44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 21, 2024 10:00AM
- May/21/24 11:18:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is precisely right. That is why it is just so baffling. The Liberals should go outside and talk to someone, actually talk to the people.
This is not rocket science. They should go to the grocery stores and the food banks to see these working families that cannot afford to pay for groceries, which have skyrocketed under the leadership of the Prime Minister, propped up by the NDP leader.
That is what it is all about, power and control, and driving up the cost to make Canadians dependent upon them.
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- May/21/24 11:19:23 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not think it has ever been said in the House of Commons that this place is lacking hypocrisy. There is usually enough hypocrisy in this place to go around, but the motion brought to us by the NDP is just abounding. It is even overflowing. It is even too much hypocrisy for the House of Commons, which has certainly seen enough of it in our history.
The NDP is talking about corporate greed and grocery prices. Meanwhile, the leader of the NDP's brother, Mr. Singh, is a lobbyist for Metro. I could not believe that the NDP member who rose with respect to the motion actually mentioned the fact. He gave away the story when he said that the most profitable large grocery chain in Canada was Metro. This is the firm that for which the brother of NDP leader lobbies. Therefore, no one is making more money. No one is profiting more from a grocery perspective than Metro, the company for which the brother of the leader of the NDP, Mr. Singh, lobbies. It is unbelievable, the hypocrisy and the chutzpah to bring this into the House, to go forward with the fact that somehow they do not have any responsibility.
Meanwhile, as the member for Peterborough—Kawartha just said, the current government is the longest surviving minority government in Canadian history. The NDP-Liberal government has continued to prop this up, so we have seen this record profit under the NDP-Liberal government. It is not a Conservative government in power. We are seeing these record profits of these grocers under the NDP-Liberal government. Therefore, we have more hypocrisy.
However, let me back up and explain why this might be happening.
The reality is that socialism fails every time it is tried. Of course, we are all aware of the tremendous failures, the suffering and the millions who died during the Soviet Union. We have seen the suffering in Cuba and Venezuela. However, I want to bring three concrete examples of where socialism has failed.
One is the U.K. After World War II, it embraced socialism. It went full hog into socialism. It nationalized nearly every major industry. What happened? Initially it was not that bad, but then Margaret Thatcher's old adage came into being, “eventually you run out of other peoples' money.” That is the problem with socialism. The United Kingdom became known as the sick man of Europe, because its economy was so behind, which brought the standard of living down further and further until Margaret Thatcher came to office, brought free economics, and brought the U.K. back on the economic road map.
The second example is an interesting one, Israel. Israel also embraced socialist policies shortly after World War II. It embraced very socialist collectivized farming. Some members might be familiar with the term “kibbutz”. These were socialist farming agricultural places. Initially, it was not bad, because they were carrying this money that had come from before. They were initially spending their money, so they grew debt.
However, what happened was that Israel's economy began to shrink and shrink badly. In fact, it was not until around 1980 or so that eventually it adopted free market policies and went from one of the lower economic growth countries to leading the developed world, from 2000 on, in economic growth.
Once again, we see socialism fail.
A third example is the world's biggest democracy, India. India initially, after World War II, also embraced socialist policies and once again found it to be an unmitigated disaster, lowering the standard of living. Then, it embraced a free market economy and, lo and behold, the market increased.
This is repeated all over again. What is happening in Canada is not new news. We had the Liberal government take power in 2015. The Liberals were coming off a great legacy of the Harper government, when housing was affordable, when Canada was a world leader in GDP per capita and when Canada was strong on the map. Then time went by and the debt, the leveraging and socialist policies had their corrosive effect on the economy over and over again, bringing down our economy.
Then a realization happened. I do not know whether it happens for all the members; maybe some of them live in blissful ignorance or just deny the truth. However, the reality is that eventually it comes to the effect that these policies do not work. We are seeing that now in Canada, just like we did in the U.K., Israel and India. Wherever there are these socialist policies, a legacy always follows. First is high unemployment; we are now creeping up to 6.1%. Second is a lack of prosperity. Third is an increase in inequality ironically enough, given all the talk of equality in the House. Fourth is incredibly slow economic growth, which drives down the economy and economic life.
For the folks who are in government, the challenge then becomes this. They see that their policies have created nothing but failure. What do they have to do? They have to create a bogeyman. They have a straw-man argument and they have to place the blame on something else. They divide, as they did during COVID, and they distract. They will do everything possible to not look at their record. That is what is going on here.
We have seen the NDP leader, whose brother is a lobbyist for Metro, the large chain with the largest profit margin of all Canadian grocers, out there blaming big grocers. I am not saying Metro is innocent; it is certainly not. However, the hypocrisy of that party to go after grocery chains when the leader's brother is a lobbyist for Metro, the most profitable large grocery chain in Canada, is unbelievable.
With that, I would like to bring an amendment to the motion. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:
the 19th report of the Standing Committee on Finance, presented on Monday, May 6, 2024, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Finance with instruction that it amend the same so as to recommend a more efficient alternative to address food insecurity among Canadians this summer by calling on the government to eliminate the carbon tax, the federal fuel tax, and GST on gasoline and diesel between now and Labour Day.
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- May/21/24 11:28:22 a.m.
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The amendment is in order.
Questions and comments, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the government House leader.
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- May/21/24 11:29:05 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I am sure the member is aware, the government fully understands and is aware of the importance of food security. It is one of the reasons we made changes to the Competition Act and it is one of the reasons we brought in things such as the grocery rebate. We have brought in a number of measures.
One of the interesting things in the federal budget is the national food program to provide food for children going to school. Approximately 400,000 children would benefit by this. Could the member explain why the Conservative Party will be voting against that program?
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- May/21/24 11:29:49 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, according to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, the carbon tax is responsible for 0.8% of inflation, or about one-third of inflation. We could dramatically reduce the cost of food today for children, for seniors and for everyone who is going hungry. Food banks have never been so busy; they have never had such a stretched demand. Why do we not cut the carbon tax today and let people eat?
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- May/21/24 11:30:20 a.m.
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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 as 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?
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- May/21/24 11:31:09 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, the answer to that is no.
Often when I am talking to constituents, they will tell me they cannot believe how much one bag of groceries costs. They will go to grab a couple things for dinner or grab a couple things for the weekend, and have one bag. That one bag used to be $20. Now it is $50, $75 or even $100 just to fill one bag of groceries. It is incredible and there is a way to fix it right away. We can eliminate a third of inflation today by getting rid of the carbon tax.
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- May/21/24 11:31:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if my colleague could comment on the gross domestic product.
We sometimes take for granted that we are a well-developed country, yet we do not have a very good track record when it comes to the latest announcements about our gross domestic product, particularly in the G7, never mind the G20.
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- May/21/24 11:32:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it really is quite sad where our GDP is per capita. The GDP per capita actually puts us dead last amongst G7 countries. Why is that important? Because it is not just a number. GDP per capita is a measure of what Canadians make and what they deliver in terms of services. The more products we make and the more services we deliver means the more goods, the more bounty, the more prosperity across this nation. The real nub of the issue is the fact that when prosperity shrinks, as it has over the last 10 years, which is Canada's very own lost decade here, it hurts the most vulnerable the most.
The folks who have big trust funds, like the Prime Minister, will be okay. It is the people who are going to the food banks in Otonabee, in Cobourg or in Port Hope who are suffering because of these socialist policies that are failing Canadians.
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- May/21/24 11:33:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I suspect that if you were to canvass the House, you might find unanimous consent to allow for the debate to be adjourned so that we can continue on with Routine Proceedings.
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- May/21/24 11:33:41 a.m.
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Is it agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- May/21/24 11:35:05 a.m.
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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.
He said: 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 ChatGBT 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.
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- May/21/24 11:44:51 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting seeing a Conservative stand up and talk about AI. The only time I am aware of the Conservatives actually utilizing AI was when they came up with the idea of using AI to create amendments that they could bring to filibuster legislation. They came up with 20,000-plus amendments in order to prevent legislation from being able to pass the committee. Now, they have another idea, which is to try to divide the legislation into two pieces and, if they are successful, they will have two pieces of legislation they can filibuster instead of one.
The member talks about the government amendments. Is he not aware that governments do that, whether it is this government or even Stephen Harper's government, which made amendments at committee stage for bills? Because a government makes an amendment at committee stage does not mean that the legislation is flawed and should not be ultimately passing. Would the member not agree?
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- May/21/24 11:45:53 a.m.
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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.
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- May/21/24 11:46:38 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the great things Canada had in terms of fighting for privacy rights was the role of the Privacy Commissioner. We know it was the Privacy Commissioner, following a letter of complaint I actually sent in, who identified that what Clearview AI was doing was illegal. The taking of people's images in public spaces and selling those images was such a breach of privacy rights, yet when the Liberals brought forward their privacy legislation, the Privacy Commissioner told us that his ability to take on bad actors like Clearview AI would actually be undermined.
Knowing the power AI has to scrape data and knowing how wide open our data, including facial images, personal information and geo-tracking, is being taken, I would like to ask the member about the importance of having fundamental principles in privacy, including the right not to be tracked, not to be followed and not to have our faces taken by corporate interests.
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- May/21/24 11:47:40 a.m.
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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.
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- May/21/24 11:48:48 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague mentions flawed legislation coming to committee. I was on a committee where the Liberals brought over 100 amendments to a piece of their legislation. This speaks to their having a problem writing legislation to begin with. Maybe this member would like to talk about how challenging it is to deal with legislation that is flawed to begin with and many amendments having come from the government.
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- May/21/24 11:49:15 a.m.
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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
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- May/21/24 11:49:48 a.m.
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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 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.
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- May/21/24 11:59:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am somewhat disappointed. I came here believing that we would be debating budgetary measures on Bill C-69, something that Canadians are very much concerned about and would ultimately like to see passed.
I am wondering why it is that the Conservatives have now made the decision to try to have a discussion on an issue that we have already had a debate on. It is in the committee. Why not allow the committee to do the work and continue to do the work that it has been doing? There is nothing the member has said that previous governments have not done.
105 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
