Recent Canadian legislation increasingly aligns Canada with approaches taken by the European Union (EU). Canadian Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, passed third reading in the House of Commons on March 25. Both the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) have expressed significant concerns regarding the provisions of this bill.
A VEXING experience awaits anyone attempting to use cash in Britain. One enters a café, a supermarket, or even a public event carrying legal tender only to discover that physical money is treated as if it were counterfeit currency, and those who still insist on using it are regarded as if they had arrived from another planet. No law has prohibited cash. No decree has abolished it. Yet through countless small refusals repeated across daily life, people learn that participation in the economy involves digital traceability or, more simply, an erosion of privacy.
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is abandoning efforts by his predecessor to reintroduce into the Canadian Human Rights Act the ability to bring forward complaints of online hate speech.
The controversial provision, known as section 13, was repealed under the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper, with efforts to revive it advanced by former prime minister Justin Trudeau as part of his government’s online harms agenda, which never passed.
OTTAWA — Google and Apple are warning that the Carney government’s effort to make it easier for police and spies to intercept private communications risks opening up “backdoors” in their products that would hinder Canadians’ privacy and make their data vulnerable to malicious hackers.
Officials from the multibillionaire tech giants railed against the legislation that Ottawa has argued would modernize police and spy powers as they testified in front of a parliamentary committee Tuesday, claiming the proposed reforms are overly broad and pose a risk to encryption in a way that could undermine user trust and goes further than other Western countries.
Carney wants to shut down the internet like Iran.
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 knowing all kinds of things about our personal lives?
On one side, you have the lawyers and executives of every major tech company, every telecom company, every major internet provider all saying that the Carney government’s Bill C-22 goes too far. On the other side, you have Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree saying these companies just misunderstand the legislation.
As a public service lets take a look at what ProtonVPN is saying about C-22…
Canada’s spy agency says the lack of a “lawful access” regime that would give it easier access to Canadians’ digital data has frustrated its ability to help foreign intelligence partners combat transnational threats, including those moving into Canada.
In a rare on-the-record briefing, Nicole Giles, deputy director of policy and strategic partnerships at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said that, in one instance, the agency was unable to respond to a request from a “like-minded” foreign intelligence partner to identify suspects found to have Canadian phone numbers.
X has agreed to process the vast majority of content flagged as illegal “hate” under the UK’s Online Safety Act within 48 hours, giving Ofcom, Britain’s speech regulator, a significant new enforcement win.
The platform committed to “review and assess UK suspected illegal terrorist and “hate” content reported through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool on average within 24 hours of it being reported, to be calculated as a mean” and to “review and assess at least 85% of UK suspected illegal terrorist and hate content reported through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool within a maximum of 48 hours.”
When police in Windsor began looking into an alleged international auto‑theft ring in late 2022, they turned to familiar investigative techniques.
Some officers went undercover, others conducted long hours of surveillance, while the courts gave police permission to hide a tracking device in the alleged ringleader’s car and to intercept his cellphone location.
Within a few months, cellphone data placed the main suspect’s phone near 23 car thefts, sometimes hours apart. Yet, police never caught him actually stealing any vehicles.
OTTAWA — When The Bureau published its analysis of Bill C-2 last fall, the diagnosis was unsparing.
Ottawa had confused expansion of state power over ordinary Canadians with the enforcement tools Canada actually needs to confront the Chinese Triads, Mexican cartels, and hostile-state networks that have turned Canadian cities into operational platforms for the hemisphere’s most dangerous criminal organizations. The government has now repackaged that same flawed instinct under a new number. Bill C-22, the so-called Lawful Access Act, deserves the same verdict.
h/t Mauser
Public Safety Canada is under fire after a social media post trying to downplay its new lawful-access legislation was slapped with a community note on X. Critics and privacy advocates are accusing the federal government of misleading the public about the true scope of Bill C-22.
The backlash started when the official Public Safety Canada account posted on Friday that Part 2 of the bill would not create new authorities for police and CSIS, but would simply ensure electronic service providers have the technical capabilities to respond to court orders.
Part 2 of Bill C-22 would not create new authorities for police and CSIS. It would ensure electronic service providers have the technical capabilities to respond to court orders or warrants to get specific info to help an investigation. https://t.co/f66jEnOw93 pic.twitter.com/yPgFaIae7t
— Public Safety Canada (@Safety_Canada) May 15, 2026
Canada’s Public Safety Minister is telling Apple, Meta, and Signal that they don’t understand his own surveillance bill. They understand it fine. That’s the problem.
Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, would force telecoms, internet companies, and social media platforms to rebuild their systems so police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) can access user data more easily during investigations.
h/t patthedog
OTTAWA – A Liberal government bill that would make it easier for police and spies to navigate the online world is running into fierce opposition from major digital companies, civil liberties groups and law professors who say it would open the door to serious privacy infringements.
The government says the bill — “An Act respecting lawful access” — will ensure law enforcement agencies have the legal tools to prevent, investigate and respond to modern crime and protect Canadians in a manner consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Greater government control over artificial intelligence in Canada could allow increased surveillance of users and discourage people from speaking freely in private interactions with AI systems, according to a Canadian rights advocacy group.
Increased state involvement in AI systems could also lead to routine government access to private conversations and data, according to a May 5 report by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF).
