{"id":103116,"date":"2026-06-20T04:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T08:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=103116"},"modified":"2026-06-19T11:48:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T15:48:38","slug":"bill-c-22-passes-the-commons-as-mps-raced-for-home-for-the-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/06\/20\/bill-c-22-passes-the-commons-as-mps-raced-for-home-for-the-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill C-22 passes the Commons “as MPs raced for home for the summer”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian Members of Parliament care more for their summer vacations than they do for the rights of Canadian citizens. While this isn’t really news<\/em>, it’s just the latest proof that our elected representatives are … well, I was about to describe their moral failings in great detail, but that could get me arrested and jailed if-and-when the many authoritarian measures the Liberals want to enact become law. Instead, here’s Michael Geist<\/a>‘s summary of the way Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Bill, got sent to the Senate on Thursday night:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bill C-22, the lawful access bill<\/a>, passed the House of Commons yesterday<\/a> with the government invoking a single motion to approve several bills without further debate or individual votes as MPs raced for home for the summer. Bill C-22 will now head to the Senate, where it can expect a rougher ride when study begins in the fall. Rather than use the final days of the House session to answer the privacy, security, and oversight concerns raised by the Privacy Commissioner, academics, technology companies, and civil society groups, the government spent the time ensuring it would not have to, rushing the bill through committee, cutting off debate, and maligning critics with tactics that they once decried when in opposition.<\/p>\n

The final days of Bill C-22 in the House marked a genuine abrogation of democratic norms. The government moved a motion to shut down the clause-by-clause study<\/a> in the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, preventing the committee from adjourning until the bill had been pushed through. That led to a session that stretched past midnight<\/a>, as MPs were barred from introducing new amendments and were left to vote on amendment after amendment without any discussion, debate, or even public disclosure of their contents. By the end of the committee session, no one could have known the contents of the bill that MPs had duly approved and sent back to the House for final approval. As noted, once back in the House, there was no further debate, discussion or even a vote. Just a motion that said the deal was done.<\/p>\n

If the process was troubling, the rhetoric was embarrassing. I wrote earlier this week about Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s Vic Toews moment<\/a>, as he said it was time for opposition parties to “choose<\/a>” whether to stand with law enforcement and victims of crime (a refrain that sounded a lot like Toews’ 2012 comment<\/a> to Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia, who is now the Speaker of the House<\/a>, that he could “either stand with us or with the child pornographers”). Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon pushed that posture further on Thursday by dismissing the bill’s critics<\/a> as wearing “tinfoil hats” engaged in “paranoia.” The charge fits a broader pattern in which this government treats independent privacy scrutiny as an obstacle rather than a safeguard, seen most clearly in the Bill C-36 approach to strip the Privacy Commissioner of authority over private-sector privacy law<\/a> altogether.<\/p>\n

The committee did approve some government amendments to the bill that improve aspects of the lawful access plan but they are still likely to leave companies, security experts, and privacy advocates concerned. For example, the maximum metadata retention period the government can impose drops from one year to six months<\/a>, and a category of metadata can now be mandated only where the Minister is satisfied that the category and all of its elements are essential to investigations. That is better, but still not good enough as it is not tied to any actual evidence about why six months is needed and both the costs and risks associated with metadata retention, which is not a requirement in the U.S., are largely unchanged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As The Reclamare<\/a> explains, this bill is yet another likely irritant in US\/Canadian affairs, as it will expose US citizens’ data to Canadian government oversight:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– A USA person creates\/maintains a social media account — lets call it “XXX”<\/p>\n

– Using its new C22 law, Canadian RCMP develops a “reasonable grounds to suspect” of “XXX” to a CDN investigation (a low investigative hunch standard under C-22).<\/p>\n

– RCMP obtains a Canadian judicial authorization (an “Order”) and sends the Social Media company an International Production Request, which is not a USA warrant, not a \u00a72703(d) order, and not routed through full MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty<\/em>) review.<\/p>\n

– The social media company is bound by US law (SCA\/ECPA), treats the request as a formal foreign inquiry.<\/p>\n

– The social media company discloses limited metadata: summary of login IP ranges, account country setting, and other classification signals to prove USA origin<\/p>\n

– This disclosure happens at Canada’s “reasonable suspicion” threshold, which is lower and less scrutinized than the US domestic requirement of “specific and articulable facts showing relevance and materiality” under 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 2703(d) for the exact same type of data.<\/p>\n

– The USA user’s metadata, which would normally enjoy stronger 4th Amendment derived judicial protections, if sought directly by US authorities, is handed to a foreign government on weaker foreign grounds, without the same level of US court filtering or notice that a purely domestic US request would trigger.<\/p>\n

– The 4th Amendment protection is effectively diluted because the platform’s good faith compliance with the foreign lower bar creates a new, easier pathway around domestic US constitutional safeguards for accounts that platforms classify as American<\/p>\n

Canada’s Liberal government continues to chip away at our “Charter of Rights”, under the guise of “Protecting Citizens” and we are moving towards authoritarianism <\/p>\n

While I loathe to create friction, I also hope your Rights can help slow Canada’s devolvement<\/p>\n

It impacts you too<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian Members of Parliament care more for their summer vacations than they do for the rights of Canadian citizens. While this isn’t really news, it’s just the latest proof that our elected representatives are … well, I was about to describe their moral failings in great detail, but that could get me arrested and jailed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,84,9,10,28,53,15],"tags":[715,58,458,154,567,217,911],"class_list":["post-103116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","category-technology","tag-constitution","tag-internet","tag-parliament","tag-privacy","tag-rcmp","tag-rights","tag-surveillance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qPa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103119,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103116\/revisions\/103119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}