44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 1, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I just have a couple of quick points.
First, I would correct the minister. He referred to it as Bill C-21 a couple of times earlier in his speech. I think that maybe it is on his mind. He knows that there are great changes that need to be made or scrapped out of that bill.
As for the references he talked about in his speech, to Huawei and 5G, obviously the government finally decided to ban Huawei from our 5G network just in May.
Why did it take the government so long? It was tabled here. A motion was passed in the House a year and a half prior to its making that decision.
I am just interested to know why it took the government so long to make such a critical national security decision.
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Mr. Speaker, I embrace the urgency of my hon. colleague's question. I also want to thank him for the legislative title correction. Obviously, I am managing a number of priorities, as he well knows.
There is no dispute that we need to advance this debate and to do so thoughtfully and deliberately and urgently. As he will know, we took very decisive action against the risks posed by Huawei and ZTE as they relate to 5G, 4G and 3G networks, and we are going to continue to be vigilant about them.
If he shares that sense of urgency in moving forward, he really ought to study the bill along with his colleagues in the Conservative Party and support it.
At the end of the day, this bill would address those gaps and potential vulnerabilities so that we can manage the risks and, at the same time, leverage the innovative opportunities that lie in wait when it comes to technology.
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Madam Speaker, I heard the member talk about Huawei quite a bit. I could not help but reflect on the fact that the former contender to the current leader of the Conservative Party was actually on the legal team to support Huawei through its initiative to try to get onto the 5G network in Canada. I cannot help but wonder why on earth, if the Conservatives are so against Huawei and treat this threat so seriously, the Conservative Party of Canada would green-light—
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the fantastic member for Lac-Saint-Louis.
It is with great pleasure that I rise to discuss Bill C-26, an act respecting cybersecurity. I will address elements in the legislation that deal with securing Canada's telecommunications system.
As Canadians rely more and more on digital communications, it is critical that our telecommunications system be secure. Let me assure this House and in listening to the debate today I think we all agree that the issue of cybersecurity is of utmost importance. The Government of Canada takes the security of this system seriously, which is why we conducted a review of 5G technology and the associated security and economic considerations.
It is clear that 5G technology holds lots of promise for Canadians for advanced telemedicine, connected and autonomous vehicles, smart cities, cleaner energy, precision agriculture, smart mining, and a lot more. Our security review also made clear that 5G technology will introduce new security concerns that malicious actors could exploit. Hostile actors have long sought and will continue to seek to exploit vulnerabilities in our telecommunications system.
CSIS, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, acknowledged this in its most recent publicly available annual report. The report states:
Canada remains a target for malicious cyber-enabled espionage, sabotage, foreign influence, and terrorism related activities, which pose significant threats to Canada's national security, its interests and its economic stability.
The report states that “[c]yber actors conduct malicious activities to advance their political, economic, military, security, and ideological interests. They seek to compromise government and private sector computer systems by manipulating their users or exploiting security vulnerabilities”.
The CSIS report also highlighted the increasing cyber-threat that ransomware poses. The Communications Security Establishment has similarly raised concerns about threats like ransomware in recent public threat assessments. We have seen how such attacks by criminal actors threaten to publish a victim's data or block access to it unless a ransom is paid. However, it is not just cybercriminals doing this. CSIS warned that state actors are increasingly using these tactics, often through proxies, to advance their objectives and evade attribution.
To be sure, Canadians, industry and government have, to this point, worked hard to defend our telecom system, but we must always be on the alert, always guarding against the next attacks. This has become more important as people now are often working remotely from home office environments.
5G technology is adding to these challenges. In 5G systems, sensitive functions will become increasingly decentralized in order to boost speeds when required.
Cell towers are a familiar sight in our communities and along our highways. The 5G networks will add many smaller access points to increase speeds. As well, the number of devices that the 5G network will connect will also grow exponentially.
Given the greater interconnectedness and interdependence of 5G networks, a breach in this environment could have a more significant impact on the safety of Canadians than with older technology. Bad actors could have more of an impact on our critical infrastructure than before.
The security review we conducted found that in order for Canada to reap the benefits of 5G, the government needs to be properly equipped to promote the security of the telecommunications system. We need to be able to adapt to the changing technological and threat environment. For these reasons, we are proposing amendments to the Telecommunications Act. The amendments will ensure that the security of our telecommunications system remains an overriding objective.
This bill will expand the list of objectives set out in section 7 of the Telecommunications Act. It will add the words “to promote the security of the Canadian telecommunications system”.
It is important for those words to be in the act.
It means government will be able to exercise its powers under the legislation for the purposes of securing Canada's telecommunications system.
The amendments also include authorities to prohibit Canadian telecommunications service providers from using products and services from high-risk suppliers in 5G and 4G networks if deemed necessary and after consultation with telecommunications service providers and other stakeholders.
It would also give the government the authority to require telecommunications service providers to take any other actions to promote the security of the telecom networks upon which all critical infrastructure sectors depend.
We have listened to our security experts; we have listened to Canadians; we have listened to our allies and we are following the right path. We will ensure that our networks and our economy are kept secure. A safe and secure cyberspace is important for Canada's competitiveness, economic stability and long-term prosperity.
It is clear that the telecommunications infrastructure has become increasingly essential. It must be secure and it must be resilient. Telecommunications presents an economic opportunity, one that grows our economy and creates jobs. The amendments to the Telecommunications Act accompany the proposed critical cyber systems protection act. This bill will improve the ability of designated organizations to prepare, prevent, respond to and recover from all types of cyber-incidents, including ransomware. It will designate telecommunications as a vital service. Together, this legislative package will strengthen our ability to defend the telecommunications and other critical sectors, such as finance, energy and transportation, that Canadians rely on every single day.
The legislation before us today fits within the Government of Canada's telecommunications reliability agenda. Under this agenda we intend to promote robust networks and systems, strengthen accountability and coordinate planning and preparedness.
Canadians depend on telecommunications services in all aspects of their lives, and the security and reliability of our networks has never been more crucial. These services are fundamental to the safety, prosperity and well-being of Canadians.
We will work tirelessly to keep Canadians safe and able to communicate securely. This legislation is an important tool to enable us to do that. I look forward to working with members in this House to getting this right and making sure that our telecommunications system is as strong as it can be.
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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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