Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security

Comité permanent de la sécurité publique et nationale

For immediate release

Ottawa, June 20, 2019 -

On Thursday June 20, 2019, the Honourable John McKay, Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (“the Committee”), tabled the Committee’s report entitled “Cybersecurity in the Financial Sector as a National Security Issue”. The Committee heard from 45 witnesses over the course of 12 meetings between January and May 2019.

The Committee believes that national and economic cybersecurity are tightly bound. Now, more than ever, Canada’s financial sector must defend itself against a range of technologically savvy and opportunistic cyber threats. These threats continuously probe for weak points in people, corporations, processes and technologies. For this reason, security must be end-to-end. We must ensure that financial institutions, small businesses and individual clients that interact with them enjoy robust cybersecurity.

In its report, the Committee makes nine key recommendations intended to instil good cybersecurity hygiene habits among Canadians and to help build the cybersecurity workforce Canada needs; weaponized artificial intelligence and quantum computing are emergent threats. The Committee believes that Canada needs to build an accurate and comprehensive assessment of the impact of cybercrime and promote a “security by design” philosophy. As well, the Committee urges the Government of Canada to support responsible vulnerability disclosure programs, explore ways to enhance Canadian data sovereignty and to reject approaches to lawful access that weaken cybersecurity.

The report is available online on the Committee’s website.