Budget 2025 Implementation Bill, No. 1
Third Reading--Debate
March 26, 2026
Honourable senators, thank you, and thank you, Senator Henkel, for your excellent focus on that issue. I will say a few words, but not nearly as eloquently as you have.
I am glad to be able to speak in support of Bill C-15 at third reading.
Budget 2025 represented a recalibration from past budgets, particularly because it was far more focused on economic matters than we’ve seen.
As an illustration, 178 out of Bill C-15’s 606 pages, or about 30% of them, were referred to the Banking Committee as part of the pre-study. This represented 16 of the 45 “Various Measures” divisions in Part 5 of the bill.
The fact that the Banking Committee dealt with such a big chunk of the budget implementation act is an important indicator of the focus on fiscal and economic matters we saw in this year’s budget. This chamber has repeatedly voiced concerns related to the use of omnibus bills, and I think we all hope that Bill C-15 will be the start of a new trend.
Although pre-studies are not ideal, this two-month review provided us with a much more reasonable time frame than we have seen in the past, with fall economic statements and budget implementation acts squeezed into the last few weeks of June. I thank the government and Senator Moreau’s office for the fact that we had time to do our job with Bill C-15.
I will quickly review the five divisions within Part 5 of the bill that I think are particularly important: Division 9, the consumer-driven banking act, and my apologies in advance as that part may not be quick; Division 23, an amendment to PIPEDA allowing for data mobility; and Division 45, the stablecoin act. These three divisions signal an important and long-awaited focus on the data economy and a centralization of regulatory oversight of financial technology innovation within the Bank of Canada. These are important things to note.
I will also speak briefly to the anti-fraud measures, about which we heard Senator Henkel speak eloquently, as well as Division 5, the amendments to the Red Tape Reduction Act allowing for regulatory sandboxes.
Colleagues, these are incredibly important and long-overdue legislative measures, which so many in Canada’s innovation community have fought hard for over many years.
In speaking about them, I can’t help but think about a very kind and generous Canadian we lost last year, Andrew Moor. Andrew was the CEO of Equitable Bank. His leadership, remarkable accomplishments and support for others were central to championing open banking in Canada. When Andrew took over as CEO of Equitable in 2007, it was a small $4-billion regional trust company with approximately 100 employees. Over the next 19 years, it became Canada’s seventh-largest bank, with $142 billion in assets under administration and over 2,000 employees, serving over 600,000 Canadians and thousands of Canadian businesses.
In a 2022 interview, Andrew said:
Being a challenger truly is a mindset. Some banks don’t think much differently than they did 40 or 50 years ago which is truly amazing given how the world’s changed.
Colleagues, Canada needs more challengers.
In 2014, Equitable Bank launched its completely digital bank: EQ Bank. EQ Bank has operated its core processing on the cloud from the outset, giving them a tremendous advantage because they could use data in real time to innovate. They strategically positioned themselves to address the underserved banking needs of immigrant and younger populations.
The lower overhead and modern services allowed the offering of savings accounts with meaningful interest rate returns and no-nonsense fees, bringing competition directly to our traditional banks.
Andrew was actively and very constructively engaged in government consultations and showed the way for others because his bank was already in a future state, something that remained rather foreign to our clunky big banks.
Sadly, Andrew Richard Garnault Moor passed away suddenly on June 23, 2025. His sharp mind and wit, generous heart and strong sense of purpose are deeply missed by countless people.
I truly wish that Andrew had lived to see the broader results of his decades of remarkable leadership in the financial services sector. He would have absolutely loved to see the specific elements of Bill C-15 that I’m going to be speaking about.
Colleagues, the legislation to implement consumer-driven banking, or what was called open banking, has finally arrived, and now you will understand why I have been insistently speaking on this issue over and over for the past number of years.
The reason is that this legislation will finally give Canadians, not their banks, control over their personal financial data. It finally gives Canadians the ability to easily transfer their business and their data anywhere within the marketplace of accredited financial services companies, including banks, credit unions and financial technology companies, among others.
The benefit is better, cheaper and more innovative financial products specifically tailored to meet the needs of Canadians, whom the big banks seem unable to serve in a cost-competitive manner.
Colleagues, when wishing to enable consumer-centric improvements, Ottawa has had a preference for regulating first, but a far more effective strategy is to support robust competition. Ottawa will never be able to regulate a company into becoming customer-centric. Only competition will achieve that goal. Consumer-directed banking will increase competition that will force our banks to become more consumer-centric.
Legislatively, we will finally cross an important finish line when we pass Bill C-15. However, considerable implementation work lies ahead to operationalize this system, and Ron Morrow at the Bank of Canada, who is in charge of this work, has stated that the work ahead is “daunting.” But real progress can finally be made.
The choice of a technical standard regarding which data will be shared securely and efficiently across financial institutions is crucial. The Minister of Finance will select the technical standards body, and I echo the Senate Banking Committee’s observation stating that they support the:
. . . criteria the Minister must consider in making this selection and recommend that the chosen body operate under a sovereign Canadian governance framework and explore the use of an open source standard capable of iterative development for the Canadian consumer driven banking regime.
An important complementary element to consumer-driven banking is the change to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, in Division 23 of Part 5. This amendment provides Canadians with a data mobility right, and that is the right for Canadians to control and share their data with the organizations that they trust. Importantly, this right can be applied to other sectors beyond consumer driven banking, such as health or tax data. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED, has indicated that the current amendments would permit such sector-specific frameworks to be created where desired.
That is a really important change where Canada is finally starting to catch up to the rest of the world.
In terms of Division 45, the stablecoin act, it includes very interesting new legislation that is enabling a framework around the usage of stablecoins in Canada. My office provided a primer on stablecoins that you are free to review if you are interested. It is available on my website.
This novel payment method was new to most of us on the Banking Committee, so it presented an important and meaningful learning experience. Stablecoins allow for the efficient settlement of payments globally, and they quickly became one of the largest payment rail systems in the world. For example, in 2024, the global annual value of funds transferred using stablecoins exceeded the combined volume of Visa and Mastercard. We are catching up to the world with this legislation. It is a really important move.
Ninety-nine per cent of the global volume in stablecoins is in U.S.-dollar-backed stablecoins. If Canada weren’t going to move and create demand for a Canadian-backed stablecoin, this would not only be a lost opportunity for our economy and innovators, but it would also have significant monetary policy implications.
Simply, the world is shifting toward stablecoin-backed payment systems. If we do not, it will result in a decrease in our monetary sovereignty and a reduction in our domestic lending capacity and make us increasingly dependent on foreign financial infrastructure.
On a positive side, the creation of a robust Canadian stablecoin market could provide international markets with a highly trusted alternative to U.S.-dollar-backed stablecoins.
In terms of anti-fraud measures embedded in the amendments, again, it is hard to follow Senator Henkel’s comments, but, currently, bank customers are responsible for a fraud event that occurs unless their bank decides that the customer was neither negligent nor complicit. Effectively, bank customers are guilty until their bank, a conflicted party, determines that they are not.
I’ve long promoted a reverse onus model. There are many available, as you heard earlier. The reverse onus model has been used in the United Kingdom, and it is where banks are responsible unless they have evidence demonstrating that the customer was complicit and grossly negligent.
Reversing the onus would cause our banks to implement countless fraud-prevention measures. They would be highly incentivized to do so. Right now, they have no incentive. There is no financial loss to them unless it is really clear that they were highly responsible.
I applaud MP Jean-Denis Garon, who attempted to amend Bill C-15 in this direction in the House Finance Committee, albeit unsuccessfully.
The Banking Committee believes that improvements are urgently needed and recommended standardized consumer protections at all banks, minimum technological safeguards and robust reporting requirements for scams and fraud-related incidents. The committee observed that banks should have similar safeguards on all their banking products, such as limited liability measures and compensation for victims of fraud.
The banking committee report offered the following observations:
Banks need to take responsibility for their role in protecting Canadians from banking related fraud and they should be subject to significant penalties if they do not meet their obligations to protect consumers under the Bank Act. . . .
You are welcome to applaud that if you’d like.
Thank you, colleagues.
Currently, Canada’s financial institutions are not required to report integrity- and security-eroding incidents of fraud to their regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. They’re also not required to report those incidents to their customers or the public. This is inexcusable. We need transparency in order for consumers to be confident in the integrity and security of their chosen financial institution and for markets to be fair and competitive.
Last year, I met with an investigator with the Toronto Police Service who used his own spreadsheet to track all the reports of fraud events that he was receiving within that jurisdiction. Shockingly, the rates of fraud that he was finding were on a scale similar to those reported for the entire country by the national fraud centre. Simply, we can have little confidence in the accuracy of fraud reporting in Canada.
Lastly, I want to speak about the Red Tape Reduction Act. Senator Housakos knows that I’m a tad concerned that the opposition decided to add red tape to the Red Tape Reduction Act with their amendments to Division 5 of Part 5, which relates to the use of regulatory sandboxes.
Sandboxes are essential and well-proven tools for introducing much-needed regulatory modernization and agility. Sandboxes are not about deregulation, yet were seen to be that by many parliamentarians.
Consider that Canada is leading the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, in terms of levels of regulatory burden as it relates to command and control regulations. By definition, this type of regulation restricts innovation because it defines how a given regulatory objective must be achieved. It defines the process, not the result. That, by definition, eliminates the ability to innovate.
This problem can be addressed by getting regulators and innovators to work together in the same room and understand both the regulatory objective and the innovation opportunity, and find new ways to serve both purposes: not just protect the public but ensure that the long-term opportunities are also able to be accessed.
To do so, legacy legislation that defines existing regulatory regimes must be suspended in order to have a controlled and monitored regulatory sandbox while new approaches are explored and tested.
Unfortunately, this objective was completely misunderstood, and, as a consequence, the opposition forced the use of sandboxes to be restricted to just financial technologies and clean tech. Other areas where outdated regulatory regimes are restricting progress, be it in agriculture, forestry, fisheries — you name it — will have to wait.
I’m disappointed that unnecessary hurdles were added to this important and urgently needed initiative.
Colleagues, to conclude, I’ve sought to champion the extremely hard work of Canada’s innovation sector during my time in the Senate. Consequently, I am thrilled to see the innovation- and productivity-enhancing economic regimes included in Bill C-15. It represents an all-important first step in the right direction for this government.
Thank you very much.
I too would like to thank the members of the National Finance Committee who worked on this bill. I also want to thank the other committees that studied this bill, as well, including the Banking Committee and the Transport Committee. Thank you for your collaborative efforts on this bill.
Like Senator Pupatello, I’d like to highlight the extraordinary work done by Senator Marshall over the years. She was an extremely valuable member of the committee and a mentor. She helped guide other members and provided many valuable tips and tricks. She will be missed. She was a pillar of our committee.
If you are listening, Senator Marshall, thank you very much.
Honourable senators, I rise today at third reading of Bill C-15 to draw your attention to a specific part of this omnibus bill, namely Division 1 of Part 5, which enacts the high-speed rail network act.
I want to be quite clear from the outset. The debate isn’t about whether Canada should improve passenger rail service in the Quebec City-Toronto corridor. The answer to that question is yes. Nor is the debate about whether VIA Rail’s current service is satisfactory. The answer is no. The real debate lies elsewhere. It concerns whether we have the right, simply for expediency, to limit public recourse, to increase uncertainty among landowners, to concentrate more power in the hands of the state, and — if I may add the following point — to completely neutralize an independent organization responsible for promoting the public interest. In my opinion, the answer is no.
Honourable senators, what this bill does is serious. It doesn’t just authorize a project, it replaces a robust process with a legal fiction while repealing access to an independent, impartial, quasi‑judicial body.
Under the Canada Transportation Act, no railway project can be built without authorization from the Canadian Transportation Agency, or CTA. This authorization requires a concrete analysis of the appearance of the respective interests of the project’s proponents and of the individuals and municipalities affected by the application.
The Canadian Transportation Agency is required to answer a basic question. Is the route suitable? To answer this question, the CTA has been applying a robust, balanced analysis for decades.
In practical terms, here is what the CTA considers.
First, it considers the railway’s operational needs, including safety, topography, gradients, curves, speed and integration into the existing network. Second are the impacts on local communities, including expropriations, noise, vibrations, land use planning and public concerns. Third, it considers the public interest and economic interest, including the actual benefit of the project, its contribution to the transportation network and its effects on logistics and competition. Fourth, it looks at environmental impacts, including natural habitats, species, waterways and significant negative effects. Finally, it examines alternative solutions. Is there a less harmful route? Can the impacts be reduced?
Honourable senators, this process is not bureaucratic. It is essential. It ensures a balance between the development of infrastructure and the protection of citizens.
What does Bill C-15 actually do?
It sweeps all that aside in one fell swoop. Section 5 provides that the construction of the network is deemed to have been authorized by the agency. Bill C-15 goes even further. It explicitly prohibits the agency from reviewing, amending or revoking this authorization. In other words, the agency no longer analyzes, assesses or makes decisions. Basically, it no longer exists for this project.
The Minister of Transport and the developer, Alto, then become both judge and jury. All the issues I just listed are dropped from the independent decision-making process. The impacts on municipalities are no longer analyzed. Alternative routes are no longer considered. The project’s needs are no longer weighed against citizens’ rights. There is no longer any independent scrutiny.
We are replacing a rigorous test with automatic government approval. We are replacing a quasi-judicial body with a political decision.
Honourable senators, I really can’t understand why, as a society, we would deprive ourselves of an assessment mechanism as comprehensive and robust as the Canadian Transportation Agency. Above all, we are depriving citizens of a neutral arbiter.
Colleagues, this is not simplification; it is neutralization. What follows is in addition to everything else: a special scheme for expropriation; no obligation to negotiate before expropriation; no public hearings; objections reduced to a written submission within 30 days; a two-year period of uncertainty; pre‑expropriation powers that restrict land use; and even the option to proceed with land acquisition before the impact assessment has been fully completed.
The message is clear. The project takes precedence. Rights will be adjusted later. Now, even the independent body responsible for ensuring a balance has been sidelined.
Honourable senators, you’re being asked to accept all this in exchange for a project that could cost between $60 billion and $100 billion. The benefits of this project are uncertain, and the ridership is purely speculative. We’re told the prices will be competitive, but there has been no assessment of either construction or operating costs.
We’re being asked to pay for a product whose length and breadth are unknown. In some cases, it would save passengers just a few dozen minutes.
That is why I have to ask: Was it really worth sidelining the Canadian Transportation Agency — a pillar of our system — for a project whose justification is dubious, even disputed?
There is an alternative: high-frequency rail, which some experts consider more realistic, less expensive, less intrusive and, above all, consistent with standard public protection mechanisms.
You didn’t know that, honourable senators? Why? Because the part that concerns high-speed rail is buried in a colossal omnibus bill that made the matter impossible to study with the seriousness it deserves and in keeping with public expectations of the Senate.
Progress and speed cannot come at any cost, and certainly not at the cost of eliminating an independent process designed to protect the public interest. Our role in the Senate is to ask these questions, to stand up for balance and to refuse to allow speed to become a pretext for eroding fundamental safeguards.
For all these reasons, I believe that this part of the bill goes too far. Not only does it modernize rail transportation, it weakens our institutions. In my opinion, colleagues, this is neither prudent, fair nor acceptable. I will therefore oppose the passage of Bill C-15.
Thank you.
Honourable senators, I, too, rise at third reading of Bill C-15, the 2025 budget bill. I will make a few short remarks. I gave lengthy remarks at second reading, and I certainly don’t want to repeat all the problematic aspects of Bill C-15.
First, I want to thank Senator Pupatello for her very worthy sponsoring of this bill. She did a very good job. I also want to thank Senator Carignan as chair of the National Finance Committee for his usual outstanding work, as well as all the committees that participated in studying Bill C-15, which is ultimately our responsibility in this place.
My fundamental problem with this is very simple: This is an omnibus bill the likes of which we have never seen before. Yes, Senator C. Deacon, you say we have had two months of pre‑study, and you laud the government’s openness and transparency, but the reality is that this is a bill that is 604 pages with 606 clauses. If the Senate, with its usual speed, as well as the House, actually spent three years studying this omnibus bill, I still think we wouldn’t be able to do justice to the taxpayers of the country.
I understand that this is a practice that has been going on for decades and decades, but it has become progressively worse year after year. At some point and at some juncture of this exercise, even as members of the upper chamber — and we know our place, which is “no taxation without representation,” which is ultimately the right of the House of Commons — given our job as supervisors, or a board that has a fiduciary duty to represent the interests of taxpayers, we need to tell the other place that this has to stop.
Senator Downe, who has been here even longer than I have, repeats this over and over, budget debate after budget debate, for at least the 17 years that I have been here. Omnibus bills, honourable colleagues, are nothing more than an exercise in lazy legislative shortcuts; that’s what they are. They want to find shortcuts in order to move certain elements forward without proper scrutiny.
This budget, in my mind, certainly achieves that goal. It is also an exercise in fiscal irresponsibility at a time when we have achieved, in the past decade, historic debt and deficits.
We are at a point in time where this young generation of Canadians, with the debt on their shoulders that we’ve saddled upon them for over a decade, has reached a point where it will have tremendous ramifications.
I have said this many times — tongue-in-cheek, of course — but when we grew up, we had Johnny Cash and we had Bob Hope, and I keep saying that this generation has no cash and no hope.
I say it tongue-in-cheek, but I am really concerned because I have children. God willing, one day I will have grandchildren, and we have to leave them a house that is fiscally responsible and a house that is in order so that they can have the same opportunities as we did.
The truth of the matter is that there is no other G7 nation that has a higher debt and a higher deficit per capita than our country does, particularly when you compile all the levels of debt in our country.
For the last five or six years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, has repeatedly given us a terrible mark when it comes to productivity. We all recognize we have a productivity problem, and it is not enough to tinker here and tweak over there and talk about cutbacks that the government is trying to make in a public relations exercise, and then they table a budget at a deficit of $78.3 billion.
In my second reading speech, I think I clearly highlighted what the projections are over the next 10 years, and it is not a pretty picture.
The government says that this is a bill that is going to build Canada strong at speeds we have never seen before, but just to move a budget through the House and the Senate has taken this government a year.
They have put into place Build Canada Homes, which is promising to build 500,000 units a year. The government has been in power for 11 years now, and they are nowhere near the 500,000 units. At least it would be reasonable if they said they are trying to build 500,000 units over the mandate of their government or over three or four years, but like I said, we have had governments — and it is not unique to this government — engaging in an exercise of public relations rather than fiscal responsibility and good management.
There are good elements in this bill, obviously, but when you look at the numbers, the numbers don’t lie. There are more red flags in it than anything else.
Our role — and we know what it is — in this place is sober second thought. It is incumbent on government appointees to support the budget. It is incumbent on the opposition to criticize it, and there is plenty to criticize in this budget.
As a result, the opposition will not support Bill C-15. It is incumbent on us in support of future generations of Canadians who are going to be picking up the tab.
I have been given the great privilege on our side to be the critic of Bill C-15, or the budget bill, as well as the estimates bill and the supply bill, which is something that another member of our caucus has so diligently and effectively done for years now. I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to say that if you look up in the dictionary a great parliamentarian, a picture would be flashing of Senator Elizabeth Marshall.
Right now she is cursing me in some kind of language that Newfoundlanders would be cursing me in, but I have to say that I had the privilege of working with Senator Marshall for 16 years. She is somebody who came to this place and already had a distinguished career — she served for 10 years as the Auditor General of Newfoundland and Labrador. She was the Deputy Minister of Social Services and a distinguished Deputy Minister of Transportation and Works. She was also elected to the Newfoundland and Labrador legislature and served as a cabinet minister in the Danny Williams government, and, of course, she was appointed to this place in 2010 by Prime Minister Harper.
I will say this: During 16 years with Senator Marshall, she taught us all what principles are about; she taught us all what loyalty is about. She is fiercely loyal to her province. She is fiercely loyal to this country and to our caucus, and she was never afraid to tell us what needed to be outlined at caucus meetings. She also had this special skill of reading numbers and explaining it to those of us who are not very good at math.
She decided to leave a little bit abruptly. As you all know, her expiration date was in a few weeks, but it was typical of Senator Marshall. She does everything on her terms, and she wanted to spend a lot more time with her son in B.C. and her children and grandchildren who are spread out a little bit across the country.
We wish her only the best, and we thank her for her service to this chamber and to our country.
Beth, I’m sorry, but I had to pay tribute to you somehow.
On that note, we call the question on Bill C-15.
All those in favour of the motion will please say “yea.”
Some Hon. Senators: Yea.
The Hon. the Speaker: All those opposed to the motion will please say “nay.”
Some Hon. Senators: Nay.
The Hon. the Speaker: In my opinion the “yeas” have it.
I see two senators rising. Do we have an agreement on the length of the bell?
Fifteen minutes? Is leave granted?
The vote will take place at 4:41 p.m. Call in the senators.
