Liberal MP Says Bill C-2 “Clarifies” the Police Ability to Invade Your Privacy

Parliament resumes and so does the misleading and ridiculous statements. That applies to Bill C-2 which has rightfully drawn fire.

When police conduct an investigation, it is normal that you can expect to obtain a warrant before rifling through your personal information or your property. It’s normal because Canada has this thing called the “Canadian Charter” which, on paper, protects against unlawful search and seizure. However, some politicians feel that you aren’t really entitled to rights like that and that it’s up to lawmakers to “update” or “clarify” laws that say that the little people aren’t really entitled to these rights. After all, human rights are more like suggestions anyway – especially when we are talking about people not in the upper class.

Case in point is the sadly once again revived lawful access debate where the government argues that police don’t need no stinkin’ warrant to invade your privacy. After all, that’s just long boring paperwork that takes too much time. None of these arguments are anything new as I remember seeing these talking points many times over right up to the point where I thought the debate was finally put to rest clear back in 2017. Sadly, the debate was resurrected earlier this year thanks to the tabling of Bill C-2, the so-called “border security” bill.

Liberal MPs pretended that this bill was simply about strengthening the border to please American fascist dictator, Donald Trump. This with the hopes that appeasing the bully will mean that Canada can get back to something resembling normalcy. It’s a foolish exercise given that bullies always come back for more, but it’s a tactic that is being employed anyway by the “great thinkers” in parliament right now. The unfortunate side effect with this bill is that it also attempts to smuggle in lawful access (AKA warrantless wiretapping) by burying those provisions at the end of the bill. As a result, this bill is actually a mass government surveillance bill.

Unsurprisingly, the bill drew a tonne of flack. For one, Canadians have argued for decades that they have no interest in such laws. What’s more, the courts have expressed little appetite in just handing every ounce of power over to the police. This was made especially clear thanks to the IP address ruling last year. So, it made the fact that lawmakers are still trying to sneak such a law in even after everyone told them “no”.

It’s not surprising that there are serious questions as to why the heck the government is trying to push these laws at all. Apparently, Liberal MP’s are arguing that by implementing warrantless wiretapping, they are simply trying to “clarify” that Canadians have no reasonable expectation of privacy at all. From Michael Geist:

The Conservatives and NDP can be relied upon to oppose the bill, but the Bloc suggested there was support based on a desire for measures to address actual border related issues. In this minority Parliament, the government needs backing from one party, and the Bloc might be the one on Bill C-2.

While it is tempting to review some of the wilder comments (notably including Liberal MP Steeve Lavoie, who, in relation to cash transactions, said “does my colleague want us to continue letting people use cash, which increases the number of crimes committed by the very criminals we want to lock up by strengthening our laws, while the current government seeks to prevent rather than cure?”), more important was the attempted defence of the warrantless access rules. After concerns were raised by many opposition MPs, Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz sought to defend the warrantless access provisions:

Some have argued that the lawful access regime being proposed is a major attack on privacy rights. I would argue that it is not. Rather, it is carefully structured to calibrate law enforcement’s access to information with the nature of information being sought. For the vast majority of information requests, a judicial warrant is required. There are a couple of exceptions to that, but they are ones that I believe all sides of the House can support.

I will give a couple of examples. First, Bill C-2 clarifies the ability of law enforcement to use specific powers and seize specific information without a warrant in urgent, time-sensitive circumstances. One such circumstance would be the live and active abuse of a child. I am sure we can all agree that stopping the abuse of a child is an appropriate exercise of police authority. The second and other instance is when police are trying to find basic information about someone as part of an investigation. This typically happens in the early stages of a police investigation. What we are talking about here is basic information, essentially something that responds to simple yes-or-no kinds of questions. What police would glean from the answer would allow them to go to a judge, seek a warrant and obtain more information. Again, the object of the exercise is to allow law enforcement to move at the same speed as the criminals they are pursuing. Due process is maintained, but speed is also critical for police when pursuing those who use digital tools to communicate.

So, it seems that the Liberal MP has dusted off the book of excuses as to why it’s important to remove human rights. The above comments from the Liberal MP is a classic excuse of pushing obviously unconstitutional laws. Specifically, the argument is that the law to allow police to invade your privacy without judicial oversight is constructed in a way that balances people’s right to privacy. What is often meant by this is that police can slurp up all the information they want out of you while citizens get sweet fuck all in return. That’s basically the version of “balance” that is often the case with lawmakers pushing for such laws.

The above example also replays another classic excuse for why Canada is transforming into a police state. That is the classic excuse of how judicial oversight slows things down and if they can just get rid of all that unnecessary paperwork to ensure that citizens rights are being protected, then everything will by hunky-dory. When lawful access was pushed previously, this tired talking point was pushed by not only lawmakers pushing such laws, but also police chief unions as well who long whined and complained about the paperwork necessary to spy on average every day people.

Further, the complaint about how criminals are moving quickly and that police should be able to move just as quickly is also nothing new. The push to “speed up” the process by trampling Canadian Charter rights was one of the talking points that was beaten to death during previous rounds of this fight against lawful access. It didn’t hold water then and today is no different.

Geist does a great job at tearing down the disinformation being pushed by the MP. Here’s part of what he wrote:

It is the second instance – warrantless access to what Dzerowicz describes as “basic information” that typically involves a yes/no answer – that matters and which raises serious privacy risks. Indeed, the scope of access is far more significant than she suggests and I would hope that all MPs would oppose (I suspect the Supreme Court of Canada will oppose it should the provision become law).

First, the scope of the information that can be demanded without a warrant extends far beyond yes/no basic information. The information demand power actually includes whether the person provides or has provided services to any subscriber or client, or to any account or identifier. This means law enforcement can start with a name, an IP address, or any other unique identifier attached to a phone in order to confirm service. For example, an IMSI catcher could be used gather phone identifiers at a protest and those identifiers could be used to confirm who provided the cellular service. The information demand also includes the power to demand whether there is transmission data on hand (who was the person communicating with and what apps were they using) as well as where and when was the service provided (were they at the protest). The information demand can also cover when service began, when it ended, and what other communications services are used by the subscriber (do they use Gmail or WhatsApp). The specific content would require a warrant, but all of this data, which can be very revealing, would be available without judicial oversight. Needless to say, many of these answers extend beyond a yes or no.

While it may be tempting to pin lawful access as just a Liberal party thing, the reality is that this is what the Stephen Harper Conservative party pushed back in the day as well, using the same tired excuses as the Liberal party. To this day, given that both Liberals and Conservatives supported the eradication of people’s privacy in Canada, it’s pretty miraculous that Lawful Access never passed in the first place. If you don’t believe me, here’s an excerpt from an article at the time published on, of all places, the National Post:

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ attempt to demonize opponents of his new Internet law — you’re either with the government, or with the “child pornographers,” he said on Monday — isn’t the first time he’s sought to demonize critics. In November, he said Liberals should “finally stop putting the rights of child pornographers and organized crime ahead of the rights of law-abiding citizens.” Two weeks ago, he urged the NDP “to listen to the police, listen to the provinces, and support these balanced measures that protect law-abiding Canadians and their children.”

Yeah, that’s just a sample of the absolute bullshit Canadians like myself dealt with back then. Heck, you can even see many of the talking points pushed by the Liberal MP recently in that snippet on top of it all.

It makes the idea of the Pierre Poilievre Conservatives being likely to oppose these laws all the more intriguing. In all likelihood, the boring “tough on crime” mentality of the Conservatives likely supports these measures, but the party can’t stand the idea that the Liberal party is writing such laws. This is likely the result of the worry that such laws would be used against both Conservative party members and their constituents. To be fair, they wouldn’t be wrong given that such laws would be used against everyone, not just Conservative party supporters.

At any rate, it seems like opposition is going to be strong on this one. That means that it’ll take longer to get these laws passed (which would be a good thing. The longer Canadians maintain their freedoms, the better). As Geist alluded to, getting these unconstitutional laws passed could also likely prove to be the easy part. Much like the Online News Act, Online Streaming Act, and the Digital Services Tax, having this law on the law books is one thing, but having it pass judicial scrutiny is an entirely different ball of wax. Those judicial challenges are a big reason why all three of those other laws are crumbling at the moment.

Still, the disappointment is the fact that there is even a push for such terrible laws in the first place. It was repeatedly made clear that Canadians don’t want such laws. There’s little appetite for such laws these days as I don’t even recall warrantless wiretapping even appearing in the election debates. Yet, some people just don’t quit on their mission to erode Canadian rights which is deeply frustrating.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.