When Governor General Mary Simon prorogued Parliament on Jan. 6 following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will be resigning, all legislation before the House of Commons and the Senate ceased to exist. Three government bills and one private member’s bill dealing with cyber matters were among the casualties.

When Parliament is prorogued, all activity in the House of Commons and the Senate comes to an end. Committees are dissolved and all bills are stopped in their tracks. When Parliament returns, MPs have the option to reintroduce any bills that died on the order paper.

The cybersecurity act, Bill C-26, was furthest along at the time of dissolution. Bill C-26 had completed third reading in the upper chamber. While it was under scrutiny in the Senate, non–party-affiliated Senator Patti LaBoucane-Benson noticed a numbering error in the legislation. The House committee on public security deleted one clause in the original Bill C-26 on providing programs to the appropriate regulator. 

But Senators realized that without renumbering the clauses, a large portion of C-26 would end up being nullified after passing into law. That’s because last June, Parliament adopted the Foreign Interference Act, Bill C-70, to set up a new framework for secure administrative review proceedings. C-70 repeals previous safeguards in C-26 and replaces them with other rules and regulations. Clauses were renumbered in C-26.

“As a result, Bill C-70 would end up repealing the wrong clauses of Bill C-26,” LaBoucane-Benson told her colleagues Dec. 5, while pitching an amendment to fix the problem. “Quite simply, my amendment would adjust the numbers of the clauses referenced in Bill C-70 so that the right clauses of Bill C-26 get repealed.”

Then-public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, N.B.) had hoped to pass the amendments last month but he was unable to do so. There is a chance the bill, as amended, could be rushed through when a new session of Parliament reconvenes on Mar. 24, but the executive director of OpenMedia is not optimistic.

“Maybe they’ll squeeze it through in March but probably not,” Matt Hatfield tells The Wire Report.

The proposed digital charter implementation act, Bill C-27 — introduced in June 2022 — was stuck in clause-by-clause consideration at the House committee on industry. If passed, the bill would have updated Canadian privacy laws and given the privacy commissioner more decision-making powers. It would have established a Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal to review the commissioner’s decisions as well. The bill also would have included AI regulation through the proposed artificial intelligence and data act. 

Hatfield considers C-27 the biggest mess the government had left on its plate. Partisan wrangling in committee slowed the process to a standstill.

“Canadians should have gotten privacy legislation,” he asserts. “We’ve been waiting for about a decade for an update to our laws.”

This is the second consecutive Parliament that did not manage to pass such legislation, he notes. A similar bill died when the election was called in 2021.

Then there is the online harms bill, Bill C-63. It was at second reading in the House of Commons and preparing to go to committee when Parliament was prorogued. One of the contentious points in the proposed act was the establishment of a regulator, the Digital Safety Commission, to oversee the provisions of the bill. The Liberal government supported the measure, while the Conservative opposition opposed it. Hatfield thinks the Tories are being short-sighted.

“There’s a lot of complexity to managing these areas correctly that a regulator can take action on behalf of Canadians and work with Canadians to get higher quality outcomes for people that the courts are not well positioned to do on their own,” he states.

The government announced in December that the bill would be split into two parts to make passage easier. That point is now moot.

READ MORE:

– As online harms bill splits in two, advocates continue seeking amendments

– Conservative MPs discuss possibility Liberal, Tory online harms bills could be studied together

The Conservatives responded to the government’s online harms bill by introducing their own version, a private member’s bill from Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary-Nose Hill, Alta.). Bill C-412 had only been introduced when the House rose and is now dead after first reading. Hatfield expects something similar to re-emerge following the next election, which public opinion polls suggest the Tories are expected to win.

“I do expect something quite close to that will be reintroduced by a Conservative government,” he predicts.

Fen Osler Hampson, Chancellor’s Professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University, does not believe any of the four pieces of legislation will reappear. The Liberals do have the option to reintroduce their three bills following the Throne Speech in March.

“They could try but I think we’re going to be going very quickly into an election,” he tells The Wire Report. 

Hatfield is only slightly more hopeful.

“If any bill gets through it’s probably going to be C-26 just because it just needs to have the drafting error corrected to be passed but I’m sceptical even that will occur,” he says. “And certainly C-63 and C-27 are not going to move under this Parliament but should be brought up again by the next Parliament.”

Hampson is more definitive.

“My own bet is all of this is dead,” he states flatly.

ppark@thewirereport.ca