44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 1, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.
There are people from the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada on the Hill today. They met with the Minister of Official Languages. The House is working on Bill C-13 because we know that the French language is declining in Quebec and Canada, so efforts to promote French must be made.
My colleague represents a riding in which 80% of the population speaks French as their mother tongue. She just delivered a speech that was about 80% in English. Does that not make her a bit uncomfortable? Does she not think that a clearer message could be sent here in the House?
Her government could also send a clearer message by giving speeches more openly in French.
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- Dec/1/22 4:59:49 p.m.
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The hon. member's question is a little off topic.
I will nevertheless give the hon. member for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne a chance to respond.
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Madam Speaker, if the member wants to ask a question about the subject matter of the bill we are debating, I would be pleased to answer.
With respect to language, I speak both official languages and am very proud to do so.
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Madam Speaker, the question of Canada's ability to deal with our situation in an increasingly unstable world raises serious questions about priorities. For example, we are years behind on the frigates that are supposed to be brought forward by the navy. The cost overruns are staggering, yet we have just seen in Ukraine that the Russian flagship, Admiral Makarov, was taken out by drones.
Do we need to completely reassess our thinking? This is the 21st century. We are investing, often, in 20th-century solutions in a world of warfare, cyberterrorism and cyber-power that is completely transforming the nature of warfare and democracy's ability to defend itself.
Does my colleague think we need to do a larger rethink across the board in terms of our strategies and our ability to defend ourselves?
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for that question, because that is one area of our domain awareness that we have not focused on a lot. When we think about the air force, army or navy, we usually talk about those three domains, but we do not talk a lot about cyber. We know that is the fourth domain that we need to focus on.
In terms of our NORAD modernization, I know cyber is top of mind in working with our Five Eyes partners and other partners. We need that modernization to take place so we can make sure this fourth element of our national defence is also included.
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Madam Speaker, I know the member for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne has heard some of the debate today, not just from other MPs but from civil society organizations that have raised concerns with respect to secrecy as it relates to addressing cybersecurity.
I am curious to hear her reflections on potential improvements she thinks could be made to the bill in order to better balance the need to improve cybersecurity while holding on to accountability and transparency.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately I do not sit on the public safety committee, so I will not be the person debating it when it eventually gets to committee, but obviously there are opportunities for improvement in any piece of legislation. I look forward to seeing the recommendations that might come from our colleagues in the House when it gets to committee.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise at second reading stage of Bill C-26, an act respecting cyber security, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other Acts.
When we consider the opportunities and challenges before us in this area, we see that the theme of collaboration underpins all that we do. Take, for example, the prevalence of cybercrime in an increasingly online world, improving cyber-defence posture in an unstable global environment, deep thinking about what the future holds in a world where innovation and change are exponential, a critical look at whether our policies and laws are up to the task, and the protection of content and intellectual property as data becomes one of the world's most precious resources.
In Canada, being online and connected is essential. Now more than ever, Canadians rely on the Internet for their daily lives. It is about more than just conducting business and paying bills. It is also about staying connected with loved ones across the country and around the world. We should be able to do all these activities safely and securely.
I would like to offer a few words about what we are doing here in Canada to get that balance right. I would like to reinforce the importance of our commitment to protecting the cyber systems that underpin our critical infrastructure.
The emergence of new technologies such as 5G is one clear reason we need to redouble our efforts. Think about our increased reliance on technology in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Think about international tensions amidst Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, with threats ranging from supply chain disruptions to state and non-state malicious cyber-activity.
Through all of these remarkable events, the government has been working tirelessly to keep Canadians safe. We recognize that, now more than ever before, secure and reliable connectivity is a necessity for our daily lives and our collective safety and security. It underpins the delivery of critical services, such as energy production, financial transactions, safe transportation and emergency communications.
As part of his mandate, bestowed by the Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Safety is seized with the opportunity and the challenge of developing a renewed national cybersecurity strategy. We need to make sure we articulate Canada's long-term plan to protect our national security and economy, deter cyber-threat actors, and promote norms-based international behaviour in cyberspace.
The Government of Canada is working to enhance the cybersecurity of the country's critical infrastructure. The work to identify cyber-threats and vulnerabilities, and to respond to cyber-incidents, is ongoing. Unfortunately, we have seen that malicious actors continue to attempt to take advantage of the current environment to exploit certain sectors.
However, we are not starting from scratch in our fight against this threat. Since 2018, the Government of Canada has invested a total of approximately $2.6 billion in cybersecurity. Through the national cyber security strategy, the Government of Canada is taking decisive action to strengthen Canada's defence, preparedness and enforcement against cyber-threats.
The strategy was paired with the largest investment in cybersecurity ever made by the Government of Canada, totalling nearly $800 million in the 2018 and 2019 federal budgets. In the 2021 budget, the government allocated an additional $791 million to improve and defend cyber-networks, enhance data collection and protect taxpayer information.
In the 2022 budget, another $852.9 million was committed to enhance the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, and its ability to conduct cyber-operations, make critical government systems more resilient, and prevent and respond to cyber-incidents on critical infrastructure.
Under the strategy, two flagship organizations were established. One is the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, under CSE, and the other is the National Cybercrime Coordination Centre, or NC3, under the RCMP.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security is a single, unified team of government cybersecurity technical experts. The centre is the definitive source of technical advice, guidance, services, messaging and support on cybersecurity operational matters for government, critical infrastructure owners and operators, the private sector and the Canadian public.
The NC3 coordinates Canadian police operations against cybercriminals and established a national mechanism for Canadians and businesses to report cybercrime to police.
Public Safety Canada's Canadian cybersecurity tool also helps owners and operators of Canada's critical infrastructure to evaluate their cyber-maturity against established benchmarks and by peer comparison. It offers concrete guidance on how they can become more cyber-resilient.
Public Safety Canada also coordinates and delivers cybersecurity exercises for the critical infrastructure community to test and develop capabilities to respond to and recover from malicious cyber-activities. More broadly, the department, as the federal lead on cybersecurity policy, promotes communication and collaboration to raise awareness of cyber-threats and risks, including with our international partners.
Public Safety Canada works closely with CSE's Canadian Centre for Cyber Security to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure in Canada. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security shares valuable cyber-threat information with Canadian critical infrastructure owners and operators, in addition to providing public advisories.
Today, I am very proud to say that we can start debating a new bill to further strengthen what we have built. Today we are starting the debate on Bill C‑26, an act respecting cyber security. The objective of this bill is twofold.
First, it would amend the Telecommunications Act to add security as a policy objective, bringing the telecommunications sector in line with other critical infrastructure sectors. This would allow the government, if necessary, to mandate any action necessary to secure Canada's telecommunications system, including its 5G networks. This includes authority to prohibit Canadian telecommunications service providers from using products and services from high-risk suppliers.
Second, it introduces the new critical cyber systems protection act. This new act will require designated operators in the federally regulated sectors of finance, telecommunications, energy and transportation to take specific actions to protect their critical cyber systems, and it will also support organizations' ability to prevent and recover from a wide range of malicious cyber-activities, including electronic espionage and ransomware. Cyber-incidents involving a certain threshold will be required to be reported.
The bill will also give the government a new tool allowing it to take action in response to threats and vulnerabilities with respect to—
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- Dec/1/22 5:13:19 p.m.
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Order. The hon. member's time has expired.
The hon. member for Drummond.
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Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis on his speech. He obviously has an excellent grasp of the file.
I put this question to another colleague earlier, after a speech, and it is something that really concerns me. I am asking it again because I do not know if the member was here earlier.
We cannot begin to imagine how organized hackers are. They have such a big head start that it will be hard to catch up to them, even if we invest all the energy and knowledge we can in our systems to protect ourselves against cyber-attacks. We have seen companies like Desjardins and Bombardier fall victim to these hackers, who demand endless ransoms. How many other companies have fallen victim to these attacks without us even hearing about it?
My question is this. Has Canada been too slow to act? It took Canada a long time to decide Huawei's fate, for example. Does the fact that the government seems to have dragged its feet before finally tabling a cybersecurity plan that appears to have some teeth not mean that we will always be one step behind those countries and organizations that are attacking the computer systems of businesses and governments around the world?
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Madam Speaker, I know that the Huawei case has been studied extensively with the involvement of our security agencies. I would like to think that the government and security agencies have learned a great deal. They have learned lessons that they can apply in the future to better protect Canadian businesses and critical infrastructure.
In terms of catching up, yes, technology moves so fast that often governments and society have to react, but it is better to react than to do nothing.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
I have a question about publicly owned corporations like Hydro-Québec. How will the bill provide a framework for this, while still allowing companies like Hydro-Québec to be proactive about cybersecurity? How will the bill ensure there is no interference? Will there be support? I would like to hear my colleague's point of view on this issue.
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Madam Speaker, I dare to believe and hope that a publicly owned corporation as big as Hydro-Québec has the resources to protect itself properly. Obviously, it provides a critical service. I think I said that in my speech. We hope that this bill will also serve as a model for other levels of government.
I think that, just like protecting the environment, cybersecurity is a team effort. We have to work with partners in other governments to come up with a solution that is watertight, well aligned and effective.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague and I spent a lot of the day together today. We had an excellent event this morning, which he organized, so I would like to thank the member for Lac-Saint-Louis for that.
There is one question I do have with regard to the bill. It has been written in such a way that secret orders could be issued, and they could be kept from being publicized or published in the Gazette. Why was that choice made? Why was the decision made to have that level of secrecy in the legislation?
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Madam Speaker, I would also like to thank the member for taking part in a panel in front of about 40 students from the Max Bell School of Public Policy this morning. It was wonderful to have her perspective as a westerner, and as a parliamentarian generally.
I would imagine that, when we are dealing with matters of national security in cybersecurity and systems that are key to our well-being, there might be a need in certain cases to be a little more circumspect. I would hope, believe and expect, because every bill that is introduced to the House has to go through a charter analysis, that any such measure the member refers to would pass the test of the charter.
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Madam Speaker, I will give my speech in French. I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Trois‑Rivières, who will no doubt be able to give a more relevant speech than me. I am pleased to share my time with him.
Ottawa is finally proposing a law to deal with the issue of cybersecurity. We are pleased to see that the government is finally addressing this issue. I will not say that it is too little, too late, but I will say that we waited a long time for this.
The purpose of the bill is to force Internet service providers to adopt better practices, something on which we all agree. We commend the government for that.
However, why is Ottawa always in reaction mode? We have been talking about the 5G network and Huawei for years. Hydro-Québec has been experiencing cyber-attacks on a daily basis for years. We have known for years about the rise of China, a country that is interfering more and more. In short, we have known for years that Canada is extremely vulnerable and that it is basically a sieve in terms of cybersecurity.
How can it be that, in this postnational system, everything happens reactively, not proactively? That is all I am going to say about that, because there is no changing the fundamentals of a country that is impervious to reform. Instead, we are going to get out. I just wanted to put that out there.
We support the bill in principle, but there are some grey areas that need clarification. That is what committees are for. The legislation is essentially a regulatory framework that, first and foremost, enables the government to make regulations to ensure the security of critical cyber systems. We have to look at the impact this bill could have on Quebec, especially Hydro‑Québec, because it lists interprovincial power line systems under vital services and vital systems. The committee will also have to look at whether the vast regulatory powers provided for in the bill are justified and ensure that they do not needlessly circumvent Parliament.
The threats that weigh on cybersecurity are likely to increase. They are the future, but they are also very much part of our present. In fact, a number of experts on the matter in Quebec talk to us about it. There is someone I really liked to watch when he was on television, although he stopped appearing when he became a deputy minister. I am talking about one of my constituents, Steve Waterhouse, who is always very interesting to listen to. His work helped raise our awareness and raise public awareness. He is from Sainte‑Madeleine, which is in the incredible riding of Saint‑Hyacinthe—Bagot.
Cyber-threats are already a part of our daily lives. Hydro-Québec is attacked every day by what are referred to as denial of service attacks. These are less sophisticated cyber-attacks and are the easiest ones to deal with, but they can cause major disruptions.
Look at Aluminerie Alouette, on the North Shore, which was the victim of a major cyber-attack that led to a serious outage. A Russian group claimed responsibility. Last summer, during the Rogers outage, which also had a serious impact on debit card transactions, a cyber-attack was the first thing that came to mind.
The objective of the bill is to mitigate the risks upstream. The legislation could certainly help Quebeckers, for example by imposing certain standards on Internet service providers, such as the obligation to avoid using products from suspect companies like Huawei.
In 2020, Parliament adopted a motion to force the government to make a decision about Huawei and Chinese interference in general. Recently, Ottawa finally blocked Huawei after years of dithering. What a waste of time. As Proust wrote, we are in search of lost time.
Madam Speaker, please tell my colleagues that they can let me know if I am disturbing them. I would not want to prevent them from having their conversations.
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- Dec/1/22 5:23:13 p.m.
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I ask that members who wish to have conversations leave the chamber to do so.
The hon. member for Saint‑Hyacinthe—Bagot may continue.
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Thank you, Madam Speaker. I see that they are no more interested in what you have to say than what I was saying, so I do not take it personally.
The 5G network is a new communications technology with bandwidth that is 10 to 100 times greater than that of current networks. The technology stands out for more than just its speed. It stands out for its extremely low latency, which is the time it takes for one computer to communicate with another and receive a response.
This opens the door to many possibilities in different areas, but to achieve performance, 5G uses a multitude of pathways. To simplify, let us say that something that is sent from Montreal to a computer in Paris could have a portion pass through New York, another through London, another through Barcelona, and so forth. This makes the technology particularly vulnerable because it becomes difficult to track the path that the data takes.
Huawei has already been implicated in the scandal involving China spying on the African Union headquarters. In 2012, China offered the African Union a fully equipped ultramodern building. Africa is known to be an extremely important location for Chinese investment. China supplied everything: networks, computers and telecommunications systems. After a few years of operation, in 2017, African computer scientists realized that the servers were sending out huge amounts of data at night, when nobody was working in the building. They discovered that the data was going to servers in China, which was spying on all staff and political leaders. Huawei was the main supplier of the network infrastructure. Microphones were also found in the walls and tables.
China passed a new national intelligence law in 2017. One thing is clearly set out in their law. All Chinese companies must absolutely participate in China's intelligence efforts. It is a form of economic and commercial patriotism, and we could also add digital. In other words, all the private players are being mobilized to say that they are going to participate in the construction of the great digital wall of China. This includes military intelligence and civilian intelligence. For instance, a company can be called upon to spy on behalf of another Chinese company in order to place China in an advantageous position on the world stage.
At this very moment, a genomics company called BGI, which works with genes, is still supplying medical equipment to Canadian hospitals. Its machines collect data, and only the company's technicians are authorized to carry out the monthly maintenance. They are the only ones with access. It turns out that this company has close ties to the Chinese military.
There is also Alibaba, a publicly traded Chinese company similar to Amazon that was founded by businessman Jack Ma. It derives its income from online activities, including a public market designed to facilitate transactions between businesses, payment and retail sales platforms, a shopping search engine and cloud computing services.
Another example is Tencent, a company founded in 1998 that specializes in Internet and mobility services and online advertising. Tencent's services include social networks, web portals, e-commerce and multiplayer online games. Tencent manages and operates well-known services, such as messaging services Tencent QQ and WeChat, and the qq.com web portal.
Today, China is the champion of data collection. This rising power requires new practices, new barriers and new ways of doing things. We should not think that the U.S. does not have their own giants that collect data, but just in China there are 800 million Internet users. That is more than the U.S. and India put together and one-quarter of all Internet users in the world. This number of users will give public and private Chinese actors, which have a close relationship, access to large sources of data that they can mine at will.
China has built a formidable digital system. There is a reason why it is constantly increasing its data storage. There is no doubt that the issue of cybersecurity is at the centre of the current international economic war that is engulfing an increasingly multipolar world. We need to acknowledge this. We need to act.
We support this bill because it is well-intentioned, but we have to find a way to put some meat on the bones.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate very much the Bloc's tentative support of the legislation to go to committee, recognizing that this legislation empowers the minister to take direct, specific actions to protect Canadians and businesses. As the member pointed out so accurately, there is a very real cyber-threat out there. It also ensures that there can be financial penalties.
Would the member not agree that this is just one step? We have had literally tens of millions of dollars invested in cyber-threats over the years. We have had all sorts of group discussions and meetings to make sure that the government is keeping up. There are a number of stakeholders with the responsibility of fighting cyber-threats today.
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Madam Speaker, should that not just be one step? The answer is: of course it should.
I believe we said we are in favour. We are not even sure that this step will be enough, but it is a step in the right direction, and that is why we support it. It is great that there is going to be money for this, but now the real work starts.
I feel there are a lot of areas to consider. We will have to look at industrial espionage and economic espionage too. Regimes have all kinds of legal and digital techniques for acquiring competitors' data and trade secrets.
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