Bill Respecting Cyber Security, Amending the Telecommunications Act and Making Consequential Amendments to Other Acts
Bill to Amend--Twelfth Report of National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs Committee Adopted
December 4, 2024
Moved the adoption of the report.
He said: Honourable senators, I rise today as the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs to explain the amendment adopted by the committee during clause-by-clause consideration on December 2.
Colleagues, Bill C-26, An Act respecting cyber security, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other Acts, was introduced in the Senate on June 19, 2024, and referred to the committee on October 23.
I want to thank honourable senators for their work and the witnesses for taking the time to testify before the committee.
We held four meetings on Bill C-26 and heard from 31 witnesses, including the Privacy Commissioner, the Intelligence Commissioner and representatives from Public Safety Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, as well as civil society organizations. Our committee was prepared to proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of this bill last Monday, November 25 when we were informed by the bill’s sponsor, Senator McNair, of technical drafting errors with potentially serious consequences on the effect of the bill. In short, a connection between Bill C-26 and Bill C-70, which received Royal Assent in June, caused an issue after clause 10 of Bill C-26 was removed by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The removal of this clause shifted the numbering of the remaining clauses — for example, clause 11 became clause 10 — resulting in Bill C-70 inadvertently repealing the wrong clauses of Bill C-26.
Our committee decided to postpone our clause by clause by one week to explore the best possible remedy to this situation.
As a result, Senator LaBoucane-Benson introduced a technical amendment on behalf of the government on Monday to resolve the issue by correcting the clause numbers referenced in Bill C-70, ensuring that the appropriate clauses of Bill C-26 are repealed. The committee adopted the amendment on division.
Thank you, colleagues, for your consideration.
Senator Yussuff, you gave a brief explanation of the major government amendment made to this bill at committee. Can you please provide a little more detail about that? This was about Bill C-70, as you said, which is the foreign interference bill. Because of what is contained in it, the parts that superseded Bill C-26’s components would have repealed clauses 12 and 14 of Bill C-26. Would that not repeal the vast majority — the most operative provisions — of Bill C-26, especially clause 12?
First of all, thank you for the question. Yes, I think you’re absolutely right in your description of what happened. The mistake was not caught before the bill was tabled in the Senate.
I want to thank Senator McNair for bringing it to the attention of the committee before we actually started our clause-by-clause examination. It was appropriate for our committee to suspend to hear directly from the government as to how they intend to fix the bill to ensure it complies with what was already passed in Bill C-70.
The proposed amendment submitted by the government, based on the technical advice we received at committee, has satisfied us that this bill will do what it was intended to. It ensures that the legislation will meet the obligations to ensure that our cybersecurity system in this country will be protected, but also provide the government with new tools that it can utilize to ensure that we can address national security threats that have been waged on our country by foreign actors. More importantly, we now have all the legal tools to ensure that, once this bill is adopted by Parliament and subsequently receives Royal Assent, there will be necessary amendments that must be introduced by the government. We’re hoping we can pass this bill in a timely manner.
With regard to the point the senator is raising, we need to ensure that in the future, as we do our work in the Senate, oversight is applied when bills are sent to the Senate. Proper checks must be made to ensure that we don’t have bills with flaws the Senate could inadvertently adopt, which could create serious issues with respect to our responsibility for sober second thought and to pass legislation without mistakes.
Equally, the officials who were there took note to identify the mistake and assured us as a committee that they would learn from this experience. Hopefully, they informed the House as they informed the Senate of the important work we do. When we are aware something is wrong — as we were — we take the necessary steps to correct it.
Finally, we can’t reasonably say for certain that this will not happen again, colleagues. We are in a place where human beings are involved in drafting legislation, but equally, I’m hoping that, once we’re aware of something wrong, we can take the necessary steps to remedy it. I don’t believe anyone was at fault in making this error. It was an oversight and was caught in time for us to do our work appropriately. Unfortunately, this bill will have to go back to the House so they can ensure that it complies with other pieces of legislation that were passed recently.
Just so that it’s clear for our colleagues here — because this was a long study of a complicated bill with many witnesses, and then this interrupted clause-by-clause examination — the Bill C-70 provisions were ones that went through this chamber in June in a fairly quick manner, and which, because that bill passed before Bill C-26, would have had the effect of repealing the vast majority of Bill C-26, a 90‑page cybersecurity bill. When we were at committee and had the opportunity to hear from officials about what they would do to ensure that this never happened again, Senator Yussuff, I was a little concerned that the officials referred to it a few times as a “one-off,” basically saying not to worry and so on.
What assurances do you feel they gave our committee that such a mistake would not happen again? The Senate can only do so much, and we have to rely on the government officials who prepare these long, complicated documents to avoid major mistakes such as this.
First, I would say that the embarrassment of it is enough for them to recognize they must do a better job. Equally, if we’d had Bill C-26 first and then Bill C-70 second, the mistake could have been noticed.
Of course, the bills came in the wrong sequence, so unfortunately, we passed Bill C-70 first and then Bill C-26 after.
Like many of us here, and as a human being, I think mistakes will be made. I’m not worried in the least that the officials didn’t see this as being a serious manner. I think they did. As senators, we had an opportunity to examine them.
For anyone who works in a bureaucracy, a mistake of this magnitude is embarrassing, regardless.
I am sure they are aware that we were paying attention, and, more importantly, they had to account for the fact that there was a mistake. Certainly, for the Senate Standing Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs, when we scrutinize the bill again in the future and officials appear before us, perhaps we can start by asking them the question, “Are there any mistakes in this bill of which we should be aware?” Maybe that will force them to read it thoroughly before we get to clause by clause.
Colleagues, when this mistake was brought to our attention, we did the right thing, and it informs the government that we need to be a little more careful in overseeing the final draft of bills that come before us. Equally, in the Senate, it is part of our responsibility to ensure that legislation we’re passing complies with other statutes we’ve passed previously.
Senator Yussuff, I’m interested in learning more about the observation attached to the report, which speaks to the pressing need for better cybersecurity protection of health systems and data. Can you share with the chamber what the committee heard about that pressing need?
We are aware as a committee that the federal government has oversight on certain parts of Health Canada’s responsibilities with respect to those issues. Veterans Affairs Canada as well as Defence and its staff fall under the federal government’s jurisdiction.
Senator Kutcher’s observation was that it’s the federal government that penned this observation, which the committee supported. We recognize that the federal government should assert itself in the management of health care data across the country because it has responsibility for certain groups of workers and those within federal jurisdiction. Of course, collaboration with the provinces is needed because the provinces oversee our data at the provincial level. What we’re seeing more and more is that terrorist activists or foreign actors are hijacking provincial databases across the country, and we need to do better.
Passing this bill, along with Bill C-70, would better protect the country. However, I hope there is recognition that those who manage health data across this country need to collaborate with each other and with the federal government to ensure that we have the proper protection for health data across this country. Wherever there is shared jurisdiction, we need to ensure that those people are held to higher standards. More importantly, we need to apply this legislation rigorously to assure Canadians that we will do everything possible to ensure their data is protected.
Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Some Hon. Senators: Agreed.
An Hon. Senator: On division.
(Motion agreed to, on division, and report, as amended, adopted.)
Honourable senators, when shall this bill, as amended, be read the third time?
(On motion of Senator McNair, bill, as amended, placed on the Orders of the Day for third reading at the next sitting of the Senate.)
