Debates of Oct. 9th, 2024

Innovation, Science and Industry

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms also includes sections 3, 4 and 5, which are about the democratic rights of Canadians. Canadians have the right to be democratically represented on the floor of this House. The majority of this House has demanded the production of documents related to the $400-million spending scandal. We did the same thing with the Winnipeg lab documents.

Why does the government consistently ignore the democratic wishes of the people's elected representatives and deny this House documents?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the member opposite because he usually stands up for institutions, including this place. What he is not standing up for right now is the independence of law enforcement in this country. The independence of law enforcement is pivotal.

What my colleague emphasized is that usually my friends opposite are listening to the police. This is what the deputy commissioner of the RCMP said on the news yesterday: “It is a very dangerous situation.... [T]he rule of law is predicated upon a separation between what [Parliament is] doing and the law enforcement agencies, in this case the RCMP.”

We are listening to RCMP commissioners and former commissioners. I wish the member opposite would do the same.

Public Safety

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Mr. Speaker, for years, they have known Samidoun as a terror affiliate. On October 7, they chanted, “We are Hezbollah, and we are Hamas. Death to Canada, death to the United States, and death to Israel.” They incited hate. They incited terror. They burned our flag.

Why does our foreign minister fail to act when Canada is threatened? She told Tom Mulcair that it is about the demographics of her voters.

Why does the minister put partisan politics over Canadian national security interests?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, our government is deeply concerned about the national security interests of Canadians. That is why we support the law enforcement agencies and security agencies that do this important work. That is why we rely on their advice to decide when the government, under the Criminal Code of Canada, should list a terrorist entity.

There is good news. These security agencies are constantly reviewing a whole series of organizations to determine if the threshold has been met. I talked to them as recently as this morning, and I am very confident that we will have some important news very quickly.

Air Transportation

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians work hard all year so they can take a vacation and visit their families. They want quality service from airlines. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of our government's approach to protecting Canadian air passengers.

Can the Minister of Transport share this wonderful news with us?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, in 2019, we were the first government in Canadian history to introduce legislation to protect air passengers. It was the right thing to do.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Canadians. They have rights. They deserve to be protected. They can count on our Liberal government. Unlike the Conservatives, we will always stand up for travellers and their rights.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Sudan now has the world's worst displacement of children anywhere, and 17 months into this devastating humanitarian crisis, not one single Sudanese Canadian loved one has gotten to safety in Canada. A family member in Vancouver was desperate to bring his sister and her two daughters to safety. With months of inaction, the sister has now perished. The two children are alone.

Will the minister expedite processing and expand eligibility of his restrictive program to include vulnerable children in Sudan?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Minister of Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows well that this plan was devised with community members and community organizations, and we worked hand in hand with them to put out this program to get 8,000 Sudanese people fleeing war. We plan to make sure these people get here, hopefully by the end of the year, with more next year. I will constantly be working with community members, who I will be meeting with as early as tomorrow, to evolve the program if need be.

Taxation

[Alain Rayes, Independent, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have been asking questions in the House for over a year, and yet there is a completely ridiculous tax issue that has not been addressed.

Here is an illustration of the problem. When a person goes to Tim Hortons and buys six donuts, they do not have to pay tax, but if they decide to buy six healthy, sugar-free bars, they have to pay tax. That means that people are paying more for healthy products. This is harming our local businesses, which are facing unfair competition with multinationals.

Can the Prime Minister tell us whether he intends to ask his Minister of Finance to change this ridiculous situation?

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Minister of National Revenue]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to discuss this situation with my colleague several times. I understand that he cares a lot about this issue, and I also understand the problem. To fix this, the Department of Health and the Department of Finance would have to make some very substantial changes. This is something that we could look at in an upcoming platform.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

During question period, the member for Outremont used unparliamentary language. I would ask her to withdraw her comment and apologize.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The hon. member for Outremont.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think if you check, you will find that this word has been used in the past.

I would be happy to respond once the Chair has done the research.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the House leader said that Liberals were not participating in the current debate on Liberal corruption, and I just wanted to know if I could table the speeches from the member from Winnipeg—

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The hon. member, unfortunately, does not have unanimous consent to be able to table that document.

Getting back to the point of order raised by the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, yes, I will review the transcripts. However, if I remember correctly, that word, as regrettable as it may be, has been used several times here in the House of Commons.

I will come back to the matter if necessary.

The House resumed from October 7 consideration of the motion.

Public Accounts

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

It being 3:21 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion to concur in the 31st report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #869

Committees of the House

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I declare the motion carried.

I wish to inform the House that because of the deferred recorded division, Government Orders will be extended by 12 minutes.

Message from the Senate

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed the following bill, to which the concurrence of the House is desired: Bill S-250, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to sterilization procedures.

Oral Questions—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I wish to return to the point of order raised yesterday after Oral Questions by the member for Kelowna—Lake Country. In her intervention, the member alleged that the member for Cambridge had used language that was unparliamentary toward her. In response, the member for Cambridge rose to vehemently deny the accusation.

As I had not heard anything like this at that time, I endeavoured to review the matter and check if anything could be heard on the video or was included in the official Debates. After reviewing these records, I can confirm that nothing was found and that these words were not part of the record.

As is the case at times, long-established tradition dictates that I should take members at their word. Accordingly, this is what I will do in this instance.

All that is left for the Chair to do is to ask all members, as I have done time and time again, to avoid speaking and shouting at each other from across the floor. This will help keep the exchanges civil and dignified.

I thank all members for their attention.

Public Accounts

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 44th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, entitled “Cybersecurity of Personal Information in the Cloud”.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise to table the Conservative Party's dissenting report to the 44th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, entitled “Cybersecurity of Personal Information in the Cloud”.

The Auditor General noted in a report the many security breaches and the lack of seriousness on behalf of the government in addressing these issues. In response, the Liberals and the NDP put forward suggestions that were focused instead on the net-zero aspect of cybersecurity.

Therefore, Conservatives recommend the following in place of recommendations 5 and 6: “That, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat take immediate action to resolve the confusion between departments regarding roles and responsibilities for cyber security and finally lay out clear and concise mandates to departments involved in cyber security” and “That, in working to immediately address the failures as reported by the Auditor General, Public Services and Procurement Canada and Shared Services should prioritize the protection of personal information of Canadians and not pursue unrelated goals that are outside the core purpose of cybersecurity operations.”

Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Madam Speaker, I move that the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, presented on Tuesday, October 4, 2022, be concurred in.

I am pleased to start the debate on this report, which is entitled “Facial Recognition Technology and the Growing Power of Artificial Intelligence”. My constituents in Trois‑Rivières regularly talk to me about these two topics. They are worried about these things. We hope to be able to shed light on this.

Over the past few years, facial recognition has become common. We like it when our iPhone recognizes us and every app can start opening up without us having to do anything. There is a catch, though. An iPhone recognizes a face, obviously, but who has read their iPhone's terms and conditions? Do users know what happens to the image that has been recorded? Do they know if they own their own image? What are the restrictions on the use of that image?

At the time of the study, those were the types of questions that got the committee interested in this topic. We are going to show that there are immense benefits to facial recognition. However, there are also some immense drawbacks. We are going to have to be able to weigh these types of things.

Facial recognition has obviously improved over time. The report, which dates back to October 2022, is quite relevant. However, it must be said that since the emergence of generative AI, these kinds of tools have started developing more rapidly. It is getting hard to keep up. There are no real regulations governing the use of AI or facial recognition.

A few years ago, in February 2021, the Privacy Commissioner released an investigation in which he found that Clearview AI, a facial recognition company, had violated the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Basically, what happened was that when shopping mall customers looked at the store directory screen, their image would be recorded and they would be tracked through the mall to monitor what they were doing in order to build profiles on them. The commissioner found that these practices violated the act.

Facial recognition is more than that. There is surveillance everywhere. Many things can be associated with facial recognition. To go a step further, I would like to propose a definition of facial recognition.

Facial recognition...is the process of identifying a face from a digital image or video. [Facial recognition technology] can be deployed in real time or on static images. It uses computer pattern recognition to find commonalities in images depicting human faces.

Obviously, it does not always work perfectly. Someone may have such a bad night that their iPhone does not recognize their face in the morning. It is not perfect.

However, we have to admit that although this technology does make our lives easier, it can also poison our existence. Several witnesses told us that this identification technology sometimes has a lower success rate among Asian people and people of colour. This is a problem if, for example, facial recognition is used by police to identify a witness or an accused person, and the wrong person is identified. Obviously, a 30% success rate for Asian people and people of colour is a bit low, so clearly, we need to be careful.

Facial recognition equals identity. Identity is how someone presents themselves to the world, how they relate to others. It is the most beautiful definition of otherness, and I am certain my colleagues in the room can easily appreciate that. Otherness is how we present ourselves to others. Our face is unique. Some may say that some faces are less so than others, but our face is unique. It is a valuable source of identification.

Have any of my colleagues in the House consented to their faces being used for commercial—