Absolutely, Chair, I'm happy to.
Let's imagine that this law is on the books. In a year or two, imagine hundreds and maybe thousands of investigations across multiple national law enforcement agencies and federal departments on all of our digital systems. Who's managing all those secure keys? Who's accountable for patching and updating those systems to make sure they are secure?
If I leave you with one message today, it's this. The business community supports production orders and we support urgent 24-hour production orders in exigent circumstances, but we are very concerned at the prospect of unfettered access by a government-authorized person to pull information from encrypted, secured systems.
What's also puzzling about this debate is that I've had the privilege of working with some of the most talented lawyers in the country, and there is a debate right now about whether or not Bill C-22 in part 2 requires a warrant. It is critical that the powers in Bill C-22's part 2 be amended to clarify this important point, especially in proposed subsections 5, 7, 14 and 20.
On the discussion of metadata, this will impose significant costs—millions of dollars—on businesses, and not just on the infrastructure to retain the data, but to manage it, to manage it securely and to have it in a usable format for law enforcement. As soon as you store large volumes of sensitive data, it becomes a cyber-target. As soon as data is retained, it's a target.
We recognize the importance of non-disclosure orders, but these should be limited to court-authorized actions tied to national security risks and active investigations.
Bill C-22 could also penalize successful Canadian companies that operate here in Canada but also have operations in the United States and Europe. If you are an electronic service provider based in Canada today, with customers in the United States and Europe, complying with parts of part 2 could put you offside with law enforcement and regulators in those jurisdictions. At a time when businesses are already facing tax competitiveness pressures, tariff uncertainty and the broader economic risk that we're all facing, adding another layer of regulatory burden on Canadian companies at this particular time may incentivize them to relocate.
Finally, with regard to the definition of “core provider”, without an amendment to this section, it potentially captures the vast majority of Canadian businesses that communicate or provide an electronic service.
In closing, the business community very clearly has signalled that they're concerned about Bill C-2 and part 2 especially. I think we all trust that the current Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice will use the measures in this law in a way that's appropriate and as they've said. I'm sure the public servants who were at the committee on Tuesday would do the same. They seemed to be very honest and reputable—