TranslatePolitics.ca

Rhonda Kirkland

Conservative 9:00 p.m.

“I'm pointing out a specific problem. The Privacy Commissioner offered amendments and we needed to understand. Only the Liberals blocked him from our committee. What does the member think of that?”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the Green Party member's speech. I have a lot of respect for the time she has spent in this place and for her opinions. I would like to hear her opinion on this. I believe she was probably watching some of the clause-by-clause in our public safety committee. During that time, we received amendment suggestions from the Privacy Commissioner. They were brought forward by all parties. When we had some confusion on why he brought certain amendments forward and had questions, I asked for the consent of members of the committee to have the Privacy Commissioner come back to clause-by-clause as we were going through these suggested amendments, so that we could do this right and understand some things. I do not know if the member noticed, but every Liberal member voted against that and blocked the Privacy Commissioner from coming to sit in at clause-by-clause. Would the member like to comment on why she thinks they would do something like that?

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Elizabeth May

Green 9:00 p.m.

“I want to put words in other peoples' mouths.”

Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Liberal 9:00 p.m.

“I think the Green Party leader is wrong. If we never use time limits, the Conservatives could block every bill just by saying they don't like it. The government needs to be able to pass legislation somehow, even without cooperation.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I completely disagree with the leader of the Green Party, because I do not think she is reflecting on the reality of change that we have seen over the last 15 years. If we follow the logic of the leader of the Green Party, it would be the Conservative Party of Canada that would determine what legislation passed, because she does not believe that time allocation should be used. The moment that the Conservative Party says they do not like legislation, the government would not be able to pass the legislation. There was a time when there was co-operation, many years ago, but we need programming, in the same way we program opposition days and private members' bills, in order for the government of the day and future governments to be able to get their legislation across the goal line. I am wondering if the member could provide her thoughts on that change.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Elizabeth May

Green 9:05 p.m.

“I want fewer, more authentic speeches. That would make it easier to agree how much time to spend on each bill.”

Dane Lloyd

Conservative 9:05 p.m.

“I'm rambling on at length and making things complicated to disguise that I'm open to expanding warrantless surveillance. I want to soften you up by sounding very reasonable about it. I want to create a complex process that sounds technical and neutral, but it would actually make spying on you much easier. When I showed too much of my hand about this, I blamed the government for it instead. I want police to have a master key to your house, but I don't want you to think too hard about how easily that master key could be abused.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join this very important debate today. I am a member of the public safety committee, and I have been there throughout this process. We have seen in this Parliament the failure of the government, when it brought forward Bill C-2, and the ongoing failure of the government to get legislation moved forward, with Bill C-22. I want to say at the outset that I will be splitting my time with the member for Thornhill. I want to make it clear that we see there is a need for changes to be made to assist law enforcement in this digital age. I saw, a number of years ago, in the wake of a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court on Bykovets revolving around the idea of the reasonable expectation of privacy in the case of a credit card fraud case, that the methods being used by law enforcement to investigate these crimes, and many other crimes that take place digitally, had been severely curtailed. I worked with my local RCMP integrated childhood exploitation unit and other stakeholders. I think a good solution is contained in what is considered part 1 of Bill C-22. That is not to say that Conservatives and I do not have issues with part 1. There are issues. There are questions about the thresholds, be it a reason to suspect or a reason to believe. One of the thresholds, the one that was chosen by the government, is far lower, but essentially, I believe, as Conservatives, we can support part 1, because we know that, if law enforcement has to reach out to a telecommunications company or an electronic service provider, they do not know whether that provider actually provides a service to an IP address, a name or a phone number, and they have to write a warrant for that process. That is a very time-consuming process for law enforcement. It is like searching for a needle in a haystack. It is very difficult. As such, part 1 of the legislation seeks to create a subscriber confirmation, and I think that this could be an effective way to have something that does not require a warrant and to ask electronic service providers and telecommunications companies a simple yes-or-no question: Do they provide services to an IP address, or do they provide services to a number? I think that this could really cut down on the bureaucratic red tape that law enforcement faces. It could help speed up investigations. That is why, as Conservatives, despite some of the concerns that experts have raised, like civil liberty groups and Canadian Bar Association, we can work with that However, where we really get into the weeds is with the concerns we set out on part 2 of the legislation. Before I get into the concerns on part 2, as they are very technical in nature, but very important, I want to provide a bit of an overview of what happened at committee. This is very far-reaching legislation. It proposes to radically remake the entire paradigm of investigations in Canada. While I recognize that there need to be reforms, when we are dealing with something of this magnitude, that is not something that can be rushed. This is not necessarily because members just want to be oppositional for the sake of opposition. However, it is actually in the government's, and all of Canada's, best interests that parliamentarians really scrutinize the legislation, because we know that the legislation is going to be contested in the courts in the future, and we want to make sure that we have the best legislation so that it is actually effective at doing the job. What Canadians fear is that the government could potentially misuse it, and maybe not even the government but malicious actors and criminal actors could misuse the vulnerabilities that the government would be creating through the legislation. At committee we heard from many witnesses, but the amount of time that we had to hear from witnesses was extremely truncated. It was over a short matter of weeks in two-hour meetings, where we had panels of very intelligent experts who had a lot to say about the legislation. Every day I was getting emails from the public safety committee clerk with new submissions and briefs. We simply did not have the appropriate time to really dissect the legislation and go deep down into the far-reaching, potentially negative impacts of it so the process became very rushed. It was a real sea change because, prior to the government's manufactured majority, it actually had to work with other parties in order to get legislation passed. The cybersecurity legislation came forward, and there were some really strong amendments put forward by opposition parties in this House that were adopted. I think it really made the legislation stronger. However, ever since the government received its manufactured majority, it has not been interested in working with other parties. Now we see that it is using this programming motion to try to ram through the legislation so that we cannot scrutinize it further. I respect the members of our non-partisan public service. At the committee clause-by-clause stage they came as technical witnesses to speak about aspects of the bill. However, during the back-and-forth, it became very clear, and they said as much, that this was important legislation to them as members of the public service, and that they were invested in getting this legislation passed. Many of the amendments that we as Conservatives and other parties put forward were based on the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner, who is a constitutional lawyer. He is a very intelligent man who I think put forward some very reasonable amendments. We as Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois wanted to have him sit in on the meeting so he could provide his insight on the more technical nature of some of the amendments and the issues we were talking about. The government would not allow that to happen. I think that is where this process really broke down and where it was shown that the government was not acting in good faith and not willing to work with opposition parties. The Privacy Commissioner is not partisan. He is an expert in his field. He is appointed by Parliament. Bringing him forward to committee to help us explore the very real privacy implications of this legislation I think would have done a great deal in easing its passage. It is a gargantuan bill with a number of amendments. It would have taken the committee a great deal of time to get through it, but I think the fact the government was not willing to hear from the Privacy Commissioner showed that it was not really interested in having a serious discussion on it. I want to get into some other aspects of part 2 now. I am very concerned about these metadata provisions. Metadata, for those listening, is the stuff in our phones. It is not necessarily the content of the text messages or the browsing history, but it is very important information about our location, what phone numbers we are contacting and other such things. The government is putting forward a proposal that would require telecommunications and other companies to maintain this metadata for up to a year. It has been ruled unconstitutional in the European Union to mass-keep the data of people in the European Union, yet this is what the government is putting forward. Some people would say that it is not going to misuse the data and that it would have to get a warrant in this case. However, my issue is not necessarily what the government is going to do with it, but what malicious actors would do with it. Imagine this allegory. The Government of Canada tells every home builder in Canada that they need to make a master key to open all the houses they produce and now it has the master key to open everyone's house in Canada. That is what it is asking the telecommunications companies, the Apples, the Googles and the Metas, for, a master key. Do I think the government or law enforcement are going to misuse it? That is not a serious fear, but who is to say that key is always going to be protected, that vulnerability is not going to be exploited or it would not be stolen by third party actors, foreign governments or malicious criminal networks? The government is creating vulnerabilities in encryption that would impact not just Canadians but people across the world, because the encryption is not just in Canada but across the world. This has now become a trade issue. That is why I am very concerned about this legislation.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

Liberal 9:15 p.m.

“I want to paint the other party as weak on crime. They disagree with us on how to fight it. That must mean they don't want to fight crime at all.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party used to call itself the party of law and order. Unfortunately, today, the Conservatives no longer have any credibility on this issue. When the time comes to better protect victims, what do the Conservatives do? They vote against it. When the time comes to combat hate crimes in our communities, they vote against it. That is not to mention all the disinformation they have been spreading on the matter. When the time comes to debate Bill C‑22 to give the authorities the tools they need to fight crime, what do they do? They filibuster. I would like to hear the thoughts of my colleague opposite. What does he think about the fact that his party no longer has any credibility when it comes to keeping our communities safe and getting tough on crime?

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Dane Lloyd

Conservative 9:15 p.m.

“You're blaming me? Ha! You're the ones who made crime go up. I won't learn any lessons from a government that's been in power for 11 years and only made things worse.”

John Brassard

Conservative 9:15 p.m.

“The Liberals are acting badly. They're arsonists! We should have got the briefs earlier. It hurt our ability to examine the bill. That's not good.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, the way the Liberals are acting tonight, it is almost like the arsonist who sets a house on fire and then we expect him to put the fire out. It is almost the same thing. I want to go back to the issue of the Privacy Commissioner. One of the things that I saw, and the member was there when I was there, was that the briefs that were submitted to the committee did not arrive and were not sent to committee members until the day they were sitting around the table to question the Privacy Commissioner and other witnesses who had submitted briefs, eight days later. I know the hon. member brought this up. He was quite concerned, as were other members sitting around that table, including the Bloc members. How much of an impact did not having those briefs have on the member's ability, as a member of this committee, to scrutinize this piece of legislation?

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Dane Lloyd

Conservative 9:15 p.m.

“The government is rushing this legislation too fast. I didn't get important information on time. There were technical issues that made it hard to scrutinize the bill properly. This hurts my ability to do my job and scrutinize the legislation effectively.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, the hon. member was indeed there. It was very concerning because we had the Privacy Commissioner come to committee, and I had received nothing from the Privacy Commissioner prior to the start of that meeting. The Privacy Commissioner was referencing recommendations that he had provided to the committee weeks before, and I had no idea what these recommendations were. There were issues with interpretation and technical issues, but I could not even get transcripts from the meeting that had taken place three weeks before, where we had former justice Deschamps from NSIRA come and provide recommendations to the committee. I could not even reference past committee meetings. Because the government is rushing through this legislation so quickly, we could not even do proper due diligence. It really did impact my ability and all members' ability to be effective in scrutinizing this legislation.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Liberal 9:15 p.m.

“You lost the last election. The people elected us. You're in my way. You're bad. We should be able to pass whatever we want.”

Dane Lloyd

Conservative 9:20 p.m.

“You've been here 11 years. It's the same talking points. Bad policies. It's still all you.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, the member talks about being a member of a new government. It is the same member, and people can check the Hansard, who has been speaking in this place for nearly 11 years. It is the same talking points. It is the same failed Liberal policies. It is the same Liberal government. In fact, the Liberal Prime Minister was advising former prime minister Justin Trudeau on many of these failed economic policies that we are seeing today, and now we have this legislation coming forward. Canadians, in the last election, did not vote for these policies. They voted to get tough on criminals, but they did not vote for law-abiding Canadians to be subjected to this level of government surveillance.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Melissa Lantsman

Conservative 9:20 p.m.

“The government is trying to ram through a surveillance bill with almost no debate. We'd pass the lawful access part that police actually asked for. But the rest is a massive erosion of privacy rights, and the minister can't even defend it. So now they're cutting off scrutiny entirely to protect themselves. I won't write them a blank check to erode citizens' rights without oversight.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, before we can even talk about this bill in Parliament, we have to talk about whether members of Parliament are even allowed to talk at all anymore. That is what the motion is about. A government that claims to defend Canadian rights is using every tool at its disposal to make sure those things cannot even be debated on the floor of the House of Commons. That is what people are seeing tonight. The Liberals are pushing the House to ram through legislation in its current form that nobody asked for, nobody wants and nobody thinks is a good idea, according to the testimony at the committee that they have just shut down. Let me be clear about what this debate is actually about, because it is not about the bill. It is about whether lawful access matters. It does. Lawful access is a tool that every police officer in this country needs, and we are ready to give them that bill, but Bill C-22 would not stop there, and that is exactly where the government has lost the plot on all this. Tonight, instead of a serious debate on a serious bill, we are listening to the Liberals mount an obnoxiously loud defence of the indefensible. They want to debate whether we should ignore the rights of the House, the will of our constituents and the basic principles of good governance that everybody came here to carry out. The government abandoned those a long time ago, but I know a lot of members of the House come here every day to scrutinize the very legislation that the Liberals are trying to ram through tonight. Let me say this to anybody watching at home at this late hour: The Liberals' argument in this debate is completely disingenuous, and they know it. I appreciate the police chief of York Regional Police. We have an enormously good relationship, a great one. I have also met with the commissioner of the OPP and with the Toronto police chief. They have all asked us to help pass lawful access, and we told them we would. Everything they asked for was in part 1 of the bill. We support that and are ready to pass that today. We were ready to pass that long ago. It is the Liberals who said no. However, not one of these police chiefs asked for the unprecedented expansion of government surveillance powers, secret ministerial orders, no oversight and a massive erosion of Canadians' privacy protections. That is all in part 2, and that is exactly what the problem is. The Liberals' trying to ram it through is a disgrace to the House. The Liberals say the police are demanding it, and I think that is as much of an insult to the police as the last 10 years of their leadership on this file has been, full stop. I do not think they can find anybody who says they need every provision in this bill, because it is just not true. We came to the government with a straightforward proposal: Pass part 1 now, give the police chiefs what they are asking for, and we will support it through the House, every part of it; then take time to properly fix part 2 instead of programming a motion that would ram it through the House without any debate. We want to fix it by hearing from the civil liberties advocates who raised concerns in committee, from the private companies and from ordinary Canadians who have every right to be heard by every member of Parliament, every member of the House, because the legislation would affect them directly. They all sounded the alarm bells at committee. Making this go away would not protect Canadians. It would protect the Liberals. The government said no to us, because the minister presenting the bill cannot even defend it. If we put him in front of a microphone, we will see. He would be blundering all over the place, not answering questions, and giving entirely wrong answers, because he does not know the contents of the bill. If he did know the contents of the bill, he would admit that it is part 1 that police officers were asking for to protect people. When the Liberals stand up and say that Conservatives are blocking lawful access, that is simply false. Every member of the House should know that. The culprit is the government's own stubbornness, its refusal to listen to anyone outside of its caucus, and, of course, it is the minister who is incapable of defending his own bill. What is the Liberals' response to that refusal? It is a motion to cut off debate, to limit how long the bill is discussed, to limit committee study and, in an unprecedented move, to retroactively pass the bill through committee without ever hearing the remaining amendments that were in committee. That has never been done in this place except with Bill C-9, the last bill the government passed through the House. My colleague mentioned that she had never seen that happen in her 15 years in this place, which is longer than I have been here. This is not procedural housekeeping, but that is what the Liberals are going to make it sound like. It is a very real, very clear threat to the rights and freedoms of all Canadians from coast to coast to coast. The government has heard this loud and clear. That is exactly why it is ramming this bill through, because its members cannot go off on a summer break and have Canadians raise the alarm bells on it. They want to get it through the House. One of the members opposite supporting this motion, and we need to talk about this, is the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. In a previous life, she sat on this side of the House as the Conservative shadow minister for civil liberties. She participated in nearly every civil liberties debate in this chamber. Every single time, she told Canadians the truth, which was that the government could not be trusted with privacy. I agreed with her then, and I agree with her now. This is what we are talking about. This is a bill that would lower the constitutional bar. This is where it gets serious. It would create secret ministerial orders with no sunlight. It would open back doors for bad actors who would mandate metadata retention as a direct precursor to AI-driven mass surveillance, and it would weaken the encryption that protects Canadians' private communications, even with their financial institutions. That is the problem. I think this bill deserves to be debated and the House should give it that. Instead, the Liberals have rammed it through with what is called the programming motion to sweep this away right before they take their summer break. Let us go back to the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. She also told the House, and I remember it, that members of the Liberal caucus wanted to see her jailed over the views that she held on these exact kinds of topics. Now she is voting with those same people. She is handing them unprecedented power to conscript private business as instruments of state surveillance and potentially break the encryption that millions of Canadians rely on every single day. This is not hyperbole. Signal, NordVPN and DuckDuckGo have all publicly said that this kind of bill would force them to leave the country entirely. With that kind of testimony at committee, does anybody in this place not think that this deserves more scrutiny and more study? That is not a talking point. They actually said that. That is a business decision that they are planning to make because of this legislation, and that tells us everything we need to know about how deeply flawed part 2 is and how it strikes at Canadian privacy rights. Normally, I might wonder out loud what the people of Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong think of all of this, but in this case, I already know because I went there. Just like Canadians across the country did not vote for the construction of a surveillance state, the people of Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong did not vote for her to erode their rights in this place. Police unions and police chiefs did not ask for their members to be handed these broad, sweeping powers; they asked for lawful access. We are ready to give it to them in part 1 of this bill. We asked for that and the Liberals said no. That is the conversation today. We are not prepared to write a blank cheque to the government. I do not think that anybody is. We, the members of the opposition, certainly are not prepared to do that as we watch the government of the day erode not only the rights of Canadians but also the ability to debate those rights in the House and the ability to scrutinize a bill that is deeply problematic. This is a bill that civil liberties associations, social media platforms and all kinds of private companies have raised the alarm bells on. We are certainly not going to do that with no debate, no witnesses at committee, no ability to propose amendments, no oversight mechanisms and no answers from the people who will actually be responsible for implementing the legislation. The reason that we are talking about this motion in the House is because of the public safety minister's inability to defend his own legislation in here, out there, at committee and everywhere else across the country. The government is programming this motion to save that minister, and Canadians deserve better than that. They deserve a debate, and they deserve scrutiny on this legislation.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

John Brassard

Conservative 9:30 p.m.

“The minority government was elected to be checked by opposition parties. But now that the government has a majority, it's hard for opposition parties to do anything. Please talk about how this is bad for parliamentary democracy.”

Melissa Lantsman

Conservative 9:30 p.m.

“I want to make the government look bad by listing a bunch of bills and claiming they erode rights. I want voters to know I'm upset about limits on committee debate and cameras.”

Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Liberal 9:30 p.m.

“We want this lawful access bill to pass. I admit it's controversial; Conservatives attack it and it could fail without time allocation. If you oppose this bill, you must be against law enforcement! Why would you oppose law enforcement?”

Melissa Lantsman

Conservative 9:30 p.m.

“You know police didn’t ask for this. I offered to pass part 1. Ignore part 2. Let’s pass part 1 now. But you don’t really want that.”

Maxime Blanchette-Joncas

Bloc Québécois 9:30 p.m.

“You did the same thing last year. Why is it wrong now but not then?”

Melissa Lantsman

Conservative 9:30 p.m.

“I want more debate and cameras. The other party is limiting them. That's bad.”

Ellis Ross

Conservative 9:30 p.m.

“I don't like that the Liberal majority government might ignore amendments from other parties. Democracy should matter more.”

Melissa Lantsman

Conservative 9:35 p.m.

“I want you to consider my pithy quote. I think it makes you look bad.”

What they said. What they meant.

Recent debates

Government Business No. 13—Proceedings on Bill C‑22

Rhonda Kirkland

Elizabeth May

Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Elizabeth May

Dane Lloyd

Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

Dane Lloyd

John Brassard

Dane Lloyd

Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Dane Lloyd

Melissa Lantsman

John Brassard

Melissa Lantsman

Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Melissa Lantsman

Maxime Blanchette-Joncas

Melissa Lantsman

Ellis Ross

Melissa Lantsman