Matt Strauss
Kitchener South—Hespeler, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, Canadians know a cover‑up when they hear one. That was a cover‑up. They turned the cameras off on a scheduled meeting about the $300‑million PrescribeIT scandal. They cancelled tomorrow's meeting so they can continue to cover it up.”
“The minister responded during that question period, saying she meant that she had spoken with her representative on the board, so in a follow-up question, I asked if her representative had spoken to the chairman of the board. She said she was “not going to get into who said what”. Well, why on earth not? This matters.”
“I think, honestly, that this is how organizations come to be poorly governed. This is how they come to blow $300 million on a program that did not work but that should have been billed successfully for $5 million. The minister is making a Schrödinger’s cat out of responsibility.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to be here so late. I am hoping that if some of the Liberals get sleepy enough, perhaps they will accidentally answer the questions and provide some light on what has gone on at PrescribeIT.”
“Mr. Speaker, I asked several very specific questions. I asked whether Canada Health Infoway is independent or not. I asked whether the Minister of Health has oversight on its funding or not. I asked whether the Minister of Health has the power to fire the CEO of Canada Health Infoway or not.”
“Mr. Speaker, Canada Health Infoway blew $300 million of taxpayer money on PrescribeIT. They have blown $1 billion over 10 years with nothing tangible to show for it. For six weeks, they have failed to produce the documents the health committee has ordered them to produce.”
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“Why would Canadians trust the Liberals, who cannot run a post office or a passport office, to do something as important as feed our children? We cannot and will not. Conservatives will fight for a budget that makes life affordable again so that parents can feed their own kids.”
“Madam Speaker, I visited the Kitchener food bank. Its CEO told me that visits to the centre have quintupled in the last 10 years. What happened 10 years ago to start all of this? The Liberals came into power, promising to grow the middle class, but after 10 years of their massive spending on nonsense like gender-neutral rice in Vietnam, the middle class in Canada can no longer afford to eat. Some 39% of Canadians experienced food insecurity in the last 12 months. I do not think the multi-millionaire Goldman Sachs banker Prime Minister has any idea what Canadians are going through right now. Every time we bring up this crisis, the Liberals say we should be thankful for their school cafeteria program. If that program was working, why has food bank use by children doubled over the last few years in our country?”
“I want my friends and neighbours at the Hespeler Toyota plant to please know that every day I am here, I am fighting to protect their jobs. If Canadians fighting for our country in this ridiculous trade war are buying new vehicles, I would ask that they please consider buying one made in Canada, such as the RAV4s assembled in Hespeler. I ask the Liberal government to please not sleep on this, show some leadership, show some fight, get this resolved and protect our jobs.”
“Mr. Speaker, I represent Kitchener South—Hespeler, home to Toyota Canada, the largest car plant in our great nation. I remember when its expansion was announced in 1994. Then, as now, the plant was a source of great community pride. Year after year, it wins awards for the quality of its product and its investments in its people. In 30 years, it has never laid off a full-time employee. It employs more than 8,000 of my friends and neighbours. American tariffs are putting those jobs at risk. That is 8,000 families wondering how they are going to pay their rent, get groceries and afford Christmas gifts for their kids if the Liberal government does not achieve some sort of resolution. Canadians buy more cars than we make. If we would all commit to buying the cars that we make, we could protect those families.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the question. It allows me to reprise the core theme of my first speech on the bill, which is that Canadian citizenship has value insofar as Canadian citizens contribute value. We put money into the pot, and then when we need our health care system, it is there for us. However, to say that 100,000 individuals who have never been to Canada, but whose grandparents were Canadian citizens and left, can come here for free health care or evacuation help from our embassy if a conflict arises, fundamentally misunderstands how citizenship works and how value is built. I find that particularly ironic given that the Prime Minister , who is ramming this through, wrote a book on values. He is an economist, yet he does not seem to understand the economy of value.”
“Mr. Speaker, I too am perplexed, like the hon. member who made the comment. Probably the best thing for me to do is to sit down, because I am still dying to hear from Liberal members. I have not yet heard which of these amendments they are planning to vote against and why. Is it the case that they are planning to vote against? All I heard in the questions so far from the Liberal member was denigration of the members of the committee based on party stripe, which is exactly the opposite of what he thought voters were looking to see when we read this at second reading.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for continuing to engage so co-operatively. However, I did not catch a question, so I will take it as a comment. There are Liberals, Bloc members and Conservatives on the committee. The member suggested that we take the bill to committee and all work together. Two parties did, but one did not, and one party seeks to undo the work of the committee now. I am not sure what else the member would have had us do when he suggested we take it to committee and work on it together.”
“If, conversely, it is the case that the Liberals are not willing to say which of these amendments they plan on voting against, then I implore them that there is still time. They can do the right thing. They can side with us, the Conservatives, to protect the value of Canadian citizenship, instead of siding with the radical left to denigrate it. I thank the members for the co-operation I see coming up.”
“I would rather hear from the Liberals. I am dying to hear from the Liberal members in the House today which of these amendments they could possibly be planning to vote against. Will they stand up in this House and say which ones, and why? I am as eager to explain this to their voters as the Liberals are eager to hide it. If the Liberals pass the unamended Bill C-3 , I will have a very, very hard time explaining to their voters why on earth they took our amendments away. I will have a very hard time explaining to Craig Norris of the Kitchener-Waterloo CBC radio program why it is that, after this promise of co-operation, it was withheld and the rug was so abruptly pulled out from under us.”
“I think he is just trying to co-operate very hard, as promised. Mr. Speaker, I also know that Liberal voters, the ones who did not vote for me, the ones who were enamoured by the new Prime Minister 's promise of change, would find these to be eminently sensible amendments that are necessary. Therefore, I am shocked. I cannot understand why the Liberal House leadership has signalled that the Liberals will vote against these amendments. In so doing, they would cheapen the value of Canadian citizenship, betray the permanent residents and refugees who are working so hard to meet similar requirements, betray the generations of Canadians who work to build Canada strong and betray their own voters, who expected change from Justin Trudeau's woke radical agenda. I have more time, but I do not think I even need it.”
“I suppose the Liberals are taking these six months to frantically prepare a budget that is also six months late. Speaking of the election, I knocked on every door in Kitchener South—Hespeler during the spring election. I know for a fact that all the Conservative voters who voted for me would find these amendments eminently sensible and necessary. An hon. member: Oh, oh! Matt Strauss: Mr. Speaker, I am having trouble hearing myself speak over the very co-operative member.”
“This bill, in fact, existed in Justin Trudeau's last Parliament, but he could not get it through, because the House was seized with the matter of his corrupt green slush fund. This is not a one-off; this is a pattern. Bill C-8 is also a re-warmed piece of extreme government overreach that Justin Trudeau also tried to pass through this House. Once again, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The new Prime Minister promised change, but he is feeding us microwaved Justin Trudeau leftovers. It has been six months since the last election, in which the Prime Minister promised change. He leveraged all his credibility as a lifelong bureaucrat who had been waiting in the wings to get Canadians to believe that promise. However, here we are, still debating Justin Trudeau legislation six months later.”
“(1705) The new Prime Minister promised change, and voters gave him a tentative mandate as a minority Parliament on the promise of change, yet here he is, enacting Justin Trudeau's insane postnationalist ideology. I went through the Liberal Party's 2025 election platform. Nowhere in that document could I find any proposition to give away 100,000-plus citizenships to people who have never lived here, who do not speak our languages or who might have criminal records, without passing the citizenship test. This is an absolute bait and switch. It is not what the Liberals ran on. The new Prime Minister promised change, but here he is, reheating Justin Trudeau's radical ideological agenda to make Canada a postnational state with no core identity.”
“For a person to get citizenship as the grandchild of a Canadian citizen, one of their parents must have lived in Canada for five years, they must pass a citizenship test and a security background check and they must speak one or both of our official languages to prove their substantial connection to our country. I believe the voters who want to see co-operation in this House, as referenced by the member for Winnipeg North , would want to see co-operation on each of these points. I cannot understand how anyone except the most radical postnational ideologues, who, like Justin Trudeau, believe that Canada has no core identity, could oppose these amendments.”
“Obviously, this would be terribly unfair to the permanent residents who are here paying taxes, respecting our laws, learning our languages and working so hard to become Canadian citizens. It is so unfair for them to have to watch 100,000 people who are not doing those things skip the line as a matter of unearned privilege. That is what we mean when we talk about a citizenship system of two tiers. Our amendments seek to level the playing field and prevent a two-tiered system from being imposed. It is with an eye to this that we structured our amendments. We used the exact same language for the same criteria that permanent residents have to fulfill. They are eminently sensible amendments.”
“In short, the bill would make Canadian citizenship out to be some sort of free goodie bag to be passed around, rather than a treasured family heirloom, but that goodie bag is not free. It is only the hard work of the Canadian citizens, permanent residents and refugees who build their lives here and build the country to make the country strong that is filling up these goodie bags the Liberals want to recklessly pass out. It is estimated that in excess of 100,000 such free goodie bags, containing free citizenship for people who do not live here, would be handed out if the unamended law passes. We say it is estimated to be more than 100,000, but as the hon. member who asked a question just pointed out, the immigration minister says she has no idea how many more beyond 100,000 it could be.”
“I immediately spoke about Bill C-3 and my honest belief that the Liberals would allow us to remediate this law through amendments at committee. That is why I stand in sorrow today. It seems the rug has been pulled out from under us. Those following at home will recall that Bill C-3 , before amendments, would have allowed the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of Canadian citizens who had left the country to claim Canadian citizenship, even if they had barely lived here, had criminal records, did not speak either of our official languages or had never paid our taxes or contributed to our civil society by working or living here. Even if they had no intention of ever coming here, except to use our health care system in a pinch, they could become Canadian citizens.”
“It is not complicated. [ English ] Would anyone believe that the first thing that happened after my speech was the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government leader in the House standing and saying, “voters want more co-operation on the floor of the House of Commons”? I agreed. He said we should vote for Bill C-3 , allow it to go to committee and pass amendments to make it a better law. I am new here, and it is perhaps for this reason that I took him at his word. I voted for Bill C-3, and at committee, Conservatives brought forward excellent amendments to make a better law. Shortly after that speech, I did an interview with the local CBC syndicate radio station in Kitchener-Waterloo. The host, Craig Norris, asked me what I was working on and whether there were opportunities to co-operate with the Liberals in the House.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in this House, but I must say I rise today in utter sorrow to speak about Bill C-3 and what could have been. I had the honour of speaking about this bill at second reading, and I poured my heart into that speech. [ Translation ] I spoke in French for the first time in the House during my last speech to highlight that Canada is not a postnational state. On the contrary, it is a blend of two peoples, one French and one English. It is unique in the world. Our unique heritage must be respected to maintain the value of our citizenship. Canada is strong because Canadians work hard to make it strong. That is why we object to a two-tier citizenship system. If the children of people who left want to come back, let them come after they pay our taxes, obey our laws and learn our languages.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am heartened, I suppose, that the member opposite heard and understood the question. I am terribly disheartened that she decided not to answer the question. I take it as a tacit admission that she does not support this legislation. As for my leader 's comments, it is my job here to criticize the appointments the government makes. Criticizing their appointments is well within what we as a democratic body have to do.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am so surprised to receive that question. I think I explained it to the member during my last two speeches on government legislation. The Liberals violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when they imposed the Emergencies Act, sections 2 and 8. That is not me, but Justice Mosley of the Federal Court who found that. I would love to hear the member apologize for that violation. Bill C-8 , Bill C-9 and Bill C-2 also violate our charter. I am not going to let it get through the net.”
“We must not forget the questions of competence that the story of Bill C-12 raises, and we must also not look away from the authoritarian tendencies of the so-called Liberals that this story reveals.”
“However, this is three times in six months they have tried to get one past us. I am asking them honestly to reflect on this. Are they even Liberals anymore, or have they become something darker? How is it that they have betrayed the Liberal tradition again and again in this House? I would ask the Liberal backbenchers, in particular, if this is what they signed up to do when they took out a Liberal Party membership and if the Prime Minister's Office ran any of it by them before it tried to ram it through the House. Why do they not do the right thing and withdraw Bill C-2 entirely instead of trying to get it passed piecemeal? One piece of Bill C-2 , Bill C-12, is going to go to committee, but we must not forget the omnibus monstrosity from which it came.”
“Here is the Encyclopædia Britannica entry on “liberalism”: political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. Do the members opposite see themselves at all in this definition today? It has been six months since I was elected to this House, and not once, in between their power grabs, have I heard them make even passing reference to individual liberty or to the fact that the government itself can threaten that liberty. Conservatives seek to conserve our liberty. Liberals are supposed to seek to expand our liberty.”
“Why is the Liberals' response to every conceivable social problem to violate our charter rights? Who is writing the legislation? (1725) I know that as soon as I am done, the member for Winnipeg North will ask why we do not fix this at committee, to which I would say, yes, we are going to have to, but every member in this House should be protecting charter rights. The committee should not be the goalie. The Conservatives should not be the goalie. The Liberals should not be trying to get charter violations past the Conservative goalies. They are the Liberals. They are supposed to believe in liberty. I am honestly starting to wonder if they even know what their party's name means anymore.”
“I want to know who, because this is not a one-off oopsy doopsy in which a junior staffer wrote a law that would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is a clear pattern with the government. The last three pieces of government legislation that I have debated in the House, Bill C-8 , Bill C-9 and now Bill C-12 have involved significant power grabs by the Prime Minister . I want to know why. Bill C-8 would allow the Liberals to kick people off the Internet without a warrant. Bill C-9 would allow the Liberals to police speech on the Internet. Bill C-12 , in its previous iteration as Bill C-2 , would not only violate patient-physician confidentiality but also allow the government to read letter mail without a warrant. What is going on over there?”
“I do not sign prescriptions that I have not read. I do not give out prescriptions that I do not believe in, because prescriptions are important documents and I have a professional duty to read them. On the other side of the House, we have a Liberal minister who seems not to read the legislation that he tries to pass in the House. On other occasions, he executes a gun grab he does not believe in. This sort of conduct would not be tolerated from any physician in this country. I dare say it would not be tolerated from any professional under any professional body in this country. Why does the Prime Minister tolerate it from one of the highest office-holders in this land? As I said, it is not merely incompetence over there. I take it that the public safety minister did not write the legislation, but someone did.”
“He was quoted in The Globe and Mail in an October 9 article by Marie Woolf, entitled “Public Safety Minister says he wants to push through refined warrantless...powers to help police”. She wrote that the Minister of Public Safety acknowledged that the “provisions in Bill C-2, the original strong borders bill, [allowing police to ask a] doctor without a warrant” if their services had been used by someone, constituted “overreach”. This is not the first time the Minister of Public Safety has had to throw the Minister of Public Safety under the bus. Who could forget that, just last month, he told his tenant that his own gun confiscation program was a bad idea that he did not support? I would love to believe that it is merely incompetence over there. It is incompetence; it is just not “merely” incompetence. I am a physician.”
“Here, once again, I will read them their own darned bill. In part 14, clause 158, it reads: A peace officer or public officer may make a demand...to a person who provides services to the public requiring the person to provide, in the form, manner and time specified in the demand, the following information: (a) whether the person provides or has provided services to any subscriber or client This is bananas. This is, once again, a Chinese Communist Party level of state overreach. Once again, if the Liberals do not trust my interpretation of their legislation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's interpretation or the Canadian Constitution Foundation's interpretation, will they believe their own public safety minister , the one who introduced the legislation?”
“Bill C-2 includes a provision that would allow the police to ask a doctor, without a warrant, if their services had ever been used by an individual. This is reprehensible. I am a physician; frankly, this does not just offend me as a Canadian and as a person, but it offends my whole profession. It would violate not just our Charter of Rights and Freedoms but the Hippocratic oath. If a member opposite or their child went to see a doctor who specializes in addictions, mental health, sexually transmitted diseases or reproductive medicine, on what possible planet would they think it was appropriate for the police to ask that physician to disclose them as a client? Again, I suspect members opposite are getting ready to say that I am somehow being outlandish in my interpretation of their proposed law.”
“What an embarrassment it is for the government. The new Prime Minister ran on his expertise in government, having spent most of his career as a bureaucrat. He had been waiting in the wings for 10 years to plant his legislative agenda. Do members opposite remember when he was asked if he would ever become prime minister? He said, “Why don’t I become a circus clown?” Well, now he has. He has beclowned himself. Bill C-2 is the very first piece of legislation that the Prime Minister 's government introduced, and it had to be split up in this manner. What an embarrassment that is. Why did it need to be split up? It is because the forefather of Bill C-12 contained clauses that were so howlingly bad that no one on either side of the House, nor from any coast in this country, could bring themselves to defend it.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-12 . This is the fourth time I am speaking to a piece of government legislation in this Parliament. For the first time, I think it is the story of the bill rather than its content that I find most interesting. I apologize to those following at home if it seems a little bit like inside baseball, but in every Parliament, the government introduces bills and numbers them sequentially. After the pro forma throne speech, Bill C-1 , came Bill C-2 . The present bill, Bill C-12 , is the parts of Bill C-2 that had to be salvaged from the flaming dumpster fire of that original piece of legislation. It is as though the Liberals set their own legislative agenda on fire and the Conservatives had to comb through the charred remains to find something salvageable.”
“Mr. Speaker, what Canadians care about is the cost of living, and the more the Liberals deficit spend, the more it costs Canadians at the grocery store. New inflation data today confirms this. All three core inflation measures are above target. Rent is up 5% over the year, and groceries are up 4% over the year. After 10 years of the Liberals' deficits, the cost of living in this country cannot take any more, so will the Liberals stay on focus and get their inflationary deficits under control to make life more affordable for Canadians?”
“Mr. Speaker, none of those words provide material support to the 8,000 of my neighbours in my hometown who work at the largest car plant in Canada. They depend on those jobs to put food on the table this Thanksgiving. They depend on those jobs to pay their rent at the end of the month. Let me be clear: This plant cannot survive the current tariff regime, and Trump officials said that the regime is staying. We are in extra innings now. Will the Prime Minister fight for these jobs before the game is over?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are breaking their campaign promise to stand up for auto workers and to stand up against tariffs. This week, we all saw the Prime Minister sit down in the Oval Office, meekly nodding while President Trump threatened to steal more of our auto workers' jobs. I did not see any elbows go up. I saw a promise to send another $1 trillion of Canadian investment over to the U.S.A. as a reward for Trump's aggression. Canadian auto workers expected to see more fight than that. Why is the Prime Minister letting them down?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals continually say they are going to build Canada strong and build a great economy. They have had 10 years to do it, and it has not happened. Canada's GDP per capita growth over the last 10 years was the lowest in the G7. I am begging the hon. member opposite merely to acknowledge that economic fact and, upon acknowledging it, reflect on what about the Liberals' plan did not work for the last 10 years and how the new plan is different.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to hear the member opposite, who is a very gifted speaker. I always hear the Liberals say they are working hard and that they understand there is an affordability crisis, but I never hear any analysis of why this affordability crisis developed during their time in power. Over the last 10 years, in Kitchener and Waterloo, food bank usage has quintupled. The Liberals like to talk about programs that are band-aid solutions, but they do not want to talk about the sectoral damage caused to our economy. Why are the Liberals working hard but it is not working?”
“Mr. Speaker, I am totally confused. The member opposite said the Conservative government did not strengthen the economy. Would the member acknowledge that GDP per capita in Canada has not gone up but has flatlined over the last 10 years that the Liberals have been in government?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised to create jobs in Canada, but since he became Prime Minister, we have lost 86,000 jobs, which is a promise broken. He promised to increase investment in Canada, but since he became Prime Minister, we lost $54 billion of investment to the United States, which is another promise broken. Yesterday, we all watched in shock as he promised another $1 trillion of Canadian investment money to the United States. I hope it is not the case that the Prime Minister plans to keep his promise to Donald Trump after breaking his promises to Canadians. How many jobs will it cost us if he does?”
“Mr. Speaker, it has unfortunately been a theme with the current government. It is not just Bill C-8 ; it is also Bill C-9 . It is also Bill C-5 in certain respects. With every problem the Liberals come across, they think the solution is to give themselves more power. They think that if they were to run the telecommunications system, it would be safer. They have been running the Post Office for the last 10 years. They have been running the passport office. I do not see any evidence that putting them in charge of things, like our telecommunications system, makes anyone any safer.”
“Mr. Speaker, yes, Conservatives will work day and night to fix the bill to improve our cybersecurity, in the committee, in every committee and in the chamber. We are committed to improving cybersecurity. We are committed to not violating charter rights.”
“Mr. Speaker, my learned colleague is a lawyer. He understands the balance. His whole work has been in the tension in this balance, and I respect very much what he has to say about it. It is a centuries-old problem, the tension between rights and security, and we have centuries-old solutions to the problem. We have solutions like warrants, judicial review, open trial, open evidence and the right to a lawyer. The bill would preclude all of that. We do not have to reinvent the wheel; we need to build back into the bill the long-standing, charter-upheld guarantees of our liberty. There is nothing novel about that.”
“Mr. Speaker, I wish this were a conspiracy. I wish the Liberals had the shame to keep it secret. It is open and it is in the bill. Multiple civil society groups have written letters asking them to change this. They are sounding the alarm. The member said I think it is a conspiracy that the Liberals might freeze bank accounts. They already did that; the federal court said it was a violation of charter rights, and they have no response to that. I am asking them to apologize. They should stand up; they have a lot to say. Now would be a terrific time to apologize for violating our charter rights in the last Parliament. An hon member : Oh, oh! Matt Strauss : I am serious. I do not know why you are laughing.”
“In the relatively uncommon situation where the threat is indeed coming from a private Canadian citizen in his mother's basement, why would they cut off his Rogers account? We can get a warrant, arrest him, have a trial in open court and put him in jail. It is the Conservatives who care about and understand cybersecurity. People with even a passing familiarity of the day's news will recall that Conservatives called to ban Huawei from our 5G networks for three years before the members on the opposite side deigned to take that threat seriously. We will salvage what is good out of the bill, and we are happy to do that work for the good of Canadians, but this cleanup job should not be necessary. If the Liberals would merely live up to their apparently insincere reverence for our charter rights, we would not even need to have this conversation.”
“Do the Liberals believe that creeping authoritarianism worldwide and on this continent is a problem, or do they not? If they do, why have they written a bill with such authoritarian provisions? Why have they failed entirely to take the advice of these civil liberties groups? Once again, the bill will go to committee. Once again, Conservatives will be called upon to do the Liberals' homework and repair the deeply flawed bill. The offending provisions that I have described would not make us any safer. The industry minister's turning off a private Canadian citizen's cellphone would do nothing to stop hackers in Russia, China and Iran from wreaking havoc on our telecommunications infrastructure. The Liberals cannot fix the problem, because they do not understand the problem. They do not even understand where the problem is coming from.”
“(1045) Here is a quote from a summary of that letter: “Bill C-26 grants the government sweeping new powers not only over vast swathes of the Canadian economy, but also to intrude on the private lives of Canadians.” Here is another quote: “Time and again, we’ve seen federal governments try to grant themselves the power to intrude on our private lives in the name of ‘security’ — and time and again, people in Canada have come together to push back.” The summary of the letter also says that the bill “lacks guardrails to constrain abuse”, “permits unknowable orders to trump public regulation”, “authorizes the use of secret evidence in Court”, “grants power without accountability” and “lacks justification”; that is, the bill would not even fix the cybersecurity problems it purports to solve.”
“This is unreasonable, and it is shocking. This is the Liberal Party under its new Prime Minister . Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In my first speech to the House, I beseeched the new Prime Minister to discard this darkness and turn toward the light. By reintroducing the Trudeau legislation, he has failed to make the turn. It is not just me raising these concerns. The Liberals tried to ram the bill through the last Parliament. Multiple civil society groups wrote an open letter to former minister Marco Mendicino, alerting him to the problems. Signatories to the letter include the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Ligue des droits et libertés, OpenMedia and the Privacy and Access Council of Canada.”
“There they will find its publication from October 1, 2025, where its expert lawyers corroborate my concerns. I am sorry to say that the bill continues to get worse; it does not get better. Clause 15.4 says, “The Minister may require any person to provide...within any time...any information that [would help her make a decision] under section 15.1 or 15.2”. It seems to me that if the legislation passes in its current, unamended form, the Minister of Industry could wake up one morning and decide that any of us or any other private citizen may be, possibly, as she is not quite sure, some sort of threat to our telecommunications system. With no warrant, no trial and no automatic judicial review, she could compel Rogers or Telus to give her that citizen's address book, their Internet search history or their browser history.”
“I have no idea how this could even possibly be enforced, but imagine being put, effectively, into a digital gulag, unable to use the phone, the Internet or one's online banking, and if the person tells anyone that this happened, they could go to physical jail. I do not doubt that the Liberals will stand and say that I am being somehow outlandish in my interpretation of this. I am not; it is there in black and white. Let me quote it for them. It seems as though they have not read it: “An order made under subsection (1) or (2) may also include a provision prohibiting the disclosure of its existence, or some or all of its contents, by any person.” If members are not inclined to believe me, they can Google “Bill C-8” and “Canadian Constitution Foundation”.”
“member for Burlington North—Milton West called the leader of my party an “existential threat to our democracy”, which is, of course, bananas, it seems to me that the industry minister could deem any speech they do not like “any threat”, and then kick that person off the Internet. The clause reaches Chinese Communist Party levels of government overreach, and the Liberals should be ashamed of themselves. The bill gets worse; it does not get better. Subclause 15.2(5) would give the minister the ability to make secret the decision to kick someone off the Internet. Imagine that: Someone has annoyed the Liberal Party overlords, and the Liberal Party overlords have decided to kick the person off the Internet and cut their phone line. This person cannot tell anyone that they have been cut off.”