Evan Solomon

Companies that operate in Canada must take responsibility for the risk their service is creating, especially when children are involved.

Canada’s consumer privacy laws are 25 years old. They were written before the iPhone. It was a different time, before AI, before deep fakes.

The legislation proposes giving Canadians the ability to request that a company delete their personal information, including AI and other electronically generated 'deepfakes,' made in an individual’s likeness.

We think Canada needs that kind of independent regulator.

We believe that it’s very important to set up a robust commission that has those enforcement powers and that’s what we’re doing, in as quick a manner as possible.

When this bill passes, I’ll be asking the regulator for guidance, to publish guidance as one of my first acts on surveillance pricing, to clarify exactly what that will be.

“If the harms outweigh the benefits, as in the case with surveillance pricing, the regulator could take charge,” he said.

Protection is not the opposite of innovation.

We’re living in a different world, and our laws need to catch up.

“Canada’s consumer privacy laws are 25 years old. They were written before the iPhone. It was a different time, before AI, before deepfakes,” AI Minister Evan Solomon said after tabling the bill in the House of Commons.

Our primary purpose here is to give control back to Canadians over their own personal information and to require by law — with enforcement — that companies treat the information very sensitively.

Canadians will have a practical way to fight back against harmful deepfakes, they will have more power to require companies to delete personal information they should no longer hold,

We are looking at things like how to combat deep fakes and giving the right to deletion.

In the forthcoming days, I will be releasing our updated privacy legislation which will update 25-year-old privacy legislation.

Responding to these concerns and building responsible Canadian AI will not be easy, but it must be done.

We will have... comprehensive legislation that will make sure that we’re protecting children first and foremost... Canadians’ privacy and Canadians’ data.

Trust is absolutely vital and upcoming legislation on online harms and privacy will be an important element in building that trust.

It’ll be lots on trust, lots on empowering workers, lots on building Canada. You’ll see the details later this week.

We’re going to build where we need to build, and we’re going to build on our advantages. Where we gotta partner, we’re going to build partnerships, and those are sovereign alliances.

I’m not going to tell you what’s in the forthcoming legislation, except to say that I’ve been pretty clear what we’re interested in.

There’s a lot of people who are candidly very concerned about jobs.

It is a framework. It provides the framework for real job growth, real economic upside, and it protects our data and our children and our privacy, and it’s ready to adjust.

If there’s new opportunities or new challenges, security challenges, we are going to adjust, and we are going to make sure that we have the flexibility to do so.

So we do have access, we are part of Project Glasswing, I’ll confirm that, and through the Canadian Cyber Security Centre, we have access Mythos now.

We will have … comprehensive legislation that will make sure that we’re protecting children first and foremost … Canadians’ privacy and Canadians’ data.