- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Dufferin—Caledon
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $184,972.24
- Government Page
- Oct/18/23 3:01:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is only one cut that we are going to make. We are going to cut about 80 members from that side of the House when we form a common sense Conservative government. When we do that, we would address the concerns, such as the ship-worker in Vancouver who is paying $7,500 a month for a mortgage.
What do they say? They talk about an AAA credit rating. How out of touch are they? They are gaslighting Canadians.
Will they cut these inflationary deficits and get interest rates under control, yes or no?
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Madam Speaker, it took eight long years for the Liberal government to recognize that cybersecurity threats exist in this country and around the world. Congratulations to them for coming to the party a little late.
The Liberals have now presented a bill to try to address issues of cybersecurity in the country. As I said, it took them eight years to get there, but I have to say I am pleased that the Liberals have decided to finally do something. I look forward to this bill being passed so that it can be extensively studied at committee.
There are some things in this bill that are good. I know praising the Liberal government is strange territory for me, but I will say that the bill would give the government some tools to respond quickly to cyber-threats. There is currently no explicit legislative authority in the Telecommunications Act to ensure that telecom providers are suitably prepared for cyber-attacks. This is a good reason why this bill should probably move forward to committee to be studied.
The challenge I have, though, includes a whole number of things. My issue with the government is trust. While I do want this legislation to go to committee, I have extraordinary concerns about this bill. Many of these concerns have been raised by many groups across the country, and I do want to speak to some of those in the probably somewhat whimsical hope that the government will listen and take some of these amendments seriously.
There has been a very bad track record of the government responding to concerns from the opposition or from outside organizations with respect to legislation. There is a view that the Liberals are going to do what they want to do on pieces of legislation and that they really do not care what other people have to say. I am very concerned that the government is not going to listen to the very serious concerns that have been raised about this bill.
I have my own concerns when I look at how the government has behaved with respect to other pieces of legislation. We have to look at Bill C-11. There has been a multitude of organizations that have said the bill needs further amendment. Margaret Atwood has said that she has grave concerns about the legislation, that she supports the intent but has grave concerns about the implementation and how it is going to affect artists and content creators. We have had folks who compete in the YouTube sphere who have raised all kinds of concerns about Bill C-11, and the government's response has been that it does not care what they have to say, and that it is going forward with the legislation as it is.
The Senate has made a number of amendments to Bill C-11. I suspect the government's attitude is going to be the same, which is that it does not care what the amendments are and that it is going to proceed with the bill as it sees fit.
We also have only to look to Bill C-21 as well. We had the minister clearly not aware of what constituted a hunting rifle and a hunting gun. The Liberals introduced amendments at committee, and it took extraordinary push-back from Canadians from coast to coast to coast to get them to wake up and withdraw those amendments that they had put in at the last minute.
What it speaks to is that, despite having at its disposal the entire apparatus of the Canadian government, the Liberals are still unable to get legislation right. It takes an enormous amount of effort and hue and cry across the country saying that this has to stop and that this has to be changed. If there is not a massive uprising, the government tends not to listen to the legitimate concerns of other constituents or other groups when it introduces legislation.
With that context, it is why I have real concerns that the government is not going to listen to some of the serious concerns that have been raised with respect to Bill C-26. I am going to go through some of those.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has some very serious concerns. It has issued a joint letter that says that the bill is deeply problematic and needs fixing, because it risks undermining our privacy rights and the principles of accountable governance and judicial due process. This is a big bell that is going off, and I hope the government is listening. As I have said, I do not have a lot of faith, given other pieces of legislation where thoughtful amendments have been put forward and the government decided not to do anything with them.
I want to enumerate a few of the concerns from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. On increased surveillance, it says that the bill would allow the federal government “to secretly order telecom providers” to “do anything or refrain from doing anything necessary...to secure the Canadian telecommunications system, including against the threat of interference, manipulation or disruption”.
That is a pretty broad power. Where is the government putting the guardrails in that would limit the effects of this or protect the privacy rights of Canadians? That is something I think is incredibly concerning.
On the termination of essential services, Bill C-26 would allow the government to bar a person or a company from being able to receive specific services and bar any company from offering these services to others by secret government order.
Where are we going to have the checks and safety checks on this? Unfortunately, I am not in a position where I think I can trust the government to do the right thing on these things. We have seen it through vaccine mandates, in the legislation on Bill C-21 and in how the Liberals are trying to push through Bill C-11 without listening to reasoned amendments. If reasonable concerns are raised about Bill C-26, I just do not have faith the Liberals are going to take those concerns seriously and make the amendments that are necessary. I really hope they do.
On undermining privacy, the bill would provide for the collection of data from designated operators, which would potentially allow the government to obtain identifiable and de-identified personal information and subsequently distribute it to domestic, and perhaps foreign, organizations. When someone takes the de-identified personal information of Canadians and does not say how they are going to deal with it or what protections they have in place to make sure it is not misused, what happens in the event that they take that information and somehow there is a government breach? Where does that information go? These are things I think we should be extraordinarily concerned about.
There was also an analysis provided with respect to this by Christopher Parsons, in a report subtitled “A Critical Analysis of Proposed Amendments in Bill C-26 to the Telecommunications Act”. Parsons raises concerns about vague language. The report notes that key terms in the bill, such as “interference”, “manipulation” and “disruption”, which trigger the government's ability to make orders binding on telecom service providers, are unidentified.
Where are the guardrails in the legislation to prevent government overreach and therefore protect Canadians? This is something that I think all Canadians should be watching and be very concerned about. They should be letting their voices be heard by the government on this.
The report talks about how the minister of industry's scope of power to make orders is also undefined. We would be giving a whole host of undefined powers to the minister and the government that would allow them to have all kinds of sensitive information. These are things that may be necessary, but I do not know. They are highly concerning to me. They should be highly concerning to Canadians, and I hope the government will hear from real experts at committee.
Let us not have a two-day committee study where we think Bill C-26 is perfect as it is and bring it back to the House of Commons, bring in time allocation or closure and pass it through. We have seen that story before, and we do not want to see it with the piece of legislation before us. My really big hope is that the government is going to take the time to really consider the seriousness and breadth of Bill C-26 and make sure we have the ways to protect Canadians.
I just want to add that the Business Council of Canada has released its own letter to the Minister of Public Safety, expressing its incredibly deep concerns with respect to the bill: there is a lack of a risk-based approach, information sharing is one-way and the legal threshold for issuing directions is too low.
There are three reports, right there, that are outlining significant concerns with Bill C-26, and I, for one, just do not believe the government is going to listen or get it right. It does not have the track record of doing so, but I am hoping it will, because cybersecurity is incredibly serious as we move toward a digital economy in so many ways. I really hope the government is going to listen to these things, take them seriously, do the hard work at committee and bring forward whatever amendments need to be brought forward, or, if the amendments are brought forward by the opposition, listen to and implement those amendments.
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- Oct/19/22 5:08:21 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her speech. I enjoyed working on the environment committee with her.
One thing she talked about in her speech is that there were consultations for five years on this bill, so it has already taken five years, but with respect to the right to a healthy environment, the government is now saying it is going to take two more years to determine what the right to a healthy environment means.
I find that incredibly troubling, that it is dragging its feet so long on this. I wonder if the member shares those concerns or would like to comment on that.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to join in the debate for this bill. I want to thank the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for putting forward this legislation. I know she is a passionate defender of the environment and always has good intentions when she puts forward a piece of legislation.
I share her concern with bills dying on the Order Paper as a result of an unnecessary and costly election that was brought forward by the Liberal government. Bill C-206, to exempt farm fields from the carbon tax, also died on the Order Paper. I hope members of the House, including the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, will try and help with speedy passage of new Bill C-234.
With respect to this exact piece of legislation, I certainly have some concerns. First of all, I start off with my concern in general with national strategies. The current government has had difficulty dealing with existing pieces of legislation that it is trying to bring forward with respect to the environment. We had five reports today from the environment commissioner, and the government got zero for five on all five reports. As a batting average when playing baseball, that is a terrible day. When it is the government, it is a tragedy for our country.
When we talk about developing a new national strategy for something, we have to look at the capacity of the government to actually carry out this ambitious project. My concern is that there is not this capacity. We can look at, for example, the motion that was unanimously passed in the House with respect to the suicide prevention line, the 988. We heard about that just recently. It has been 500 days since this was passed unanimously in the House. Absolutely nothing has been done, and Canadians are still waiting for some progress.
The approach of trying to deal with this through a national strategy is not the right one. There could perhaps be ways of looking at making amendments to existing pieces of legislation. For example, the member talked about enshrining the right to a healthy environment. That is actually in the update to CEPA that is in the Senate right now. Something like that has already been dealt with in a piece of legislation.
We already have a complicated regulatory environment when we are developing projects in this country. I am unsure about this national strategy, what it will do and how it will add to the complication of these kinds of processes. When I look at the legislation and what it talks about, possible amendments to federal laws, policies and programs, that is a very broad power that is being granted here as part of this legislation. We do not know exactly where that is going to lead. Whether it will lead to more uncertainty in other things, I am not 100% sure.
On compensation for individuals or communities, there are no parameters around this statement as to what that is going to look like, how it is going to be developed and what it is going to mean. I generally do not like open-ended or blank cheques that are given to any government, and in particular the current government. Right now, we certainly have concerns with this piece of legislation, because we do not know 100% what it is going to mean.
We do, of course, as Conservatives, want to support a healthy environment. We absolutely want to combat racism. However, I do not believe this piece of legislation is going to accomplish any of those goals, for the reasons that I have been setting out. I just do not think the government is actually going to get it done, and the proper way to deal with things like this is to look at existing legislation like the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. If we want, for example, to collect information and statistics for incomes, we could look at modifying an existing piece of legislation to deal with that. If we are trying to look at information and statistics relating to the location of environmental hazards, I also think these are things that could be looked at within existing legislation if we want to add some additional protections for Canadians.
I do not think that the way to do this is to wait two years for the government to set up a national strategy. It would then be debated endlessly, and whether anything would actually be implemented, I do not know.
I appreciate the member's earnest hard work on this piece of legislation, but as this piece of legislation stands, we will not be in a position to support it.
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