Juno News - Liberals push sweeping surveillance bill

00:00:00.000 Overreach, again, this time with a bill that some say invades Canadians' privacy by accessing

00:00:12.120 information on phones and other devices.

00:00:15.300 Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangari says the law needs to be updated to keep up

00:00:21.100 with technology.

00:00:22.100 Let's listen.

00:00:23.100 Our government introduced Bill C-22.

00:00:26.660 C-22 creates a legal framework for lawful access regime in Canada.

00:00:32.460 Something that law enforcement, security services, and organizations supporting victims have been asking for for decades.

00:00:41.180 This new bill has its roots in former Bill C-2, but it is not the same.

00:00:47.360 Well, as you heard there, the minister says police need updated rules to deal with digital evidence.

00:00:53.680 Things like emails and texts.

00:00:55.720 Critics like David Fraser say that Bill C-22 could compromise, say, privacy.

00:01:02.180 If Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act of 2026, becomes the law, the government of Canada will be able to secretly order Apple to build in a capability into its infrastructure to allow Canadian law enforcement and national security folks to track every iPhone, every iPad, every Apple Watch, every Apple AirPod, and every AirTag in real time.

00:01:20.960 Then they'll be able to require Apple to confirm whether they provide you any services.

00:01:25.080 Then, they can go to a Justice of the Peace and get an order without actually believing

00:01:28.800 that a crime has been or will be committed, requiring Apple to hand over every device

00:01:32.900 identifier for every device that you use with their services.

00:01:37.040 That's the digital ID for your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPod, Apple TV, AirTag.

00:01:42.620 With that information, they can go back to the judge and get an order, again, without

00:01:45.300 actually believing that a crime has been or will be committed, requiring Apple to give

00:01:48.700 them the moment-by-moment locations of all your devices.

00:01:51.800 Oh, and that secret order also required Apple to keep your location history for a full year,

00:01:56.900 so cops can get that too.

00:01:58.700 Is that a power we want Canadian police and law enforcement to have?

00:02:01.620 Well, obviously, it's a power that some people feel is too much for the government.

00:02:07.540 Bill C-20, again, also known as the Lawful Access Act, was tabled and passed first reading

00:02:14.060 in the House of Commons a little over a week ago.

00:02:17.400 and to Sangre, he says Canadians need to watch their device usage. Let's listen.

00:02:22.700 Where we have smartphones, with just with our phones, we have so much information that's

00:02:28.360 available to us. Every desktop computer and every technology out there have significant

00:02:36.140 abilities, not just to communicate, but also to deter those who use crime as a tool to be able

00:02:53.120 to conceal information that will be critically important for law enforcement. Our laws are stuck

00:02:59.840 in a century while technology has essentially moved forward joining us now is john carpe

00:03:06.640 president of the justice center for constitutional freedoms welcome john

00:03:11.200 glad to be with you and your viewers and listeners mark we'll see 22 another problem

00:03:17.120 child i mean we've seen a series of these bills oftentimes aimed at restricting speech at least

00:03:23.840 that's the effect of these censorship related speech in this case we're looking at a bill that

00:03:32.160 apparently police need because they need to update their ability to target criminals who

00:03:39.680 are online accessing digital information but there's always a concern isn't there

00:03:45.920 the big question is do we give the state do we give government surveillance powers to to look

00:03:55.040 at all citizens or do we stick with our centuries old tradition of allowing law enforcement to

00:04:04.300 target only people when they have a reasonable and probable grounds to believe that they're

00:04:11.160 engaged in criminal activity they have to go to court they have to get a warrant

00:04:14.200 and then if they get that warrant yeah they can bust into your home unannounced because they have

00:04:20.260 a court order allowing them to do so and maybe catch you with uh you know running a prostitution

00:04:26.740 ring or having child pornography whatever so the we've always had this balance we've had this

00:04:33.680 tradition that goes back for centuries where the government respects both our property rights

00:04:38.240 so you can't just barge into my home unless I've consented and privacy rights that the government

00:04:44.840 cannot video record audio record me unless I'm a suspect of you know committing a crime or

00:04:54.480 involved in criminal activity about to commit a crime so what the problem is with this supporting

00:05:01.860 authorized access to information act is that if this passes the big tech companies are required

00:05:09.540 to maintain metadata on every canadian for a full year and they're required to turn over information

00:05:19.220 to governments about all canadians this is the surveillance state this is not crime fighting

00:05:25.700 this is the surveillance state are we talking about companies like balance rogers

00:05:31.220 alice these companies that would be required to hold on to data for at least a year

00:05:36.580 and the government wouldn't be asking them to do that if they weren't able to access that data so

00:05:44.020 not only do they want them to hold on to it they want to be able to get it and so this really puts

00:05:50.660 these big companies uh behind the eight ball i don't think they want to do it but then again

00:05:56.260 these these are regulated companies are regulated by the crtc so they're subject to oversight by

00:06:03.700 these regular by the regulator and so in a way um they're kind of between a rock and a hard place

00:06:11.620 aren't they they are and large companies typically are not freedom fighters they tend to do as they're

00:06:18.420 told. There are other ways to do this. In Germany, for example, police can go to court and get a

00:06:26.860 freeze order, which pertains to one individual. And so they can go to a tech company and let's

00:06:32.100 call the guy Mark Smith. My apology to any Mark Smiths out there. But if the police have reasonable

00:06:38.000 and probable grounds to think that Mark Smith is involved in child pornography or terrorism or

00:06:43.740 other criminal activity, they can get a freeze order whereby a company has to keep on file

00:06:50.700 all of the data that they have about Mark Smith, but Mark Smith only. That's completely different

00:06:57.520 from what's being proposed with C-22, which is to pass a law where these companies have to keep

00:07:03.240 data on all Canadians, including the 99.99% of us who are not suspected of committing a crime.

00:07:11.580 right um it just puts everybody in that position it makes everybody a suspect

00:07:18.420 basically it's like you know i mean it's it's like shoot it's like using a sledgehammer to

00:07:27.580 to kill a fly isn't it well it's it it's exactly like that it it's it's this excuse

00:07:33.620 you know government needs to have all this information on on everybody um what's to stop

00:07:39.600 them from abusing it. It brings us so close to the social credit system they have in China where 0.86

00:07:45.760 the government has centralized data on everybody. So in one file, they've got your social media

00:07:52.500 commentary, your health records, your QR codes, your banking. And so in China, if you say something

00:08:02.740 bad about the government on social media, you will suddenly find yourself unable to get onto

00:08:07.400 a train or a plane or a subway. And this Bill C-22 takes us, it's a big step in that direction

00:08:17.900 where the government knows everything about everybody. And then you're left to this naive

00:08:23.540 notion that they will somehow not abuse this knowledge and somehow not use it against us.

00:08:30.700 Yeah, I mean, and given the government's history of doing things like freezing bank accounts,

00:08:35.340 that they already have a reputation as being extremely heavy-handed in position of the

00:08:42.800 Emergencies Act, which you've written about extensively, despite courts coming forward

00:08:50.060 and saying that this was government overreach, they went too far, that it was essentially

00:08:55.220 illegal. Now they're going to the Supreme Court to try and get a favorable ruling.

00:08:59.480 It's like these people, they really don't like the fact that we're saying things that we want to say.

00:09:07.400 I mean, you really get the sense that so much of their attention is focused on these types of pieces of legislation that are aimed at restricting or surveillance.

00:09:20.160 You know, what is it with these guys?

00:09:21.840 I mean, there's just something about the laws that they push the hardest at, because this is not the first time that they table something like this.

00:09:31.020 This is multiple times because there's been minority governments that have fallen.

00:09:37.040 And then we've had elections that they have not been able to do what they wanted to do, but they're not giving up.

00:09:42.600 And I think Canadians should be very wary about all of this.

00:09:45.440 What do you think?

00:09:47.060 Well, they're very clever about how they promote this.

00:09:50.240 governments and politicians never take away your rights and freedoms without offering a nice

00:09:56.160 sounding pretext so the government says we want to protect you from hatred and protect you from

00:10:03.260 disinformation and misinformation which at first glance or at first blush it sounds wonderful but

00:10:08.980 then you have to ask who gets to decide what is hate who gets to decide what's disinformation

00:10:15.320 That'll be the government and bureaucrats. And so when you allow the government to decide on your behalf what constitutes hate or disinformation, you're fundamentally giving up your right as a human being, as a citizen, to make that decision for yourself, to decide for yourself what is right or wrong, true or false.

00:10:39.360 The other thing is the minister said, this is just, you know, relax.

00:10:44.160 This is just the law catching up to technology.

00:10:46.840 Technology has outpaced the law.

00:10:48.440 That's simply not true.

00:10:50.340 This is in the direction of giving the government access to all the information about where we move, what we say, what we do, how we spend our money.

00:11:03.080 This is not the law catching up with technology.

00:11:06.640 This is the creation of a surveillance state.

00:11:10.440 And it's just simply dishonest to pretend that this is just some modernization to catch up with technology.

00:11:16.560 Because, again, I go back to that traditional centuries-old common law tradition where the starting point is our home is our castle.

00:11:26.460 We have privacy rights, property rights.

00:11:29.780 That's the starting point.

00:11:30.720 The state can only violate that if they go to court and get a warrant to target somebody when they have reasonable and probable grounds to suspect that they're engaged in criminal activity.

00:11:40.980 That's the only exception.

00:11:42.480 That's not the surveillance state that's being pushed now by C-22.

00:11:46.720 And what is your organization doing about this in terms of advocacy?

00:11:52.000 we launched a petition on uh friday afternoon which usually it's it's you know it's the worst

00:12:00.120 possible time to to do or say anything but that's just it it took us uh that's when it was ready

00:12:06.120 we're close to 10 000 signatures already and uh i will be we'll be delivering or presenting those

00:12:12.780 um they are effective uh this horrible bill c22 believe it or not is less bad

00:12:19.240 than the Strong Borders Act, Bill C-2,

00:12:24.560 which should be called the Strong Surveillance Act.

00:12:26.740 They've actually put Bill C-2 on the back burner

00:12:29.780 and they've come back with something that's a little bit less bad.

00:12:34.260 And that was in response to so many Canadians

00:12:36.820 contacted their MP to say that Bill C-2 was totally unacceptable.

00:12:42.980 So now we've got the petition against C-22 and pushback.

00:12:47.080 What about law enforcement? I mean, they're coming out with Chief Dem Q and standing next to Gary and Andy Sangary and touting this thing as saying that they need it. You know, they're not innocent here, are they?

00:13:04.140 No. Most police officers are good and respectful of charter rights and freedoms, and they want to work in a way that respects those rights, including privacy, which is one of our charter rights that's embedded in the charter right to life, liberty, security.

00:13:21.280 the person has been interpreted as including a right to privacy even though it's not the word

00:13:28.120 privacy is not spelled out in the charter but it's the courts have interpreted that to mean that that

00:13:33.160 we all have privacy rights as citizens and actually sorry charter section 8 there's a right to be free

00:13:40.200 from unreasonable search and seizure so that's again it doesn't mention the word privacy but

00:13:45.940 it's protection of privacy. So it's unfortunate that some police officers, I think they're a

00:13:50.980 minority, that would want to support this development of the surveillance state, which

00:13:58.520 they themselves might one day be a victim of. Yeah. I wonder if they really understand that.

00:14:04.880 Speaking of police officers, we're also seeing more cases where police, RCMP, or whomever,

00:14:10.420 knocking on the door of people who have posted things online,

00:14:14.340 things that, you know, can be vile, can be even perceived as threatening.

00:14:19.800 But this is very disturbing for people who post things on Facebook.

00:14:25.060 What advice would you have for somebody who's putting stuff online

00:14:29.300 and maybe gets a knock on the door, like East Germany, you know,

00:14:35.420 used to do with people who were rumored to have criticized the government?

00:14:40.420 Well, generally speaking, I mean, the best advice for anybody when police come knocking on your door or otherwise is exercise your right to remain silent, which is not just an American thing from the American TV shows.

00:14:55.340 you always see that, you know, you have the right to remain silent. It's very much Canadian

00:14:59.100 as well. And you're not obligated to answer questions of police officers with the exception

00:15:06.100 of, you know, if you're pulled over for speeding, you're obligated to, you know, turn over the

00:15:10.120 information, driver's license, insurance, et cetera. But you're not obligated to answer

00:15:15.980 questions from police. And the best thing for all Canadians to do is to continue to exercise

00:15:22.280 our free speech rights say what we want to say even if it's controversial topic immigration

00:15:28.780 abortion aboriginal issues land acknowledgements whatever the issue is just keep on speaking out

00:15:36.640 and do you think Canadians are waking up to the dangers I mean this is the other question

00:15:41.740 and you've certainly been outspoken in your defense of civil liberties over the years but

00:15:48.400 I mean, considering the voting patterns that we've seen, it doesn't seem to be an issue that's top of mind for most voters or for a lot of voters anyway.

00:15:59.100 Is your message getting through?

00:16:01.780 To some extent.

00:16:04.000 Again, I was really pleased to see the government, the federal government, back down on Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act.

00:16:11.340 They're coming back with something bad, but it's less bad.

00:16:15.100 C2 was put onto the back burner because the liberal MPs and all MPs got so much pushback

00:16:22.900 from Canadians.

00:16:23.960 And we had groups from across the spectrum.

00:16:26.040 We had Professor Michael Geist at the University of Ottawa, who probably would not call himself

00:16:32.140 right wing or a conservative.

00:16:34.300 He's raising a big stink about C22.

00:16:37.120 You've got all these different groups and organizations are pushing back against it.

00:16:42.620 And so, you know, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

00:16:51.440 So as long as Canadians are engaged in the democratic process and contacting their MPs, I think we can hold the bad stuff at bay.

00:17:01.520 But it is a numbers game, right?

00:17:03.820 We need enough people to speak up.

00:17:06.760 Okay.

00:17:07.480 And how do people access the petition if they want to sign?

00:17:11.180 So Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, jccf.ca, and a petition can be found there. You

00:17:18.460 can sign it. And when we reach a certain threshold, whether it's 50,000 or 100,000 or more,

00:17:24.700 then we will be delivering those to the Prime Minister's office in Ottawa.

00:17:30.700 John Carpe, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it.

00:17:34.140 My pleasure.

00:17:35.420 John is President of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:17:38.540 If you enjoyed this show, consider supporting great independent journalism by becoming a

00:17:43.420 premier member of Juno News. Go to junonews.com backslash straight up. That's the name of this

00:17:49.980 show is Straight Up. Helps us do what we do. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.

Juno News - March 24, 2026

Liberals push sweeping surveillance bill

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