Brian Masse

[Telecommunications, October 21st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the multi-billion dollar telecom company Rogers said that its latest price hike is a result of the increasing cost of technology. Canadians are not buying it, but they are paying for it. They were misled. This is another ploy to get ripped off by Rogers, which just gouged out record profits.

The Conservatives will not stop Rogers from gouging Canadians. They will not risk losing the maximum donations they receive from the company's owner. The Liberals keep handing out millions of taxpayer dollars to Rogers, which is gouging those same taxpayers.

Why do the Liberals, like the Conservatives, ratchet up corporate greed at the expense of Canadians? Why will they not stand up to Rogers?

[Committees of the House, October 9th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague and I thank him for his really good work with regard to this report, which was issued in October 2022.

It is sad that we have not seen the government use this report for what it should have been used for. It is a call for action to deal with many of the issues of artificial intelligence, and it puts due light and justice not only to areas of concern but also to some of the good that AI can do, as my colleague referenced, when it is applied to conditions that have oversight and due diligence related to knowledge and awareness. It also looks at the vulnerabilities of AI as it is being built out.

I have had the opportunity to attend several conferences across the United States and Canada on artificial intelligence, and I can say that we are missing the opportunity to act in a responsible fashion. My colleague mentioned some practical examples, and I will return to those in a few minutes. I want to start by identifying that at the industry committee, Bill C-27, to deal with artificial intelligence, has been languishing since the start of this Parliament. That bill was tabled by the government and not a single thing took place with respect to it for a full year. We had a series of hearings and discussions with testimony that lasted weeks upon weeks to get to the bill, and at that time, we identified several problems.

There are two key components the New Democrats have been pushing for with regard to this bill that are important right now. The issues over privacy, which there seems to be a path forward to resolve, were part of the bill. Then the government decided to put artificial intelligence in the bill as well, which complicated the bill's sense. The government tried to sneak one past everybody by combining these pieces of legislation, which was not necessary. In fact, it was the member for New Westminster—Burnaby who got the bill separated for votes in this chamber, which we can still have, but the bill should never have been put together like this. The protection of Canadians' privacy should have been, foremost, the part of the bill we did first, before even going to testimony on artificial intelligence, instead of trying to sneak one by the Canadian public.

My colleague from Hamilton has outlined some of the deficiencies of artificial intelligence related to facial recognition, which this report speaks to. However, artificial intelligence, given some of the models that have been developed to date that people use, also already shows biases with regard to race, religion and the inputs it has. I have heard from the Amazons and the Googles at different conferences, and they admit to their failures in creating algorithms. They have biases for race and different genders built and baked into their systems because the people generating AI are not diverse and do not have to deal with the consequences of people being identified and misidentified mostly based on not being white and male. That is a known fact in the entire universe of AI.

In fact, at the time the government tabled the bill, a number of AI scientists broke from the major conglomerates to warn humanity about that. However, we have seen what has taken place from how badly the bill was manufactured, as we have over 200 amendments on this bill alone. As referenced here in the chamber by one of my colleagues on the committee, over 50 amendments were from the government, which tells us how badly it was crafted.

Those are very important factors to identify, because we are passing on protecting Canadian privacy and on updating the Privacy Commissioner. That is identified through several excellent recommendations in this report, which call for action. Despite that, not only have the Liberals done nothing, but on top of that, they filibustered their own bill. Even in the past week, when the minister was in Montreal, the Liberals blamed the committee and the opposition for holding up the bill. His own members filibustered their own bill before we broke at the end of the last session. That is what took place in committee and they blamed us publicly.

I asked the minister at committee just last week whether he regretted his comments or at least wanted to clarify them, but he doubled down. We have been requesting amendments to deal with the Privacy Commissioner and to protect Canadians, which they know of, but the Liberals are hanging onto the idea that we want to be complicit in an AI strategy that is not fundamentally vetted and has the not-for-profit community, the public and the academic community all concerned.

The Googles, the Amazons and all the others that are going to benefit from this are not concerned, and that is why they are clinging on to keeping the bill together. What I want to talk about, in terms of how we can move forward, the NDP's proposition to deal with the one carrying point that has a problem. This has united the other members on the committee, the Conservatives, the Bloc and the NDP, who are concerned about a tribunal system set up regarding the Privacy Commissioner.

We have concerns about that because the Competition Bureau has a tribunal over top of it. As New Democrats called for stopping the takeover of Shaw by Rogers, the government allowed the Competition Bureau to be sued for $5 million for doing its job by Rogers itself. The New Democrats defended the Canadian public. They defended the position that should have been there, which was not to let this takeover take place. On top of that, the public was punished by not even having their representation be able to carry the case without repercussions that were allowed from Rogers and Telus.

To wrap up quickly, the real repercussions are as follows: We have seen the Lavender project used by the Israel Defense Forces, using artificial intelligence, as a practical situation that has cost human lives. Today, this has consequences for thousands of families in Gaza. It is a real situation that has come to take place since this report was published. It is a real situation in which artificial intelligence in the military needs oversight and control.

I agree with my colleague and the rest of the committee in their call for halting artificial intelligence face recognition right now until we get some controls. It is about time the Liberals actually came to the table with solutions instead of putting up problems and other problems in the future.

[Privilege, October 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the appointment process, would the member agree that we would have to change it? In the past, in the Harper administration, we had Bruce Carson, who was also incarcerated. We have a whole series of other appointments that have problems, and then we have the current situation that has taken place.

Would more transparency for appointments be something Conservatives would support, which would then also be tabled in the House of Commons here when we make these decisions?

[Committees of the House, October 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has fought to have invasive carp eliminated before getting into Canada's tributaries and lakes. New Democrats fought to get the first microplastics ban passed in the House of Commons, which was then made into regulation. As well, we have fought to get some of the programs to deal with phosphorus.

One of the ones I have yet to get finished and still want to work on, and on which I want the members' opinions, is an action plan for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, for the rise and also the falling of the water levels that take place, so we would know where to dredge, where we would do remedial action and so forth. That would take collaboration between the cities, the provinces and the federal government in the United States. It would also provide a list of business items to make sure our waterways are protected not only for the environment but also for the economy to remain strong.

I wonder what the Conservatives' position is on that suggestion, in terms of creating a business plan to deal with the rise and the fall of water levels in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.

[Privilege, October 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the intervention by my colleague, who I miss on the industry committee. It is important that he was part of the SDTC's original examination. I will give him credit for that.

I want to ask him about some of the problems we have with the appointment processes and transparency. Will the Conservative Party support changing the current practice of making these appointments? Bruce Carson, who was appointed by Stephen Harper, was caught and charged for influence peddling. There was Arthur Porter, who Prime Minister Harper also appointed. He actually fled to Panama and sadly passed away there while awaiting extradition. There has been a litany of appointments, by both the Liberals and the Conservatives, for which we still see no transparency.

Does the member agree that these documents and the reason people are appointed should be more transparent and that the documents should not be redacted so much? Then all of Parliament and Canada could see that someone will work on behalf of the taxpayers and government when they are appointed by a person in power, like the Prime Minister.

[Privilege, October 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Actually it was the NDP that helped bring the motion to the floor of the chamber. In fact I did the intervention myself, along with the member for New Westminster—Burnaby.

[Privilege, October 7th, 2024]

I do not care if it is a ghost or him or whatever. You can have the ghost. It is all good; I know it was in jest anyway.

Mr. Speaker, we got to this place before with the Afghan detainee documents that were not released by the Conservatives, and now we have this situation. One of the solutions for Parliament is updating Crown copyright. It is important to preface by saying that Crown copyright is the privileged access Canadians get to documents, information and research that should be made publicly available on a regular basis. Canada is one of the Commonwealth nations that has not updated this. All the others have. In fact, our laws go back to the early 1900s and have rarely been reviewed. The United States does not have this problem.

Why are the Conservatives still opposed to updating Crown copyright? We could have done that and it would have prevented a lot of this mess right now. I would like to see that done. If the Conservatives would agree, we could get that done and get some of the documents sooner.

[Privilege, October 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to talk about Stephen Harper under beds. That is too much for me to grasp on a Monday morning.

[Privilege, October 4th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, in April 2010, Speaker Peter Milliken ruled on the Afghan detainee documents that the Harper government would not release at that time. We had a series of different interventions from diplomats, other whistle-blowers and so forth. Parliament then had a motion pass, and the Speaker ruled on that in 2010.

If we had actually followed through with the recommendations and the path forward set by the House of Commons, as well as the ruling by Speaker Milliken, we would not be in this situation. We are here, and in what took place on the Conservative benches from when we had the Milliken response and decision to the end of their government record, they did not clean up this fiasco. Therefore, we cannot get the documents that we are seeking today, along with the Conservatives and the Bloc.

To my colleague, why was there not an attempt to correct this behaviour from the Conservative government at that time, under Harper, so we would not have to relive what we are reliving right now?

[Housing, October 4th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, rents are skyrocketing and families cannot find an affordable place to live. Liberals and Conservatives have stood by and done nothing while corporate landlords buy up previously affordable apartments to jack up rent and increase profits for their shareholders. Now we find out that these landlords may be using AI software to coordinate rent increases and price people out of their own home. It is the same software that is under investigation for illegal price-fixing in the United States.

Why will the Liberals not act to stop greedy corporate landlords from ripping off Canadians and using AI as a strategy to evict people from their homes?