Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to join the debate today.
I listened with great sympathy to every word said by my new colleague across the way. I understand the issue very well and sympathize with the challenge that is facing him, and many of us, which is exactly why Bill C-2 is so important in enabling us to make the kinds of changes necessary to give the tools that are required and necessary for the various policing organizations and other organizations that deal with the many issues that Bill C-2 covers. I am happy to be able to speak to it, as well as to welcome my hon. colleague here.
I want to focus my remarks on the provisions of the bill that deal with lawful access, which is an issue that many of us have heard about and talked about.
When the police want to investigate something, they often have many roadblocks in being able to do that. How law enforcement obtains evidence in investigations is a real challenge. These provisions, though, have sparked much public comment, and I would like to try to dispel some of the myths about them.
Before I do that, I want to provide some of the context that informs the bill that we are debating today. A key challenge facing the criminal justice system right now is that digital evidence is required in almost all criminal and national security investigations. The Internet has fundamentally transformed how many serious offences, such as extortion, fraud and money laundering, are committed. The online world also allows criminals to operate across borders much more easily. As a result, many types of crimes are easier to commit and harder to detect, investigate and prosecute.
The transnational nature of many types of crime and the storage of data in the cloud, beyond the reach of local law enforcement, makes international co-operation a necessity in many of these investigations. The evolving case law in this context also highlights the challenges that law enforcement faces in accessing key information required to investigate many of these serious crimes. I am referring especially to two decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada, in Spencer and in Bykovets, which address child sexual exploitation and abuse material and online fraud.
In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada, in Spencer, held that Internet users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their identity when linked to anonymous online activity. Accordingly, the court held that the police need some type of lawful authority to obtain subscriber information in this context. The Spencer decision has had a significant impact on law enforcement investigations across the country. Since that decision, service providers, in the context of routine investigations, do not provide the police with any information relating to their subscribers without a court order.
In the absence of a specific tool to seek lawful authority to obtain subscriber information, law enforcement has been using what is called a general production order. However, this tool was designed for other purposes, and police are often unable to meet its threshold requirements, namely, to demonstrate that they reasonably believe that an offence has been or will be committed and that the subscriber information sought will provide evidence of the offence. If they do not meet those conditions, they cannot obtain a general production order.
That is just one example of the difficulties that our law enforcement officers and other authorities have when it comes to securing evidence that is required. These conditions are particularly challenging at the very early stages of investigations.
Bill C-2 proposes to address that challenge, post-Spencer, by establishing a new production order. It is designed specifically to allow the police to seek judicial authorization to compel the production of subscriber information. This would be done on a standard that is calibrated to balance the expectation of privacy with the needs of the state to pursue criminal investigations when there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the information will assist in the investigation of an offence, making it something that should be much easier to obtain.
One of the key safeguards embedded in these amendments is requiring judicial authorization prior to the release of any subscriber information. Previous attempts by Parliament to address this issue proposed allowing the police to access subscriber information without prior judicial authorization, but in 2024, in R v. Bykovets, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to an IP address that has been assigned to them. An IP address, of course, as we all know, is a unique set of numbers that identifies a device connected to the Internet or a private network.
The decision has created uncertainty as to how police can act when an IP address has been provided to them voluntarily. For example, when the victim of an online crime such as fraud identifies an IP address when filing a police report or when law enforcement receives tips regarding child sexual exploitation and abuse from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the bill clarifies that law enforcement can receive and act on information, including an IP address, that is provided to them unsolicited and information that is publicly available. This clarification would enable more timely investigations and reduce pressures on the criminal justice system, including police and judicial resources.
Bill C-2 would also modernize existing tools like the main research and seizure power in the Criminal Code. It has been in place for decades and was originally designed for the search of physical places and the seizure of tangible things. The proposed amendments address the examination of data stored on an accessible device by adding terms and conditions relating to the examination of the data. The proposed amendments seek to codify the Supreme Court of Canada's direction on computer searches set out in the 2013 decision R v. Vu. Related to this amendment is clarification that the Criminal Code's existing regime governing the detention of seized property does not apply to data obtained during an investigation.
As I previously mentioned, digital evidence is now required in almost all serious criminal and national security investigations. Often this digital evidence may be held outside of Canada; for instance, it may be held by social media companies. Existing mutual legal assistance mechanisms are often too slow for investigations that require digital evidence, especially in light of the volatile nature of data and the ease with which it can be moved or destroyed. Bill C-2 would establish a new mechanism, called an “international production request”, that would allow law enforcement to seek authority from a court in Canada to request subscriber information or transmission data.
Bill C-2 is important and is necessary for us to move forward in this new time in our world.
