Elbows Down: Warrantless Wiretapping Appears on Notice Paper

The US government has been pressuring the Canadian government to implement warrantless wiretapping. It’s now on the notice paper.

It’s a debate that should’ve been dead many years ago now: warrantless wiretapping in Canada. Since at least when I started my journalism career in 2005, the Canadian government sought to emulate the American style privacy busting warrantless wiretapping laws through what was gently described by government as “lawful access”. Whether it was the Paul Martin Liberal government or the Stephen Harper Conservative government, both parties had a keen interest in getting rid of the constitutional right to privacy. Canadians protested, signed petitions, sent letters, and made it very clear that they didn’t want this. As a result, successive efforts on the part of both parties ended with the legislation dying on the orderpaper.

Faced with the reality that Canadians didn’t want this, the Canadian government, in 2017, had a committee to discuss this topic. In 2017, they recommended against pursuing lawful access. That is when and where the debate should’ve died out. Canadians value their right to privacy and have continuously fought against these efforts. It was also an admission that maybe law enforcement shouldn’t become lazy and just skip that whole “court oversight” thing when it comes to invading peoples privacy. Close the book, we’re done here.

Sadly, that didn’t happen.

The Canadian government decided to try and slip lawful access through the back door by having the Supreme Court of Canada rule on this very topic. In response, the Supreme Court rejected that effort in 2024. As a result, the Canadian government was forced to go back to the drawing board in their quest to abolish the right to privacy.

Also, in 2023, the Canadian government launched a “consultation” where they tried to hide Lawful Access in a debate about money laundering. That got exposed and it became clear that the Canadian government was interested in trying to resurrect this debate, yet again.

The US, for their part, started randomly demanding a stronger border protection bill. You know, because that geographically makes sense. So, the Canadian government decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to, ironically, smuggle Lawful Access through a border security bill. Claiming that fentanyl is a problem, the government used that as an excuse to push warrantless wiretapping through. The two are completely unrelated, but, you know, we live in a post-logical world these days. Luckily, the Conservative party decided to oppose this, which ultimately slowed down the process.

Canadians were, rightfully, furious that this is even being considered again. So, they protested this. The intelligence community, clearly not one for understanding history, was all surprised that their privacy busting bill would receive pushback. At any rate, the movement on the bill ended up being slow. So, the Liberal party split the bill with the hopes of getting the border security measures passed without the boat anchor of lawful access holding it back. While that seemed like a recognition for the blindingly obvious, the Liberal party then changed its mind again and began pushing Bill C-2 again in their bid to push for Lawful Access.

More recently, it seems that the Liberal Party revised their approach. Recently, Lawful Access has made a return on the notice paper:

Introduction of Government Bills
March 10, 2026 — The Minister of Public Safety — Bill entitled “An Act respecting lawful access”.

Apparently, it’ll be known as Bill C-22 and the Canadian government published a so-called “backgrounder” on this, recycling the same contradictory language that have been used for over 20 years to push this:

Part 2 of the Bill C-22 does not create new authorities for law enforcement agencies and CSIS to intercept communications or obtain information. It focuses solely on ensuring that electronic service providers (ESPs) are able to comply with existing legal orders, which are found in the Criminal Code, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act.

Current framework

Currently, Canada relies on a 1995 condition of license that only covers voice telephony despite vast technological changes, including the internet, Satellite and messaging platforms. Law enforcement agencies and CSIS can obtain authorization, though a warrant or production order, to intercept communications or obtain information; however, there is no corresponding requirement for an ESP to actually establish and maintain a system capable of providing the communication/information in question. Furthermore, outside of voice telephony services, the support of ESPs to fulfill lawful access requests is entirely voluntary.

Bill proposes to

SAAIA would require select ESPs, to develop and maintain the capabilities necessary to enable law enforcement and CSIS to effectively obtain communications and information they are legally authorized to have for their criminal and intelligence investigations, while respecting rights and freedoms.

Instead of requiring whole sectors, including small enterprises, to have the same capabilities in place, the proposed framework adopts a more targeted approach for technical capability development. Under the proposed Bill, there are two ways by which an ESP could be mandated to develop and maintain lawful access capabilities: ESPs designated as ‘core providers’ and through Ministerial Orders.

In other words, the Canadian government here is saying that the law doesn’t do anything new (then why even table a law at all?) and, instead, allows law enforcement to obtain all of your communications that they are legally entitled to (the Canadian Charter and the Supreme Court of Canada begs to differ).

So, the reason for all of this? Using the same bullshit excuse of ‘times are changing’ and that this is just a tiny little ‘update’ of the law and the poor poor police officers who are overworked just don’t have time to do all this paperwork to, you know, get a warrant and all that unnecessary stuff. They just want all of your personal information at the tips of their fingers. See? No big deal!

Rapid technological growth has created a complex digital ecosystem with far more data, devices, and ways to interact than ever before. The use of smartphones and instant messaging applications, for example, make communication with others easier and instant. Threat actors exploit this digital environment for criminal activities like online sexual abuse, online fraud and radicalization, or the planning, coordination, financing or perpetration of transnational and domestic threats to public safety, such as terrorism, organized crime, and foreign interference.

These technologies generate unique data about a person, which in specific circumstances, can help law enforcement agencies and CSIS gather the information needed to effectively investigate crimes and threats to the security of Canada. Law enforcement agencies and CSIS have worked for decades with outdated laws that have not kept pace with our new technological and digital reality. As a result, investigations are missing critical information needed to generate leads or help identify and prosecute individuals or groups involved in serious criminal activities or national security threats. In some cases, investigations are abandoned due to these challenges.

This is why the Government of Canada introduced an act to keep Canadians safe (Bill C-22). The Bill would keep Canadians safe by providing a modernized legal framework that helps ensure that CSIS can investigate threats to the security of Canada and law enforcement agencies can effectively detect, deter and respond to crime.

Even worse is the fact that the belligerence doesn’t even end there. There are also data retention requirements as well:

Previous proposal

The implementation of certain capabilities implicitly requires the retention of data.

Bill C-22 proposes to

Explicitly allow regulations to be made regarding the retention of prescribed metadata for a reasonable period of no longer than one year, but not for content, web-browsing history or social media activity.

Why is this needed?

To make sure requirements around data retention are clear and transparent.

This argument that it’s just “metadata” has been debunked many times over by experts. It’s still personal information and, frequently, the requirements for retaining data often go far beyond that. It’s the same garbage online creators faced throughout the debate of the Online Streaming Act. They were repeatedly told that their “cat videos” were not regulated, yet the legislation itself explicitly states that if the content makes money, then your content does fall under the legislation after all. The talking points saying one thing, but the legislation saying another has long been a problem and the debate about lawful access is no exception. In other words, believe it when you actually see it.

At any rate, it is infuriating to me that after 21 years of writing, I still have to keep publishing articles on this garbage legislation, debunking the exact same talking points, and monitoring the progress of this unconstitutional law. Why can’t the Canadian government take a hint here? Canadians do not want this.

(Notice paper note via @MGeist)

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.