Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 28/11/2022 17:32:44
Context: Debate

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Madam Speaker, I acknowledge I am standing today, as any day that I am on Parliament Hill, on Algonquin land of the Anishnabeg peoples. I say a large meegwetch to them.

I am speaking today, as we all are, to Bill C-27, which is really three bills in one. My other parliamentary colleagues have already canvassed the bare outline of this, that we are looking at three bills: an act to create a consumer privacy protection act, as well a personal Information and data protection tribunal act, which largely replaces some of what there was already in PIPEDA in the past, and a brand new artificial intelligence and data act.

I want to start with the artificial intelligence and data act because it is the part with which all of us are least familiar. Much of what we see in this bill was previously before Parliament in last session’s Bill C-11. There is a lot here to dig into and understand.

As I was reading through the whole concept of what kind of harms are done by artificial intelligence, I found my myself thinking back to a novel that came out in 1949. The kind of technology described in George Orwell’s book, famously called 1984, was unthinkable then. The dystopian vision of a great writer like a George Orwell or a Margaret Atwood is hard to imagine.
I will never forget the scene in the opening of The Handmaid’s Tale, where a woman goes into a store and her debit card is taken from her. At that moment, we did not have debit cards. Margaret Atwood had to describe this futuristic concept of a piece of plastic that gave us access to our bank without using cash. No one had heard of it then.

There are the words from George Orwell, written in 1949, about the way in which artificial intelligence and new technologies can really cause harm, in a dystopian sense. In 1984, it states, “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away.”
More recently, there is the song by The Police and written by Sting and others. I will never forget that once I went to a session on rights to privacy being under assault and a British jurist brought with him for his opening of the speech, “Every breath you take, And every move you make, Every bond you break, Every step you take, I’ll be watching you.”

We live in a time when artificial intelligence can be enormously invasive of our privacy with things like visual recognition systems, as the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman was just speaking to. These are things that, for someone like myself born in 1954, are all rather new, but it is new for people born in 1990, too. It is very new technology and bringing in legislation to control it is equally new and challenging for us as parliamentarians. The whole notion that we are going to be able to spot the ways in which artificial intelligence can affect our democracy is something that will take time.

We talk about harms from this kind of technology, from capturing algorithms, from invading our spaces. We do not have to look any farther than the way Cambridge Analytica was used by the anti-Brexit forces in the U.K. to harness a public outrage against something based on a pile of disinformation, targeting individuals, collecting their data. That kind of Cambridge Analytica concern also gets into part 1 and part 2 of this bill. We really do need to figure out how to control the digital tech giants from harvesting our information.

As an example used earlier today in debate, there is the idea that big digital giants, for profit motives of large corporations and without the consent of Canadians who may have put a family photo on social media, never know that their privacy has been invaded and their personal information and photos have been used for profit without their permission. In this sense, I am going to flag that in the context of the artificial intelligence and data act, I hope we will be taking the time necessary to hear witnesses specifically on this.

We have developed a pattern in recent years, which is to say the last decade or so, of having three or four witnesses appear on panels. All of us in this place know that committees are trying to hear from a lot of people and receive a lot of evidence. It will do us a disservice to dive into the artificial intelligence and data act if we combine panels with people who are experts on PIPEDA, people who are experts on other aspects of this bill and have a panel on artificial intelligence and data.

The committees that study this bill will control their own processes. Committees are the masters of their own processes, but I would urge the government, the Liberal legislative managers of this piece of legislation, Bill C-27, to follow the lead of the Speaker’s ruling earlier today. If we are going to vote on the artificial intelligence piece as a separate piece when we come to vote, at least we could make an effort to ensure that the concentrated effort of committee members and hearing witness testimony is not diluted through several different pieces of legislation and panels with three or four witnesses.

Members’ questions will inevitably and invariably go to one or two. In this format of panels and pushing witnesses through quickly, we lose a lot of content. Compared to when I worked in government back in the 1980s, which I know seems like the dark ages and no one in this room was on committees in those days, committees would hear from a witness who could speak for 15 minutes and then we would have the rest of an hour to ask that one witness questions. Now that we are into something as complicated as this area, I would urge the committee to give it that kind of attention or ask the government to send part 3, the artificial intelligence and data act, to a different committee so that the study can be thorough and we can educate ourselves as to the unintended consequences that will inevitably occur if we go too fast.

Turning to the parts of the bill that deal with privacy, I want to put on the record again, and a question was raised just moments ago, about whether privacy legislation should apply to political parties in Canada. At the moment, it does not. Political parties are exempted from the kinds of privacy protections that other organizations, NGOs and corporations must protect the privacy information of their customers, consumers and citizens.
Transcription in progress / Transcription en cours

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): I will say quickly that I tend to agree with the first analysis that one of the NGOs was very concerned with privacy information. OpenMedia, in an article by Brian Stewart says very clearly that this legislation could actually make things worse in some privacy protection. They give the efforts of the bill, Bill C-27’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act and Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, a grade of D. In other words, it passes but just barely. There will be many witnesses.
I can certainly confirm that as the Green Party member of Parliament in this place, I will be bringing amendments forward, assuming this bill gets through second reading, which I think we can assume, and ends up at committee.

In the time remaining, I want to emphasize that Canada is aware that privacy is a fundamental human right. It is part of the UN declaration on the rights of individuals. I echo some of the sentiments from the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman in asking why we are looking at consumer privacy. Maybe we should change that word to Canadians’ rights and privacy.

I also agree with many members who have spoken today about the problems of section 18.3 and the number of exemptions along with the question of what is a legitimate reason that people’s privacy can be invaded. That should be further clarified. A reasonable person would expect the collection or use for such an activity to be fine, but the exemptions seem overly broad.
If I dive into anything else I will go over my allotted time.

This is important legislation. We must protect the privacy of Canadians. I think we will call on all parties in this place to set aside partisanship and make an honest effort to review it; not delay it, but an honest effort to review it before this bill leaves this place.

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Time: 07/06/2022 23:31:50
Context: Question

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today at Adjournment Proceedings. I have to say the hour is awfully appropriate. I am going to be following up on a question I asked in question period on May 2, related to what are called small modular reactors and their connection to nuclear proliferation, so it certainly is appropriate that the clock is approaching midnight. It reminds me very much that there is something called a doomsday clock that is kept up to date by the bulletin of atomic scientists. I just checked it and it shows we are 100 seconds to midnight.

The combined factors are increased threats of nuclear war brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as the significant risk to the whole planet brought on by the climate crisis. These issues are related, and I related them in my question in the House on May 2. The answer from the Minister of Natural Resources was not sufficient and that is why I have brought it forward this evening.

The so-called small modular reactors are not part of any solution to the climate crisis. Moreover, they are untested and essentially experimental. Last, I again draw the attention of this place to the risk of nuclear proliferation.

Just to walk through those three points, the Minister of Natural Resources has said frequently in this place that there is no pathway to climate solutions that does not include small modular reactors. That is simply not true. Reducing greenhouse gases involves phasing out fossil fuels, cancelling the TMX and not pursuing Bay du Nord. These are tangible things that have nothing to do with nuclear. Nuclear is actually in the way. It is highly expensive. Per tonne of carbon reduced, it is about the most expensive way we can go and it also has a long timeline before we see any results from a decision to go with nuclear.

The fact that these reactors are untested and essentially experimental has not had enough attention in this country. I turned to an expert in the area, Professor Allison M. Macfarlane, as a source. She is actually the former chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is currently at the University of British Columbia.

She told this to the CBC:

Nobody knows what the numbers are, and anybody who gives you numbers is selling you a bridge to nowhere because they don’t know…

Nobody has ever set up a molten salt reactor and used it to produce electricity.

A molten salt reactor is exactly what the Government of Canada and the Government of New Brunswick are throwing tens of millions of dollars at, to a private-sector operator who proposes this and has been approved to go ahead and build it. It is being reviewed at this moment, but the money is flowing toward a molten salt reactor that will use plutonium from the spent fuel at Point Lepreau in order to create this unproven technology and allegedly to produce electricity.

It is all very much in question, except for one thing. There is a huge risk in taking plutonium from spent fuel. It is the kind of risk that existing nuclear non-proliferation treaties are very careful to prevent us from doing. If we are promoting a global plutonium economy, even a tiny, infinitesimal amount of plutonium in the hands of terrorists could create a dirty bomb. In the hands of other countries around the world, there is the very large risk that they will produce a nuclear weapon.

We had this experience in 1974 when Canada gave India one of our CANDU reactors. It turns out that these new SMRs, as reported in The Globe and Mail this week, produce far more nuclear waste than conventional reactors. They produce two times to 30 times more.

Therefore, I ask the government to think twice. This is a mistake. This is radioactive snake oil.

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Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 01/06/2022 21:46:18
Context: Motions\Debate

I am part of a global party. It does not come up very often in this place that I am a member of Parliament in Canada, within a family of global Greens. One of those global Greens is Pekka Haavisto, who is the minister of foreign affairs for Finland and a very germane part of the debate tonight. Up until December, a friend of mine, Per Bolund, co-leader of the Green Party of Sweden, was their deputy prime minister, but the Swedish Greens just left the Swedish coalition for reasons I need not get into here.

As Greens we have a profound commitment to peace and non-violence, which means, saying it just as clearly as I can, that I am no fan of NATO. Greens are not, generally, because it is a military. It is a defensive alliance, but it is not without issues for those of us who are committed to non-violence. It has been an issue for us to know that we absolutely, unequivocally, believe that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is the sole responsibility of Vladimir Putin and that we are on the side of Ukraine and Ukrainians. We are supportive of every action our government has taken, but it is not without difficulty for us.

How do Greens feel about Canada being in NATO? In an ideal world, when the Warsaw Pact ended, NATO would have ended too. That is how we see it. There is a big “if”. It is one of the main things I want to talk about tonight. NATO’s continued involvement in the world does create tensions that we probably did not need if we had had the former Soviet Union and the United States pursue nuclear disarmament. When Mikhail Gorbachev was championing perestroika and glasnost, he also picked up the phone and called former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. He asked, “Do you want to end nuclear weapons, because I do” and Ronald Reagan said, “I do too”. By the way, the reason I know that is because Mikhail Gorbachev told that story to a small group of people in a room in Rio de Janeiro at Rio+5. I was there because I was a part of a committee that Mikhail Gorbachev co-chaired.

In the years that followed, the efforts toward nuclear disarmament faltered. I believe that Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin and the two of them decided, or at least Putin decided, “Let’s not get rid of nuclear weapons. Let’s slow down the talks. Let’s not have nuclear non-proliferation discussions any more. Let’s not have nuclear disarmament discussions any more.” It has made the world less safe.

In the context of Vladimir Putin and Russia, wars are generally illegal. It is hard to know when a war is exactly legal because many of them are founded on lies: the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. We can make up a story and say we need to attack this other country just because, but there are some wars that we know were morally justified, such as the Allied Forces confronting fascism in the Second World War. Many of our parents, my parents and many people in this room had family members engaged in a war that, as the member for Scarborough—Guildwood just said, it is the young people who suffer. In wars it is the young people who die, but with some wars we can see the moral justification.

In this case, supporting Ukraine really matters, but I question what Canada should be doing in NATO. I want to share that with all of my colleagues as I conclude my remarks. I will, spoiler alert, agree with a motion that Finland and Sweden should be supported in joining NATO because that is what they asked for right now. As I said, my colleagues, who are in the global Green Party, global Green parliamentarians, asked for that. We respect the decisions made within countries by our colleagues in the Green Party, so no question from Greens. We support that Finland and Sweden should be supported in joining NATO.
Let me ask the question. The budget of 2022 said clearly that we are going to have a foreign policy review. In that foreign policy review, I hope we will ask the question: Should Canada stay in NATO?

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-06-01 17:31

Madam Speaker, I am so grateful to be acknowledged at this moment, because it allows me to follow up on the question from the hon. member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke and clarify for the hon. member for Fundy Royal that no one voting for Bill C-5 thinks that guilty parties should have no jail time.

What we are arguing for, based on the evidence, is that we do not put an additional cost burden on the provinces by putting more people in jail. The provinces have to pay the costs of what was an omnibus crime bill in a previous Parliament, Bill C-10. We do not want to see people who are innocent get so worried about a mandatory minimum that they take their lawyer’s advice and take a plea deal because they do not really want to take the chance of letting the judge use his or her discretion, having heard all the evidence, and we do not want people to get lesser sentences because they did not go through the process where a judge had the discretion to decide how they should go to jail.

The punishment must fit the crime, and the cookie-cutter approach of mandatory minimums is a failure.

Hon. Rob Moore (Fundy Royal)
2022-06-01 17:32

Madam Speaker, I wish all Canadians could have been watching when we saw the Green Party move amendments at our committee to remove every single mandatory penalty from the Criminal Code, including sexual offences against children. It was appalling. They moved the amendments, but then they did not want to speak about them.

I am happy to speak about them. We, the Conservatives, believe that Parliament needs to send a message that individuals who victimize young people and Canadians, cause fear in our communities and engage in drive-by shootings, weapons trafficking, the importing and exporting of firearms illegally, robberies with a firearm, extortion with a firearm and the discharging of a firearm with intent, as in a drive-by shooting, need to be off the streets and there need to be serious consequences for those types of crimes.

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Read the full transcript here.

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-05-30 23:51

Mr. Chair, just by way of opening, I will say that I am basing a lot of these questions on testimony that we heard at the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. It is an excellent committee with a lot of non-partisan co-operation between members around the table, but I will not cite every witness in every specific question.
I am following up on an earlier question on the climate impacts of extreme weather events and the impacts on fish habitat. We know we have impacts on and threats to Pacific salmon from flooding, wildfires and the destruction of the riparian zones that used to shield the waters to keep them from getting too hot from increased water temperatures. However, I want to focus on what we are going to do to rebuild infrastructure after the November floods in B.C. We could do it wrong and worsen salmon habitat through building dikes and drudging or we could do it right. Some of the expert witnesses suggested that Washington state is where we ought to look for excellence in its flood plains by design program, which works to reduce flood risks while enhancing and restoring salmon habitat.

Can the minister update us on whether DFO is actively pursuing a flood plains by design program?

Hon. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra)
2022-05-30 23:53

Mr. Chair, I absolutely share the concern that it is not just the effects of the flooding, slides and fires, but how we rebuild from them. I mentioned earlier that I am part of the emergency committee of provincial and federal ministers, and each of my and DFO’s interventions has been to make sure the other ministers understand the importance of having fish-friendly rebuilding. We are going to continue to press that point.

Our government provided $5 billion to the province to help rebuild from the flooding in November. That rebuilding has to be done in a way that is fish friendly, so I am going to be asking for a report on what we are doing to ensure that.

I thank the member for her concern.

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-05-30 23:54

Mr. Chair, I will move to the problem of what people call aquaculture but my constituents insist I call toxic fish factories, and how we are going to get them out of the water, as the minister’s government promised. Some of the witnesses who testified recently on the science issue questioned why the department, not the minister personally, obviously, has in certain sections suppressed science on viruses and sea lice. The conclusion was that it had to do with the fact that the Fisheries Act structurally has a conflict of interest in both promoting the aquaculture industry and regulating it.

Would the minister be open to looking at the new aquaculture act to eliminate that conflict of interest, have a different department promote aquaculture and have DFO protect wild fish stocks?

Hon. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra)
2022-05-30 23:55

Mr. Chair, we do have a process, the CSAS process, which provides the opportunity for peer review of science. I understand what the member is saying when she says that there has been some recent research that has come out since the CSAS report that determined minimal risk. At a certain point, when there is a body of work that has not been reviewed, I will be requesting that another peer review process take place through CSAS so that we can update our analysis of the risk to wild salmon.
Consideration in a Committee of the WholeDepartment of Fisheries and OceansMain estimates 2022-2023

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-05-30 23:56

Mr. Chair, moving on, I was really pleased to hear the minister say that she recognizes that polystyrene is a real problem of plastic pollution in our coastal areas, but I was disappointed to hear that it sounded like DFO is not interested in getting it out of the ocean.
Is DFO working with Environment and Climate Change Canada to improve the regulations currently under review for ocean plastics to put polystyrene’s use in the marine and coastal areas on a list so that we avoid getting it into the ocean in the first place?

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-02-28 23:23

Madam Chair, I echo the comments of the hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul. It is certainly a wonderful thing when we can come together and unify around a common cause, which is to defend the people of Ukraine against an aggressor, which I do not think is the nation of Russia, but increasingly seems to be its leader. He is unconcerned with the fate of his own people as well as the people of Ukraine.

I ask our hon. colleague if he has any thoughts on how we can reach out to the people of Russia who are bravely standing up in peace marches to encourage them to fight against Putin.

Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands)
2022-02-28 23:24

Madam Chair, it certainly is encouraging to see people who are standing up and protesting in a country where we know things can happen to those who are very loud and vocal about their opinions. They are still doing it, so that is all the more inspirational.

What can we be doing? We can be giving them the tools to make sure their voices are heard. We can be communicating through various technologies we have today to make sure the right information is coming forward.

When President Zelensky specifically spoke to the Russian people in Russian, that was incredible, but we know that is not going to be played on RT, Russia Today. We need to make sure we are doing our part to get messages like that in front of the Russian people, because they are being oppressed. The manner in which they are being pushed down is the exact same thing Putin wants to do to Ukrainians. Whatever we can do to make sure that message gets through is something we should be doing.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-02-28 22:43

Madam Chair, a lot of proposals have been put forward on top of the very good actions the government has already taken. One that I think came up earlier today relates to Canadian pension funds that are invested in Russian operations. We would have to amend the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act.

Would the hon. member agree with me that we should do so, and quickly, to divest of Russian investments?

Julie Dzerowicz (Davenport)
2022-02-28 22:44

Madam Chair, I am reluctant to provide advice on our pension fund about what to divest or not divest. However, I will say that I am very proud not only of how the government has taken action, but also of Canadians across this country and businesses, small, medium and large. Everybody has stepped up to ask what they can do, and I would encourage everybody to continue to do so. What more can we do? How can we further support Ukraine and Ukrainians? That is something we all should be doing in the coming days and weeks.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-02-28 19:24

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. leader of the Bloc Québécois. I completely agree with him and I appreciate him having the courage to clearly say that we have no reason to support fossil fuels.

Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, published a new report stating quite clearly how close we are to the tipping point of a major planetary disaster. We are facing security threats and planetary threats.

I found a quote by Svitlana Krakovska, head of the Ukrainian delegation at the IPCC negotiations. She said:

She said, “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots—fossil fuels—and our dependence on them,” and “We will not surrender in Ukraine, and we hope the world will not surrender in building a climate resilient future”.

I would like my colleague’s comments on that, please.

Yves-François Blanchet (Beloeil—Chambly)
2022-02-28 19:26

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to derail this debate entirely, but that report is alarming. It really made me question whether the people who hold the political and economic power are prepared to deal with or mitigate the fallout of climate change. Are they just insulating themselves from the impact of climate change by accumulating more wealth and selling more oil? Climate change will hurt many other people who are far less wealthy.

That is horribly cynical. I do not think that producing and exporting more oil helps Ukraine or anyone. I think that we need to be looking at other solutions all around.

Obviously, since we need to transition much more quickly, western Canada will not be a supplier for Europe.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-02-28 19:06

Mr. Speaker, would the hon. Leader of the Opposition and her party consider adding to the list of actions we should take? Looking across Canada, we see the assets in this country bought by Russian oligarchs, the millions of dollars in real estate. Could we move fast to seize those assets to send a message to Putin and his cronies?

Hon. Candice Bergen (Portage—Lisgar)
2022-02-28 19:07

Mr. Speaker, that is definitely something we could support. It is very disturbing to see Putin’s assets being protected and hidden. Money laundering is a big problem in Canada, not just with Russian oligarchs, but also with the Chinese.

This is a prime opportunity to deal with some of these major problems that we have seen occurring in the country. Canada should not be a safe haven for gangsters, thugs and dictators to protect their money. That has to stop. This is the best time and we are all in agreement. Let us get it done. Let us punish some of these dictators.

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Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 20/02/2022 17:21:28
Context: Questions and Comments

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Madam Speaker, to my hon. colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood, I think we have seen something called a “war room” in the Alberta government and a very expensive report that looked into all of the Tides Foundation money in Alberta. It did not find any evidence of anything. It was all reported. It was never hidden. As for Leadnow, far as I know, all of its donors are Canadian. We have already put the rumours to bed.

If the member wants to find foreign-funded, large influence on energy policy in Alberta, look no further than the board of directors of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, where 80% of them are controlled by foreign interests.

Kevin Waugh (Saskatoon—Grasswood)
2022-02-20 17:25

Madam Speaker, I will say this, because I have watched quite a bit of the debate for the last two days. The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands has not made up her mind on this. I believe her. We are looking forward to seeing where her vote goes tomorrow night.

In western Canada, they are looking at every NDP and Green MP to see which way they vote tomorrow night, and they will not forget.

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