44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2022 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I am really intrigued by the carbon capture topic that the member brought up and I look forward to learning about the facility in his riding.
The concern I have about this approach, though, is that we are heavily subsidizing a very profitable industry. Our general approach to subsidies is that the government should be stepping in and helping those companies and those Canadians who are struggling the most, the ones who do not have the funds available to make the changes that need to be made.
The polluter pays principle seems like an inherently Conservative principle. Would my colleague not agree that we should not be giving billions of dollars to the most profitable companies, which very clearly have the funds available to invest in the kind of research and development that is required in this area?
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Madam Speaker, the fact of the matter is that even before the government brought forward this tax credit, oil and gas companies in this country were already investing in carbon capture. Companies in Saskatchewan and Alberta have been sequestering carbon for enhanced oil recovery purposes and non-enhanced oil recovery purposes. We have Whitecap Resources' Weyburn project, the Shell Quest project, the Redwater Sturgeon Refinery in my riding and the Nutrien fertilizer plant. They did receive some government support under the previous Conservative government, but I think the difference is that we want to see much more. We want to unlock the potential for carbon capture in this country, and if it means putting up a billion dollars to leverage $10 billion of private investment and it achieves real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, I do not see why the NDP would not support it.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to speak to the investments mentioned in the budget that we are making in the defence and security of our country.
Before I get into specific issues, I would like to mention two things: first, the importance of defence and security industries from the economic point of view; and, second, how Ottawa, as a city, is very well placed to be the hub of companies involved in the ISR, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, segments of the defence and security industries.
The Canadian defence and security industries are an essential service and a critical sector in Canada’s economy. These companies are highly innovative, export intensive and provide high-wage employment. These companies export 54% of their total sales. These companies provide employment to 64,000 people whose salaries are about 60% above the average Canadian manufacturing salaries.
During the last couple of decades, we have seen most of our manufacturing jobs outsourced to low-cost manufacturing countries across the world, but the jobs and manufacturing facilities of Canadian defence and security industries will never be outsourced. Also, for the U.S. defence purchases, which run into hundreds of billions of dollars every year, Canadian companies are considered to be U.S. domestic companies, offering a huge advantage to the Canadian defence and security industries.
Ottawa, as a hub, can be home to ISR companies, similar to hundreds of small companies around Washington, D.C. and the Annapolis beltway. Also, we are just few hours away from the centre of defence establishment in the U.S. We already have several companies in defence and security industries in Ottawa today. We also have Defence Research and Development Canada. Decision-makers on technology and procurements are also located here. All of these make Ottawa an ideal location for promoting it as the hub for ISR industries.
Canada is geographically well placed, with the powerful and friendly United States as our neighbour, who also is our major economic partner. The physical security threats to the country from outside our borders are minimal, and Canada was never worried much about physically protecting our land.
National defence is a fundamental responsibility of the federal government. In addition to protecting Canada from international threats and defending our sovereignty, the Canadian Armed Forces play an important role in making the world a safer place.
Budget 2022 recognized those challenges and proposed new action to respond to them. It invested in Canada’s defence capabilities, and in the alliances that will ensure a strong and coordinated global response to the ongoing challenges that the world faces today. Based on recent events and the changing global environment, the government acknowledged the requirement to reassess Canada’s role, priorities and needs in the face of a changing world.
Budget 2022 announced a defence policy review to allow Canada to update its existing 2017 defence policy, “Strong, Secure, Engaged”. In my view, merely updating the current policy is not enough. There has been a paradigm shift in the kinds of threats facing our country.
First, we have cybersecurity threats, including those that come from foreign actors, that target Canadians, Canadian businesses and our critical infrastructure. As Canadians grow more dependent on digital systems, the potential consequences of cyber-incidents continue to increase, and Canada needs to be ready.
Second, we have the spread of misinformation and disinformation that is directly challenging the stability of even the most long-standing democracies. Foreign threats to democracy, including state-sponsored disinformation, which is misinformation that is deliberately targeted to deceive people, have continued to grow amidst rising geopolitical tensions, a global pandemic and the rapid evolution of technology.
Third is biological threats that know no boundaries. The nature and severity of biological threats has grown in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the potentially catastrophic impacts of a deliberate biological event. Concerns are growing that the pandemic's unprecedented scale and reach could inspire terrorists to turn to biological weapons. United Nations Secretary-General Guterres has understood this threat. He warned:
The weaknesses and lack of preparedness exposed by this pandemic provide a window onto how a bioterrorist attack might unfold – and may increase its risks. Non-state groups could gain access to virulent strains that could pose similar devastation to societies around the globe.
The threat due to domestic terrorism is on the rise due to increasing hate and due to the spread of misinformation and disinformation. During the latest occupy movement, the cross-border connections between the extremist groups were alarming. Based on these threats, in my view, merely updating the current policy is not enough. We need a change in our approach to national security. We need a unified approach to defence. We need a unified approach between all government departments to seamlessly share the information for a unified response. We need a unified command to address the modern needs of security.
The existing policy document, “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, stated:
This policy is deliberately ambitious and focuses, first and foremost, on the heart of the Canadian Armed Forces – the brave women and men who wear the uniform.
We know how this worked out.
The document was geared more toward the big-ticket items like ships and fighter aircraft, which, while important, do not address the major threat that Canada and Canadians are facing.
In the current policy document, “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, which is 113 pages long, the word “misinformation” is mentioned only once. Similarly, the word “disinformation” is also mentioned only once. Also in this policy, the investment in cybersecurity was under “Joint Capabilities”. It was grouped with IT and communications, signal intelligence, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive detection and response capabilities. All of these had just a $4.6-billion investment over 20 years out of about $164 billion in proposed spending.
We should stop saying threats involving guns and bullets or ships and fighter planes from foreigners invading our land and sea are the only responsibility of the Canadian Armed Forces; or that cybersecurity threats are the responsibility of the Communications Security Establishment alone; or that biological threats should be handled by the Public health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces role is limited to providing a few medics; or that threats posed by misinformation and disinformation are the responsibility of maybe Canadian Heritage or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service; or that the threat from domestic terrorism is the responsibility of the RCMP, CSIS and local law enforcement agencies.
We should stop compartmentalizing the threats and divide the responsibility. We need to act cohesively.
We need generals who have a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and other leading technologies. We need generals with a Ph.D. in biology. We need to completely start afresh and come up with a comprehensive strategy and policy. The existing policy document “Strong, Secure, Engaged” focused on a $164-billion investment in procurement of traditional assets and tools, including ships, fighter aircraft, etc.
When we review this policy, it may be a good idea where the new high-technology companies are going. As an example, a Silicon Valley company called Anduril is succeeding commercially in transforming the U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. It says that the next generation of military technology will depend less on advances in shipbuilding and aircraft design than on advances in software engineering and computing. Unlike traditional defence contractors who focus primarily on hardware, its core system is an autonomous sense-making and command and control platform that serves as the core platform for its suite of capabilities.
Ideas are turned into deployed capabilities in months, not years, saving the government and taxpayers money along the way. The company combines military veterans with engineers who are experts in artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced sensors, secure networking, aerospace, virtual reality technology, aircraft modelling and simulation. We should look at companies like this to see what is happening elsewhere and where the defence systems are going.
I would like to quote extensively from the report, “A National Security Strategy for the 2020s”, prepared by the Task Force on National Security and the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
It said:
We are living in a time of intense global instability when the security of Canada and other liberal democracies is under growing threat. An increasingly aggressive Russia is only one of a series of threats, both old and new, that endanger national security in Canada. It exemplifies the worrying re-emergence of great-power rivalry. It also interacts with or amplifies other threats, such as the use of new technologies to wage cyber-warfare, an increase in ideological extremism at home and abroad, attacks on democratic institutions, and transnational threats such as climate change and pandemics. We witnessed a different constellation of such threats in the protests that blocked border crossings and disrupted Canada's capital in early 2022. Where once the state was the focus of these threats, individuals and societies have also become targets.
When these and other threats reach the scale and potential to endanger what matters most to us as a country - our people, our democratic values and institutions, our economy, our society and our sovereignty - Canadians expect their government to protect them. Yet Canadians and their governments rarely take national security seriously. Taking shelter under the American umbrella has worked well for us.... We have not experienced a direct violent attack against our citizens in recent memory on the same scale as some of our allies, with the last major one being the Air India attack of 1985. This has made us complacent and paved the way for our neglect of national security....
Our peers, including our partners in the Five Eyes partnership (Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) are reacting to this rapidly changing situation by revamping policies, identifying new tools and authorities, reforming institutions, devoting new resources to security and seeking new partnerships. They possess not only a deeper appreciation of the threats facing the West but also a more sophisticated national security culture writ large.
The report makes the case that Canada is not ready to face this new world. As a country, it says we urgently need to rethink national security.
The best part of the report is that the core recommendations do not require massive amounts of new spending, but, rather, focus on making better use of the tools we already have and improving co-operation among key partners.
The report makes recommendations in four broad categories.
Number one is to develop new strategies. Canada needs a national security strategy that reflects today’s realities. We can no longer count on some of the traditional pillars that have guaranteed our security and prosperity for decades. The essential first step is to hold a public review of national security. A thorough and transparent review would help inform the public, highlight priorities, identify the policies and tools required to address them, and point to the required changes to governance. In reviewing its national security strategy, the government should also take a hard look at whether its foreign, defence and development policies are adequate. This does not mean an isolated update in each case, but a holistic approach that examines all our national security assets in a coordinated fashion.
Number two is to strengthen existing tools and create new ones. Canada must build new tools and make better use of existing ones to deal with this diversifying and intensifying range of threats. More specifically, Canada should invest more in the following areas: sharing information within government, sharing information with other levels of government, reviewing outdated legislation, enhancing the use of open-source intelligence, strengthening cybersecurity, protecting economic security, guarding against foreign interference, and deterring organized crime and money laundering.
Number three is to enhance governance. Canada needs to rethink its national security governance framework: how decisions are made, policies developed and information shared.
Number four is to increase transparency and engagement. Many Canadians today mistrust government. This has major implications for national security. This erosion of trust opens space for misinformation and disinformation to spread, which weakens democratic institutions and contributes to a vacuum that hostile actors do not hesitate to fill. In this context, the national security community’s tradition of secrecy is outdated and counterproductive. As such, the report strongly recommends that the national security community’s recent engagement efforts be significantly ramped up, both with the public, including civil society, the private sector, the media and academia, and with Parliament. The community, moreover, must continue and intensify its efforts to increase diversity within its ranks.
It has been over 15 years since we produced a national security or foreign policy statement. We have not seriously reviewed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act since CSIS was established in 1984. We need to have an integrated approach involving the Canadian Armed Forces, the Canadian Security Establishment, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Public Health Agency of Canada and other agencies dealing with defence and security.
I will conclude with a quote from Alex Deep. In his article “Hybrid War: Old Concept, New Techniques”, in the Small Wars Journal, he mentions that we need “an adaptable and versatile military” to overcome the complex threats posed by the modern hybrid war, which combines all the conventional and irregular components.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, section 48 of the Constitution Act, 1867, requires the presence of 20 members in this House, including the Speaker, in order for business to be conducted.
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- Jun/8/22 9:55:43 p.m.
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I would remind the hon. member that there are no quorum calls following Motion No. 11.
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Madam Speaker, I am not making a quorum call. I am just making the point that the Constitution Act, 1867, section 48, requires the presence of 20 members. I count the presence, including yourself, of 17 members. Surely, the government would want to ensure that if the process by which this bill were to be adopted in this House were ever to be challenged in court, it would be upheld. That is the simple point that I would like to make.
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Madam Speaker, first and foremost, the member should probably recount the members who are actually in the House, and he will find that there is a quorum, even under the old rules. As you have pointed out, Madam Speaker, we are under Motion No. 11 rules, which received support from a majority of members of the House.
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- Jun/8/22 9:56:47 p.m.
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To make it very clear again, before members go any further with this point of order, I would remind them that on May 2, the House duly adopted an order prescribing that the Chair shall not receive any quorum calls after 6:30 p.m.
The Chair rendered a decision on the admissibility of the motion, including the section on quorum calls during extended sitting days in May and June.
The ruling can be found in the Debates of May 2, 2022 at pages 4,577 and 4,578. I would invite the member to read the ruling of the Speaker to find that this matter has already been settled.
Questions and comments, the hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.
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Madam Speaker, I know it is getting a little late, so I first want to thank the member for being here to participate. It sounded a bit like a canned speech, but I will leave that to the member to decide whether it was by his own hand or someone else's.
I think it was around this time five years ago that the former minister of national defence tabled a new national defence policy. I have been listening to what this member wants for national security. I would simply ask him to speak with his caucus because, quite honestly, the government has been terrible on these large policy reviews in other areas of government.
If we look at the mess that the current Minister of National Defence has inherited and how our Canadian Armed Forces is underprepared in so many different ways, it is woeful. It is shameful. The member may want to consider that, rather than proposing new policies, perhaps the government should actually start filling the gaps that exist right now.
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Madam Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, in 2017 we had a policy document, but things have changed tremendously in the last five years. Misinformation and disinformation, while not a major factor five or six years back, have now become a major factor. We did not have the pandemic then, but now this pandemic has shown that a man-made virus could create havoc throughout the entire world. These are the reasons why the government has said, rightly so, that we are going to review the policy and update the existing policy document.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech, which did not have the slightest connection to Bill C-19.
I know that when a point of order is raised to have the Chair ask members of the House to ensure their speeches are on topic, it is always interpreted very broadly. In this case, however, my colleague's speech had absolutely nothing to do with Bill C‑19.
First the government introduces a special motion forcing us to sit until midnight every night, at its whim, under time allocation. The normal process of debate in the House is not being followed. Now the government is sending in Liberal members who, as interesting as their speeches are, are more or less filibustering on Bill C‑19.
My question for him is—
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- Jun/8/22 10:00:18 p.m.
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I am sorry, but I must leave time for a response.
The hon. member for Nepean.
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Madam Speaker, if the hon. member had read the budget, he would know that there is an entire chapter on this. Not only has $8 billion been invested on the basis of the policy that was published in 2017, but I can go on to read what the government has announced in investments.
The government has provided $875 million to address the cyber-threat landscape, based on Canada's first comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. On misinformation and disinformation, the government has provided $13.4 million for the G7 rapid response mechanism. The government has provided $10 million for the Privy Council Office to coordinate, develop, and implement government-wide measures designed to combat disinformation and protect our democracy. The government has also provided $385 million for IRCC and CSIS, plus the—
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- Jun/8/22 10:01:19 p.m.
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We have to proceed with questions and comments.
The hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
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Madam Speaker, although I appreciate that the member gave a lot of anecdotes of what Canada should be doing and could be doing, I was wondering if the hon. member would commit to getting whichever ministry he thinks is responsible for that long speech to get to work on the work he just said Canada should be doing. If he is okay with that, can he please tell us which minister he will approach and when he thinks this will take place?
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Madam Speaker, in fact, that is the entire big mistake, what the member is doing. It is not the responsibility of one minister; it is a whole-of-government approach. If he had listened to what I was saying, he would know I said that we need a coordinated, comprehensive policy to tackle the new threats Canada is facing, which were not there five or 10 years back.
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Madam Speaker, to pick up on what my colleague from Joliette was saying, there was indeed not much of a connection between our colleague's statement and the subject at hand, which has me wondering if he is tacitly acknowledging that there is nothing in the budget.
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Madam Speaker, absolutely, if the member had taken some time to read the budget, there is a whole chapter on this. As I mentioned, there are many investments on many different levels that deal with the defence of our country and the security aspects of our country. Every single one of these things has been derived from the budget.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to respond to the previous comments that were made by my colleagues across the way. I take a lot of offence at the fact that they were stating there was nothing in the budget with respect to cybersecurity and nothing in the budget with respect to defence, which my colleague spent 20 minutes highlighting.
I sat on the national defence committee during the first mandate, and I know full well exactly what the threats facing Canada are today. The fact is that we had to look at “Strong, Secure, Engaged” and shift and pivot, given the new realities.
That is what the member just mentioned, and he spent 20 minutes highlighting the new realities here, so I find it quite offensive that people are accusing the member of not discussing what is actually in the budget, on page 136.
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- Jun/8/22 10:04:02 p.m.
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The member for Joliette on a point of order.
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