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Charlie Angus

Member of Parliament
NDP

Timmins—James Bay
Ontario
Voting Attendance: 60%
Expenses Last Quarter: $134,227.44

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 314 - May/21/24

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

May/21/24 12:01:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I remember that in 2018-19 the ethics committee, working across party lines, was attempting to bring forward to the House language to protect privacy rights in light of the Cambridge Analytica breach. One of the key elements that we had was the right not to be tracked. When my daughter goes on the Internet, why are they tracking her? Why is that phone tracking us? The ability to say no, to limit the amount of information, did not happen. Then we had Clearview AI stealing people's images and selling them. The Privacy Commissioner stepped into the breach at that point, and yet he said that the Liberal government's privacy legislation at the time would undermine his ability to hold companies like Clearview to account. Now we have AI. What we were dealing with in 2018 is like dealing with stagecoach robberies, given the speed of the ability to take information, to take our lives and to move them in ways we could not even conceive of, yet the Liberals are still puttering along with legislation. They have put it into what should be two separate bills that are really thought through. We are trying to just deal with one single bill. I want to ask my hon. colleague what he thinks the danger to Canadian privacy is, with regard to the failure of the government to address the privacy rights of citizens and the right to privacy as a fundamental right.

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Context: House Hansard - 314 - May/21/24

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

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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Context: House Hansard - 174 - Mar/28/23

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Mar/28/23 3:51:51 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-27

Madam Speaker, I had the great honour of working across party lines in 2018 on issues of privacy. The idea that citizens somehow opt in through terms and conditions has to be debunked. I never gave Gmail the right to read my mail. I never gave Google the right to listen in on my phone. The terms and conditions are a fundamental problem. The question is whether we limit the power of surveillance capitalism to gather data. What data should they be allowed to gather and what should they not be? It really has to come down to dealing with very, very superpowerful corporations. It is not like my data is in the cloud in this little box. Their ability to take everything we do and track us needs to be limited. To my colleague: Would the Conservatives support putting limits on the amount of data that is collected by the tech giants?

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Context: House Hansard - 174 - Mar/28/23

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Mar/28/23 1:55:12 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-27

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for my colleague and great interest in the issue of making privacy a fundamental human right. One of the shocking things we found with the last bill was from the Privacy Commissioner. He ruled that the company Clearview AI had broken Canadian law by allowing all manner of photographs of Canadian families, individuals and children to be sold on a market with facial recognition technology. He called that out as illegal but told us that under the new law, it would be almost impossible for him to go after Clearview AI because his rulings could be overturned by a board the Liberals will appoint above him. We trust our Privacy Commissioner and we need to protect privacy. I want to ask my hon. colleague why he thinks the Liberals are undermining privacy at this time.

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Member of Parliament

Charlie Angus