New bills would allow the government to intrude on privacy and secretly boot individuals from the internet if thought to be a ‘threat’
Among the western democratic powers, Canada is quickly emerging as a leader in internet regulation and state surveillance.
The federal government, whose efforts are encouraged by a mostly compliant public, is driving more and more of the human experience into a digital realm. This digital realm is a vast infrastructure of legislation, law enforcement and corporate partnerships in which people are becoming the objects of government analysis, modelling and manipulation.
Bill C-2, which the Liberals tabled in June, would have allowed government agencies to demand personal data from online service providers and from any other organization that provides certain services to the public. As nearly every organization provides some kind of service to the public, however small, it seems that Ottawa’s goal was for every Canadian organization to fall within the shadow of its authority.
But now the government appears to be retreating from this astonishing expansion of its lawful access powers. Bill C-22, introduced on March 12, would empower law enforcement to demand only that telecommunications providers (not everyone providing a service to the public) confirm whether they are providing services to a particular person. This change is a win, due in no small part to opposition from civil liberties groups in Canada.
Still, the second half of C-22 takes up C-2’s ambition for “anyone and anything internet” to whir as a cog in Ottawa’s growing surveillance machinery. The bill would allow the state to force electronic service providers (Rogers, Google, a neighbourhood IT firm, a startup social media platform, etc.) to develop capacity for extracting and organizing information for government or law enforcement review, to install devices that allow government and law enforcement to access information, and to retain metadata for up to one year.
Bill C-8, now before committee, would use cybersecurity as the pretext for empowering government to direct telecommunications service providers (e.g., Bell, Rogers, Telus and their many subsidiaries) to remove all products by a specified person from their networks or facilities. If Bill C-8 passes, the minister of industry could even issue secret orders to telecommunications providers to “deplatform” individual Canadians based on alleged telecommunications “threats.”
In the background, all the while, Ottawa and financial institutions continue to flirt with the ideas of a central bank digital currency and a national digital identity framework. The Bank of Canada makes no secret of its continued research into a digital dollar, in case Canadians “at some point in the future … decide they want or need a digital dollar.” Canadians’ opinions are wilfully ignored. As recently as 2023, 92 per cent of 89,423 respondents to a Bank of Canada poll stated that they prefer traditional payment methods over a digital dollar. And, 82 per cent of respondents strongly disagreed that the central bank should research or develop capacity for a digital dollar. And yet this research plods on, under some ivory-tower optimism that Canadians will soon rethink their backwardness.
A digital currency would allow government and financial institutions to track and even program (i.e., restrict) financial transactions. A digital ID framework would allow governments to track every other transaction where Canadians normally present proof of identity: boarding a flight, renting a car, checking into a hotel, ordering a drink, entering a concert venue or sharing information after a fender bender. This one-two combination punch of a digital dollar and a digital ID would ensure that, wherever you go in the world, government agencies will have sufficient information to construct a vivid portrait of your “continuous presence” across time.
The ostensible goals of these legislative and tech initiatives are the usual: efficiency, convenience, sovereignty, strong borders, anti-money laundering and an internet free from child exploitation. By pretending that current legislation and law enforcement are inadequate, this federal government is performing a sleight of hand. With one hand, Ottawa waves Canadians’ appetite for alarmism toward a cross-border fentanyl trade. With the other, Ottawa reaches into the mailboxes, wallets and internet search histories of law-abiding Canadians.
Surveillance systems, once established, do not contract. By violating Canadians’ privacy and by empowering government with massive quantities of personal information about every citizen, surveillance abuses human dignity. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Why would governments, once empowered with private and personal information, not abuse this power to control Canadians?
It was not long ago that the federal government directed financial institutions to identify the Canadians who donated to the peaceful Freedom Convoy protest, and to freeze their bank accounts. Banks complied, and Canadians missed their mortgage payments.
Privacy is the shield of a free people. We allow new laws to dismantle it at our peril.
John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca).
