissions, the Liberals gifted them billions in tax credits. What are those very companies doing now? They are increasing their emissions. They are scaling down their climate commitments. They are raking in record profits and asking for more handouts.

We need to fix Canada's taxation system, which is rigged in favour of big oil and gas. Let us end fossil fuel subsidies and implement a windfall profits tax.

TaxationAdjournment Proceedings

6:45 p.m.

Burnaby North—Seymour B.C.

Liberal

Terry Beech LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate this evening. I want to thank my colleague from Victoria, a place where I grew up as well, for asking these questions. I have prepared a response that actually takes on all the questions that were raised in her original question, which include inflation, affordability, tax fairness, climate change and fossil fuel subsidies.

We understand, as a government, that many Canadians are struggling to make ends meet during a period of high global inflation. Canadians are feeling the pain when they go to the grocery store, when they fill up their tanks and when they pay their rents. Although inflation in Canada is lower that it is in the United States or in Europe, it is our responsibility to make life more affordable while building an economy that works for everyone. This is why we have provided $12.1 billion in new inflation-relief support with many measures continuing in 2023 to help make life more affordable for millions of Canadians. This includes measures like the GST rebate, dental care, child care and supports for seniors. Students no longer need to pay interest on student loans, and new parents are able to more easily return to the workforce.

At the same time, our government has been, and remains, committed to making sure everyone pays their fair share of taxes. For example, budget 2022 announced a permanent increase of the corporate income tax by 1.5 percentage points on the largest and most profitable banks and insurance companies in Canada. It also announced the Canada recovery dividend, a one-time 15% tax on Canada's most profitable banks and insurance companies to help pay for the cost of fighting COVID. We have also reduced taxes for the middle class and for small businesses on four separate occasions, while increasing taxes on the top 1%.

Our government is also committed to phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that give fossil fuels an unfair advantage over cleaner energy solutions. In our previous election platform, we committed to phasing out these fossil fuel subsidies by 2025, but like the member opposite said in her speech, we felt the matter was so urgent that we actually accelerated the timeline of this commitment to the end of this year, a full two years early. In fact, the majority of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies have already been eliminated.

In budget 2022, for example, the government committed to eliminating the flow-through share regime for fossil fuel activities. This will be done by no longer allowing expenditures related to oil, gas and coal exploration and development to benefit investors after March 31, the end of this month. This coincides with our world-leading climate plan, which is working to lower Canada's greenhouse gas emissions while creating high-paying, sustainable jobs that will benefit Canadians for generations to come.

The government is also taking meaningful actions to improve competition in this country and ensure that consumers pay fair prices for goods and services. We provided an additional $96 million in funding over five years to the Competition Bureau in budget 2021 and made targeted improvements to the Competition Act in June 2022. This will strengthen the Competition Bureau's powers, better protect consumers and ensure that workers and small businesses are protected from anti-competitive or deceptive practices. These amendments brought the Act more in line with international best practices, including higher maximum fines and a broader scope of anti-competitive behaviour that the Competition Bureau can now review. On top of that, last fall we launched a consultation on the future of competition policy in Canada to seek input on what further we can do.

In conclusion, our government is fighting climate change, making life more affordable, ensuring the Canadian economy is competitive and, at the same time, making sure everyone pays their fair share of tax. Given that Canada enjoys the lowest deficit and lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, we can expect that Canada, and Canadians, are well positioned to outperform in the years ahead.

TaxationAdjournment Proceedings

6:50 p.m.

NDP

Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC

Mr. Speaker, I hope the member was not serious when he said that most inefficient fossil fuel subsidies have been eliminated, because that would mean that whatever the government is counting as inefficient fossil fuel subsidies is not taking into account the billions of dollars we are still handing out to oil and gas companies.

I am baffled by Liberal MPs who claim to care about our climate and to understand the urgency of the crisis we are in, but then support massive handouts to oil and gas and refuse to make these companies pay what they owe. Oil and gas companies have profited for decades from fuelling the climate crisis. These rich CEOs and lobbyists have successfully lobbied for tax breaks and handouts. I will remind my colleagues that oil and gas companies last year made more money than they have ever made before, while Canadians are struggling to pay for groceries.

It is time for Canada to stand up to big oil and stop making Canadians and the environment pay the price.

TaxationAdjournment Proceedings

6:50 p.m.

Liberal

Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC

Mr. Speaker, our government has taken meaningful actions to make life more affordable and build a sustainable economy that works for everyone. We are doing this by fighting climate change; making sure everyone pays their fair share of tax; making our economy more competitive; and supporting Canadian workers, creating more than 809,000 new jobs since the start of the pandemic. Canada is working, Canadians are working and their government is working hard for them as well.

Immigration, Refugees and CitizenshipAdjournment Proceedings

6:50 p.m.

Conservative

Eric Duncan Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON

Mr. Speaker, as I have said in this House and during question period, a growing number of Canadians believe that everything feels broken in this country. There is correlation and a connection to what they are feeling that brokenness from: the poor management from the current Liberal government.

Whether it was when Veterans Affairs Canada officials admitted that their staff offered MAID to multiple veterans when they were looking for help or the lack of accountability when it comes to foreign interference, getting to the bottom of it and having transparency to make sure it never happens again, Canadians feel like their federal government is broken. When it comes to trying to get a passport or accessing an airport with ease and reasonableness, they feel like things are broken. If anybody has ever gotten a bill from CRA when they owe $41.72, they get the letter right away and it says they have 30 days to pay or the penalties start. Then, the Auditor General said there was $15 billion in fraudulent and wrong payments that went out by the government, and the government says it is not worth even trying to collect on this.

Everybody increasingly believes that the federal government is broken because of the opioid overdose epidemic that is happening in many parts of this country. Only a couple of weeks ago, to the Prime Minister's surprise, the government suddenly found out that there was a permit granted to produce and distribute cocaine in British Columbia. Sadly, the leader of the party said today, very clearly, that it is easier to get a permit to distribute and produce cocaine in British Columbia than it is to get a passport. That speaks volumes about what Canadians are seeing these days.

After eight years, everything the federal government touches gets worse. There are more public servants than ever before. More money is being spent and allocated and promised, but the results are worse than ever. The Auditor General confirms the government spends more money and gets fewer results, so Canadians feel like things are broken because if this were any other business or any other way of life, those managers would have been fired a long time ago.

I want to follow up on how the City of Cornwall is unfortunately seeing how things are broken in our country these days. It is seeing Roxham Road and the national problem and challenge that we have faced of an unprecedented volume of irregular border crossings, with people seeking asylum and refugee status here in this country.

Thirty-four days ago, I put out a public statement because two large processing centres came into the community, but the Minister of Immigration did not say a word or acknowledge it. The minister provided zero consultation, zero heads-up and zero resources to help the City of Cornwall deal with this.

Cornwall is a welcoming community. We have seen the diversity, and we have seen the benefits of immigration over the course of the last couple of years. However, it has been 34 days, and it has been a couple of weeks since I asked my original question. We had a week and a half since IRCC officials came to Cornwall to hear first-hand how frustrated the city is by the poor communication, leadership and management around that.

From city council to provincial and federal officials, local charities, health and education, people are looking for a plan. After 34 days of this going public but months of the government's knowing the chaos and the confusion and the strain on local resources on the ground, they are looking for a plan.

They finally came down to Cornwall and listened, admitted their communication was poor and admitted that something needs to change. Months later, they are hearing the consultations. Having a meeting is not an outcome. They have heard the problem. The City of Cornwall and the stakeholders who want to help, who want to end this chaos and fix what the government has broken, want a plan. My repeated question and follow-up to the government tonight is this: What is the plan? What resources are we going to get to address the problem when it comes to the IRCC processing centre?

Immigration, Refugees and CitizenshipAdjournment Proceedings

6:55 p.m.

Orléans Ontario

Liberal

Marie-France Lalonde LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his advocacy.

Let me note what Canada is committed to. Canada is committed, through domestic law and international convention, to providing supports to individuals making an asylum claim. That is a fact.

We have a duty to protect the integrity of our borders and to manage resources on behalf of all Canadians. Let me be very clear: We continue to encourage asylum claimants to enter Canada through designated ports of entry, to apply through regular immigration streams and to make a claim of asylum in the first safe country they enter.

Canada is unfortunately not alone in facing a rising number of asylum claims. The world is facing an unparalleled flow of migrants and refugees, with the United Nations Refugee Agency reporting nearly 4.9 million asylum seekers in 2022. That is making Canada's share less than 1%. This is a global challenge driven by war, persecution, political and economic instability, and discrimination. Solving this challenge will require a global response.

In recent years, the majority of asylum claims in Canada have been made near Roxham Road, which is not a port of entry. In the summer of 2022, Quebec indicated that its social supports and housing system were hitting their maximum capacity, so our government began transferring asylum seekers who expressed an interest in travelling to Ontario or further west to other provinces. In February, when Quebec indicated that it could not take more asylum claimants, we supported transferring all asylum claimants to Ontario, and just recently began transferring them to hotels in the Atlantic provinces.

As of February, we have moved over 5,600 asylum seekers from Quebec to Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Our officials have been in contact with host communities, and IRCC is conducting community engagement in these provinces. We want to thank the communities and provinces that are receiving asylum claimants.

Canada's humanitarian efforts cannot fall on only one region or province. We continue to engage in discussions with provinces and municipalities that have expressed a willingness to accept additional transfers. I heard the member mention that Cornwall has accepted additional transfers. We know that the City of Cornwall in the member's riding wanted more communication, and we responded to that request. The associate deputy minister has been to Cornwall several times over the last few weeks, and the department is working with the community and local leadership.

We are very conscious of the potential impact that an influx of people could have on local resources, and we continue to listen and respond to local needs. The federal government has been providing supports to provinces and municipalities to respond to the rising number of asylum claims. Since 2017, we have provided $551.6 million to affected provinces and municipalities to address interim housing-related expenses for asylum seekers. In addition, since April 2020, IRCC has been providing temporary accommodations to asylum claimants who do not yet have private accommodations and who cannot go to provincial shelters due to capacity issues.

Our government has covered health care services and products, including immigration medical examinations, which also help connect claimants to the provincial health care system through a program called the interim federal health program. Where we can, we provide expedited work permits for claimants, and we continue to explore the possibilities of accelerating work permits so that claimants can work and support themselves.

In conclusion, the federal government continues to support the provinces and our communities and continues to listen and respond to their needs. We will continue to be there.

Immigration, Refugees and CitizenshipAdjournment Proceedings

7 p.m.

Conservative

Eric Duncan Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON

Mr. Speaker, in that four-minute response by the government, and after 34 days of going public with the problem of wanting a plan and resources, we got the same answer: It is listening, it is consulting and it is meeting. Having a meeting is not an outcome, but the Liberals could confirm and communicate that they acknowledge their shortcomings and acknowledge that communication was poor.

Most importantly, what the City of Cornwall and our community are asking for are proper resources. Some $16 million is what has been unveiled so far to go to DEV centre for its contract. We do not know about the former Ramada Inn property. There are tens of millions of dollars to go to those sites, and not a dollar can be allocated to local resources on the ground that could help end the chaos and act as a pinwheel. The IRCC and the minister need a plan to actually solve this chaos, not more meetings and conversations. We need a plan.

I will ask this again, and there is one minute for a response. Where is the plan and the timeline to fix what the government broke?

Immigration, Refugees and CitizenshipAdjournment Proceedings

7 p.m.

Liberal

Marie-France Lalonde Liberal Orléans, ON

Mr. Speaker, again, I want to thank the member for his advocacy. Certainly, he and I have had a conversation in the last few weeks on this particular issue. Other members of the community have raised those concerns.

As I mentioned before, our assistant deputy minister has been in regular contact with city officials and individuals in our community. We are fully committed to help. That is what we have been doing since the process started. We have been working with local municipalities and have also engaged with others.

I want to reassure the member that, as we go forward, we are always going to engage with our partners, our local municipalities, which are so important.

CannabisAdjournment Proceedings

7 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell a short story about the government's regulatory failure, which has cost constituents in my riding hundreds of well-paying jobs in the last month or so.

Until February 9 of this year, Canopy Growth, a licensed cannabis producer, was the largest private sector employer in my constituency. Based at the former Hershey chocolate factory in Smiths Falls, it has been transformed into a high-tech, legal, cannabis-producing facility. At the height of their operations, they employed about 1,800 people in Smiths Falls. However, last month Canopy announced the elimination of 350 jobs, 190 of which were to be cut immediately, and the rest to follow in the coming months. That was at the tail end of series of prior cuts.

Canopy will soon employ fewer than one-third the number of my constituents it once did. These job losses, to a large extent, can be laid at the foot of the government's failed policies. In 2018, the government, with great fanfare, legalized the sale and use of recreational cannabis. I voted for that.

We are just five years on, and the government's delivery on its plan, its crushing federal taxes and its insanely high regulatory compliance costs have allowed the illegal market to continue to flourish, and it is directly causing hundreds of Canadians to lose their jobs in my constituency alone. A month ago, the day after the job cuts in my riding were announced, I raised this point and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry stood to say that his government continues “to engage with stakeholders” and that they have recently funded a “strategy table” to “support dialogue”.

That is nice, I guess, but the government would have been better advised to have acted sooner, years sooner, on the advice it was getting from industry and stakeholders. The next best thing would have been to say it would act immediately. Saying that we will have more talks when the House is not nearly on fire but just about burned down is too late.

A multi-party group of parliamentarians with three Liberals, of which I am a member, has written numerous times to the Minister of Health. We wrote, as an example, about attempts to rationalize various regulations dealing with cannabis infusion beverages. It has inexplicably taken years for movement to occur on that one small issue. There are other issues by far that are much more important and there has been no movement on them. This long struggle for incremental microscopic improvements illustrates the problem the government has. On a macro level, it has failed to deliver on its promise of listening and creating a business-friendly environment for the cannabis industry.

I have mentioned the parliamentary secretary's response to my question from last month, and I am sure that tonight he will repeat at length the same kind of response. He will say that he regrets the job losses. He will say some industries face challenges, and that they want to listen to industry and stakeholders. I am sure he will be saying it honestly, but I truly hope that the government's speaker this evening will acknowledge that their ministers have been receiving advice from industry and stakeholders for years now. They could have acted upon it with far greater speed. If they had done so these jobs would still be in existence.

While there is still some hope that some jobs can be saved, and we will not lose the entire industry, perhaps the government could agree to move quickly on the recommendations that have been made by the legal cannabis industry, which would allow it to prosper and ensure that our industry does not remain 50% in the illegal sector, as it now is.

CannabisAdjournment Proceedings

7:05 p.m.

Halifax Nova Scotia

Liberal

Andy Fillmore LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to respond to the comments made by the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston. He and I had occasion to work together on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament. I think we did good work there and I always appreciate his interventions.

In 2018, through the Cannabis Act, Canada made history and became the first major industrialized country to provide legal and regulated access to cannabis for non-medical purposes.

That act had three primary aims. The first was to prevent young people from accessing cannabis. The second was to protect public health and public safety by establishing product safety and product quality requirements and the third was to keep revenues from cannabis businesses out of the hands of criminals.

Since this bold and historic decision, the legal cannabis industry in Canada has grown rapidly and there is much to applaud. With over 900 licenced cultivators and processors of cannabis under the Cannabis Act and thousands of cannabis retail stores, the regulated cannabis industry is present coast to coast and has welcomed a tremendous number of new businesses.

In fact, the sector generates over $4.5 billion in sales and employs thousands of people.

The legal sector is successfully advancing the objectives of the Cannabis Act. The regulated market, based on the Statistics Canada household expenditure survey, is estimated to now represent approximately 70% of the total Canadian cannabis market. While views on that number may differ, it is clear that the illicit market share is diminishing.

Canadians are not only benefiting from having access to safe cannabis products but also benefiting from new business opportunities across the value chain, from cultivation to processing to research and testing and retail. Small and medium-sized enterprises continue to represent a greater and greater share of licence-holders and the market has continued to grow.

However, as we know well, this expansion is not without challenges. The sector is facing instability and uncertainty as it continues to mature. Our government recognizes how important the competitive and sustainable legal cannabis industry is to fully realizing the objectives of the Cannabis Act.

This is why, in budget 2022, our government announced a new cannabis strategy table, which the member has identified, that will support ongoing dialogue with businesses and stakeholders in the cannabis sector. It is an opportunity to identify ways to work together and to grow the legal cannabis sector in Canada. This commitment recognizes the economic and business realities that the sector is facing.

This initiative is led by the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, which is actively engaging the cannabis industry and working with federal partners to ensure that the government is aware of and understands the issues at hand.

Further, in September 2022, the hon. Minister of Health and the hon. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health announced the launch of the legislative review of the Cannabis Act.

Early assessment of the act was always envisioned. This review will ensure that the flexible legislative framework set out in the act adapts and responds to ongoing and emerging needs and to make certain that the act best protects the health and safety of Canadians and provides for the establishment of a diverse and competitive legal industry.

Our government's commitment to Canadians and to achieving the objectives of the act, as set out in the act, are clear.

CannabisAdjournment Proceedings

7:10 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

Mr. Speaker, the fundamental problem is this: if the cost to produce and sell legal product is higher than the cost to produce and sell illegal product, then the illegal product will have the ability to drive out the legal product. This is exactly what is happening in the market today in Canada. There is some high-end product, which, I grant, the legal sector predominates in, but the fact is that, right now, it is a lot worse than a 70-30 split.

I have heard 60-40 and in some parts of the cannabis production industry, I would say it is 50-50 or worse.

One cannot impose massive regulatory compliance costs on the legal sector, which do not exist for the illegal sector, without having the effect of driving these producers out of business.

If there was some way of making the illegal producers stop, we would not have a problem, but that was never possible.

I ask again: what is the government doing to ensure that regulatory compliance costs are brought down and taxes are kept reasonable for legal producers?

Remember, illegal producers do not pay tax—

CannabisAdjournment Proceedings

7:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Chris d'Entremont

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

CannabisAdjournment Proceedings

7:10 p.m.

Liberal

Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS

Mr. Speaker, we have delivered on our promise to Canadians to establish a safe and legal cannabis sector in Canada. Our government remains committed to advancing the objectives set out within the Cannabis Act, including through the planned and launched legislative review of the act and the development of the budget 2022 announcement to establish the cannabis strategy, where the challenges that the member has identified will be aired and acted upon.

This table will provide new opportunities for government and industry to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing this relatively new sector as it continues to establish itself and find its footing as a sustainable alternative to the illicit market.

Our government has been and remains steadfast in its commitment to engage and work with industry while doing so and I extend that same offer to the member.

CannabisAdjournment Proceedings

7:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Chris d'Entremont

The motion that the House do now adjourn is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7:13 p.m.)