Juno News - October 08, 2026


Bill C-22 could drive Canadian tech out of Canada

Mentioned
Kirk Lubomov Mark Carney Bill C-63 Danielle Smith Carney
Oklahoma State Senator SOUNDS ALARM over repeated church burnings Ontario College Under Police Investigation for OSAP Fraud

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

163.38

Word count

1,973

Sentence count

42

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 A Toronto-based tech firm trusted by millions of people to bypass censorship in places like Iran
00:00:12.680 and China is planning to leave Canada over Bill C-22. Now that bill would force companies like
00:00:20.060 Syphon to include surveillance capabilities in its software which would or could expose the
00:00:27.580 identity of the people using it. Without privacy protections, those using the software could be
00:00:33.840 identified and arrested. The company reports around 20 million users every month, and that
00:00:40.840 was critical for people in Iran, for instance, communicating with the outside world during the
00:00:45.820 government crackdown last February. Our guest today is business consultant and commentator
00:00:50.980 Kirk Lubomov coming to us from Calgary. Welcome, Kirk. How are you? Great. Now, you were posting
00:00:56.680 about this company siphon and uh they've also been talking to the global mail and others about this
00:01:04.360 here's a company that is on the precipice of leaving canada over this bill c22 and why did
00:01:11.640 you see fit to raise this issue with people who see your posts on x yeah you know to bill c22 is
00:01:20.200 a quite a serious bill and you know it's one that many of us warned that will have significant
00:01:27.080 consequences for the tech industry and it's not only about privacy for example such as in this
00:01:32.600 for this company which is paramount uh and it's a little ironic that the company that's uh has
00:01:41.000 essentially provides tech for people to communicate in under regimes that cracks down on free speech
00:01:47.960 and such is now leaving Canada for the exact same worry.
00:01:54.940 So the big problem with this bill is it requires infrastructure
00:02:00.080 that many tech companies, especially smaller tech companies,
00:02:04.100 just don't have.
00:02:05.900 And that's just to create a backdoor for surveillance
00:02:10.600 for our institutions, our authorities.
00:02:13.580 on for not exactly uh there's not exactly a need for it there's not exactly uh uh you know it's a
00:02:21.740 it's a case-by-case basis it should be applied here but it's a really overreaching build that
00:02:27.660 require a lot of companies to to create a lot of architecture on the back end and create a
00:02:33.020 lot of data surveillance on their own users and it can go back to years and one of the issues
00:02:38.940 here is how do you how do you construct that that doesn't uh infringe the privacy of other users
00:02:45.820 because some users interact online for one reason or another they interact with different businesses
00:02:50.700 for one reason or another and when the government wants to create a spider web of data surveillance
00:02:56.780 system at the back end it infringes on other people's rights yeah it infringes on their
00:03:01.820 privacy which in places like china could be deadly i mean the whole point of this software
00:03:08.300 is that you can bypass the censorship in these countries,
00:03:12.580 whether you're talking about Iran or Russia,
00:03:15.580 countries that do not have the kind of free speech
00:03:18.980 that, say, the Canadians have or others.
00:03:22.680 And here's a bill that undermines all of that.
00:03:26.520 And these people at Syphon have about 20 million monthly users.
00:03:31.760 During the Iranian crisis, where thousands of people were murdered,
00:03:36.700 People were reaching out to the outside world.
00:03:39.720 They were relying on this software to communicate with other people all over the world, saying
00:03:45.240 this is what's going on. 0.66
00:03:46.380 Tens of thousands of citizens are being murdered in Iran.
00:03:51.240 And that's how that communication was made, using this critical piece of software.
00:03:57.700 And so the fact that Canada is undermining this is really troubling because it tells
00:04:04.300 me that not only do they seem preoccupied with destroying free speech for its own citizens but
00:04:10.140 they may want to destroy it for people outside the country as well what do you think
00:04:15.180 yeah and it's again there is really two sides to it one is the tech side the actual infrastructure
00:04:22.700 and costs that will that many companies will have to face building this for the government and the
00:04:29.660 The other aspect of it is exactly this, is the privacy and data situation.
00:04:34.680 And, you know, one of the most trouble things with this is that we don't have transparency in how it will be used or how they wish to be used.
00:04:42.720 So, you know, the government right now, essentially, the liberal government made a deal with China on information sharing.
00:04:49.380 Well, if we have people that are in Canada using this to communicate so they will not be targeted by CCP,
00:04:57.020 Like, we know Canadians on our own soil have been targeted by CCP.
00:05:02.280 How do we know that data is going to be protected for our own citizens?
00:05:07.780 So we have a serious situation here where we have so many questions and no answers.
00:05:14.000 And our own culture minister and everyone else talked about how they want to regulate
00:05:20.060 speech online and and what's misinformation what uh you know all that stuff when we start to get
00:05:27.660 down this route where uh down the road of regulating speech and who decides what's
00:05:34.060 what's misinformation what's not misinformation what's uh you know what's real we're not it's uh
00:05:40.060 and for the government to decide it's becoming a little uh a little scary because if you look
00:05:46.140 at everything to put together you know big changes don't happen as all at once but the
00:05:50.460 liberal government has really been doing is making little tweaks here and there all leading
00:05:54.780 towards the same direction and that is really controlling the speech and uh and freedom of
00:06:01.020 what's happening right now which is a little scary yeah it's very disturbing i mean this company i
00:06:05.980 think employs around 30 people or so i mean most graduates in places like waterloo for instance
00:06:12.060 they head to the United States where all the jobs are. We're trying to build a tech sector
00:06:16.860 of this country, supposedly. And this is what we do. We try to pass a bill that discourages these
00:06:24.700 companies from operating in Canada. The few that we have are being discouraged in terms of staying
00:06:31.420 in Canada because of regulations and laws that are being passed. It's very disturbing. And yet,
00:06:38.240 that's what's going on. Let's talk a little bit about trade, because you were also posting on
00:06:42.800 the fact that Prime Minister Carney, Daniel Smith, they made an announcement last week.
00:06:49.640 They tried to make a big deal out of it, you know, saying that now this pipeline that's going to
00:06:54.560 follow the same trajectory as the TMX pipeline to the West Coast, you know, that this is going to be
00:07:00.440 fast-tracked as a project of national interest. You were not that optimistic. Why?
00:07:08.240 Well, you know, that announcement seems to be really more of a pre-referendum, rah-rah, you know, against the separation movement than anything.
00:07:17.700 You know, I don't really understand why we have, you know, announcements and chest-pounding events for essential paperwork.
00:07:27.800 You know, the pipeline moves from one set of paperwork to another set of paperwork, and we're celebrating as if there are shovels in the ground.
00:07:35.080 the the the pipeline is not even approved they're not even talking about approving there was not
00:07:41.020 even a serious language that it will be approved you know i've mark carney spent two minutes trying
00:07:47.040 to explain the process you know barely a few words together and then it's like well then we will look
00:07:52.740 at the economic conditions well you've been kicking the can down the road for this pipeline for two
00:07:58.020 years that's we just need to start building it and let's remember that by the time this pipeline
00:08:02.800 be built we're looking at close to 10 years so we're going to have 10 years of essentially
00:08:09.280 really hindered oil supply war while our allies are begging for it every single day that that's
00:08:14.960 a three-year pipeline should take no longer than three years to build it and about 90 percent of
00:08:20.320 the route is within 300 meters of the keystone excel uh sorry with the of the tmx right so we
00:08:27.280 know exactly where this pipeline is going and the only other issues that they complicated it is that
00:08:33.040 it needs to come out of out of a new port in delta so now we need to wait for the delta port to be
00:08:38.800 built as well and right before that this announcement mark carney has announced new
00:08:45.520 ocean regulation stuff which means the new port and this pipeline will have more red tape to jump
00:08:53.520 through just to get just to get to the export facility so you know so we just keep spinning
00:09:00.640 our wheels instead of just let's just get building and then figure out the parts that we need to
00:09:05.200 figure as we get close to them how is this playing ahead of the referendum i mean are albertans
00:09:12.080 thinking okay you know we're seeing some encouraging signs from the federal
00:09:15.840 government and we really don't need to proceed anymore with the independence or are they
00:09:21.280 skeptical yeah you know there's there's definitely they're definitely trying to push
00:09:27.600 the narrative of the federal government is working with alberta again right because for the last 10
00:09:32.960 years the trudeau government essentially said there's no business case for anything that alberta
00:09:37.120 produces our key industries now we at least say you may get a pipeline you may not but you may
00:09:42.960 get a pipeline in 10 years uh you know the confederation works kind of conversation
00:09:47.840 you know it it definitely catches some people it's you know the real question is who shows up
00:09:54.480 to the poll and votes and i think it'll be mostly between rural and city voters so it's uh you know
00:10:01.360 we'll see i mean there's more people in the cities right yeah yeah it's uh it's a it's uh
00:10:07.520 you know it's it's essentially how ndp gets selected in in in alberta is uh by city voters
00:10:15.440 yeah edmonton any other thoughts about the current state of trade between canada and
00:10:21.440 the united states yeah it's uh you know we we just i really don't understand why the conversation is
00:10:29.520 just fell out and parties moved along and it's just we need to keep building the us is building
00:10:35.440 so many new industry industries right now their private sector growth like if you look at the
00:10:40.080 s&p global pmi it's a it's at a five-year uh bull run it's a five-year high right now they're
00:10:47.280 manufacturing servicing the composite index and we in canada still trying to process our own
00:10:52.880 paperwork and you know the keystone excel uh talking about pipelines trump is really excited
00:10:58.800 about we just need to get it building i really don't understand why we having so many press
00:11:03.760 conferences and different mo use and travels uh you know to europe for you know for nothing to
00:11:10.960 show for it we just need to build at home and just get it going and i think it's really paramount to
00:11:15.920 start start focusing on our entrepreneurship um and which is i think the missing part of this
00:11:21.440 whole conversation uh for the past two years and i find that's a little frustrating because
00:11:26.960 we need to support our local small businesses which have been declining like if you take out
00:11:32.160 to private if you take out the health care services businesses out of the equation the
00:11:38.240 private sector business in canada has been declining for a good two to three years which
00:11:43.520 is really alarming kirk thank you so much for coming on the show we really appreciate it
00:11:48.320 my pleasure thank you kirk lubomov if you enjoyed the show and appreciate independent journalism
00:11:54.000 please consider becoming a premier member of juno news by going to junonews.com backslash
00:12:00.160 straight up. It helps us do what we do. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.