44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 7, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, we are here today to talk about Bill C-27. It has got a big fancy name: an act to enact the consumer privacy and protection act. I worked on this extensively as former chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. A big part of what we talked about was Canadians' privacy.
I want to lead off with a question that I think all who are watching here will want an answer to by the end of what I have said, and I hope I get there. Can we trust this government when it comes to privacy?
We have heard many accounts. We have heard of foreign interference. We have seen evidence that that has been happening under the government. We cannot even keep track of all the ethics breaches.
There was a recent article in the National Post about Canadians' data, and many folks out there would remember this, called “Canada's public health agency admits it tracked 33 million mobile devices during lockdown” and it read, “The Public Health Agency of Canada accessed data such as cell-tower location to monitor people’s activity during lockdown, it said”.
Can we trust this government? I think the answer is becoming more and more clear.
What have we done to protect consumer privacy? I was, again, part of that ethics committee. We formed an international grand committee of nine countries, representing half a billion people, where we really tried to tackle this and get to some better practices for big tech.
Cambridge Analytica was a scandal where big tech was getting our information. Many points are being collected, and 53,000 points of information is what we heard was the Facebook average amount they are collecting on us, and that is being sold to the highest bidder. It is being used to not only give us a choice on what cereal we should buy in the morning but also surveil us to make predictive behaviour so we will kind of go in the direction they want us to go.
We Conservatives saw a need to have a better, more robust policy, so I will read from our constitution, our policy, which I was part of drafting, along with many other EDAs from across the country. This is from the Conservative Party:
The Conservative Party believes digital data privacy is a fundamental right that urgently requires strengthened legislation, protections, and enforcement. Canadians must have the right to access and control collection, use, monitoring, retention, and disclosure of their personal data. International violations should receive enforcement assistance from the Canadian Government.
That is just a little snapshot of what we have been doing over here. We would hope that legislation like this would address some of those privacy concerns. What we learned and what many are hearing from this debate is that there are huge exemptions for big tech, huge ways to use consumer data in ways that, first of all, consumers do not want their information being used for, and they do not even know how their information is being used.
I am going to get into some of the critics of Bill C-27. I will read from an article today by a young man, Bryan Short, who has some concerns around Bill C-27. Referring to Bill C-27, the article says:
...this change opens the door for companies to begin describing their data collection and surveillance practices in a highly simplified manner, leaving out important details about how this information could be used to harm and discriminate against a person or group of people, and ensuring that the data broker economy continues to thrive while people in Canada’s privacy rights are pushed to the side.
Well, according to the Liberals, this is what this bill is supposed to be addressing. Here, we see simplified consent. That is something that we have supported too. It should be something that we can understand, but not to be abused in this manner, where the fine print is down here and we just check that little box to make ourselves feel good that we have done it. We feel like our data or our privacy is protected, but it really is not.
I will read on: “But with deceptive design practices already being regularly used to encourage people to click 'agree' without really understanding what they’re signing up for, Bill C-27’s weakening of consent could be a big step backwards in terms of privacy.”
I will keep reading, as I have a little bit more from this particular author. We talk about the right to request deletion, and that is part of one's data that is online.
In reference to Bill C-27, the article says, “What’s lacking is a mechanism for when people change their mind about consenting to the collection and use of their personal information, or if they’re opposed to the use of their data and consent wasn’t required at all”.
We have seen the exemptions. They are a big haul. My colleague from Edmonton just referred to those exemptions. We want some better pieces of legislation. I applaud the effort. The previous privacy commissioner Therrien was excellent in caring about Canadians' data and really pursuing a solution for it and defending Canadians. I applaud him for that.
However, I am going to go on to another critic whom I have gotten to know very well from being on the committee, and from his work in Canadian information and how important that is to protect. He is a man named Jim Balsillie, a stranger to none of us in this place and former part owner of BlackBerry. I will read from the article from the Globe and Mail called, “Privacy is central to human well-being, democracy, and a vibrant economy. So why won’t the Trudeau government take it seriously?” The article, written by Mr. Balsillie, states:
Privacy is a fundamental human right that serves as a gateway to other rights and freedoms such as freedom of expression, individual and collective autonomy, and freedom from harassment or invasion. Privacy is critical for the healthy development of the human brain, identity, close relationships and social existence.... “True realization of freedom, that is a life led autonomously, is only possible in conditions where privacy is protected.”
We absolutely agree that privacy is a fundamental human right. I will go on, as this helps explain what Mr. Balsillie is referring to in that paragraph. The article continues:
Behavioural monitoring, analysis and targeting are no longer restricted to unscrupulous social-media companies, but have spread across all sectors of the economy, including retail, finance, telecommunications, health care, entertainment, education, transportation and others.
I have told many high school classes an example of this. We learned that people's data is being monitored in real time, so when standing in front of a display at a big box store, it is known that one happens to be standing in front of a certain brand of headphones, so people should not be surprised if they get an ad for these particular headphones, and why they should buy them, before they leave the store. In a good way, it is incredible, but it is scary in other ways too with the predictive nature of having all that information.
Mr. Balsillie goes on to criticize the current Liberal government. He says:
Yet, Canada's federal government has repeatedly failed to take privacy seriously and construct a legal and regulatory framework that protects the rights of Canadians in the digital age...the Digital Charter Implementation Act, normalizes and expands surveillance and treats privacy as an obstacle to corporate profits, not as a fundamental right or even a right to effective consumer protection. After years of cozying up to Big Tech and meeting with its lobbyists as often as twice a week, the Canadian [Liberal] government is finally coming to terms with the fact that the digital economy needs to be regulated.
The act expands surveillance. It does not reduce it.
I asked initially this question: Can Canadians trust the Liberal government? The Liberals are pretty close to big tech guys. I will use the example that many have been talking about, which are smart cities. That conversation was brought up many years ago and as recently as just a few years ago. Our efforts at the ethics committee were to really push back on this invasion of privacy and that a particular smart city in Toronto, Sidewalk Labs, would have been an invasion of Canadians' information. The Sidewalk Labs project would monitor data on many levels, and it has connections to the current Liberal government. I will read from an article, which states, “Sidewalk Labs project gained support from Trudeau in 2017 call ahead of bid process”.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès): The member knows we cannot use the names of current members.
Mr. Bob Zimmer: My apologies, Madam Speaker. It is a title, but that was my mistake.
What is concerning about this particular article is not just that the Prime Minister supports an invasive smart city kind of concept of monitoring everything, but that it was really done in secret. The people who wanted to get to the bottom of the Prime Minister's conversation with Google and Alphabet Inc. had to get a freedom of information request to find out that the government was having secret negotiations behind the scenes.
I started off by asking a question: Can we trust the Liberal government when it comes to privacy? I think the answer is a clear no.
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Madam Speaker, that is a very interesting question from a Liberal member across the way. No, I do not. That is the reason we are tackling big tech, such as Facebook and Google. The invasiveness of big tech on our privacy and data is a huge concern.
Google was so linked to the current Liberal government and the former member for Vaughan was carrying the water for Sidewalk Labs. It was really something else. There were secret conversations happening to usher a Google project through. Absolutely, I do not trust it.
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Madam Speaker, yes, we absolutely support it being separated out. It is such a big issue to tackle, and we should tackle these things individually. They are huge issues.
As a testament to when we worked in ethics, often, across the aisle, we do not agree on things in this place, but the one thing we agreed on in our ethics committee was that we all cared about our privacy and Canadians' data. Among the Liberals across the way, there were a couple of members who were supportive of where we were going. I think, in the efforts of supporting all Canadians' right to privacy by not having our data sold and farmed out to the highest bidder, it is in our best interest to defend all Canadians' privacy in this place.
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Madam Speaker, that is a good question. The more alarming part is that we get pop-ups, and they mysteriously show up after we have been in a certain place. We can extrapolate that to include testimony we have heard at committee.
These data farms and data-mining operations know how someone will vote before they even know how they are going to vote. That is what leads us to huge concerns around being guided in certain directions to vote, which is really anti-democratic. We believe this bill needs to go back, get rewritten and done right. We have the expertise in this place. The minister across the way just needs to listen.
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Madam Speaker, the evidence that the current government has been in the back pocket of big tech has been there since the member across the way, the member for Vaughan who is not here anymore, was just so obviously supporting Google in all its ambitions.
We all understand that there is interest for data. It is something we need to use, but it needs to be done with proper—
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Madam Speaker, I just have a question for the member. She brought up Google before, but I will quote Jim Balsillie again.
I want your response to his statement that “Canada’s federal government has repeatedly failed to take privacy seriously and construct a legal and regulatory framework that protects the rights of Canadians in the digital age.” How do you respond to that?
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- Mar/7/23 1:42:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member across the way talked about Google. We have always known that there is a close relationship between Google, the Prime Minister and the Liberals.
However, a question comes up from Jim Balsillie's statement that “Canada’s federal government has repeatedly failed to take privacy seriously and construct a legal and regulatory framework that protects the rights of Canadians in the digital age.”
Would the member please respond to that?
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Madam Speaker, to respond to the member across the way from Alberta, he, the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party say to just trust them on this. Does the member who just spoke think we should trust the government and the Prime Minister?
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