Michelle Rempel

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, members in this place have been extremely frustrated and embarrassed by the lack of accountability of the Liberal government to comply with basic orders of Parliament over the last year. Then the Liberals go out into the public and say, “Oh, you know, Parliament has been ground to a halt because of...,” and we can insert any reason other than the government's complete unwillingness to adhere to the laws of this place.

I stand here tonight deeply frustrated. Colleagues in this place have voted to release documents related to a variety of different scandals this government is involved in. One is related to 400 million dollars' worth of potential misappropriations related to this green slush fund.

Earlier this year, I asked a question about a sitting minister of the Crown being involved in a company that was involved in misappropriations and malfeasance. Even if we dispose of this privilege motion related to the green slush fund that we have been seized with for weeks, because the government refuses to turn documents over, we are going to be seized with another privilege motion afterwards related to a sitting minister of the Crown.

His business associate said things like, “Oh, it was autocorrect; it wasn't Randy, it was Shpandy.” It is so ridiculous. We are at the point of preposterousness.

I cannot believe I have to rise in this place to ask for clarification when the government should just be handing over documents so that the members of the opposition, and frankly, even members of the governing party who have a fiduciary obligation to hold the government to account, can actually just get on with that business.

I have been doing this a hot minute. I have been very blessed to be the voice of the residents of Calgary Nose Hill in this place. Now I have to stand here and argue the question of a sitting minister of the Crown handing over documents related to his business with his partner saying that, no, it was not him, the other Randy; it was somebody with autocorrect, who was Shpandy. I know how ridiculous that sounds, because it is ridiculous. It is preposterous. It is a mockery of Canadian democracy.

To anybody who stands up from the government who tries to defend this ridiculousness: it is embarrassing and it is preposterous. It is a mockery of every Canadian who pays taxes, who votes and who thinks this place functions.

I cannot believe I am here having to say, “Please, government, comply with the privilege motion where you hand over documents or comply with the order of the Auditor General or any other basic function of democracy.” Yet, here we are on multiple different occasions. Literally, we had a business associate of a sitting minister of the Crown, who benefited from tax dollars, effectively say, “Oh, no, it wasn't this minister of the Crown. It was an autocorrect and it was Shpandy.”

Can the government just give it a rest and hand over the documents so we can get on with the business of making this place work?

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

Madam Speaker, I wish I had five hours.

I will just say this: Bill C-18 is one small example of what the government has done. Bill C-18 has resulted in the complete decimation of Canada's media ecosystem. There is virtually no local reporting. There is a ban on sharing news on social media platforms.

The government wants an ill-informed, censored population so that it cannot be held to account.

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

Madam Speaker, the government has failed on the fronts that my colleague mentioned in two ways: action and omission. On action, the government has censored Canadians through Bill C-11, which has had a massive effect on YouTube creators, censoring who gets seen and who does not. Bill C-18 has resulted in a news ban for online media platforms, so Canadians cannot get the news. It has also put many newsrooms out of work, so now the government cannot be held to account. Now the government is proposing Bill C-63, which will lead to a kangaroo court, wherein any Canadian could be dragged through with vexatious complaints based on their political opinions.

As well, through omission, by not putting limits on facial recognition software, the government can overreach and use Canadians' biometric data without any limitation. All of that leads to a police state, a censorship state, and something that every Canadian, regardless of political stripe, should be absolutely opposing with every fibre of their being.

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

Madam Speaker, it was former prime minister Harper's government that introduced legislation to stop revenge porn. That was the first law that passed in the House of Commons in response to many terrible incidents. That was a Conservative bill that was passed. Bill C-63 does not do that.

The bill that would do what the member opposite was talking about is a bill that I wrote, Bill C-412. My bill, Bill C-412, would protect people from the non-consensual distribution of intimate images created by artificial intelligence. It includes a digital restraining order for women who are being stalked by people online and a regulated duty of care for how online operators must treat children. We would do all of that without a $200-million bureaucracy, which C-63 proposes, and without a massive impingement on Canadian speech through the reiteration of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

We in opposition did what the government should have done a long time ago. I am very proud of that. I am proud of my caucus colleagues. It is more of what Canadians can have, with the hope that they can look forward to when the Conservatives form government after the next election.

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

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.

What we are doing here today is something called a concurrence debate. It relates to a report that was actually submitted to the House in October 2022, two years ago, on the topic of facial recognition software. This might seem like a very niche topic, but it is really not. Facial recognition software has become pervasive in use, especially here in Canada, and the report provided a set of recommendations on safeguards that could be used to protect Canadians' privacy and their data, as well as to prevent negative social impacts such as the use of facial recognition software to do things like racially profile people from marginalized groups.

The report had some pretty clear recommendations. It was issued in October 2022, and the government abjectly has failed. It has let two years go by without implementing a single one of the recommendations to protect the health, safety and privacy of Canadians. I want to talk about what the government is going to say that it did in response to the report, and then debunk it.

The government tabled a bill, Bill C-27, which has two components. It has some content with regard to privacy and some content with regard to artificial intelligence. The problem with the bill is that virtually every type of civil society group, as well as academics and businesses, has panned both components of the bill for a variety of reasons. Many members of the House have asked for the bill to be split so that the two very disparate topics could be studied separately. The government has refused to do that. Most importantly, the bill contains absolutely nothing on facial recognition, absolutely nothing that materially addresses the recommendations in the report.

That is why when the Liberals stand up and talk about this, they have to dance around the issue. My colleague from the NDP rightly asked how many of the recommendations had been put in place. The answer is zero.

I am going to outline what the key failures of the bill are and then what the impacts of that are on Canadians. This is not necessarily a front-burner issue, but I think it was really important that the report was brought forward today, because it is something Canadians should be concerned about.

There are problems with unregulated use of facial recognition. I know this can sound really technical for some people, but I have to explain how pervasive it is. If someone were to walk into a shopping centre today, there is absolutely nothing stopping that shopping centre from using high-definition cameras to capture their every move, capture their biometric data, attach it to other profiles that the person might have with other companies and then use that information to make a profile on them about what they can afford and how they could be targeted for advertising. In really bad cases, they could be targeted for negative security experiences.

This is a very pervasive technology. Basically, anywhere there is a camera, facial recognition software can be and is likely being used. It is being used not just by the private sector; it is also being used by governments, and there are almost no limits on what the Liberal government can do with facial recognition software in Canada today. That is highly problematic for several reasons.

First of all, it is a massive invasion of Canadians' privacy; many times, they do not even know it is happening. That is because of the lack of regulation. The failure of the government to address the recommendations and put regulations into Bill C-27 means that Canadians' privacy is at risk. They do not have the ability to consent to when and how facial recognition software can apply to them. The second thing is that this opens them up to big-time data misuse.

As I said in the shopping centre example, there is really nothing preventing a shopping centre from selling biometric data and putting together a broader profile on somebody to be used for any purpose, without that person's ability to reject it on moral grounds. Under the fundamentals of privacy in Canada, we should have the right to reject it. I would almost argue that it is a human right.

The other problem is that it can lead to discrimination and bias. Many studies have shown that facial recognition software actually treats people of colour differently, for a wide variety of reasons. Of course that is going to lead to discrimination and bias in how it is being used. There should be restrictions on that to maintain Canada's pluralism, to ensure equality of opportunity and to ensure that people of colour are not discriminated against because of a lack of regulation. To reiterate, none of these things are in Bill C-27.

The unregulated use of facial recognition software, because the government failed to regulate it in Bill C-27, can also lead to suppression of speech. Let us say that a government wanted to use facial recognition software to monitor people on the street. There would then be, within different government departments, some sort of profiles on who people are, what they do or what their political beliefs are. If government officials see them and maybe a few of their friends coming from different areas and walking to a gathering spot, that could, in theory, be used to disrupt somebody's right to protest. There are absolutely no restrictions on that type of use by government in Bill C-27.

We can also see how facial recognition could be used by the government for extensive overreach. Many members of this place will talk about wrongful convictions with respect to facial recognition software. There have been cases where facial recognition software was used to lead toward an arrest or a warrant. Because there are not clearly defined limits or burdens of proof for the use of the technology, it can lead to wrongful arrests and convictions as well.

It leads to a loss of anonymity. I think we have the right to be anonymous, certainly in this country, but that right has been breached without even any sort of debate in this place, because the government has failed to put the regulations into Bill C-27.

Frankly, the lack of regulations, particularly on government use of facial recognition technology, also means that there is a lack of our ability as legislators to hold the government to account on whether or not it is overreaching. Because we do not have the requirement in law for governments to be transparent about how they are using facial recognition software, we cannot in this place say whether there has been an overreach or not. It is very difficult to get that information.

To be clear, Bill C-27 has been panned at committee by civil liberties groups and civil society groups because of three things: It fails to define “biometric function” as sensitive data, fails to provide clear restrictions on when and how businesses and government can use facial recognition technology, and fails to provide adequate safeguards for individuals, especially regarding consent and the potential for discriminatory outcomes. The bill is a failure. It should have long been split, as has been the request of multiple parties of this place.

Furthermore, the reality is that we have not had the debate in the House of Commons on what the guidelines should be for facial recognition technology. What the government has proposed to do in Bill C-27 is to take that out of this place, this vital debate, and put it in the hands of some Liberal-controlled regulator to be determined behind closed doors, with big tech companies, not us, setting the boundaries on that. That is wrong.

I want to talk about what the government has done. First of all, it has put unfettered use of facial recognition software out into the public. It has failed to define it in Bill C-27. Then it went one step further. Bill C-63, the government's massive draconian censorship bill, would go one step further in putting a chill on Canadian speech. It is another layer of Canada's loss of privacy, Canada's loss of speech and Canadians' loss of rights.

When the government stands up and talks about Bill C-63, the draconian censorship bill, as somehow being a response to facial recognition technology, this is not only laughable; it should strike fear into the heart of every Canadian. All of these factors combine to really put a chill on Canadians' privacy, their right to assembly, their right to freedom of speech and their right to live their life without government intrusion or the intrusion of merchants who might be using their biometric data to sell it to other companies.

It is just insane that Canada has not acted on this. We know that the Liberal government has not acted on it because it is in chaos right now. It has so many scandals, spending crises and ethical breakdowns. However, the one thing it has been focused on is censorship. That is because it does not want Canadians to hold it to account.

I am very glad that the report is being concurred in in the House. I find it an abject failure of the Liberal government that it has not acted on the recommendations, which, frankly, are non-partisan and should have been put into law a long time ago.

[Foreign Affairs, October 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, one year ago today, Hamas committed the greatest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. The attack should have woken all of us up to the fact that the terror regime in Tehran and its proxy groups seek the destruction not only of the Jewish people but of democratic values around the world. These groups care nothing for the lives of the people subjugated under their rule, and they subject them only to death and misery.

The genocidal regime in Iran and its proxy terror groups are the foe today, which failing hands threw us the torch to guard against. In that, we must know that the promise of Canada does not self-perpetuate. We must fight for it every day. That means rejecting feckless leaders who placate lawless mobs within Canada's streets. It also means defending the right of Israel, a democratic nation, to protect itself from the same terror groups that also seek death to our Canadian way of life.

I remind my colleagues that peace never comes through appeasement. It only comes through strength. Am Yisrael Chai.

[Privilege, October 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I did hold a cabinet position. It was an economic position that was responsible for various grants and contributions, and every step of the way, I changed terms of funding. I called for proposal models so everything would be as fair and as just as possible so no one could ever accuse our government of not spending money wisely or of enriching our friends.

It is corporate fiduciary responsibility that the current government has lost because it does not have ministerial accountability anymore. I think that is so sad, and I look forward to a government led by the current Leader of the Opposition where that accountability is restored.

[Privilege, October 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there absolutely is something that prevents the RCMP from getting the documents. It is the Liberal Party of Canada, and that is why we moved the motion in this place to compel the documents. The member's party has completely blocked justice in this sense, and that is why we are doing this today.

It was actually the member opposite, who just raised the question, whom I was referring to in in my earlier remarks, saying that members like him who do not hold a government position, though I guess he kind of does, need to look inside and say that they will not do the dirty work of the government anymore and will not be complicit in this. When the member keeps standing up and raising talking points that are just patently false, he is not being true to himself or to his constituents, who brought him here to uphold the rules and to respect their rights and privileges.

[Privilege, October 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, first, I offer my condolences for having to serve under one of the worst prime ministers in Canadian history. Second, I think I will deal with the question obliquely, by saying that the whole goal of SDTC, the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, was to promote technologies that were homegrown so that the intellectual property could stay in Canada. What else was its goal? It was also to address environmental challenges like climate change. The government has done nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and now it is literally allowing one of its main funds for the issue to be subject to potential malfeasance. How disheartening is that?

Not only are the Liberals not meeting their climate objectives but they are also allowing scandal, waste and fraud to permeate a company filled with people who just want to do good. How disheartening is that?

That is why, as my colleague said, the motion is before us. I think there is a lot of agreement in this place, except from the governing party, the Liberals, for us to move on. I wish for and implore the governing Liberals to just produce the documents so we can move on with life and, as my colleague rightly brought up, perhaps re-inspire the hope of that former employee of SDTC.

[Privilege, October 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague just underlined the importance of this place and the importance of respecting the rules of this place. In that, I wholeheartedly agree. She and I may vehemently disagree on approaches to public policy, but the reality is that we each have the duly elected right bestowed upon us by all of our constituents to raise our voice on the issues we may disagree with in order to come up with public policy that is in the best interest of Canadians.

However, we can do that, as she said, only when our privileges are respected, when we can get the documents that this place has ordered, when we can examine the government's activities and hold the government to account and when the rules of this place are upheld. When we have an executive government, a branch of government, led by a Prime Minister who has frequently, abjectly and completely ignored and, yes, flipped the bird to this place, then we have a duty to end the government and move on to elect a new government that will not do all of the things that he has done and which have led to the erosion of Canadian democracy over the last decade.