Debates of June 14th, 2023

Military Chaplaincy

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I am going to have to shut it down there. Your phone is on top. I have reminded folks time and time again to make sure that those phones are not put near the microphones so that that the impedance of the phone does not interfere with the microphones.

The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, they recommend that the House of Commons and the Government of Canada reject the recommendations on chaplaincy in the Canadian Armed Forces' final report and that they affirm the right of Canadians, including Canadian Armed Forces chaplains, to their freedom of religion.

Charitable Organization

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the next petition I have is from Canadians across the country who are concerned with an item in the 2021 platform of Liberal Party that would deny charitable status to organizations that have convictions about abortion that differ from the Liberal Party's position. This may jeopardize the charitable status of hospitals, houses of worship, schools, homeless shelters and other charitable organizations that do not agree with the Liberal Party on this matter for reasons of conscience.

Many Canadians depend on the benefits of these charitable organizations, which include food banks and summer camps, and the government has previously added a values test and discriminated against worthy applicants for the Canada summer jobs program, denying funding to any organization whose officials were not willing to check a box endorsing the political position of the governing party.

Charities and other organizations should not be discriminated against on the basis of their political views or religious values and should not be subject to a politicization of charitable status. Under the charter, all Canadians have the right to freedom of expression without discrimination.

Therefore, the folks who signed this petition, residents of Canada, call on the House of Commons to protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a politically and ideologically neutral basis, without discrimination on the basis of political or religious values and without imposing another values test, and to affirm the rights of Canadians to freedom of expression.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 1459, 1460, 1465, 1466 and 1467.

Question No.1459—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

With regard to the use of artificial intelligence by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA): does the CRA use artificial intelligence, and, if so, how?

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Minister of National Revenue]

Mr. Speaker, please note that the scope of the CRA's artificial intelligence, AI, definition is consistent with the definition of "automated decision systems" outlined in the Treasury Board's directive on automated decision-making. However, the CRA's directive is broader in scope as it includes AI solutions developed for CRA's compliance programs and internal operations in addition to those developed for external service delivery. This definition also includes robotic process automation, RPA, processes that are highly administrative, require little judgment and have clear business rules.

It is important to highlight that the CRA continues to keep humans in the loop of all its AI activities. Human oversight and final decision-making continue to be applied in all types of AI results and program activities.

The CRA does use artificial intelligence in various ways.

The CRA is using AI-based solutions to solve compliance and collection business activities including analysis of patterns, cluster analysis, prescriptive, predictive models and applied predictive analytics i.e., for non-compliance identification, fraud detection, workload selection and compliance strategies.

The CRA employs AI to transform business activities using robotic process automation to automate pre-assessment activities and AI techniques to model and identify processes efficiency gains.

The CRA is using AI-based solutions to transform client service offerings and enhancements through continuous improvements such as the chatbot and improved accessibility. Service improvements are also informed through AI text analytics such as topic modelling, text summarization and sentiment analysis on high volumes of unstructured textual data such as client feedback.

The CRA also uses AI techniques to strengthen data-driven outcomes. Specifically, it is used for research including forecasting, identity and relationship resolution, lead generation and advanced visualization pattern detection. In the research space, the CRA is beginning to experiment with artificial neural networks and recurrent neural networks to test predictive capabilities and assess potential business benefits.

Internally, the CRA uses AI to transform its internal services including natural language processing for analysis of employee surveys. The CRA also uses AI to support security including the evaluation of software/documents to assess their maliciousness, anomaly detection, log collection, tracing and monitoring of accesses.

Question No.1460—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

With regard to the use of artificial intelligence by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC): does IRCC use artificial intelligence, and, if so, how?

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, IRCC uses artificial intelligence, AI, technology for purposes of advanced analytics to triage client enquiries and to identify routine and straightforward applications for faster processing within the programs of temporary resident visa for visitors, visitor records, and spouse and common-law partner in Canada applications. Advanced analytic tools are used to help determine the applicant’s eligibility to the respective program. When eligibility requirements are met, the application is then sent to an officer to determine if the applicant is admissible to Canada and to make the final decision. Applications that do not have their eligibility approved automatically are sent to an officer for review and final decision. Only an IRCC officer can refuse an application; the automated tools never refuse or recommend refusing applications. IRCC does not currently use black-box algorithms to automate or recommend decisions.

AI is used by IRCC to automate the detection of risk patterns. These risk patterns are one factor considered when determining whether to initiate a verification activity. IRCC officers would then follow standard operational processes to verify the authenticity of documents with the document issuer, e.g. university, bank, etc. Risk patterns are not visible to IRCC officers; instead, they receive only the results of the verification activities initiated. As such, the tool does not automate nor does it recommend final decisions on applications.

AI is also used for a chatbot deployed on IRCC's Facebook channel to provide functional guidance to IRCC clients looking to make an application. The intent of IRCC’s chatbot is to serve client inquiries in English and French on 76 unique pages of IRCC’s website. The responses provided by the chatbot are general and based on people’s typical circumstances. This means it cannot respond to case-specific information or provide tailored immigration advice. The chatbot can respond to questions in two ways: responses written and trained by human operators based on previously received questions, or referrals to curated lists of IRCC web content. It directs clients to various linked web pages across our website, including our help centre FAQs, tools such as the “Come to Canada tool”, varied program-specific web content and the client support centre.

The IRCC chatbot cannot intervene with a client’s application as it does not have back-end access to the GCMS services. This means it cannot respond to case-specific questions or provide tailored immigration advice based on a client’s particular situation. The responses provided by the chatbot are general and based on people’s typical circumstances. If the chatbot can’t answer your question, or the user is unsatisfied with the answer provided, it will instead ask you a series of questions to determine which of our service channels is right for you, and then direct you there.

Question No.1465—

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

With regard to government revenue from the goods and services tax (GST) and the federal portion of harmonized sales tax (HST), broken down by year since 2016: (a) how much GST or HST revenue was collected on the sale of new homes; (b) on how many new homes was GST or HST collected; and (c) what is the breakdown of (a) and (b) by province or territory?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, under the goods and services tax and the harmonized sales tax, GST/HST, the government does not track the amount of GST/HST that is collected for each type of good or service that a vendor may sell. When firms remit the GST/HST that they have collected on their taxable sales, they report and remit to the Canada Revenue Agency only one single amount. Requiring vendors, such as small businesses, to track GST/HST collected on the individual types of goods or services they sell would impose a significant reporting burden on them.

Question No.1466—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

With regard to legal costs incurred by the government in relation to the invocation of the Emergencies Act in 2022, as well as any subsequent legal action: what is the total amount (i) paid out to date, (ii) scheduled to be paid out, on outside legal counsel, broken down by department, agency or other government entity which encountered the expense?

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to legal expenses incurred by the government for outside legal counsel on work related to the invocation of the Emergencies Act in 2022, as well as any subsequent legal action, to the extent that the information that has been requested is or may be protected by any legal privileges, including solicitor-client privilege, the federal Crown asserts those privileges. In this case, it has only waived solicitor-client privilege, and only to the extent of revealing the total legal costs.

The total legal costs associated with expenses incurred by the government for outside legal counsel on work related to the invocation of the Emergencies Act in 2022, as well as any subsequent legal action amounts to $3,756,458.66. This amount includes outside legal fees related to the Public Order Emergency Commission, which had a timeline compressed by statute. The total amount mentioned in this response is based on information contained in Department of Justice systems, as of May 4, 2023.

Question No.1467—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

With regard to the upcoming tenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, from November 10 to 25, 2023, and the third session of the Meeting of Parties (MOP3) to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, from November 27 to 30, 2023: (a) how many individuals will be part of the government's delegation and what are their names and titles; (b) what is the overall budget for the government's COP10 and MOP3 participation, broken down by (i) accommodations, (ii) meals or per diems, (iii) hospitality; (c) what are the government's key priorities or action items for both the COP10 and MOP3; and (d) has the government been assigned any specific agenda items or resolutions for both the COP1O and MOP3, and, if so, what are they?

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, at this time, the Convention Secretariat to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has not published an agenda for the tenth session of the Conference of the Parties. Therefore, Health Canada has not yet confirmed details such as participants in the Canadian delegation, the budget for Canada’s participation, or key priorities and action items.

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, if the government's response to Questions Nos. 1458, 1461 to 1464, 1468 and 1469 could be made orders for returns, these returns would be tabled immediately.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Question No.1458—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

With regard to the Canada Dental Benefit, broken down by federal electoral district since the program's inception: (a) what is the total number of applications (i) received, (ii) approved; (b) what is the total dollar value of payments delivered to eligible applicants; and (c) how many children, in total, have been helped by the program?

(Return tabled)

Question No.1461—

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

With regard to expenditures on chauffeur-driven vehicles or similar types of car and driver services for ministers, exempt staff, or senior government officials, since January 1, 2018, excluding expenditures associated with the government's fleet of executive vehicles: what are the details of all such expenditures, including, for each, the (i) start and end dates of the vehicle usage, (ii) amount, (iii) individual for whom the vehicle was used, (iv) pick up location, (v) destination, (vi) type of vehicle, (vii) vendor?

(Return tabled)

Question No.1462—

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

With regard to the public service: (a) how many employees occupy or have been assigned more than one physical office on government property; (b) of the employees in (a), how many are (i) executives, (ii) other employees; and (c) for each employee in (a), what is (i) their title and classification, (ii) the number of offices they have, (iii) the buildings and cities where their offices are located, (iv) the reason for having multiple offices?

(Return tabled)

Question No.1463—

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

With respect to the Canada Summer Jobs program: (a) for each of the 338 ridings in Canada (i) how much money, how many positions and how many hours of work were allocated for fiscal year 2023-24, (ii) how much money, how many positions and how many hours were requested for fiscal year 2023-24, (iii) what is the numerical difference between the amount of money requested and the amount of money received, (iv) what is the numerical difference between the number of positions requested and the number of positions granted, (v) what is the numerical difference between the number of hours requested and the number of hours granted; (b) in mathematical terms, and with all variables defined, what was the formula used in fiscal year 2023-24 to determine the funding granted to each riding; and (c) what share of the overall funding, in percentage and dollar terms, has been paid to ridings in Quebec, broken down by fiscal year since 2006-07?

(Return tabled)