Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Bill C-22, the Liberals' surveillance law bill, gives the government sweeping new surveillance powers to access the private digital communications and information of Canadians. This bill has serious privacy implications, to put it mildly. As the Privacy Commissioner himself observed, “the interception of communications and the search and seizure of information are among the most intrusive forms of power that the state can bring to bear.” The Privacy Commissioner was referencing the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians in their 2025 “Special Report on the Lawful Access to Communications by Security and Intelligence Organizations”.
The Privacy Commissioner went on to state, in a brief he submitted to the public safety committee, the following:
This is so not only because of the reasonable expectation of privacy that we may have in such information as individuals, but also because of the impacts that its collection and use by state actors may have on our ability to exercise and enjoy other fundamental rights as members of a free and democratic society.
Consistent with the observations made by the Privacy Commissioner, I would note that constitutional jurisprudence has recognized that such things as metadata, Internet browsing activity and so on are highly sensitive personal information protected by section 8 of the charter, which states, “Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.”
Bill C-22 is arguably overly broad, interfering with the privacy rights and interests of Canadians. The bill would give sweeping powers to order electronic service providers to build into their systems interception and monitoring capabilities to collect and retain data about Canadians, data that includes everything, including the location of Canadians—talk about a surveillance state bill. Service providers are any “person who provides services to the public”, which is an extremely broad definition.
The Privacy Commissioner, in light of the privacy implications of Bill C-22 and the concerns that it is overly broad in scope, submitted a brief to the public safety committee, where Bill C-22, the Liberal surveillance bill, is being studied. In it, the Privacy Commissioner set out a number of concerns he had with the bill, including, as I noted, the broad definition of a service provider. The Privacy Commissioner observed that “the proposed production order for subscriber information”, which is information in which a high level of privacy is attached, based upon jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, “could be served on any 'person who provides services to the public'.” As the Privacy Commissioner notes, “Given the breadth of the definition, this means that...in some cases...healthcare providers, lawyers, financial institutions, certain apps and online services” and others “could be ordered to produce highly sensitive information about clients or subscribers based on a threshold of only reasonable suspicion.” That's a very low threshold to be made out.
Further to that, the Privacy Commissioner noted that “the production order provision stipulates that a person who receives such an order would have to produce 'all the subscriber information that relates to any information...that is specified in the order'.”
He also says, “As a result, service providers could be compelled to produce much more subscriber information than is necessary for the purposes of a given investigation.” Again, it's overly broad in its scope.
The Privacy Commissioner went on in his brief to cite concerns around the fact that “for greater certainty” with respect to production orders or warrants, it wouldn't be necessary to get one if the information were available to the public. In other words, law enforcement could do a runaround on the basis that the information was supposedly publicly available. I should note, as the Privacy Commissioner notes, that just because information is publicly available, it does not automatically follow that privacy interests and the right to privacy are not attached. That is not the case.
Also, what's missing from the bill is a provision for “necessity and proportionality” to ensure that regulations made under the legislation “are tailored to minimize privacy impacts.”
These are just some of the concerns the Privacy Commissioner raised with regard to Bill C-22.
At the public safety committee last week, Conservatives asked, given the serious concerns the Privacy Commissioner raised, that the Privacy Commissioner be present as a witness to address questions about privacy as the committee goes through clause-by-clause, just as, for example, CSIS, the RCMP and departmental officials are there to answer questions. Conservatives thought it was appropriate that the Privacy Commissioner also be there, given that this bill deals with issues around public safety that need to be balanced against the privacy rights of Canadians.
What we saw last Thursday at the public safety committee was Liberals thwarting and blocking the Privacy Commissioner from coming to committee, the very commissioner who is charged with protecting and promoting the privacy rights of Canadians. Liberal MPs want the commissioner to be silenced, to not be heard, to not answer questions about clauses within the bill that go to the heart of the privacy rights of Canadians. The question is this: Why?
The answer one can reasonably infer is that the Liberals want to sidestep and ignore the very serious concerns that the commissioner has raised about the threats posed by Bill C-22 to the privacy rights of Canadians. These are the same Liberals, by the way, who are doing a do-over with Bill C-22 after they got caught sneaking, into what they called a “border bill”, a surveillance bill in Bill C-2.
Given that, I would submit that it's imperative that we hear from the Privacy Commissioner and that we on this committee, who are charged with dealing with issues around the Privacy Act and privacy issues, report our concerns to the House and urge the Liberals to reverse course in order to stop putting a gag on the Privacy Commissioner and to allow the Privacy Commissioner to come before the public safety committee so that the committee can fully understand the privacy implications of Bill C-22.
Thank you very much.