Tabling Bill 6: new development in Quebec’s digital transformation

On October 28, Éric Caire, Minister for Government Digital Transformation, tabled in the National Assembly Bill 6, entitled An Act to enact the Act respecting the Ministère de la Cybersécurité et du Numérique and to amend other provisions. 

This bill follows on the opening remarks of the October 19 parliamentary session, at which Premier François Legault announced his intention to create a department dedicated to cybersecurity and digital technology. 

With the tabling of this bill, Quebec creates a new department that will bring together technology services, digital infrastructure expertise, and cybersecurity and cyber threat prevention. 

The department’s purpose will be to "instigate and coordinate state action in the areas of cybersecurity and digital technology, proposing general policy directions in those areas to the Government, determining the sectors of activities in which the Minister intends to act as a matter of priority and proposing to the Government measures to increase the effectiveness of the fight against cyber attacks and cyber threats in Québec"¹. 

The bill’s priorities are to curtail cyber-attacks against the state, protect Quebecers’ public data and enhance the digital systems already in place. 

To achieve these objectives, several measures will be implemented. 

For example, the bill will entrust the future minister with:

• the responsibilities currently conferred on Infrastructures technologiques Quebec, including that of providing public bodies with technology infrastructure services as well as the responsibility of acting as a cloud broker, by providing public bodies with cloud-based offerings of goods and services; 
• certain responsibilities and functions of the chair of the Conseil du trésor, in particular those related to digital transformation and information security; 
• certain missions of the Conseil du trésor regarding information resources, provided in the Act respecting the governance and management of the information resources of public bodies and government enterprises; and 
• the discretionary power to form a committee of experts able to advise the minister on cybersecurity and digital technology. 

In addition to providing for the transfer and migration of responsibilities of Infrastructures technologiques Québec and of the Conseil du trésor, most employees from these public bodies will also be transferred to the new department. 

To fulfill his or her duties and achieve the government’s objectives, the future minister will need to develop expertise in digital infrastructure and enhance computer security within public bodies. In this respect, the minister’s mission will be "to instigate and coordinate state action in the areas of cybersecurity and digital technology." In doing so, the minister will therefore be expected to:

• advise the Quebec public service on these issues, particularly with a view to offering quality digital services to citizens and enterprises; 
• support public bodies in deploying their digital transformation strategy; 
• establish security requirements for digital information held by public bodies, and will have the authority required to order public bodies failing to comply with these requirements to do so.

The bill also provides conforming amendments to certain legislation, including the Act to establish a legal framework for information technology and the Act respecting the governance and management of the information resources of public bodies and government enterprises, in particular to take into account the powers of the new department and the abolition of Infrastructures technologiques Québec, and the Act respecting Infrastructures technologiques Québec. 

Finally, the bill establishes the Cybersecurity and Digital Technology Fund. This fund will aim to finance the development and implementation of technological infrastructure, as well as projects and activities in the area of digital data protection.

With these measures, the government with combine, in one department, all government activities related to cybersecurity and digital technology, previously carried out by various bodies. This departmental restructuring confirms the government’s ambition to address the lag that certain public bodies may have been experiencing in terms of technology. It will be interesting to see how the work of this new department will fit into Quebec’s digital transformation initiative, and how the Commission d’accès à l’information, which was not specifically addressed by this bill, will collaborate with the Ministère de la Cybersécurité et du Numérique. 

The authors wish to thank Anne-Marie Galerneau, law student, for her help in preparing this legal update.