44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 1, 2022 10:00AM
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-309, An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (public institutions).
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am certain anyone who read the Ontario auditor general's report on the financial disaster at Laurentian University understands the importance of protecting public institutions from ever being exploited through the bankruptcy protection act.
What happened at Laurentian was a debacle. We now know that this was not an accident. The administration and lawyers deliberately chose bankruptcy protection. In doing so, they trashed the careers of numerous academics, destroyed programs that took years to build up, and damaged the career trajectory of over 1,000 students. It will take years to restore the confidence there once was.
We need to ensure that the bankruptcy protection act is never used against institutions that receive public funding, whether it is hospitals, universities or health care centres. This cannot be a tactic used by right-wing governments at the provincial level to undermine public investment in key institutions, like what happened at Laurentian University.
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Madam Speaker, it is important that we not use disinformation in the House. The member mentioned that restaurant waitresses were breaking the law by asking for vaccine information. That is a falsehood. Could the member correct that?
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- Dec/1/22 2:30:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the fight to block justice for first nation children, the government has put up 23 non-compliance orders, spent millions on lawyers and are now back again fighting in federal court. It has lost every single legal action.
Fixing the broken child welfare system is possible, but it requires trust and good will. Will the minister just call off his lawyers, take the arbitrary deadline off the table, sit down with the communities and the child welfare experts, and put an end to the systemic discrimination and underfunding facing first nation children once and for all? Will he do the right thing?
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Madam Speaker, cyber-threats are not new. In 2011, Canada's two main financial centres in government, Finance and the Treasury Board, were pushed off-line for days by hacks from Chinese operators, yet the Harper government did nothing about that. It did not want to talk about it because it was busy selling off sections of the oil sands and Nexen to Chinese state-owned operators and then signing a free trade deal with China, the deal that would allow it to take on Canada outside of the court system.
I find it kind of special that the Conservatives are suddenly concerned about cybercrime now, when they did nothing to take on China's state threats to Canada under Harper.
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Madam Speaker, one of the things that has become very clear, particularly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is how destabilized our world is and how many bad actors are out there at the state level trying to undermine democracy.
My concern is about the ability of the federal government to withstand cyber-attacks. Earlier today, I talked about 2011 when actors out of China were able to shut down finance and the Treasury Board for days on end with relentless attacks. With the amount of financial information for Canadians that is in those departments, that is very serious.
We know that in the immigration department, which has turned into an absolute nightmare for anybody trying to navigate it, the system is breaking down. Staff in the department cannot access information files because the system is not up to speed. This will require a major investment to protect people, but also to deal with dark forces, whether they are Russians, the Chinese or any other non-state actor.
Has the government put in a credible plan to ensure we get our federal systems up to speed to be able to withstand hackers?
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Madam Speaker, I am not nearly as old as I look. When I came here I was much younger, but then I had to sit through eight years of the Harper government and my hair turned white. I feel like I am one of the few who remember what actually happened then, and I watch this cultural amnesia play out day after day.
I remember Bill C-30. Stephen Harper decided that he wanted a law allowing the police to check people's phones any time they wanted for whatever reason, and the Conservatives insisted that the telecoms put in a back channel so they could spy on and listen in to ordinary Canadians. That was before we knew there were conspiracy theories, and the Conservatives have a million over there. They would think this had something to do with promoting vaccines, but this was Stephen Harper's attempt to criminalize ordinary people without a warrant.
I want to ask my hon. colleague about that. She talks about, God forbid, the Conservatives coming back. I do not know what would happen to the rest of my hair if that happened. Are they going to continue to promote the kinds of tactics that Stephen Harper used, which criminalized ordinary Canadians in their private homes by listening in to what they were talking about?
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order. I retract my previous comment. I do dye my hair so I look smarter than I am. I have been called out, so I have to admit it. I dye my hair.
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Madam Speaker, the question of Canada's ability to deal with our situation in an increasingly unstable world raises serious questions about priorities. For example, we are years behind on the frigates that are supposed to be brought forward by the navy. The cost overruns are staggering, yet we have just seen in Ukraine that the Russian flagship, Admiral Makarov, was taken out by drones.
Do we need to completely reassess our thinking? This is the 21st century. We are investing, often, in 20th-century solutions in a world of warfare, cyberterrorism and cyber-power that is completely transforming the nature of warfare and democracy's ability to defend itself.
Does my colleague think we need to do a larger rethink across the board in terms of our strategies and our ability to defend ourselves?
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