Debates of April 20th, 2026

Lawful Access Act, 2026

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that was another great comment and question from the member from the Bloc. Again, this goes back to money. The Liberals, we know, cannot manage money to save their lives. It seems like instead of trying to support the security community and make sure this program actually works and the bill can work, the Liberals are more interested in protecting slush funds.

Tomorrow, at the health committee, we are going to be investigating why 250 million taxpayer dollars was spent on PrescribeIT, rather than going to help security forces and strengthen this bill. Meanwhile, it was put into a Liberal slush fund.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, Natural Resources; the hon. member for Langley Township—Fraser Heights, Indigenous Affairs; the hon. member for Oxford, The Economy.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I get up to speak to a bill that I think we absolutely need to send to committee. We are already very tardy on lawful access. As my fellow parliamentary secretary mentioned just a moment ago, all of our other Five Eyes partners and all of our other G7 partners have modernized laws with respect to lawful access.

Our government entered office with a couple of main priorities. One of them was being laser-focused on the economy and one of them was instilling a sense of safety in Canadians. In order to instill a sense of safety, we need to make sure that police, CSIS and all of our security community stakeholders have the effective tools they need in order to confront organized crime, threats of terrorism, interference from abroad and all of the other modern threats that exist in today's digital age, which did not exist 20 years ago.

That might have been done with the combatting hate act that was just adopted through the House and is now before the Senate. It would give police the tools they asked for to better combat hate. It was done through a bill we adopted with a significant majority to deal with making it harder for dangerous criminals and repeat offenders to get bail. It is being done with respect to a bill we are now debating at the justice committee that talks about intimate partner violence, femicide and images that are being shared. It is also being done through making sure that police have the necessary tools to deal with threats that are coming across our networks.

I used to have the privilege, before I was elected, of being the general counsel and chief administrative officer of a tech company. I frequently dealt with Internet service providers and telcos. This bill deals with solving the issues we are now having with respect to getting information from telcos and ISPs. That is the core of the bill.

The bill has three parts. I want to talk about the first part of the bill, the core of the bill, which deals with the new measures to help law enforcement deal with obtaining information and combatting crime in the digital age.

The first issue we need to confront is how law enforcement find out which telco or ISP has the needed information for them to then ask for a warrant to obtain more detailed information. The law that we now have, after the Supreme Court case of R. v. Spencer in 2014, means that telecommunications providers are generally only providing information once a court order is obtained. However, if law enforcement cannot figure out which telco has the phone number, the ISP address or the email that is tied to the potential violation or the feared violation of the Criminal Code, then they are stuck in limbo because they need to know who to go to, and have the reasonable grounds to go there, before they can get a court order.

In this bill, we created an amendment called the confirmation of service demand. It basically says that law enforcement can fill out this form and the service provider will have to answer if they are, for example, the provider of a specific number or email address. All that would be provided is a very rudimentary list of things to identify whether they have this information or not. That could be the address associated with the account, the email address, the telephone number, the amount of time the service has been going on and the type of service they provide. There would be no detailed information given without a court order, but this would resolve the issue from the R. v. Spencer case which made it inordinately complex, in my view, to get basic information from a telco.

When I was young, there was something called the White Pages and the Yellow Pages. We could find everyone's telephone numbers, addresses and names there. If the police was looking for a telephone number, they could find it in a phone book.

Those no longer exist now, with the advent of cellphones. Perhaps they still exist somewhere, but they are rarely used. I would not even know where to find one. I know that we can find information in the online 411 service.

If the information is in the public domain, it is not necessary to go to court to get an order to access it, because it is already available online.

We had another judgment of the court that made it confusing as to whether an Internet service provider or a telco could provide information that was available in the public domain without a court order or whether the police could use information that was in the public domain without a court order. There was also confusion as to what would happen if a good Samaritan, a company or anyone voluntarily offered law enforcement information that would touch, for example, what the billing address of a phone number was that was thought to be behind, for example, fraud.

We have all of these people who call us all the time in this country who are attempting to defraud us. I do not know how many times I have been called by Windows, not Microsoft, but Windows, with somebody telling me that my computer was broken, and I should give them my password for them to fix it. They are calling from a phone number and are attempting to defraud me. That same phone number has a senior scam where they call seniors and say it is their grandson or their granddaughter. They say they have been in an accident and need the grandparent to give them money, but no, no, no, they should not tell anyone else in the family.

I have heard from many people who have experienced this grandparents scam. They should be able, if somebody has that information, to give it to police. If the company, the telco, wilfully gives the information to police without a court order, the police should be allowed to use it. This bill clarifies that they can. It would also allow us to deal with information, such as phone numbers, email addresses and other information, that may be located abroad.

I would imagine that many different telephone numbers and email addresses are used to contact Canadians from abroad. We know that a lot of fraud happens in India, including many fraudulent calls directed at Canada. There are also attacks originating from Russia. Until now, it has been very difficult to obtain information from a foreign country under the law. The bill will give us that power and will enable other countries to request information from Canadian courts in a more equitable and fair way. If, for example, France is the victim of fraud committed by a number or person in Canada, then we should also help France obtain information. This is a very good start, in my opinion.

This bill would also clarify the issue of the police's right to use information in the event of an emergency. For example, if there is a terrorist attack, we certainly do not want police to have to get a court order to obtain the information they need to attempt to thwart a terrorist attack on Canada or a cybersecurity threat. These matters are all dealt with in the bill. One of the things I think we have pretty much unanimous agreement on, from all the recognized parties in the House, is that this should go to committee to be studied properly by a parliamentary committee.

I think everyone agrees that a committee should examine this bill, hear from witnesses and determine whether amendments are needed. It is very important to give our law enforcement and security agencies the tools they need.

I will wrap up, and I welcome any questions from colleagues.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary said, quite rightly, that 15 years ago we did not have this problem, and that is absolutely true. Technology has advanced since then. He also said that his new government is laser-focused on crime. I would like to point out that the government is not a new government. It is 11 years old. While technology has advanced, criminality has galloped forward.

I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary would like to explain why, in 11 years, when technology has advanced at a certain pace, crime has galloped ahead at a much faster pace.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, let me simply reject the premise of literally everything the hon. member said. The Prime Minister was elected with a new government last April, and that was Canadians' choice, whether the hon. member accepts it or does not accept it, likes it or does not like it, likes the fact that we have a majority or does not like the fact that we have a majority.

We all should be working together to combat crime. Combatting crime is a really serious issue for Canadians across this country. It is something that I think we generally agree with across parties, and we should be working together, not insulting one another on this issue.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed my colleague's speech. He delivered it in both official languages and I thank him for that.

I have a little question for him, precisely because he is a Quebec member. Quebec has adopted robust legislation to protect privacy, Bill 25. Certain large Quebec institutions have asked me what is going to happen with Bill 25. They have adapted their practices and systems to meet the privacy requirements of Bill 25. Now that Bill C-22 has been introduced, is it going to cause any confusion in Quebec? Companies and institutions have made a lot of investments in response to Quebec's Bill 25.

What is my colleague's reaction to that? What kind of allowances does he propose that his government make?

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that we should invite those groups to testify in committee. We should invite the Barreau du Québec, the chambers of commerce and anyone who can tell us about the work that entrepreneurs in Quebec have done to adapt their privacy practices.

In my previous job, I noticed that, even though the laws vary from place to place around the world, companies always find a way to adapt. Of course, I do not think that we should make people do redundant work to achieve what is essentially the same outcome, but I think that is something that can be sorted out in committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to reinforce what the member alluded to, which is that, within the last year, the Prime Minister, the government and Liberal members of Parliament have brought forward a suite of legislation to deal with combatting crime. One would think that all members of the House would see the value of that. This is what Canadians want us to do. Bill C-22 would deal with very serious issues that I have had the opportunity to highlight and the member highlighted, issues like extortion, terrorism and so forth.

I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts as to why it is so important to pass legislation that would reflect what our constituents have been asking for and the commitment that was made in the last election, just under a year ago, by the Prime Minister.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely, one of the focuses of the government is crime. It is not only crime, but also making sure all Canadians have a sense of safety. People need not only to feel safe, but also to be safe. That is why we brought forward a robust number of crime bills and worked with the public safety critic of the official opposition on private members' bills, which add to the list of bills.

I think this is something that all members of all parties agree on. We all pretty much agree.

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee.

To the viewers at home, the Liberals are coming to regulate the Internet.

This is a very serious moment. The Liberals have introduced a piece of legislation that looks to police activity on the Internet and prosecute crime using the Internet. Obviously, this is going to give rise to a lot of questions about privacy, law and execution. I propose to have a professional discussion about how the Liberals are going to police the Internet while preserving basic charter rights, because we all agree that we must preserve charter rights.

Conservatives support giving law enforcement the tools they need to combat crime and keep communities safe, particularly as threats become more sophisticated in the digital age. At the same time, these powers must be accompanied by strong safeguards, clear limits and independent oversight to protect Canadians' rights and freedoms. Conservatives will always continue to stand for individual freedom, privacy and safety.

Let us begin by talking about some laws. The Liberals want to know if Jane Doe is a customer of Telus. They want law enforcement to have the right to call up an Internet service provider and simply ask if Jane Smith is its customer, without a warrant. I must say that I do not object to that. It is probably public information, and in the interest of security, providers could probably move their privacy policy in a direction where that would be allowable.

I see that my friend from Winnipeg North agrees. I am happy.

I would like to put another proposition to him. Telus or Rogers knows that Jane Smith is a customer, and the police want to seize additional records on Jane Smith, some basic information such as IP address, location, etc. Now we are talking about personal information contained within the records of the company. Like my friend from Winnipeg North says, they are going to go see a judge, hallelujah.

The problem is that, to obtain a warrant, typically a police officer would have to swear to a reasonable belief that criminal activity may have occurred. “Reasonable belief” is an important technical term because it commits the police officer to an affidavit, to a subjective belief that he must swear to. However, in this bill, the Liberals are proposing to lower that threshold to reasonable suspicion.

If a police officer says that they reasonably suspect a crime has occurred, then that would be enough to satisfy the conditions of the warrant and disclose Jane Smith's additional information. We will think about this at committee, and I will want to hear some testimony, but I am not sure that it is prudent to be lowering the threshold of search and seizure, so this is a very problematic provision.

Second, the Liberals are asking Internet service providers to co-operate with them in creating various systems that will help them prosecute crime and find offenders. I do not disagree that that is a noble and necessary goal. They are asking Internet service providers to create systems for the retention of data, back doors where the government would be able to enter encrypted communications and other means to help law enforcement. What is important is that those companies would not be asked by virtue of a court warrant, because a crime has been committed, to say that they now need to create a system.

It would be done by a ministerial order, signed off by the commissioner of intelligence pre-emptively. In other words, while we would not be alleging that any crime has been committed, the minister would now come to the private sector and say that they want it to create a system.

That is fine, but even if that were to happen, the problem is the definition of an electronic service provider, because this order may be very wide. According to the legislation, an electronic service provider “means a person that, individually or as part of a group, provides an electronic service, including for the purpose of enabling communications, and that...provides the service to persons in Canada [and] carries on...its business...in Canada.‍”

If it is Telus, Sprint and Rogers, I understand, but I say to my friend from Winnipeg and to my friend from Mount Royal, who just spoke to this, that I would like to understand very clearly whether this could this also apply to a law firm. Could it apply to an accounting firm? Could it apply to an educational institution? All these folks meet the definition of an electronic service provider as presently articulated by the legislation.

That is a concern on my part. I ask that we study it very carefully at committee. I am sure that even members on the other side of the aisle who lean to the left agree that we have to set some reasonable limits, that we cannot be coming to a law firm and saying that a minister, without a court order, would secretly order them to create a retention system and a back door to look at their clients, with no court order, no judge and no right of appeal. Please, let us be very careful with this.

That brings me to the final point on what is difficult about the bill, and that is the fact that the public safety minister would order the retention of metadata, of all the data, essentially, that goes through an electronic service provider's infrastructure, and they would be mandated to keep it for 365 days. That engages an interesting question about section 8, on arbitrary search and seizure, because the Internet service provider would be ordered by the minister, not by the court, to keep all our data for 365 days, without a warrant. A person may not have committed any offence, but the minister would want the Internet service provider to keep the data in the event that they have committed an offence. That is not how our legal system works.

People will say that it would not be the government seizing the data. That does not matter. If the government were to order another institution, in this case an Internet service provider, to seize it, that Internet service provider would become an agent of the government. The effect is the same, which is a breach of section 8 in that it would be an arbitrary seizure. We need to think about this very carefully. I think I have made a prima facie case that this would violate the charter.

It is important to distinguish this from Snowden. I want to talk about Snowden a little bit. He blew the lid off this in 2013 and said that the government was collecting all sorts of metadata. It was collecting all of it. In order to collect that metadata, one had to go to the FISA court. Even though there are some questions about the FISA court and its efficacy, there was still a court. According to the bill, there would be no court. We would just seize it all.

In fairness to my friends the Liberals, the government would not be able to see the information seized without a court order, without a warrant. The Internet service provider would hold on to all this stuff. If the government wants it, it would get a court order. Nonetheless, the seizure would still happen.

That brings me to my last point: security. It is very clear. According to The Globe and Mail, we are not prepared. We do not have the systems in place to order this sort of metadata catch-all and to create back doors. The article says, “experts are warning that the lawful access regime could allow hackers to exploit architecture inserted into electronic systems”. That is exactly what happened to the United States. The Salt Typhoon hackers out of China, who allegedly have been working for the Chinese state, exploited lawful intercept infrastructure that the U.S. telecoms were required by law to build. They were actually able to breach the White House. Their systems are considerably more advanced than Canadian systems.

We understand the need for lawful access, but we need to make sure we draw the appropriate lines and safeguard civil liberties. The government has a problem with civil liberties.

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

Mr. Speaker, as we get closer to the possible ending of the debate on Bill C-22, it is important to amplify the fact that the legislation would protect personal privacy. Within the legislation, there are checkmarks to do that. Through the legislation, we would also be protecting the public's interest on the issue of safety in a number of different areas. The legislation would do both.

I am encouraged by the Conservatives who were saying this afternoon that the bill will go to committee. The member expressed himself, and though I disagree with a lot of what he expressed, I hope he is able to get some detailed answers at the committee. If he is having issues after the committee, he should not hesitate to bring those concerns to me personally.

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg is exactly wrong on the privacy issue. In fact, the Privacy Commissioner was not brought into the legislation. Ministerial orders require approval only by intelligence commissioners, and the absence of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada from any oversight role suggests that privacy is at best a second consideration. The Privacy Commissioner is not contemplated within this regime, and the criminal law system that is contemplated in it would override any privacy concerns. It is very concerning that the legislation was, effectively, drafted without any input from the Privacy Commissioner.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague gave an excellent speech.

In interventions from the government side, we have heard that we should be confident that the government intends to do the right thing going forward. I want to ask my hon. colleague what level of confidence he has, given that the Prime Minister committed to having a free trade agreement with our cousins to the south, and to building things at unheard of speeds. In the past we have also heard that the budgets will balance themselves.

What level of confidence does my hon. colleague have that, on its own, the government would do the right thing?

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, obviously I have very little confidence, but I would like to provide a legal answer as opposed to a political answer.

We are still bound and graced by and availed of the presumption of innocence. It is a presumption that the government must overcome. It is important that we do not create a regime that would undermine some of our basic civil liberties. Of course, in the quest of pursuing criminals and defending children, it is not uncommon for police or prosecutors to want to overreach. We cannot have that situation here if we want to preserve our democracy.

We always treat the state with suspicion. It comes from a very basic premise: The state has the power, the legislature, the police, the crown and the lab workers. All there is on the other side is—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Order. We will continue with questions and comments.

The hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon has the floor.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I see that my colleague enjoys holding forth, and I think we share the same concerns about Bill C‑22. It is a much-needed bill, but there are a lot of passages, especially in part 2, that require amendments to improve the bill, particularly when it comes to the whole issue of definitions. In Bill C‑22, the government gives itself a great deal of leeway to define certain fundamental privacy-related terms, but it chooses to do so through regulation rather than through parliamentary debate. This raises concerns, because the government will have a lot of freedom to change the definitions of fundamental privacy-related terms.

Does my colleague think that reducing the number of things that can be decided by regulation would be good amendment?

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am actually very worried that we are not going to have a lot of opportunity to fix this by way of regulation.

I would point out to my hon. colleague that the most worrisome thing, the greatest expansion of rights and what scares me about part two, is the definition of electronic service provider. The way it reads now, basically anybody who uses email for work would be an electronic service provider if they facilitate communications in Canada. That would include corporations, trusts, partnerships, joint ventures, unincorporated associations, etc. I am very concerned that we would have ministerial orders without judicial oversight targeted at private corporations—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22 is like so many other bills that show good promise and strong potential to be shaped into good policy in committee. It is right here in second reading that the problems with Bill C-22 are initially identified, and that is what my colleagues on this side of the chamber have been doing: probing, asking questions and identifying weak spots that could be eliminated or good points that could be strengthened. If after this debate the House agrees, Bill C-22 would go to committee stage where it would be debate and have amendments introduced, and then the amendments would be voted on.

Committees are an exceptional tool in which all parties can take a mediocre bill and shape it into good policy, or they can take a good bill and make it even better. We conduct witness interviews, and we incorporate the concerns of everyone until we have a bill that works for all parties, and by extension, for all Canadians. Unfortunately, this is what the Liberals have recently taken to calling obstruction, but it is not. This is how our Canadian parliamentary democracy is supposed to work. I want to address this manufactured Liberal claim of obstruction, because with the compliant media out there, if I do not tell Canadians in the House, they are not going to find out.

Contrary to the narrative of obstruction the Liberals are trying to create, we Conservatives truly did hope that the Prime Minister would steal another of our platform promises and build the so-called energy corridor he promised. We believed him when he said he would make Canada an energy superpower. We hoped he would move quickly and decisively to get our clean Canadian energy to an energy-starved world. That is why we Conservatives voted for Bill C-5 early in the Prime Minister's tenure, and with it gave him more power than any previous prime minister has ever had to achieve those goals.

The Prime Minister has more jurisdictional power than Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had when he built thousands of miles of continental railway through some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable. The Prime Minister has technologies that would leave Macdonald in shock. We can do in a day what it took a year to do in Macdonald's day.

The Prime Minister can look down in real time from 100 kilometres above and see right into the earth with lidar. He can view the route. He can model a pipeline. He can even watch it in real time as it is built from the comfort of his airplane seat. He could have a pipeline built in two years if he wanted to, yet a year after Bill C-5, he does not even have a pipeline started. He does not have a plan to build one. He does not have a route, not even a gleam in a surveyor's eye. What would a rational person think about this?

The Prime Minister promised grand projects of great national importance. He promised a deal with the Americans by this time last year. He promised to move at speeds not seen in generations to unleash our Canadian economy. However, he has not landed in Canada long enough to move anything. Instead of an energy corridor, we have silence. Instead of housing, we have an enormously expensive bureaucracy and empty props that are taken down as soon as the photo op is over. Instead of a continental railway from coast to coast, we have a $90-billion boondoggle between two eastern cities that will likely never get built, and even that is mired in scandal and controversy before the land snatch even begins.

Unfortunately, our Prime Minister is usually absent from Ottawa, flitting about the world here and there in no particular direction, at enormous taxpayer expense and with a catering budget that would make Emperor Nero blush, all apparently to avoid hard questions in question period, since nothing much has been produced except an undergrad international relations term paper at Davos.

The reason I bring this up is that there is a problem, and I am troubled by it. If we send Bill C-22 to committee by voting for the legislation, how can we be confident the Liberals will respect the committee process and not try to do an end run around Canadians? Can we be sure that our efforts in committee will be respected by the Liberals? What is supposed to happen is all-party input, all-party witnesses, all-party debate and amendments put forward and voted on, and ultimately the result is a bill modified by the people of Canada through the process of representative democracy. That is what is supposed to happen. It is not what is actually happening, and I want to talk for a minute about what is happening.

I want to talk about a troubling tactic the Liberals are using to subvert that process. I am fearful that what happened to Bill C-11 is going to happen to Bill C-22. I am a member of the national defence committee. We recently studied Bill C-11, a bill whose central purpose is to transfer sexual assault cases from the military to the civilian justice system. I assumed, probably like most of us here, that after listening to the horror stories in the media, this would be a rubber stamp, and we would simply transfer the authority to the civilian system. However, all of us at committee were surprised.

We listened to the defence and the prosecution teams from the military argue that the studies the bill was responding to were a decade old and no longer applied to the current military culture. They argued that they had both the capability and the capacity to address the cases, and that the culture within the CAF had radically changed in those 10 years.

We listened to the civilian police, who told us that, although they had the capability, they no longer had the capacity to absorb yet more work, especially in locations with military bases close by.

Then we listened to victim after victim of sexual assault in the military. It was really the victims who surprised me and I think most of us at committee, the people I thought would have the strongest desire to move out of the military justice system. I thought perhaps one or two might say they would like to have a choice, but it turned out that just about every single witness we talked to wanted a choice between the military justice system and the civilian system.

After numerous victims spoke, it became obvious that the bill needed to be modified, so, with the support of the Bloc member on the committee, we co-operated to amend an outdated Liberal motion into one that every stakeholder, from victim to investigator, wanted. We gave the victims a choice. So far, so good. We took a bill that was okay and made it into a good bill. Late this Friday afternoon, the Minister of National Defence, in defiance of civilian and military lawyers, civilian and military police, and even the victims themselves, came into the House and tabled Bill C-11 at report stage.

He is trying to strip our amendments from the bill. Why are the Liberals doing this? We had a decent bill that we turned into a much better bill. There seems to be no explanation for it at all. Why would the Liberals defy both the military and civilian justice systems and the victims?

There is a reason. The Prime Minister has not, will not and cannot fulfill his campaign promises. The cracks in our economy have become chasms, and he needs an election before Canadians feel the full brunt of his purposeful inaction. He knows Canadians are going to start to notice the growing divide between these grandiose announcements and the cold, grey reality of their pocketbooks, so he needs a majority government, and fast. He trolled the opposition benches and, yes, sure enough, an artificial majority did manage to slither across the aisle, but the Prime Minister is afraid that his majority will unravel, since he now has both far right and far left members in his caucus. He has called this a big tent, but it has become more like a circus tent, so he needs an election.

However, the Prime Minister does not want to be blamed for calling an election, so the Liberals are banging on about obstruction to make it look like the normal processes of Parliament are somehow wrong. If he employs tactics like this now that he has a majority government, he knows it is to create the kinds of division within Parliament that he can point to and claim are obstruction. Bill C-22 may have the potential to be a good bill, if it makes it past second reading and goes to committee. My fear is that it will meet the fate of Bill C-11, be subjected to the scrutiny of experts, be modified into a much clearer, better bill, and then have all the positive changes stripped out once it hits report stage. This is obstruction, to be sure, but not by Conservatives.

Conservatives are doing what we are supposed to be doing for the benefit of Canadians. The Prime Minister and the Liberal Party, on the other hand, are acting on behalf of the Liberal Party. They are attempting to fabricate another election that no one wants by trying to make it look like it is not their fault. This is not order and good government, but devious arrogance by the Liberals. Canadians had better brace themselves.

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

Mr. Speaker, there was a lot in that speech. It was not necessarily related to Bill C-22, but there was definitely a lot in terms of conspiracy theories.

Let me reassure the member. Here is a reality check. The Prime Minister and the government are focusing on building Canada strong for all. There are record amounts, over $70 billion, of foreign investment because of initiatives that the government is talking about abroad. There are all sorts of potential export opportunities. There is a litany of things. The Speaker is not going to give me enough time to expand on it all. The point is that, as we are focused on Canadians with good and sound public policy, the member opposite can focus on whatever he wants.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there was not a question there. There was a statement, so I am going to make a statement. Potentialities are not the same thing as actualities. We have MOUs worth whatever amount of money. What we actually have is very little. I could talk about the great mineral exploration we are going to be doing on Saturn, but that does not mean we are going to have it today, tomorrow or ever. I am just talking about it.

That is my statement.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has a way of really hitting the point home. The Liberals have been in power for 11 years now, and there is a big gap between expectations they set for themselves and for Canada and the experience that Canadians feel. They also have a very long track record of making grandiose statements and of actually overreaching into the affairs of provincial governments and private citizens.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague this: How does he think we should trust this government after all it has done to erode the trust of Canadians for the past 11 years?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think we should trust the Liberals at all. We just heard that over 10 years, crime has galloped ahead, and it is being blamed on technology creep. Crime has galloped. Technology has moved. The reason for that is fairly obvious: The Liberals are now playing catch-up to a decade of ignoring crime and hoping that it would go away. Now they are dealing with the actuality. They are scrambling to do it and somehow yelling and screaming that they need to do it quickly.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the 30 years of policing that I did, getting access to information was a huge challenge for us. Oftentimes the evidence we needed to prosecute an accused person was sitting on a server outside of Canada, and co-operation was voluntary. Does my colleague see any practical solutions in the bill that would help with cross-border access and enforcement?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I see a great deal of potential in the bill. I have been talking to people overseas as well. There is absolutely no recourse in our laws, and I certainly think we need that, but we have to draw a balance between, on one hand, the anarchy of pure freedom, and on the other hand, really heavy-handed authoritarianism. I think the bill has the potential to hit the middle ground there, but it must go to committee and have all-party input. I hope that the Liberals abide by that, and I hope that they honour the process of Parliament.