00:00:55.720Critics like David Fraser say that Bill C-22 could compromise, say, privacy.
00:01:02.180If 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.
00:01:20.960Then they'll be able to require Apple to confirm whether they provide you any services.
00:01:25.080Then, they can go to a Justice of the Peace and get an order without actually believing
00:01:28.800that a crime has been or will be committed, requiring Apple to hand over every device
00:01:32.900identifier for every device that you use with their services.
00:01:37.040That's the digital ID for your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPod, Apple TV, AirTag.
00:01:42.620With that information, they can go back to the judge and get an order, again, without
00:01:45.300actually believing that a crime has been or will be committed, requiring Apple to give
00:01:48.700them the moment-by-moment locations of all your devices.
00:01:51.800Oh, and that secret order also required Apple to keep your location history for a full year,
00:01:58.700Is that a power we want Canadian police and law enforcement to have?
00:02:01.620Well, obviously, it's a power that some people feel is too much for the government.
00:02:07.540Bill C-20, again, also known as the Lawful Access Act, was tabled and passed first reading
00:02:14.060in the House of Commons a little over a week ago.
00:02:17.400and to Sangre, he says Canadians need to watch their device usage. Let's listen.
00:02:22.700Where we have smartphones, with just with our phones, we have so much information that's
00:02:28.360available to us. Every desktop computer and every technology out there have significant
00:02:36.140abilities, not just to communicate, but also to deter those who use crime as a tool to be able
00:02:53.120to conceal information that will be critically important for law enforcement. Our laws are stuck
00:02:59.840in a century while technology has essentially moved forward joining us now is john carpe
00:03:06.640president of the justice center for constitutional freedoms welcome john
00:03:11.200glad to be with you and your viewers and listeners mark we'll see 22 another problem
00:03:17.120child i mean we've seen a series of these bills oftentimes aimed at restricting speech at least
00:03:23.840that's the effect of these censorship related speech in this case we're looking at a bill that
00:03:32.160apparently police need because they need to update their ability to target criminals who
00:03:39.680are online accessing digital information but there's always a concern isn't there
00:03:45.920the big question is do we give the state do we give government surveillance powers to to look
00:03:55.040at all citizens or do we stick with our centuries old tradition of allowing law enforcement to
00:04:04.300target only people when they have a reasonable and probable grounds to believe that they're
00:04:11.160engaged in criminal activity they have to go to court they have to get a warrant
00:04:14.200and then if they get that warrant yeah they can bust into your home unannounced because they have
00:04:20.260a court order allowing them to do so and maybe catch you with uh you know running a prostitution
00:04:26.740ring or having child pornography whatever so the we've always had this balance we've had this
00:04:33.680tradition that goes back for centuries where the government respects both our property rights
00:04:38.240so you can't just barge into my home unless I've consented and privacy rights that the government
00:04:44.840cannot video record audio record me unless I'm a suspect of you know committing a crime or
00:04:54.480involved in criminal activity about to commit a crime so what the problem is with this supporting
00:05:01.860authorized access to information act is that if this passes the big tech companies are required
00:05:09.540to maintain metadata on every canadian for a full year and they're required to turn over information
00:05:19.220to governments about all canadians this is the surveillance state this is not crime fighting
00:05:25.700this is the surveillance state are we talking about companies like balance rogers
00:05:31.220alice these companies that would be required to hold on to data for at least a year
00:05:36.580and the government wouldn't be asking them to do that if they weren't able to access that data so
00:05:44.020not only do they want them to hold on to it they want to be able to get it and so this really puts
00:05:50.660these big companies uh behind the eight ball i don't think they want to do it but then again
00:05:56.260these these are regulated companies are regulated by the crtc so they're subject to oversight by
00:06:03.700these regular by the regulator and so in a way um they're kind of between a rock and a hard place
00:06:11.620aren't they they are and large companies typically are not freedom fighters they tend to do as they're
00:06:18.420told. There are other ways to do this. In Germany, for example, police can go to court and get a
00:06:26.860freeze order, which pertains to one individual. And so they can go to a tech company and let's
00:06:32.100call the guy Mark Smith. My apology to any Mark Smiths out there. But if the police have reasonable
00:06:38.000and probable grounds to think that Mark Smith is involved in child pornography or terrorism or
00:06:43.740other criminal activity, they can get a freeze order whereby a company has to keep on file
00:06:50.700all of the data that they have about Mark Smith, but Mark Smith only. That's completely different
00:06:57.520from what's being proposed with C-22, which is to pass a law where these companies have to keep
00:07:03.240data on all Canadians, including the 99.99% of us who are not suspected of committing a crime.
00:07:11.580right um it just puts everybody in that position it makes everybody a suspect
00:07:18.420basically it's like you know i mean it's it's like shoot it's like using a sledgehammer to
00:07:27.580to kill a fly isn't it well it's it it's exactly like that it it's it's this excuse
00:07:33.620you know government needs to have all this information on on everybody um what's to stop
00:07:39.600them from abusing it. It brings us so close to the social credit system they have in China where
00:07:45.760the government has centralized data on everybody. So in one file, they've got your social media
00:07:52.500commentary, your health records, your QR codes, your banking. And so in China, if you say something
00:08:02.740bad about the government on social media, you will suddenly find yourself unable to get onto
00:08:07.400a train or a plane or a subway. And this Bill C-22 takes us, it's a big step in that direction
00:08:17.900where the government knows everything about everybody. And then you're left to this naive
00:08:23.540notion that they will somehow not abuse this knowledge and somehow not use it against us.
00:08:30.700Yeah, I mean, and given the government's history of doing things like freezing bank accounts,
00:08:35.340that they already have a reputation as being extremely heavy-handed in position of the
00:08:42.800Emergencies Act, which you've written about extensively, despite courts coming forward
00:08:50.060and saying that this was government overreach, they went too far, that it was essentially
00:08:55.220illegal. Now they're going to the Supreme Court to try and get a favorable ruling.
00:08:59.480It's like these people, they really don't like the fact that we're saying things that we want to say.
00:09:07.400I 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.
00:09:21.840I 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.
00:09:31.020This is multiple times because there's been minority governments that have fallen.
00:09:37.040And then we've had elections that they have not been able to do what they wanted to do, but they're not giving up.
00:09:42.600And I think Canadians should be very wary about all of this.
00:09:47.060Well, they're very clever about how they promote this.
00:09:50.240governments and politicians never take away your rights and freedoms without offering a nice
00:09:56.160sounding pretext so the government says we want to protect you from hatred and protect you from
00:10:03.260disinformation and misinformation which at first glance or at first blush it sounds wonderful but
00:10:08.980then you have to ask who gets to decide what is hate who gets to decide what's disinformation
00:10:15.320That'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.
00:10:39.360The other thing is the minister said, this is just, you know, relax.
00:10:44.160This is just the law catching up to technology.
00:10:50.340This 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.
00:11:03.080This is not the law catching up with technology.
00:11:06.640This is the creation of a surveillance state.
00:11:10.440And it's just simply dishonest to pretend that this is just some modernization to catch up with technology.
00:11:16.560Because, again, I go back to that traditional centuries-old common law tradition where the starting point is our home is our castle.
00:11:26.460We have privacy rights, property rights.
00:11:30.720The 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.
00:11:42.480That's not the surveillance state that's being pushed now by C-22.
00:11:46.720And what is your organization doing about this in terms of advocacy?
00:11:52.000we launched a petition on uh friday afternoon which usually it's it's you know it's the worst
00:12:00.120possible time to to do or say anything but that's just it it took us uh that's when it was ready
00:12:06.120we're close to 10 000 signatures already and uh i will be we'll be delivering or presenting those
00:12:12.780um they are effective uh this horrible bill c22 believe it or not is less bad
00:12:19.240than the Strong Borders Act, Bill C-2,
00:12:24.560which should be called the Strong Surveillance Act.
00:12:26.740They've actually put Bill C-2 on the back burner
00:12:29.780and they've come back with something that's a little bit less bad.
00:12:34.260And that was in response to so many Canadians
00:12:36.820contacted their MP to say that Bill C-2 was totally unacceptable.
00:12:42.980So now we've got the petition against C-22 and pushback.
00:12:47.080What 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?
00:13:04.140No. 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.
00:13:21.280the person has been interpreted as including a right to privacy even though it's not the word
00:13:28.120privacy is not spelled out in the charter but it's the courts have interpreted that to mean that that
00:13:33.160we all have privacy rights as citizens and actually sorry charter section 8 there's a right to be free
00:13:40.200from unreasonable search and seizure so that's again it doesn't mention the word privacy but
00:13:45.940it's protection of privacy. So it's unfortunate that some police officers, I think they're a
00:13:50.980minority, that would want to support this development of the surveillance state, which
00:13:58.520they themselves might one day be a victim of. Yeah. I wonder if they really understand that.
00:14:04.880Speaking of police officers, we're also seeing more cases where police, RCMP, or whomever,
00:14:10.420knocking on the door of people who have posted things online,
00:14:14.340things that, you know, can be vile, can be even perceived as threatening.
00:14:19.800But this is very disturbing for people who post things on Facebook.
00:14:25.060What advice would you have for somebody who's putting stuff online
00:14:29.300and maybe gets a knock on the door, like East Germany, you know,
00:14:35.420used to do with people who were rumored to have criticized the government?
00:14:40.420Well, 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.
00:14:55.340you always see that, you know, you have the right to remain silent. It's very much Canadian
00:14:59.100as well. And you're not obligated to answer questions of police officers with the exception
00:15:06.100of, you know, if you're pulled over for speeding, you're obligated to, you know, turn over the
00:15:10.120information, driver's license, insurance, et cetera. But you're not obligated to answer
00:15:15.980questions from police. And the best thing for all Canadians to do is to continue to exercise
00:15:22.280our free speech rights say what we want to say even if it's controversial topic immigration
00:15:28.780abortion aboriginal issues land acknowledgements whatever the issue is just keep on speaking out
00:15:36.640and do you think Canadians are waking up to the dangers I mean this is the other question
00:15:41.740and you've certainly been outspoken in your defense of civil liberties over the years but
00:15:48.400I 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.