Debates of April 20th, 2026

Lawful Access Act, 2026

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always great to get up in the House and represent the fine people of Ponoka—Didsbury. I consider myself fairly right-wing, but my colleague from Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee is making me look like a moderate in the House today. I unfortunately do not have time to go back and alter my speech in order to keep pace with my new-found best friend. We are going to be spending a lot more time together, based on my assessment of what he had to say about the government across the way.

It is important to speak to this piece of legislation, Bill C-22, the lawful access act. It is a bit weird to stand here, because it feels like we were just talking about this last fall. This is the second kick at the cat for this piece of legislation for the government. The Liberals tried to have a similar set of laws passed in a sweeping omnibus bill, Bill C-2, but that bill did not pass, and now it seems it is being reintroduced by the government. We know that it is coming on the heels of what was a minority Parliament and is going to turn into a majority Parliament here soon. One always has to keep that in mind. If this bill is crafted the same way that the majority government here was crafted, there is no reason at all to think that this is not a sneaky piece of legislation.

The Liberals laud their talking points and their PMO comms lines that this bill would help keep Canadians safe and get crime under control. The only reason crime is not under control is that we have had 11 years of Liberals across the way. If Bill C-22 were really about law and order, limiting crime or protecting victims, Conservatives would be wholly in support of this piece of legislation, but it is actually not about any of that. It is about power, it is about control, and it has a very deeply Orwellian feel to it.

Conservatives in this country have always believed in law and order. A vital and fundamental pillar of what it means to be a Conservative is to believe in and respect the rule of law in this country. We used to actually have governments that followed the laws as well. It would be nice if we got back to that at some point in time.

The governing Liberals have had many opportunities over the last 11 years to show us that they also want to see a reduction in crime, but every chance that we put in front of this Parliament, they seem to vote against. The Liberals have an ardent history of refusing bail reform and embracing catch-and-release style legislation. Now, after a decade, they expect the opposition members to believe that they are actually serious about cracking down on crime. Well, I am not buying it.

Last week, we debated Bill C-25, which would amend the Canada Elections Act. One of the objectives of that bill is to prevent foreign interference. During debate of that bill, I used the example of the 700 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members who are freely living in Canada today. The government will not deport them and will not put them in jail. They are here fundraising, conducting business and harming our country every single day. The Liberals cannot say that they are serious about dealing with foreign interference if they do not deport the terrorists and criminals living in our country. They cannot say they are serious about crime and protecting Canadians without deporting these same terrorists or criminals from the country as well. They cannot have it both ways. That is because the Liberals are not serious about crime.

The Liberals are serious, however, about seizing control and having more power for themselves and their government. We know that much for sure. On Friday, my colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes referred to Bill C-22 as “Bill C-2 redo”, and he is exactly right.

Last fall, the Liberals put forward Bill C-2, the strong borders act, which fell short of protecting Canadians while overreaching in many areas of jurisdiction where it did not need to, like authorizing law enforcement to open up people's mail and inspect it without any due process at all. There was severe push-back on this, not only from the opposition but from hundreds of advocacy groups, who stood firmly against this legislation because of the risks it would pose to the civil liberties of the Canadian public. The Conservatives successfully blocked Bill C-2, stopping the Liberals from limiting the use of cash in transactions, opening the mail without any oversight whatsoever, and demanding that any service providers, including hospitals, financial institutions and probably even one's local dry cleaning store, disclose user data without any judicial oversight.

Bill C-22 removed some of these proposed provisions that we opposed, but reintroduced some of the proposed parts of Bill C-2 that were rejected when the Liberals held their rightful minority government. They have since reintroduced this bill, now that they know they are going to have the majority of votes in this place. It seems like an awfully convenient opportunity, does it not?

We Conservatives support giving law enforcement officers the tools they need to combat crime and keep communities safe, particularly as threats and dangers evolve in the digital age, but we also believe that there need to be strong safeguards accompanying these powers.

There also need to be clear limits and independent oversight to protect the rights and freedoms of the people here in Canada. Bill C-2 was a failed piece of legislation that the opposition could not and did not support because not only did it fail to adequately address the criminal element in our society, but it infringed on the freedoms and the rights of Canadians in an unjustifiable way.

Now the Liberals seek to reintroduce many of the rejected measures of Bill C-2 in this bill today. They rebranded their failed legislation as Bill C-22 and have brought it back to this very House with their illegitimately obtained, like I said, soon-to-be majority here in the House. This should alarm Canadians, especially the 11-plus million Canadian voters who did not actually vote for a Liberal candidate in the last election.

Our caucus has been very clear in where we stand on the Liberals' obsession with big, bloated and powerful government: It is unnecessary and is a gross misuse of power.

Bill C-22 focuses specifically on telecommunications and Internet service providers while creating oversight for ministerial orders. The Liberals have already banned news from being reported on Meta. Why do they need access to Canadians' information through the Internet and telecommunications providers? Will the personal information of Canadians be shared with the government through this bill, like it would have been under Bill C-2? The government will not tell us. Can any member sitting on the government benches today give me an answer to that? If they could, they probably would not. If they did have an answer, chances are it would be wrong.

Keeping Canadians safe is just a mere disguise for the folks across the way. The Liberals have had over a decade to keep Canadians safe, and they have continuously let crime get worse. The Liberals say that Bill C-22 is needed to keep up with the rapid growth of our world's digital environment and to help keep Canadians safe, but it makes me wonder if this is actually true. I would say that in some cases it is not. Why is this? It is because the Liberals have voted down every piece of crime-reducing legislation the Conservatives have brought to the House since this Parliament commenced last May.

The Liberals have repeatedly ignored the calls of every single premier in Canada who asked for bail reform. They refused to appoint judges, so violent criminals are having their cases dismissed and timed out. This is not about crime reduction for the Liberals across the way. This is all about having an excuse and a reason to seize power and control.

Even CBC pundit Andrew Coyne, known for his staunch Conservative support, and I am kidding of course, said last week that the Prime Minister has an “autocratic streak a mile wide,” and he is showing that now. Coyne said that during a minority Parliament. How bad will it actually get in a majority parliament? It is all about control, about central control by the central banker.

Bill C-2 was about control by letting law enforcement open our mail. Bill C-9 would control what religious people are allowed to say out loud or how texts are supposed to be read. Bill C-22 would control the privacy rights of Canadians through increased government surveillance and access to information.

We know this because the Liberals have a track record of these power grabs, such as changes they proposed to make to the Standing Orders in 2016. I do not know if there are a lot of people here today who remember that, but I remember it. They were going to basically take control of this place. They did not want an opposition; they wanted an audience.

There was the former prime minister's interference in the SNC-Lavalin scandal in 2019 and subsequent firing of the first indigenous female justice minister in Canadian history. As well, we see the consistent cutting, through time allocation, of debates on important pieces of legislation. There were gag orders on government watchdogs, as well as the unnecessary invocation of the Emergencies Act in 2022, which saw the Liberals freeze the bank accounts of hundreds of Canadians.

There was the expansion of cabinet authority provided in Bill C-5. Bill C-15 gives ministers of the Crown permission to exempt individuals and organizations of their choosing from any federal law they want, including the Criminal Code. Now there is online surveillance and access to Canadians' information.

Every time the Liberals are tasked with solving a problem, they always choose to assert total control and dominance over the situation. They grab power for power's sake. They control people's taxes, finances, what they say, the religious texts they read aloud, the firearms they are allowed to hunt with, the things they need to believe to qualify for Canada's summer jobs money and the salmon they allowed to fish for on the west coast.

It is all about control. It is always overkill. It is always too much. It is always over the top. It never solves the problem. Then again, one cannot be the problem and the solution at the same time. Bill C-22 is of course no different.

The Conservatives have put forward so many pieces of legislation to crack down on crime and protect Canadians, but the Liberals continue to vote us down in favour of their soft-on-crime policies that repeatedly let violent offenders out on bail time and time again.

The government does not need to infringe on the rights of Canadians to solve the problem of surging crime. That problem is solved and Canadians are protected by putting violent offenders in jail, strengthening bail laws and deporting non-citizens who are guilty of committing violent crimes here in Canada. I do not see any of that in this legislation. It is because the Liberals are not serious about fixing the problem. They are only serious about garnering more control for themselves and their friends, and taking Canadians' tax dollars and putting it on their—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, in a word, wow. We can talk about conspiracy theories. We can talk about misinformation. When we want to talk about safety in our communities, we have a new Prime Minister from less than a year ago, as well as a new government.

Bill C-9 deals with hate propaganda. Bill C-14 deals with bail reform. Bill C-16 actually restores mandatory minimums. We have Bill C-22 that deals with sensitive issues such as national security, terrorism, extortion and child exploitation. They are all substantive pieces of legislation.

On the other hand, the biggest thing the Conservatives have done to date has been to filibuster and slow down the progress of legislation because, in the minds of some, there is a giant conspiracy that the Government of Canada wants to take over the world.

Does the member support the principle of lawful access?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that was a lot of consternation. The member actually did not list a single thing that I said as being untrue or wrong. Is that not funny? Not one thing that I actually said did he disagree with. He just spoke loud, yelled and made a big production, as if he was somehow offended by all of the facts that I presented here in the House today.

Does the lawful access regime in this bill do some good things? Yes, it is going to do some good things. It is going to do some things that law enforcement needs. As a former law enforcement officer, I know that we actually need to give tools to the men and women who protect us and keep us safe every day.

The problem is the Liberals never get it right the first time. Every piece of legislation that he talked about has to do with undoing things or restoring them. Well, he is undoing his own mess. He is restoring things that Conservatives have done. One cannot be the problem and the solution at the same time.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C‑22 includes a change involving the burden of proof. The government wants to allow police forces and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to obtain warrants based on suspicions. Previously, it was necessary to prove to a judge that there were reasonable grounds to believe that a crime was committed or that a crime would be committed. From now on, what is required is to prove that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a crime was committed or that a crime will be committed. It is the lowest standard in criminal law, and that is now what is being proposed.

In my colleague's opinion, what are the risks associated with this change?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there are some potentially groundbreaking and new precedent-setting provisions in this legislation, but we also have to have some of the tools in place that will allow police to operate in a digital environment. There are lots of laws in the Criminal Code about the things we can and cannot do in real life, in the real and tangible world that we are not allowed to do. We cannot harm each other. We cannot steal property. We cannot do many of those things, yet the online world seems to allow a greater opportunity for these things to happen.

I am looking forward to this bill going to committee. I think that is the place where some of these questions will actually need to be addressed and where we get the proper experts. I think the member who asked me the question is right to have the questions he has. I am sure their member on the committee will flesh this—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have to continue with questions and comments.

The hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the Indian Act, I have a special concern when it comes to civil liberties and the freedoms and rights of Canadians. However, when we are talking about protecting civil liberties, the Liberal government says that is based on conspiracies when, really, all we are trying to do is protect the freedom of Canadians.

Can my colleague give some examples of the Liberal government trying to promote the overreach of government, which nobody wants in this House or in Canada?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it does not seem to matter what aspect of life in Canada we look at, but if someone had, at any point in time, a disagreement with the policy of the government in the last 11 years, they would be squarely in the crosshairs of the government's mean-spirited implementation of programs. For example, groups running summer camps for kids have to sign an attestation form to go against their own values, in order to access their very own tax dollars from the government. That is just one example of how the Liberals actually only govern for themselves and the people who agree with them, and they—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Kitchener South—Hespeler.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my speech by thanking OpenMedia, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and privacy lawyer David Fraser for their excellent work on Bill C-22. The analysis I am about to offer closely mirrors their own, and if the Liberal government members would simply listen seriously to these civil liberties groups, they would not have to hear from me on this bill, but they have not, so here we are.

At around age 13, I was horrified to read the following excerpt from chapter 1 of George Orwell's 1984:

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made...would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision...he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in...was guesswork.

That gave me a chill down the spine 27 years ago. Could people really live with the government listening to their every utterance, watching their every move? How could the human spirit ever flourish in the utter absence of basic privacy? Even at a much younger age, I knew it was basically wrong for my sister to go through the things in my room or for me to read her diary, not because any authority figure ever told me it was wrong, but because I knew it in my soul. One cannot develop one's thoughts, one's feelings, one's self under prying eyes. That was just respect to my friends and family. What if a power as great as the government or the police violated our privacy? I knew that my mother and her family had escaped a Communist regime in the 1960s, but back then, telescreens were science fiction. Could my family have managed to plan their escape if a telescreen had been in their home?

I knew vaguely that there had been revolutions in East Germany and throughout the U.S.S.R., but even in 1989, when those revolutions started, the telescreen idea remained in the realm of science fiction. Fast-forward to today, I am more horrified today. We now have the technological capability to make telescreens. I have a phone in my pocket and an Apple Watch on my wrist. I am most horrified because, with the legislation before us, the Liberal government is attempting to make possible the 1984 telescreen out of every cell phone, AirPod, Apple Watch, smart TV and automobile, anything that is connected to the Internet. To quote the excerpt from 1984 again, “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.”

I know the members opposite will consider my views outlandish, but they are not. Let me please take them through their own law to show them how they are doing the exact thing they swore they would never do.

Proposed subsection 5(2) says:

The Governor in Council [which means the government] may make regulations respecting the obligations of core providers, including regulations respecting

(a) the development, implementation, assessment, testing and maintenance of operational and technical capabilities, including capabilities related to extracting and organizing information that is authorized to be accessed

In plain English, this means a back door. Right now, it is my understanding that my watch listens to everything I say. If I say, “Hey, Siri”, it sends whatever speech follows to the cloud for processing. If I do not say, “Hey, Siri”, nothing goes to the cloud. Proposed paragraph 5(2)(a) allows the minister to require that Apple build in the ability for authorities to listen to my Apple Watch whether I say, “Hey, Siri” or not. The same would go for my phone and my AirPods. Yes, they would need a warrant to actually listen in, but this bill takes the huge first step of building the surveillance architecture in the first place. Once it is built, it will be ripe for abuse either by the government or by hackers. Once it is built, it will not be unbuilt. We are at the stage where the government builds all the telescreens and puts them in our home, but promises to only use them if we have been bad.

What is worse is this bill, as pertains to electronic service providers under proposed section 7, such as Apple, Signal, Telegram or Tinder, may be forced to keep that back door secret. Proposed section 15 says:

An electronic service provider and any person acting on its behalf must not disclose any of the following information

(c) the fact that the electronic service provider is subject to the order;

In plain English, this section sets out the fact that the government has ordered construction of a back door to be kept secret. Once this bill passes, our cell phone manufacturer, our messaging service, our dating app may receive a secret order to build a back door into the service for the government to check in on us, and we might never be alerted. Our excerpt from the 1984 says, “How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in...was guesswork.” Why? Why, if everything here was above board, would the bill include the ability for the public safety minister to build secret back doors? I do not happen to be one of them, but some Canadians might say it is okay to read their Tinder messages, that they do not care, but to at least tell them if the government is going to do that. This bill specifically allows a minister to do it secretly. Why?

Just on these points alone, the construction of a backdoor surveillance architecture and that they intend to keep some parts of this architecture secret, the Liberals should hang their heads in shame. Liberals are supposed to fight against this sort of excessive government reach. They are not supposed to be its source, and it only gets worse.

As set forth in proposed paragraph 5(2)(d), in addition to demanding that secret back doors be constructed, the government's ministers can order all electronic service providers to collect and store all metadata for a year. Metadata means many things, but the most important thing to me is location. This bill goes even further than the telescreens in 1984. It would turn every Internet-connected device into not just a listening device, but a tracking device as well, and it would cause that location data to be admissible in a court of law.

Let me just give a couple of examples for why I find this concerning. We just had a pandemic, in which some governments went way too far restricting human rights in unscientific ways. Do people remember the red zones and the green zones or the six-person bubbles? It may surprise the House to learn that I never broke a single COVID rule, even though I was a strong critic of their unscientific basis, but I know that a lot of people did. I know that some people sitting on the government side of the House did. It is a matter of public record that Justin Trudeau broke COVID rules and broke the Reopening Ontario Act by attending a Black Lives Matter protest here in Ottawa.

If Bill C-22 passes, when there is another pandemic with some silly rules, any police officer could say they suspect that the member for Winnipeg North broke pandemic rules, get a warrant and see his location for every moment of the last 365 days. If he ever stepped into a red zone or ever broke quarantine, it would be game over. This capability would not be merely for COVID laws. It would be for every law. Chrystia Freeland was once found guilty of going 30 kilometres an hour over the limit on the highway to see her dad. Once she was convicted of that, a police officer could check to see her speed for every moment of the 365 days preceding.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. As the head of Joseph Stalin's secret service said, “Show me the man and I'll show you the crime.” If everyone here is surveilled 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, every one of us will be liable to be found guilty of something. If the government of the day passes this bill in its present form, I fear that the Liberals may live to see the day when its provisions are used against them. I swear it will not be me doing it, but who knows who will be prime minister in 2046. I fear her last name may be Trudeau-Perry.

The Liberals will rue the day they torched all our collective privacy rights. I urge them to correct course. We can catch bad guys without violating the privacy rights of every single Canadian.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful that we are seeing the legislation go to committee. I disagree with much of what the member opposite has said. Within this legislation, the public security and safety issues are being addressed, and privacy concerns are also addressed. We can do both in one piece of legislation. Bill C-22 amplifies both of those. Most importantly, it would protect real Canadians in our communities from organized crime and so many other things that are taking place. The legislation is needed because it is time to modernize. Canada is the only one of the Five Eyes that does not have legislation of this nature.

Does he support the principle?

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is very interesting that the member disagreed with everything I said but failed to point to one specific piece of my analysis that was wrong. Every piece of my analysis was correct.

As to this talking point, I keep hearing that all the Five Eyes are doing it. I am proud to be Canadian. I am proud to have been born in the freest country in the land, and God help me, I am going to keep it that way. Just because the member's friends are all jumping off a cliff, it does not mean that the member should too.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raised some rather serious concerns in his speech, including on the idea of forcing service providers to go further than they do currently and develop capacity to retain metadata for one year, which may include geolocation.

What parameters can my colleague propose to ensure that, if this bill moves forward, we can keep this data as secure as possible?

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the best way to keep a year's worth of surveillance location data secure is to not build a back door or to not save it in the first place. There is some bizarre verbiage in this bill about systemic vulnerabilities, but the point of part 2 of this legislation, as it currently stands, is to build the systemic vulnerabilities that it later says it is not building. It is frankly doublespeak at this point, and it needs to be significantly reworked.

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we often hear from the other side that Canada is the only country that does not have this type of law, but what they sometimes forget to talk about are the damages and deleterious effects that have come from creating these back doors or front doors.

Does the member have any examples of bad things happening, either by government abuse or by hackers and bad actors?

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am relying on the video that privacy lawyer David Fraser put together on the topic. I urge every member of the House, particularly those on the government benches, to see it. It is not outlandish. He is a very credible voice. He teaches at Dalhousie University. He speaks about the Salt Typhoon incident in which the Americans, one of those Five Eyes partners that my colleague from Winnipeg North is so eager to emulate, built these sorts of back doors into their messaging services. The first thing that happened was that the Chinese Communist Party hacked into them and got everybody's private conversations.

It is a real threat. If the NSA is subject to this sort of data exploitation by the Chinese Communist Party, I suspect that our country, having just initiated this new security partnership with the Chinese Communist Party, would be even more at risk.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a previous colleague of ours shared the metaphor that one cannot be the problem and the solution at the same time.

I wonder if my hon. colleague could respond to the following metaphor with respect to the government actually behaving itself if this legislation were to pass. A previous assistant deputy minister once said to me that a hog can never slaughter itself.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am a great fan of my colleague who asked the question. I myself am a city boy, and I do not understand the metaphor.

Can I just say what is particularly galling to me about this legislation? Conservatives like law and order. We support the police. We want bad guys in jail. We have put forward dozens, at this point—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

We are resuming debate.

The hon. member for Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj has the floor.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, how can we ensure that law enforcement and CSIS have the resources they need to access digital data and effectively combat organized crime and threats to national security without descending into an era of widespread, intrusive and excessive surveillance?

That is the question that we are facing today in this debate on Bill C-22. How can we modernize our law enforcement without infringing on people's right to privacy?

Bill C‑22 seeks to strike a balance. I understand that we will likely be able to find out in committee if this balance was struck.

We in the Bloc Québécois have a number of questions about what is being proposed, although we support the goal of properly equipping our law enforcement agencies. We have questions about a number of aspects.

The first question concerns the proposed new orders. The government wants to simplify the work of law enforcement when it comes to conducting investigations. How? It is creating a new order. The order will allow law enforcement to simply ask an Internet or electronic service provider whether or not a person is a subscriber.

All that a police officer needs to make this request is a suspicion, and a suspicion is not much at all. A suspicion is the lowest bar there is in Canadian criminal law. Police officers are often asked to have “reasonable grounds to believe” that a crime has been committed. This remains the current state of the law today.

Why are police officers required to have reasonable grounds to believe that a crime has been committed? It is to prevent fishing expeditions and to ensure that police officers have a minimum amount of evidence before obtaining people's personal data.

The other order provided for in Bill C-22 concerns the production of subscriber information. Once again, the burden of proof that law enforcement agencies would be required to meet is low. If they have a phone number, for example, or an IP address, they only need to have a suspicion that a crime has been committed or is about to be committed. That is a very low threshold, and it does not take much. They will be able to go before a court to obtain an order for the production of information. They will be able to obtain the name and address of the person to whom the IP address belongs and track them down. Is it possible to strike a balance with such a measure when the burden of proof is lowered? We will have to ask this question and listen to privacy experts, because a police officer might be strongly tempted to quickly file a request for the production of documents, given that it will now be much easier to do so.

Another point that is quite concerning and that will raise questions is that, under Bill C‑22, the Minister of Public Safety will first have to determine which service providers would be required to develop technical capabilities.

We need to understand where we are going with this. Right now, some telephone or social media service providers do not really keep the data they have because they are not interested in it, since they are only in business for commercial purposes. They might keep some data for the purpose of commercial profiling, but they might not keep it for a very long time or in an orderly fashion, since they have no commercial interest in doing so.

Essentially, however, what the government is proposing with Bill C‑22 is to require service providers to have the technical capability to retain metadata for one year, including the geolocation data of its subscribers. They will also be required to ensure that they can provide this information within a relatively short period of time, on the grounds that law enforcement may need it in order to know where a specific person was on a specific date.

Of course, we understand how incredibly efficient this will be for law enforcement, because as soon as they have reason to suspect that a crime has been committed, they will be able to retrieve location data to determine where a person was on a specific date.

It will help, but it raises some very legitimate concerns, because, as my colleague mentioned, a database will be created containing millions and millions of location data points for each individual. Each one of us has a phone, which means that with data from the past year, it would be possible to determine where we were at any given time.

This is meant to target criminals, of course, but 99.9% of people in Canada are not criminals and their data are going to be captured somewhere. Any time that a large amount of data like that exists somewhere, it can attract organized crime. We know about hackers, but countless other situations come to mind if we think of all the metadata to be stored. I understand that people would be concerned about this. Questions must be asked, because these data banks will not be created by the government, but by businesses. They will be required to conserve these data, but what kind of data protection will be required? There are examples. A few years back, fraud was committed at Desjardins. Sometimes the mechanisms are good, but insiders have bad intentions. A year's worth of geolocation metadata is practically a treasure trove for hackers. The mind reels just thinking about it.

Another concern we have is about the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. Normally, one would expect this agency to be given more financial and legal authority, as well as material resources, to do its job and to reassure us, at least a little, about this new surveillance system that is being put in place. One of our concerns is that, when interventions are made, the agency will not be notified until 12 months later. There are other countries, such as Australia, where the agency is notified in real time. However, 12 months is already quite far removed from the abuse of authority, if any abuse occurred, so we have a concern on that front.

Next, we have concerns regarding funding. The government has announced across-the-board cuts that will affect this agency in particular. These cuts amount to 15%. If law enforcement agencies are being granted expanded powers and significant amounts of personal data will be stored with service providers, we would at least like to be assured that the agency will have the resources it needs to take action.

I also have questions about the regulatory powers that are being granted. Since April, the government has adopted the unfortunate habit of frequently proposing to proceed by regulatory means, so there are concerns. How will the government determine what exactly constitutes a service provider? Some banks are concerned. Will they be included in that definition? If they provide banking services, will they have to retain that data as well? The minister's power to act through regulatory means and ministerial orders raises some concerns for us, as does this bill's alignment with Quebec's new Bill 25, which seeks to protect personal information and which forced businesses and organizations in Quebec to adapt to protect data. Is the federal government going to add another layer of protection? That will need to be done properly. We need to be careful about this so as not to duplicate legislative protections.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am again encouraged by the Bloc recognizing that there is value to having lawful access. I did not know about the Province of Quebec. I will have to look into that aspect. I would like to think they would be complementary of each other, but I do not know. I believe it is important for the bill to go to committee. The member raises a number of concerns he has with the ministry. If there are things that they can do even in advance, I would encourage him to do likewise.

My understanding is that the Bloc supports the principle of the legislation and wants to see it go to committee. Am I not correct?

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what the Bloc Québécois is asking for is a balanced approach. We want to give law enforcement the ability to act, adapt and modernize its capacity to act while also ensuring that the right to personal information and privacy remains a fundamental right that is protected in Quebec and Canada.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to ask a question to my colleague from Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj. I also want to congratulate him on his speech.

Earlier, my Bloc Québécois colleague asked a question about Bill 25 that was passed by the Quebec National Assembly. Although this legislation was necessary and legitimate, it caused a lot of challenges for Quebec businesses when it was introduced, forcing them to adapt to this new reality in terms of privacy protection. I think the question is very relevant, because the federal government is creating a law that will likely infringe a bit on what has already been implemented in Quebec under Bill 25.

Can my colleague tell us how we could proceed, if Bill C‑22 were to be passed, to ensure that it is seamless for Quebec businesses, which have already gone through quite a bit of hardship as a result of adapting to Bill 25?

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. I think that, when the time comes, we will have to take a closer look at what Bill 25 has accomplished. The idea behind Bill 25 was really to protect personal information in this increasingly digital age.

As for Bill C‑22, I am really concerned about the businesses that will be affected by it. I think it will be important to put in place very specific measures. Service providers will be required to keep data, and we will have to make them ensure that it is the most secure data in the world.