When it comes to encryption, the battle for that is lost. There is absolutely no way that the Canadian government can prevent outside organizations from communicating through encrypted technologies. We can go to every single Canadian company that deals in encryption and demand a backdoor key, and it will do absolutely nothing, because there are thousands of other companies around the world from outside our jurisdiction that anyone can go to.
So the idea of trying to prevent encryption, or to go after encryption, is surrounded by a massive misunderstanding. It's impossible. It is impossible for the government to get that. All we can do is make Canada, legitimate actors, and people who are lawfully using this encryption, including our law enforcement agencies, far less secure by demanding these keys and by demanding access. The only people this will actually harm are law-abiding citizens, period.
It is folly to think we will be able to get access to that dark room through encryption. It will never work, and a big part of the reason this bulk metadata and overall data collection simply doesn't work is that the bad guys who really want to prevent you from getting that information will be able to do so. They'll either go offline or they'll use encrypted technologies that our government will never be able to crack, because they're encrypted from organizations outside our jurisdiction. The only way to effectively fight this would be to put an agent, through traditional surveillance, in the room. You can't access that dark room if it's cut off from the Internet. You can access it if you have somebody there. That's the way it has to work.