44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 6, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, on the one hand, the member says that he is really concerned about cybersecurity, and then on the other hand, the member is saying that the government is doing too much and that he is concerned about overreach and is very skeptical. Then he uses examples of health care and talks about waiting lists and so forth. I am a bit confused about exactly where the Conservative Party is with respect to the legislation.
Would the member not agree that, at the very least, many of the issues or concerns he raised might be somewhat irrelevant to the debate and that parts of his comments would probably be better served if the bill went to committee? He seems to give me the impression in his comments that the Conservative Party supports the principles of the legislation. Does the member believe that he will be voting in favour of the bill so that it can go to committee?
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Uqaqtittiji, given that there are concerns about our privacy rights being infringed upon and that Bill C-26 is not doing enough to protect our privacy rights, I would like to hear what the member thinks needs to happen to make sure this bill is improved.
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Madam Speaker, a 20-minute speech does not give a lot of time to go over the multitude of concerns with Bill C-26. Yes, there are a lot of privacy concerns with this bill. We have had those concerns outlined not only by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, but also by OpenMedia.
The way we allay those concerns is that we empower committee members on the public safety committee to give this bill a thorough going-over, and to make sure those expert witnesses are brought forward so they can identify the specific clauses of this bill that are problematic. We need to give members of the committee enough time to draft the amendments.
What I ultimately want to see when this bill is reported back to the House is an acknowledgement that there is a very real threat; that the bill would empower the government to counteract that threat; and that the bill would also provide a very important layer of parliamentary oversight and accountability, which I think should include some of our dedicated public servants, like the Privacy Commissioner and others.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford shared some concerns in his speech. I am sure he saw the open letter from eight groups, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and OpenMedia. One of their concerns is power without accountability for the CSE, or Communications Security Establishment, our cybersecurity agency.
Can he share more about what could be done to address this concern in Bill C-26?
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Madam Speaker, this is a very interesting debate and something we should be discussing thoroughly here in the House.
As my colleague has spent a lot of years as a defence critic and in the defence milieu, he is knowledgeable, so I want to ask him a bit about the People's Liberation Army's units 61486 and 61398. We know from public reports that these units have thousands and thousands of people working for them. The entire Canadian Armed Forces is somewhere around 60,000 to 70,000 people, so we would be outnumbered by their cyber-divisions alone.
Given the fact that AI is now in the public domain, does the bill go far enough in addressing the legitimate concerns that foreign actors create in everyday life here in Canada? What could be improved upon in the legislation?
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Uqaqtittiji, I would like to thank the member for his very informative intervention, where he very clearly stated his concerns with the broad powers the government seems to want to grant itself.
Can the member talk about what concerns regular Canadians might have, regular Canadians who have not done anything wrong, and how they may be impacted by the extreme ministerial powers that might emerge from this bill if it is not changed?
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague had a very insightful speech and talked a bit about how there are some concerns related to the oversight that would be associated with the wide and sweeping powers the government may be granting itself in the bill. I am wondering if he could expand a bit more on why it is important that, through the processes of debate in this place and through committee work, we ensure that we have the appropriate balances in place to ensure we get that oversight side of things right.
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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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Madam Speaker, like my colleague, I think we are broadly supportive of the aims and principles of this bill but have some significant concerns about many of the details. This includes that the bill would open the door to new surveillance obligations; would allow the termination of essential services, perhaps without due process; may undermine privacy; lacks guardrails to constrain abuse; and has some relatively disturbing secrecy provisions that would obviate the minister from having to be accountable to Parliament by publishing the measures he takes.
Among the many concerns expressed about the bill, which ones does the member find the most troubling that he would like addressed at the committee stage?
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Madam Speaker, all of those are legitimate concerns that we will be addressing at the public safety committee if and when this bill gets there. I do not know if I can rank them today, because I think they are all significant. Everybody has different issues that come to mind based on what is most important to them. Obviously, privacy is one of the most important things to people.
What I mentioned in my speech was the ability for companies to still manage themselves once these fines have been imposed. We do not want to put out of business the small and medium-sized companies that have already had cyber-attacks, and then give a fine on top of that.
There are many things we need to address in committee. I am looking forward to studying the bill with my colleagues from all sides when it gets there.
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Madam Speaker, I want to continue the line of questioning of other members on balancing the need to address cybersecurity and privacy at the same time.
One group that has shared some concerns is the Citizen Lab. It has put together a report called “Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness” and has offered 30 recommendations for the governing party to consider at committee.
I wonder if the member has seen this report and if there are any recommendations in the report that he sees worthy of going ahead with. He may not see them all as worthy of going ahead with, but are there some recommendations that he thinks we should pursue?
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Mr. Speaker, it is disconcerting, as Canadians, when we look at the history of the Liberals since they have been in for seven years and five months. Inflation brings it to eight years.
One of the things that is important is we have lost face, if one wants to use that term, with our global partners and our Five Eyes agencies that have now gone and done things without us. That is because we have not been at the table. We have been slow to react to the very legitimate concerns about the cybersecurity and the national security of this country and of our allies.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are very trusting people. We like to give. However, when we buy into something, such as an app, we are giving over some vital information that is ours. We have seen cases where people had that information abused, and there has been no full disclosure. This is one of the concerns I have with the bill.
There are concerns that we have already witnessed in this country in terms of different businesses; a colleague mentioned Indigo being attacked. My hope is that, during committee, we ensure that we are protected. We have a responsibility to Canadians to protect them.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take this debate from coast to coast. I live on the west coast, and I thank the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame for presenting from the east coast.
Recently, we had a cyber-attack on Okanagan College in my riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap. It is always an honour to rise as the representative from that area.
Does my colleague for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame think that this bill will address the concerns that were obviously brought to light there, when the college was basically shut down for weeks after the Christmas break? Students could not access their files. Basically, the entire college system was shut down.
If this bill is needed, I wonder if the member has a comment as to why it has taken the government seven and a half years to address this, when our party brought to its attention the potential issues with Huawei and its activities in Canada. Maybe the member would like to comment on that.
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- Mar/6/23 7:02:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, again, I want to thank the member for his advocacy. Certainly, he and I have had a conversation in the last few weeks on this particular issue. Other members of the community have raised those concerns.
As I mentioned before, our assistant deputy minister has been in regular contact with city officials and individuals in our community. We are fully committed to help. That is what we have been doing since the process started. We have been working with local municipalities and have also engaged with others.
I want to reassure the member that, as we go forward, we are always going to engage with our partners, our local municipalities, which are so important.
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