Ryan Williams

[Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I come from Belleville, Ontario, and we are at the centre of an opiate crisis right now. We have a major overdose epidemic. In the last three months, we had 240 overdoses. We had 13 in two hours. We had 23 in two days. As an MP, I have been working with the former Liberal member, the mayor of Belleville, Ontario. I have been working with and talking to community groups and those who are addicted and struggling, as well as police, paramedics and our hospitals.

The problem we have is twofold. We talk about how the NDP has supported the government with bail reform, and the police are saying it does not work. The NDP has supported, especially in B.C., decriminalization, and these community groups are saying that does not work. One of the first things we can do is ensure we give the tools to the police and the community groups that make sure that the criminals who are dealing drugs go to jail and stay in jail, and that those who need help in treatment of addiction get the treatment of addiction so we can bring our loved ones home drug-free.

However, most importantly, the NDP can defeat the government and call an election so we can have these issues come to the open, and we could bring a government back to Canadians that would fix these issues once and for all.

[Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, we cannot always flaunt our skills. We say it is thanks to the speNDP helping the government “jiggle jiggle”.

We have so much more we can do in the government, and I think, slogans or not, the main thing we want to do here is work on behalf of Canadians. Canadians are screaming for change. They are screaming for a government that is going to look after them to ensure that they have housing and a good standard of living. No matter what our skill sets are, we will work on behalf of Canadians.

[Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, while we are discussing what we renamed the SES, the summer economic statement, Canadians are experiencing the worst cost of living crisis in 40 years, due to a lack of affordable housing, the carbon tax, and record-smashing food bank use and grocery prices. Canadians have always had common sense. When Canadians look at their own expenses, they budget. They stretch dollars. They choose whether they go on vacation or whether the kids go to after-school activities. They go to a grocery store and have to budget what they are buying. They have to look at practical solutions to everyday challenges with resilience and resourcefulness.

However, common sense is like deodorant; the ones who need it the most never use it. With respect to this level of government, Canadians are shaking their heads in disbelief because of the lack of common sense on the opposite side of the aisle. This is the greatest country in the world. We have great people, innovative minds, great institutions and hard workers. We have resilience. Canadians invented peanut butter, the zipper, the Ski-Doo and the Sea-Doo, but common-sense approaches have become rare commodities.

In 2015, among the Liberal campaign promises was the promise to help the middle class and those looking to join it, as well as tax cuts for the middle class. What do we see now? We see more people who are out of the middle class. We see tax increases. The carbon tax alone went up 23% on April 1. More people are finding themselves out of the middle class, and more people are finding themselves taxed, as we have a government that lacks common sense.

Look at what the government could do if it looked at the basics. Let us say a dozen people went into the woods to try to start a community. What would be the first things they would do? They would build shelter. They would hunt and find food. The community would make sure it had a place to look after the children and one another, that everyone would be well looked after.

After nine years under the government, more Canadians than ever before are finding that rent has doubled, mortgage payments have doubled and the amount needed for a down payment has doubled. They are finding that grocery prices are $700 more this year alone. Groceries have gone up 24% over the last four years. Look at the cost of heating one's home. All prices for farmers growing their crops have gone up. The government's common sense has just disappeared. Let us look at some examples of its lack of common sense.

The government borrowed $400 billion back in the day when the Prime Minister said that interest rates were at historic lows. When we borrowed $400 billion, the government borrowed it over the short term. The government did not look ahead 20 or 25 years as a family would when looking at a mortgage. The government looked at the short term.

Now the debt is coming up for renewal. Do members know how much the renewal is going to cost us just in 2025? It is going to cost $12 billion, because the government did not have the common sense to look at long-term loans to look after Canadians' money. I wonder how many water bombers we could have bought and had fully crewed to be operating in B.C. right now to look after forest fighters.

Look at NATO and NORAD. They are our trusted allies. NATO and NORAD have asked us for years to contribute our 2%. We even passed a resolution in the House to do so, but we have not contributed. Because of that, we do not have a seat at the table. What happens to international security if we are not at the table? We will also not be at the table when it comes to international trade because our trading partners will work only with partners who work with them for security.

What is happening up north right now? The fact is that we do not have a base. We cannot even land an F-35 fighter in the north right now in Canada. We have jets being purchased, but it has taken 10 years. Do members remember when we said that the F-35 was too much? The Prime Minister said we were not going to buy it, and nine years later, of course, we are buying it for how many billions more? However, we cannot even land the thing in the north. Finland is buying half as many F-35s as we are, and it has already built a runway to land in the north to defend the northern border.

We talk about icebreakers in the north. We have one barely functioning icebreaker. Do members know how many icebreakers Russia has in the north right now? It has sixteen. Do members know how many China has? It has 40. We did not have the common sense to put any money toward our security or the north, which we really need in order to play our part in NORAD and NATO, on behalf of our allies in the U.S. and, of course, just for our security.

We have talked about drugs in hospitals. We are saying that smoking crack at a hospital or bringing in a weapon should be outlawed. More importantly, I visited Millhaven maximum security prison in Kingston only two weeks ago; three inmates there were high on drugs.

After nine years, we have mergers and more mergers under the government. We talk about competition. Part of the bill is about competition. However, under the government's watch, the merger of HSBC and RBC was approved. Because of that, mortgage rates have gone up. HSBC used to have a mortgage rate that was 1% lower than RBC's offering. Right now, that is costing the average taxpayer, who has a $500,000 mortgage, $300 more a month because that merger was approved.

We had WestJet buy Sunwing. Only a couple of months later, it was announced that Sunwing was going to shut down. There is only one competitor in the west. Sometimes it is Air Canada; most of the time it is WestJet. We had Rogers buy Shaw. What happened two months ago? It was announced that cellphone prices were to go up nine dollars a month. When we look for competition, it is not there.

The bill would bring in some aspects of competition. Thanks to the Competition Bureau, and dare I say, some amendments by the NDP, we are going to look at ensuring that we have no mergers approved that have a market share of over 30%. At the end of the day, the government has approved more mergers.

Open banking is probably the closest thing we can have to actual competition coming to one of our oligopolies right now. Open banking in Canada would open up the doors for Canadians to bring them financial freedom. One example is this: If Canadians have a Wealthsimple account, they have to screen scrape and find different ways to get through it. The government makes it really difficult for people to try to use a new banking app. This app right now pays Canadians 5% on their cash balance daily. What is the average bank interest rate right now? It is 0.2%. I think if someone had $10,000, over 10 years, they could make $100. Competition is freedom for Canadians. Open banking was not in the fall economic statement or in the new budget, to make that a reality for Canadians.

We are talking about no common sense. The government has hired 100,000 employees, a 40% increase since 2015. However, it takes 58 days to get an email back from CRA, compared with 43 days in 2015. Someone should try getting a passport. There has been no efficiency. There is more government and less efficiency.

On housing, the $4.4-billion housing accelerator has not built one home. We have a lack of skilled trades. Here is my favourite stat from last year, as we are talking about no common sense. We brought 1.3 million immigrants to Canada, new Canadians, permanent residents and TR. Do members know many home builders we brought last year? It was 4,300, and we wonder why we have a housing shortage.

We need immigration. Our birth rates are extremely low. We need people to come in, but when we are looking at immigration, let us make sure we are also looking at building homes first, so we have a place for people to go and house prices do not go sky-high. We even had the member for Winnipeg North say that MAID has saved lives. That was a statement used. There is no common sense.

Another one of my favourite examples is that the government has cut the budget to the Information Commissioner at a time when access to information is at an all-time low. The Ethics Commissioner had their salary cut when the workload has never been higher. Common sense is not common. Canadians have common sense, but the government does not.

It will only be in electing a common-sense Conservative government that we once again restore common sense to Canada and to Canadians. Of course, we will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. We are also going to create competition for a change, for my home, for everyone's home, for our home. Let us bring common sense home.

[Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I understand consent was sought and given for me to split my time. Therefore, I would ask to split my time with the hon. member from Saskatoon—Grasswood.

[Taxation, May 21st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, a fun fact is that the Liberal-NDP minority government is now the longest-serving minority government in this country's history. A not so fun fact is that Canadians have never been poorer. With the worst standard of living crisis in 40 years, and in the middle of this historic cost of living crisis, the government decided to hike the carbon tax by 23%, ruining Canadians' vacations.

The Conservatives just announced their common-sense plan to axe the carbon tax and all federal taxes on gas from Victoria Day to Labour Day weekend, which would save the average Canadian 35¢ or, for those in Ontario, $592. Common-sense Conservatives know that what Canadians really need a vacation from is the government and its tax hikes, which is why, when Canadians elect a Conservative government, we would axe the tax in the summer, fall, winter and forever for everyone.

[Committees of the House, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, yes, going to committee one expects to do the work. This is an important topic for every single Canadian, and the fact is that we have to deal with filibustering and amendments from a government that just cannot get it together or present good legislation to begin with. It would help all Canadians and all the government if it could just get its act together and present some good legislation in the first place.

[Committees of the House, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I cannot believe I am saying this, but we agree with the member. We are fighting for privacy as a fundamental right and ensuring that those things can happen. We are the only party, and actually the NDP is with us, fighting for that data to be deemed sensitive. This is data such as one's location, biometrics and gender. Even with driver's licences, massive fraud is going up. Violent crime is going up. All those things are extremely important.

I would hope the Privacy Commissioner gets more money and more funding. We are asking for more power to that commissioner. I hope this member does not go down the same road as what has happened with the Information Commissioner and the Ethics Commissioner, who are seeing their funding cut. I do not think that the funding of those two commissions needs to be cut or that the commissioners' wages need to be cut.

We need the Privacy Commissioner to probably see more autonomy, but also get the power they need to make sure they enforce those rules.

[Committees of the House, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the government brought 55 amendments to its own legislation. When has that happened before? The member talks about Stephen Harper. I do not think Stephen Harper brought 55 amendments to his own bill, followed by 16 subamendments and then filibustered his own bill for four meetings in committee.

The government's role is to present a piece of legislation, ensure there is proper debate in the House and in committee and then ensure the bill passes in the House. One does not do that by bringing 55 amendments and 16 subamendments. The government has failed to present a proper bill. We have identified that it needs to be split, or it may never get passed.

[Committees of the House, May 21st, 2024]

moved:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology that, during its consideration of Bill C-27, An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts, the committee be granted the power to divide the bill into two pieces of legislation:

(a) Bill C-27A, An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, containing Part 1 and the schedule to section 2;

(b) Bill C-27B, An Act to enact Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, and an An Act to enact the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, containing Part 2 and Part 3.

Madam Speaker, I rise today on an important debate that is coming from the industry committee. Right now, we are studying what seems to be the unending study of Bill C-27, which is privacy legislation.

I have risen in this House before at least one other time on this matter, as have other members of the Conservative Party and other parties, including the NDP. We are rising today to request that this bill be split into two parts. One would be the privacy legislation replacing PIPEDA in the tribunal, and the second one would be AIDA, or the AI portion of this bill.

The reason for that is twofold. It is taking a long time to pass this bill mainly because of the government. The government produced a bill that was flawed, and because of this flawed bill, when it presented the bill, it presented 55 amendments to the bill. We have been going through them at committee, and we are now just getting through the definitions part of clause-by-clause on the first part, which is PIPEDA. We are finding there has been 16 table-drops to this bill for amendments.

This bill was not ready to come to the floor. We are looking at the need for privacy legislation, which we do agree with. Conservatives have stood in this House and said we believed that privacy should be considered a fundamental right for Canadians. When we look at that aspect of the bill, and it is very important, the second part of this bill, the AI, the AIDA, portion of this bill, is so flawed that it is holding up the first part of the bill.

The parts never should have been put together; they should have been separate. There were some fundamental reasons why the government wanted to put them together. With 55 amendments and 16 subamendments to the main part of the bill, this bill is so flawed we cannot even get through the first part. We are worried if the bill is not separated into two votes, and we do not have AIDA separated and perhaps have it come back as a whole new legislation, we are not going to get the first part of the bill through, which is privacy legislation that Canadians are desperately asking for.

After nine years, Canadians have never had less privacy. We look at the fact that we have Alexa, or AI of any form, and when our children are on their iPads, that data is being scraped off the Internet and collected. None of it is private. We do not have any privacy with our data.

This week, we are looking at privacy, and we are trying to discern the difference between normal privacy and sensitive data. Sensitive data would be looked at under the act but would be a bit more heightened. It would be looked at with greater penalties for those who breach it. We are certainly looking at everyone's privacy in the coming years with AI and the advancement of computers.

The one that we are specifically looking at is financial data. All of the transactions that we do through Interac, our banking system as a whole, our bank accounts, and the interactions that we have online, like with Apple Pay or on our cellphones, are all held by the banks. Many Canadians would be surprised to know they do not own their financial data.

A bank has someone's data, and that can mean anything from their credit history, where they spend their money, how they get their income or where they are paying their taxes. All of that data right now is not held as sensitive, and more importantly, it is not held under that person's consent. Financial data across Canada needs to be regarded as sensitive.

Perhaps the biggest breach of that within the last two years was when the government enacted the Emergencies Act and bank accounts were frozen under the act. The government has the ability to freeze bank accounts because that data is not sensitive. Through the government, when it took away the rights of Canadians, that data was then held by those banks against consumers' will.

In this country, we want to be able to have open banking. The idea with open banking is to have Canadians control who owns their data, and, with their consent, who can have their data. That is really the crux of this bill. When we talk about sensitive financial data, it is the ability for someone, as a consumer, to control where their data is and where it goes.

Open banking, of course, brings competition to our banking sector, which allows not only the six big banks to have our business, but also hundreds of other financial tech organizations that want to have our business and right now are only able to get it through screen scraping. This is taking data off screens or having their clients take screenshots of their financial history in order to get it to a financial tech organization so it can compete for their business. However, financial data should be sensitive information, and when we look at how that relates to AI, well, it is a whole different component of the bill. Also, when we look at location data, and the ability for someone to know from a person's phone where that person is right now, that is also sensitive data. However, the advancement of AI has allowed all of that information to be out in the open and to be emulated.

When we look at the AI bill, the most important part that we are going to be standing up for, as Conservatives, is to ensure that computers cannot emulate human beings without their express consent. However, when we look at privacy as a fundamental right, AI allows the ability of one's image, likeness and voice to be replicated and used all over this planet, which, of course, is bad when we talk about fraud. We have all the heard stories of parents who thought that their children were calling them for help and to ask for money. It sounded like them, they laughed like they did, but at the end of the day, it was an AI program that emulated an individual to cause an act of fraud.

Right now, Scarlett Johansson is in the news. If anyone has used ChatGPT lately, version 4, which is the new version, they would find that Sky apparently uses Scarlett Johansson's voice without her permission. AI does this right now. It can scrape images and likenesses off the internet, and there is no recourse to ensure that it is taken care of. However, having this AI bill attached to Bill C-27, the privacy act, is slowing this process down and, because of that, Canada is falling further and further behind. It should be a separate bill, and we are asking that the bill before us, of course, be put into two separate votes, as we have before.

I am splitting my time today, because I have some knowledge, but we have greater expertise coming from the member from South Shore—St. Margarets.

I will end with where we are with AI in general. It was announced last week on the budget bill, Bill C-69, that the government is going to put money into AI, figuring that, finally, Canada should have been a leader and should be a leader on this. However, another article, just released yesterday, effectively said, “Ah, too late”, and that the money the government wants to put into AI and infrastructure, Meta Llama 3 has just made obsolete. Of course, Meta, Microsoft, Google and so many other companies have already put money and resources into AI, and Canada is falling further and further behind because, after nine years, Canada has lost almost all of its IP in AI to the rest of the world. China had 13,000 patents in AI just last year, which was more than all patents filed in all sectors in Canada. The U.S. had close to 20,000 patents. So, now, when we put money into IP for AI in Canada, it is not Canadian IP. Once again, we are just investing in American and international companies in Canada. Canada is becoming a branch-plant state. We take our taxpayers' hard-earned money and we put it into intellectual property and multinational corporations that do not provide the GDP that Canada needs but just jobs, which is what we are left with.

We have a bill that was not properly done. It has 55 amendments from the government side and 16 subamendments. I could not believe that, the other day, the government was filibustering its own bill. We were in committee, and the government was talking it out. It did not like that we were talking about financial data as sensitive information. I had never seen this before. However, the bill is flawed and it needs to be split in two. We are happy to make sure that happens and that we get the bill right. Do not worry, a Conservative government will get it right.

[Committees of the House, May 21st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the member talked about the leader of the NDP and his brother who is with Metro. We always wonder why we do not hear about Metro in here. We hear about Loblaws all the time. However, the government is equally complicit in grocery prices.

Last October, the minister of innovation stated that grocery prices would come down in a matter of weeks or months. The government passed and received royal assent, on December 15, 2023, on the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act. The government has an act called “affordable groceries”, which was passed on December 15.

I wonder if the member would comment on this. Have grocery prices gone down? Has the government done anything at all to lower grocery prices?