Ziad Aboultaif

[Freedom of Religion, March 10th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, representatives of Open Doors Canada came to Parliament Hill this week to highlight the 2023 World Watch List of the 50 most dangerous countries in which to live as a Christian. More than 360 million Christians around the world are suffering high levels of persecution and discrimination. Last year, 5,621 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons. An additional 4,542 were detained without a trial, arrested, sentenced and imprisoned.

Christians are not the only ones who face persecution. Ahmadiyya Muslims in Bangladesh have also seen a recent increase in violence against their community, with homes torched and people killed: two dead and 100 injured, according to March 3 reports.

I call on all members of this House to recognize that freedom of religion and belief is a fundamental right, not just here in Canada but around the world.

[Online Streaming Act, March 9th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, this bill has gone back and forth in the House for a long time. the NDP's position before was completely different from what it is today.

I would ask the hon. member to tell us what kind of revelation happened for New Democrats to have changed their minds all of a sudden.

[Pandemic Day Act, March 8th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for the motion.

The text of this bill claims:

it is fitting that March 11 of each year be officially designated as “Pandemic Observance Day” in order to give the Canadian public an opportunity to commemorate the efforts to get through the pandemic, to remember its effects and to reflect on ways to prepare for any future pandemics.

Certainly, it is fitting that we take time to remember the effects COVID-19 had on our lives. More than 55,000 Canadians died COVID-related deaths. That is a sobering statistic. This number is more than die each year of heart disease and about four times the number of people who die accidentally each year.

We do not remember statistics though. We remember husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and grandparents whose lives were shortened by the disease. Each one was an individual. Each one was loved. Behind each death, there is an intensely personal story. Their loved ones remember them every day. They do not need the government to set aside a designated day for that purpose.

Do we need a pandemic observance day to give the Canadian public an opportunity to commemorate the efforts to get through the pandemic? Communities came together in innovative ways to deal with a situation no one had prepared for. It can be inspiring to think of the ways individual Canadians reached out to others for the benefit of all. It can be said that Canadians showed their resilience in the way they supported each other through that very trying period.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the Canadian people together. It was a shared experience that brought out the best in people. It also brought out the worst of the government's performance. The most memorable stories of the COVID-19 pandemic are not those of individuals coming together but of a government out of control, out of touch with reality and showing itself to be incompetent, corrupt or maybe both.

As the pandemic was unfolding, the government sent 16 tonnes of badly needed personal protective equipment to another country: 50,118 face shields, 1,101 masks, 1,820 pairs of goggles, 36,425 medical coveralls, 200,000 nitrile gloves and 3,000 aprons. In doing so, it left our country without sufficient supplies for our own medical personnel. Canada was unprepared for the pandemic. The government failed in its duty to protect the Canadian people. It apparently believed the virus was not going to come here. It kept that attitude despite the fact that it had been warned.

In 2004, the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health presented its recommendations to the government. Canada was unprepared for the SARS outbreak, it said, “because too many earlier lessons were ignored.”

SARS made hundreds of Canadians sick and killed 44. It paralyzed a major segment of Ontario's health care system for weeks, and thousands were placed in quarantine. Overworked health care workers felt mental and emotional stress. Does that not sound just like the COVID-19 pandemic?

It was sadly obvious that the Liberals were unprepared for COVID-19. If they had paid attention to the SARS report, they would not have been giving away the very materials our health care system needed.

Given the Liberal track record, Canadians have no reason to believe the government will, as this bill suggests, spend any time reflecting on ways to prepare for any future pandemics, unless it is reflecting on finding ways to enrich its friends during a time of crisis. This will happen at the taxpayers’ expense, of course.

As unprepared as they were, the Liberals did see some opportunities as COVID-19 cases mounted in Canada. This is something all Canadians should remember.

We can think back to March 2020, as the first COVID cases were being reported in Canada. After giving away the PPE equipment our health care workers needed to fight the pandemic, the Liberals decided that they needed sweeping new powers to tax and spend without parliamentary scrutiny. When that did not work, they shut down Parliament to avoid being held accountable.

Faced with a global health emergency, their first response was an attack on democracy. They did not want Canadians to be informed of what was going on. They did not want to have to answer questions in Parliament.

They hoped no one would notice when an organization with financial ties to the Prime Minister’s and finance minister’s families were chosen to receive millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money through sole-sourced contracts.

The public service has considerable expertise and experience in administering government programs. Instead, the Liberals tried to funnel the money to their friends. When the wrongdoing by the former minister of finance was discovered, at least he was honourable enough to resign, unlike the Prime Minister, who has apparently never done anything wrong in his life.

Apparently, the Prime Minister has not even read the Ethics Commissioner’s reports, which is perhaps not surprising. The pandemic has shown that the Liberals are, at best, ethically challenged. They do not understand the rules, even simple ones, such as that we do not give government contracts to our friends.

After the Ethics Commissioner found that the Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development had broken the rules, she apologized. However, she has not offered to repay the money that she had her department give to her friend.

There was also the former Liberal MP whose medical supply company was awarded a $237-million contract for 8,000 ventilators, at $10,000 more each than what is paid in the U.S.A. Once again, a contract was awarded without competitive bidding, this time to a company that had never made ventilators before.

The government spent $1.1 billion for 40,000 ventilators. Most of them were not needed because COVID was not as bad as forecasted, and now they are just gathering dust in warehouses.

When Canadians remember the pandemic, they will remember the Liberals investing $130 million of taxpayers' money in a vaccine that was being developed by a Canadian firm partially owned by a tobacco company. Was there no one smart enough to ask whether such a vaccine would be acceptable to the World Health Organization? Apparently there was not. It was no surprise to anyone, except perhaps the Liberal government, when the WHO failed to approve the vaccine because of the tobacco company involvement.

Canadians do not need a special pandemic observance day to remember the most out-of-control government spending. There was billions of dollars in handouts, no accountability and no determination as to whether the funds were really needed.

Canadians will have no choice but to remember the biggest government spending spree in our history because they will be paying off the debt for decades. My unborn grandchildren will be paying off the Liberals' debt. They will wish they had nothing to remember.

Canadians remember the incompetence of the government as the pandemic became endemic. As travel became possible once more, those lucky enough to get a passport endured chaos at the airports. The Liberal government could not even figure out how to make the system work.

Inflation rose to record levels, and the government responded by tripling its carbon tax instead of providing relief for Canadians struggling to make ends meet. Canadians will remember that every day; no special day is required. Canadians do not need a pandemic observance day to remember their loved ones, nor do they need this legislation to remember just how incompetent and corrupt the Liberal government was in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Pandemic Day Act, March 8th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I respect your decision, but you never called my riding by name. You looked my way, and I—

[Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, March 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I did actually edge on where the federal and provincial responsibilities come on certain aspects of privacy and privacy protection. Again, the definitions come into play in understanding the legislation. That is why the government could have done much better in bringing more clarity to the bill, so we could at least study it better.

[Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, March 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I go back to the one thing I mentioned. Even these vague definitions would still be in the hands of the minister to decide after the fact, and that is one of the biggest flaws in the bill. We do not understand how the minister would handle this and whether the minister would let the commissioners play their roles and do their jobs. That is why we have to be very careful approaching the bill and examining it, especially at committee, to be able to bring forward an acceptable and effective piece of legislation.

[Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, March 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I did mention the European law and the fact that the government was too late at looking at it and in considering steps to bring Canadians legislation that would help and that was most needed.

I also mentioned the fact that there are a lot of vague definitions that will lead to problems for this bill to be resolved.

The government presented the bill much later than the Europeans, who presented their bill in 2016. It is 2023 now. It could have done something much faster, quicker and more mature so we could work together to provide Canadians something that is most needed.

[Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, March 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, in a previous Parliament, the government killed Bill C-11 because it wanted to have an election. It did not see the importance of that bill. Now the government is proposing a flawed bill and expecting us to support it. We will support a bill that really makes sense, a bill that will help and work for Canadians.

I do not think we have any interest in wasting time. It is up to the government to do something with its bill to make it acceptable for other parties to support it.

[Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, March 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, last week, the federal government banned the use of the TikTok app on government devices because of data privacy concerns, so it is very appropriate for us to be discussing this matter today. Digital data privacy can be seen as a fundamental right, one that urgently requires strengthened legislation, protections and enforcement. Canadians must have the right to access and control the collection, use, monitoring, retention and disclosure of their personal data.

This is a pressing issue. Realizing that, the European Union introduced the GDPR, its General Data Protection Regulation, in 2016. EU countries were given a couple of years to adapt to this new privacy reality, with the regulation coming into effect in 2018. The GDPR has been used by many other countries as a framework for privacy protection.

With the GDPR as an example, and faced with a changing digital data universe, the government basically did nothing to protect data privacy for Canadians. Perhaps that is an unfair statement. After all, digital and online data privacy was addressed in the last Parliament under Bill C-11. The Liberals recognized that Canada needed to bring its privacy laws into the 21st century.

However, that bill was never passed. Apparently, data privacy was not a big enough issue to be made a priority, and the digital charter implementation act was scrapped in favour of an election that Canadians neither wanted nor needed. Now we are asked once again to address this subject. It is indeed better late than never. I would have hoped, though, that with the delay, the government could have improved on what it is proposing.

Perhaps if the government had moved a little faster, Canadians would not have had to question how their data was being used and how their privacy was being invaded by governments and corporations. We are left to wonder how many privacy breaches have gone undetected or unreported. The ones we know of are disturbing enough. Tim Hortons used its app to track customer movements. The RCMP used Clearview AI’s illegally created facial recognition database. Telus gave customer location data to PHAC.

It has been more than 20 years since Canada’s existing digital privacy framework, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, was passed. With technological changes in recent years, legislation is needed to address subjects such as biometrics and artificial intelligence. We have to consider how Canadians understand the issue of consent when it comes to the use of their data and their privacy.

I am deeply concerned and disappointed with how sloppy the Liberal approach in Bill C-27, the digital charter implementation act, 2022, currently is. Privacy is a fundamental right. This bill does not mention that, despite the Supreme Court of Canada having acknowledged it. We need to clearly distinguish the extent to which Canadians’ digital privacy will be protected. If the government wants the bill to be fully effective, it needs to further explore the scope of accountability required when privacy is breached.

The clear definition of consent is a major improvement from what it once was in the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Document Act, but a good definition is only the beginning. Because technology has greatly expanded and evolved since the implementation of PIPEDA, should we not also expand the umbrella of activities that consent would cover? The large number of exemptions allowed would weaken the impact of the legislation.

Bill C-27 may be a good beginning, but I had hoped for something better. It is sad that the bill’s title is perhaps the strongest statement in the legislation. While the title gives some idea of what the legislation is all about, it is already dated. We are no longer in 2022, and the Liberals are once again falling behind.

As parliamentarians, we know the power of words and the importance of speaking in a way that can be understood by those receiving the message. It is important that legislation can be understood. It is even more crucial that the bills we pass spell out exactly what we intend.

Perhaps the most important part of any of the laws is the section that provides definitions. They need to be clear and comprehensible and not subject to differing interpretations that weaken the intent of the legislation. Legislation that allows each person to provide their own definitions is problematic. Bill C-27 uses words such as “significant impact” or “sensitive information”. I cannot help but question what is covered by these vague terms.

Before the people of Edmonton Manning sent me to represent them in the House, I was a businessman. I understood the importance of safeguarding the personal information my customers entrusted to me and not to abuse that trust. However, as we have seen, some companies make unauthorized use of the information they gather to gain a competitive edge or for profit.

With that in mind, there must be a balance between acceptable use of data by business and the fundamental protection of our privacy. It seems to me that the balance is wrong on this bill, given the way it addresses user consent and the use of collected information.

The more I read Bill C-27, which 100 pages-plus, the more questions I have. There is too much in it in need of clarification. Yes, that will be done when it goes to committee after second reading, but the government could have presented a better bill to make the committee’s work easier.

I do not want to sound too negative. I know the Liberals mean well, even if they do not seem to be able to quite understand just how important digital privacy is to Canadians in the 21st century. I am pleased therefore to see that they understand that sometimes mere words or a scolding are not enough.

It makes sense to me that the Privacy Commissioner will receive new powers to enforce violations of the consumer privacy protection act. That may be the most impactful change the legislation brings about. It is not enough to simply recommend that perpetrators stop their violations. Any parent could tell us that consequences are needed if we want to ensure improved behaviour.

With the Privacy Commissioner finally being able to force violators to conform to the rules, I think we will see increased respect and better treatment of Canadians' personal information. The harsh financial penalties for non-compliance will be a powerful motivator.

Given the amount of time the Liberals had before presenting Bill C-27, we must question why they did not come up with a better bill. They have left me, and all Canadians, asking if they really understand what their own legislation is supposed to do.

Does the consumer privacy protection act, as proposed in the bill, do enough to properly protect Canadians’ personal information? The Liberals had a chance to look at the EU’s GDPR and see how well that worked. Did they learn anything?

Would Bill C-27 improve the protection of Canadians’ personal information or are there so many exemptions for needing consent in the sharing of personal information that the words of the bill are meaningless?

Would the legislation create proper protections for Canadians’ biometric data? Given that no such protection currently exists, perhaps we should be thankful that the subject is addressed at all.

Is it reasonable to exempt security agencies and departments, such as CSE, CSIS and DND from AI regulations? How do you balance privacy and security concerns?

Canadians’ digital privacy and data needs to be properly protected. This bill is a flawed attempt to start the long overdue overhaul of Canada’s digital data privacy framework. The Conservatives will be looking at putting forward some common-sense amendments at the committee stage to ensure we have the best possible legislation.

[Arab Heritage Month Act, February 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise once again to offer my support for Bill C-232, an act respecting Arab heritage month.

I am one of more than a million Canadians of Arab descent. As so many have, I came to this country as an immigrant, escaping the dangers of war and economic upheaval. Here I have made my home, raised a family, and I am proud now to be able to give back by serving all Canadians in the House.

I am proud of my heritage, my Arab background, but I am prouder to be Canadian, which means that I will be pleased to celebrate April as Arab heritage month. I will celebrate the contributions of Arab culture and Arab people to Canadian society. However, I will not allow myself to be defined by the hyphen that people use when they call me an Arab-Canadian. When I became a Canadian citizen, I did not make a partial commitment. I went all in. I love the land of my birth, and who I am has been shaped by my heritage, but my identity is now found here.

As the late John Diefenbaker, the 13th prime minister of Canada, reminded us upon the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1960, he said that:

I am Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.

When a person is a Canadian, no hyphen is needed. There are no second-class citizens in Canada. It does not matter what a person's race or religious beliefs are. A person's background does not define them, their character does.

Do we as individuals and a nation always live up to our ideals? Unfortunately not. However, as Canadians, when we fail, we say “sorry” and then we try again, always striving to do better. We learn from our mistakes.

I think that wanting to do better is one of the values that makes the Arab people want to come to Canada to be part of this great country. We come from a region where old rivalries, sometimes going back thousands of years, are all too often an impediment for progress. “Sorry” is a word rarely heard.

Canada offers an opportunity for a fresh start, and Canadian values are also Arab values. Looking at the Bill of Rights, upon which the later Charter of Rights and Freedoms is based, I see the values that founded Canadian society that resonated with me as a new Canadian.

We read that the Parliament of Canada believes the Canadian nation to be founded upon principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God, the dignity and worth of a human person and the position of the family in a society of free people and free institutions. Also, that humans and institutions remain free only when freedom is founded upon respect for moral and spiritual values and the rule of law.

As the bill recognizes, in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely:

(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law; (b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law; (c) freedom of religion; (d) freedom of speech; (e) freedom of assembly and association; (f) freedom of the press.

Sadly, in many places in the world, including Arab countries, some of those rights are not available to the citizens. In some places none of them are. No wonder Canada has become the destination of choice for Arabs seeking a better life.

The lack of freedoms in some places in the Arab world is perhaps one of the reasons why we need an Arab heritage month. Canadians need to be reminded that there is so much more to the history and culture of the Arab people than the negative portrayals found all too often in the news. The current political activities in the region do not always reflect the values of the Arab people, just as the actions of the Government of Canada do not always reflect the values of Canadians.

Arab heritage month would be an opportunity for those of us of with Arab roots to share the richness of our culture in a more deliberate way than is the case now. We have introduced many Canadians to shawarma and baklava already, but there is more than that to be shared and celebrated with Canadians.

There is a rich cinematic tradition that is almost completely unknown here that can now be viewed online. Naturally I feel the Arabic language films are best heard in the original, as Arabic is one of the most beautiful languages in the world. I would encourage all hon. members to learn my mother tongue, but watching with subtitles can still convey the cultural richness of the Arab world.

It is not just in film that there is a long-standing tradition, but in music also. Just last month I watched Christa Maria Abou Akl, who was born, as I was, in Lebanon, appear on the French language television show La Voix, which airs on the TVA network, singing in Arabic and French. Just 20 years old, Christa Maria is already a musical force to be reckoned with. It was my privilege to get to know the family four years ago when they first arrived in Montreal. It was a pleasure to see Christa's success in becoming part of our music future and history in this country.

I am proud of my heritage and am happy to see the establishment of Arab heritage month. I am prouder still to be a Canadian. It is a great honour to have been chosen by my fellow Canadians, from all different backgrounds, to represent them in this House.

Recognizing my heritage, they have asked me to serve all Canadians, to affirm, as the Bill of Rights says:

That the Canadian Nation is founded upon principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God, the dignity and worth of the human person and the position of the family in a society of free men and free institutions.

This April, and every April thereafter, let us celebrate Arab heritage month and the contributions of Canadians of Arab descent to this great country. Since the 1880s, Canadians of Arab descent have been enriching our nation, adding their ideas, energy and values to making this the best country in the world.

As I have said before, Canada is an example of what a society can be when the people celebrate their heritage without forgetting what unites them in common purpose. Let us celebrate Arab heritage month, whoever we are and wherever we came from.