Why do Canadians cherish privacy in the first place? If a person has nothing to hide, why should they care if the authorities can read their emails, texts, or AI conversations? Why does Section 8 of the Charter expressly protect Canadians against unreasonable search and seizure?
Even completely innocent people who have nothing to hide rightfully cherish their ability to think, speak, explore ideas, and meet with others without the state silently observing their every move. If we are not comfortable with a nosy neighbour or even a close friend knowing everything about us, why should we accept the state having that power?
Beyond the intrinsic value of privacy, there is also a practical reason to oppose expanding government surveillance: human nature is a mixture of good and evil. Governments are made up of people, and people in power can do great harm. More citizens were murdered by their own governments in the twentieth century than the number of soldiers who died on the battlefields. From Stalin and Mao to Hitler and Pol Pot, state surveillance was a key tool used to enforce obedience, crush dissent, maintain power, and perpetrate genocides. Privacy is the shield of a free people.
MPs will soon vote on Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act. Under the pretext of “public safety,” Bill C-22 would expand state power over ordinary Canadians while doing nothing to address the actual legal architecture that allows transnational criminal networks to operate in Canada.
Under its broad definition of “electronic service providers,” Bill C-22 could require AI companies and “core providers” like Rogers, Bell, Google, and WhatsApp to retain metadata for up to one year and build systems for rapid data handover when law enforcement presents a valid authorization. Bill C-22 also makes it easier for police to obtain a warrant and demand users’ subscriber information (name, address, email, IP address, account details, etc.) by lowering the legal standard from “reasonable grounds to believe” to “reasonable grounds to suspect.”
Law professor Michael Geist posits that mandatory metadata retention for internet service providers is one of the most privacy-invasive tools available, creating backdoor surveillance capabilities extending beyond the government’s stated anti-crime goals.
Numerous companies have stated publicly that Bill C-22 would force them to compromise their no-logs architecture and encryption protections. They would leave Canada and stop providing their services to Canadians.
Signal, the secure messaging service used by millions of Canadians, has warned it would rather withdraw from Canada than compromise the privacy promises it has made to its users. Signal is used by journalists and by dissidents seeking to avoid scrutiny from repressive regimes, specifically because it doesn’t store user chats or contact lists.
Bill C-22 would require private companies to engineer vulnerabilities into their electronic systems that can be exploited by hackers, with private messaging services serving as an ideal target for foreign adversaries.
The concern from Signal and other tech companies is that the bill would effectively require them to engineer backdoors into their software. Tiwari was blunt about why that’s a problem: “End-to-end encryption is incompatible with exceptional access, no matter how creative the route taken to achieve it.” Tiwari called provisions that force vulnerabilities into that kind of infrastructure “a grave threat to privacy everywhere.”
Apple and Meta oppose Bill C-22, stating that the legislation could turn private companies into an arm of the government’s surveillance apparatus.
Non-profit consumer advocate group OpenMedia argues that Bill C-22 “continues to create an unprecedented and extraordinarily dangerous surveillance architecture that could impact every digital tool people in Canada depend on every day.”
Tobi Lütke, founder and chief executive of Shopify, Canada’s most important technology company, has called Bill C-22 “a huge mistake” that “may well end up dealing a death blow to Canadian tech viability,” and has publicly urged Ottawa’s Public Safety Minister to study expert opinion on the bill’s fatal flaws. Windscribe, the Toronto-headquartered virtual private network provider, has threatened to move its headquarters out of Canada if Bill C-22 passes.
Proton VPN has warned that Bill C-22 empowers the government to order VPN providers in Canada to retain metadata for up to a year. Operating under Swiss and European jurisdiction, Proton VPN has put it bluntly: “Complying with foreign surveillance orders without Swiss legal process is a criminal offence. Not happening.” NordVPN states its no-logs policy is not up for debate. Likewise, Toronto-based Windscribe VPN states that Bill C-22 is driving VPN businesses out of Canada because of the required user logging.
South of our border, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast have written to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, warning that Bill C-22 would “drastically expand Canada’s surveillance and data access powers in ways that create significant cross-border risks to the security and data privacy of Americans.”
Everyone supports public safety and fighting crime effectively. We can and must do this without turning Canada into a surveillance state. Now is the time for freedom-loving Canadians to contact their MP and urge him or her to vote against Bill C-22.
John Carpay, B.A., LL.B. is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which is funding the legal defences of Benita Pedersen, Karen Richert, Barbara Kay, Dallas Brodie, Meghan Murphy, Kari Simpson, Derek Fildebrandt, and the Western Standard.
