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Member of Parliament

Matthew Green

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • NDP
  • Hamilton Centre
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 65%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $131,250.15

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 165 - Mar/7/23
Mr. Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, NDP)
  • Mar/7/23 10:07:11 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-27 
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the wonderful member forRosemont—La Petite-Patrie. I am grateful for the opportunity to rise today on Bill C-27, which is an act to enact the consumer privacy protection act, the personal information and data protection tribunal act and the artificial intelligence and data act, and to make consequential and related amendments. The amendments are what I am particularly interested in today. As New Democrats, we will be supporting this at second reading. We support the need to modernize Canada's privacy laws and establishing rules around data governance and empowering the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to bring enforcement actions to protect consumers and citizens. This bill takes some of those steps. However, there is a need to ensure that reforms are robust and effective. In my opinion, a long list of amendments will certainly be required to achieve these goals. I am going to be referencing two important works that have been presented. One is from the Centre for Digital Rights, entitled “Not Fit For Purpose - Canada Deserves Much Better”. From the title, we can note that there are some concerns with this bill. However, we recognize that this privacy legislation must be amended because there are already glaring shortfalls in PIPEDA, which urgently needs updating. Technology continues to evolve, and data-driven business continues to move away from a service-oriented approach to one that relies on monetizing personal information through mass surveillance of individuals and groups. While these businesses find new ways to expand their surveillance and methods of monetizing our personal information, Canadians' privacy is increasingly put at risk. The GDPR is the bar that is currently considered the adequate level of protection. However, if we were to do a little bit of comparing and contrasting, we would see that this bill tends to fall short of this level in terms of what the European Commission has done. What this means for us is that the ability for personal data to flow to Canada without any further safeguards is at risk. There has also been pressure from industry and advocacy groups, the privacy commissioners of Canada and abroad, and privacy and data governance experts. In fact, in this particular bill, we think that the government side has fallen short in its engagement with people; I will get to that in a moment. When we are in these technological environments, it is an ecosystem that goes well beyond our borders. We are talking about what it is like—
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