44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 20, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-27, the digital charter implementation act. This legislation is the first update of federal private sector privacy laws in more than two decades.
Contained within this bill are three distinct pieces of legislation, each of which is flawed in its own way. The first piece of legislation within this bill would establish the consumer privacy protection act, legislation that completely fails to protect personal and sensitive information of individual Canadians in the digital era. The second piece of legislation within this bill would establish a tribunal system with respect to complaints around potential privacy rights violations. I submit that this tribunal system is duplicative, cumbersome and political, and that it would slow down the process of adjudicating and determining privacy complaints, to the detriment of individual Canadians and often to the benefit of powerful corporations.
The third piece of legislation within this bill seeks to establish a legal framework with respect to artificial intelligence systems. Let me say that it is important that the regulatory void that presently exists, with respect to the AI sector, be filled, but the substance of the bill, as it pertains to AI, is fundamentally flawed. It contains vague language. More concerningly, it puts a significant amount of legislative power in the hands of the Minister of Industry by way of regulation, absent parliamentary scrutiny.
The government is essentially asking, with respect to AI, for Parliament to adopt a bill without knowing the details and without understanding the impact of the bill on AI. It is saying, “Trust us. Trust the minister to fill in the blanks and come up with the rules after the fact.” I do not trust the government on anything, after it has gotten just about everything wrong over these past eight years. In any event, it is an overreach. It is a power grab of sorts. It is inherently undemocratic and it undermines investor confidence in the AI sector when we need investor confidence because of the uncertainty the bill creates in giving the minister the power to essentially come up with and change the rules on a whim.
When it comes to the AI component of the bill, the government needs to go back to the drawing board and engage in meaningful consultation, consultation that simply did not take place.
This is a complex bill. It is more than 100 pages long. It includes many complex and technical matters and so, in the very limited time that I have to contribute to this debate, I want to focus on how this bill fails to adequately protect the privacy rights of individual Canadians.
Privacy has long been recognized as a fundamental right of Canadians. That is because it goes to the core of who we are as individuals and is essential to the enjoyment of fundamental freedoms. As the Supreme Court declared in a 1988 decision, “Privacy is at the heart of liberty in a modern state” and privacy “is worthy of constitutional protection”.
Unfortunately, Bill C-27 fails to put the privacy rights of Canadians first. Instead, it puts the interests of big corporations, big tech and data brokers ahead of the rights of individual Canadians, and that, without war, is unacceptable.
It is true that the preamble of the bill refers to privacy interests, and I emphasize the word “interests”, as being integral to individual autonomy, dignity and the enjoyment of fundamental freedoms. It is of significance that missing in the bill is any mention of rights, but instead privacy is referred to as an “interest” and not the right that it is.
The absence of rights-based language in the bill tips the scale against individual Canadians in favour of commercial interests. As a consequence, the tribunal, as well as the Privacy Commissioner, would face significant challenges in weighing the privacy rights of Canadians against commercial interests, more likely than not, unfortunately, to the detriment of individual Canadians.
Members do not have to take my word for it. They can take the word of the former privacy commissioner of Canada, Daniel Therrien, who, in a November 13, 2022, op-ed in the Toronto Star said that the absence of rights-based language in this legislation “will likely reduce the weight of privacy in assessing the legality of intrusive commercial practices.” That was from the former privacy commissioner of Canada.
While the absence of rights-based language is a significant shortcoming in the bill, it is far from the only shortcoming in the bill when it comes to protecting the privacy rights of Canadians.
The bill contains many exceptions and loopholes with respect to obtaining the consent of Canadians for the collection, use and retention of data and private or personal information. So wide are the exceptions, so wide are the loopholes that the purported protections provided for in the bill are all but meaningless. The bill provides no clarity with respect to sensitive information. There are no broad categories around sensitive information, information worthy of additional protections, unlike legislation in other jurisdictions.
The bill is completely silent with respect to the selling of data. It provides no limitations or rules around data brokers. It provides nothing in the way of protections for Canadians around other areas. It does not provide a remedy, for example, for moral damages in the case of data breaches.
In so many respects, this bill falls short, and that is why it has been widely criticized by leading privacy experts. Canadians deserve better. That is why Conservatives will be voting against this bill. The Liberal government needs to go back to the drawing board.
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Madam Speaker, to answer the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, the bill is fundamentally flawed. It is unsupportable on that basis. If it were a matter of a few amendments, it would make sense to send the bill to committee on the basis that the bill was supportable on principle, but that is not the case with the bill. Indeed, with respect to the consent provisions of the bill, the bill arguably would take a step back from the completely inadequate measures that were provided in PIPEDA.
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Madam Speaker, what we need with respect to the AI component of the bill is clarity, and we need certainty. What we do not need is the power grab the government has afforded itself, whereby the minister would be afforded enormous powers by way of regulations that would create significant uncertainty.
There was a complete lack of consultation. I believe the consultation only began in June, and that underscores why the bill needs to be scrapped and needs to be defeated. The government needs to go back, do its homework, engage in consultation and get this right.
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Madam Speaker, if the bill is passed, given the trend with respect to data practices, the bill will be, for all intents and purposes, already out of date, and that is a problem. However, I would submit that if it is studied at committee, which I expect it will be, it would require significant amendments around protecting the individual privacy rights of Canadians. There are major gaps missing from the legislation that I outlined, including with respect to sensitive information. There is a lack of broad categories, and the fact that this is not defined needs to be worked on. There are a whole lot of other provisions. There are many, in fact, which is why we cannot support the bill.
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