Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on this motion today. To remind everyone what it is about, we have a massive bill, as my colleague from Bay of Quinte said, that would, one, replace the entire Privacy Act with a brand new one for Canadians; two, create a new judicial tribunal to appeal decisions; and three, create something totally unrelated, the artificial intelligence and data act, the first such act.
Way back in October 2022, the House leader for the New Democratic Party moved a motion to split the vote, to have two separate votes on this bill, which we had at second reading: one vote on parts 1 and 2, the privacy and tribunal parts, and then a separate vote on the artificial intelligence part. In November, the Speaker ruled in favour of that and we were pleased to support that motion.
What we are asking for now is to go a step further and split the bill, because we had 21 meetings in committee with witnesses, we are in meeting nine or 10 of clause-by-clause, and we have had almost unanimous witness testimony asking for the bill to be split, and not only because it is a totally separate subject area. To remind everyone, the purpose section in part 1 of the bill, regarding the Privacy Act, says:
The purpose of this Act is to establish—in an era in which data is constantly flowing across borders and geographical boundaries and significant economic activity relies on the analysis, circulation and exchange of personal information—rules to govern the protection of personal information in a manner that recognizes the right of privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information and the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information....
However, the purpose section of part 3, the artificial intelligence and data act, says the following:
(a) to regulate international and interprovincial trade and commerce in artificial intelligence systems by establishing common requirements, applicable across Canada, for the design, development and use of those systems; and
(b) to prohibit certain conduct in relation to artificial intelligence systems that may result in serious harm to individuals or harm to their interests.
It is a very different piece of legislation bolted onto privacy legislation. I think that is why the Speaker rightly ruled that they are separate pieces of legislation and, therefore, should have separate votes.
Conservatives are proposing, after all this study, that the bills should be separated, and we are not alone in that. I will quote what some members in this House have said about separating the bills. The New Democratic Party member for Windsor West, who has been very active and proposed many valuable amendments to this bill in committee, said, “this is really three pieces of legislation that have been bundled up into one.... The first two parts of the act, concerning the consumer privacy protection act and the personal information and data protection tribunal act, do have enough common themes”, but he still thinks they should be separated. He went on to say, as he has said on many occasions, that the New Democrats agree with having the bill in committee, but they want separate voting, as the AI act is the first time that topic has been debated in the House “and it should be done differently.”
The member from the Bloc Québécois who has spoken on this, the member for Laurentides—Labelle, said, “this bill is important, but I would like to know if we should refer it to a committee to study it properly because it is really two bills in one. The first is on artificial intelligence, and the second on privacy protection.” I could go on. For example, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands said in response to the Speaker's ruling, “The Speaker has now given a ruling that says we will be able to vote separately on the AI piece of the bill, but I do not think that is good enough. I do not know if the committee will be able to set aside witnesses and only look at the AI piece”.
The minister claimed he has done all the consultation and that the artificial intelligence bill is a great bill. It turns out he did not have a single meeting on it before he tabled it in June 2022. He did not have a single meeting with any group, but then he bragged afterwards, because he had to put the toothpaste back in the tube, that he had 300 meetings after the bill was tabled. Let me tell members whom he had meetings with.
He said he had 300 meetings. He had five meetings with the AI advisory council; four with the Alliance for Privacy and Innovation in Canada; eight with Amazon; four with the Business Council of Canada; 12 with the Canadian Bankers Association, and maybe that is why we are hearing a big lobby on the filibuster right now on behalf of the Canadian Bankers Association in committee, four meetings where the Liberals have been speaking on behalf of big banks; five with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce; and 12 with the Canadian Marketing Association, the people who send all that irritating stuff. I could go on. The list is here. There were 15 meetings with Microsoft. These are companies that are obviously very interested in protecting people's data and the use of artificial intelligence. It seems that for big businesses, after a bill is introduced, they can get time with the minister.
Now, not to be outdone, the committee has had a request that the bill be separated, signed by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Digital Public, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Open Media, the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, Tech Reset Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, the Centre for Digital Rights, the Centre for Free Expression, the Women's Legal Education & Action Fund, and then another 18 individuals.
The letter was sent to the chair of the industry committee, a very fine chair, by the way. It said:
This letter, submitted on behalf of the individuals and civil society organizations below, is a formal request for your Committee to recommend that AIDA be sent back to the drawing board for full public consultation prior to a substantial redrafting. Additionally, such consultation should not be led by ISED alone given that their stewardship to date has resulted in deeply-flawed legislation, flowing from a process biased heavily toward narrow industry interests.
We are also asking that your Committee split your hearings on AIDA—to have them exist distinctly and separately....
We have done this. It goes on to refer to the Speaker's ruling, saying:
As you know, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in his ruling of 28 November 2022, decided that the House would vote separately on Part 3 of Bill C-27 (AIDA). Subsequent to that ruling, the Committee Vice-Chair [referring to me] noted...that “we've chosen as a Committee to break up the witnesses,” and that “The details of AIDA will happen, and those witnesses will be at the back end of the witnesses.”
This was in the context of granting the Minister more time to produce his promised amendments on AIDA.
It goes on to ask for the bill to be split up. I do not have the time to read the whole letter, but it was interesting that when the minister led off the discussion in the committee, he said, essentially, that it is a flawed bill. He admitted it. His whole opening statement was about amending eight areas, or saying he was going to amend eight areas. It was very specific.
Then, when I and my other colleagues asked him to table those amendments, he refused. We actually had to fight, for four meetings, to get him to agree to table those amendments. We were about to embark on hearing from witnesses who were going to discuss a bill that was already out of date, and the minister was refusing to share what parts he thought were out of date and how he was going to amend it. He finally relented and put in eight draft amendments.
We held 21 meetings. Then, as my colleague from Bay of Quinte said, the Liberals proposed 55 amendments in clause-by-clause to their own bill. None of the witnesses in the 21 meetings that we had had a chance to comment on those 55 amendments. Thirty-eight of them are on artificial intelligence. The Liberals have made 38 amendments to the artificial intelligence bill that they introduced, when they said they were only going to make three or four. They hid all of those from the public, and now the public and the people in the industry have no ability to comment on them, because we are in clause-by-clause.
The minister's admission from the beginning that he had drafted a flawed bill, his admission that he had met with people only after the bill was tabled, his admission that he had basically met only with big business about the bill and his tabling of 55 amendments after we had heard from witnesses all speak to the fact that these are two separate bills on a flawed bill and need to be separated.
