PACP Committee Report

Conservative Dissenting Report to the 42^nd Report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts: Cybersecurity of Personal Information in the Cloud

44^th Parliament

The Liberal-NDP Coalition Prioritizes Ideological Carbon Reduction Over Canadians Cybersecurity

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada has tabled a scathing report that shows how little the Government of Canada is doing to protect Canadians’ cybersecurity. Instead of addressing the shortcomings, the reaction from the Liberals is to tie needed cybersecurity investment to carbon reductions.

As clearly explained in the body of this report, and the Office of the Auditor General’s November 2022 Report Cyber Security of Personal Information in the Cloud, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Shared Services Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada, and Communications Security Establishment Canada have failed to adequately protect the personal information of Canadians due to Liberal incompetence and lack of prioritizing this urgent issue.

The Government of Canada should focus all its cyber security resources and efforts into complying with their own rules and regulations and above all address the deficiencies so that Canadians are protected. This includes securing software applications and databases, ensuring enforcement of cloud guardrails, and preventing and responding to cyber attacks.

The Liberal Government should not be wasting cybersecurity investment and resources on their ideologically driven pursuit on reducing carbon or other greenhouse gas emissions. Cybersecurity and the protection of Canadians should not be sacrificed for political messaging of the Liberal government.

The Office of the Auditor General has reported the Liberal government’s failure in implementing the 2018 Cloud Adoption Strategy.  The report also highlights that departments are struggling to understand their roles and responsibilities, leading to confusion regarding cybersecurity tasks. This confusion further amplifies the potential risks to Canadians' safety due to bureaucratic and political inefficiencies and incompetence within the Liberal government. Given the existing delays, confusion, and potential security risks, adding additional unrelated tasks is not a prudent course of action.

No evidence was provided to suggest that requesting Public Services and Procurement Canada or Shared Services Canada to write a report linking the procurement of cloud services and cybersecurity to a 2050 target will contribute to emission reductions.

Conservatives disagree with implementing Recommendation 5 and Recommendation 6 of the majority report where the focus is on the Liberal government’s ideological pursuit of net zero instead of protecting Canadians.

Instead, Conservatives recommend the following in place of recommendation 5 and 6:

• That, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat take immediate action to resolve the confusion between departments regarding roles and responsibilities for cyber security and finally lay out clear and concise mandates to departments involved in cyber security.  
• And
• That, in working to immediately address the failures as reported by the Auditor General, Public Services and Procurement Canada and Shared Services should prioritize the protection of personal information of Canadians and not pursue unrelated goals that are outside the core purpose of cybersecurity operations.