Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Secretary of State for Combatting Crime.
Bill C-22, an act respecting lawful access, is a tool that law enforcement has been asking for for many decades, in fact, over three decades. Canada is the only Five Eyes and G7 country not to have a formalized lawful access regime. We have had a couple of court decisions that spoke to the limits of this very important issue of lawful access that people have been asking for.
Over the past 10 months or so, the Minister of Justice, the Secretary of State for Combatting Crime and I have been going around the country meeting with police chiefs, as well as those in unions, law enforcement and, across the board, individuals who have direct experience with the impediments that the inability to have a lawful access regime poses to the safety and security of Canadians.
Members will be aware that over the last several months, I tasked a former minister from British Columbia, Murray Rankin, to engage with different parties, oftentimes those with competing or differing views, to build an element of consensus on what a lawful access regime should look like. The parties included those in civil society, academics, law enforcement, and industry. Mr. Rankin had a number of engagements between the four groups and made some recommendations to the Minister of Justice and me. I thank him for his work.
Based on that, and based on additional consultation, we put forward Bill C-22, which, in my opinion, balances the critical need for protection of individual privacy as well as ensuring that law enforcement has the necessary tools to do its work. I want to thank many colleagues, on both sides, who have been instrumental in helping us get to this point.
There are essentially three major parts to this bill. The first part, and I want to frame this—