The petition to withdraw and amend the bill was presented to the House of Commons today [1]. People whining about how there's nothing they can do basically don't engage in democracy and thats how you end up in a US situation..
I emailed 9 senators and heard back from one. Emailed the other 8 today. Even when you engage, there's little positive feedback. The older I get, the more I believe this is a feature of the system and not a bug.
I feel most of us have been conditioned to prefer only the mildest and most inoffensive ways of protesting as valid and consider the rest impossible. In my view, governments today ignore protests because they don't actually threaten anything. A protest with teeth might be mass absenteeism from work, refusing to pay taxes, something that actually hurts.. although in this case it's probably a bit much, when the threat of real protest is completely gone you end up with authoritarian governments.
The fact is this political system of ours is heavily balanced in favor of those with the endless budgets and resources to spend engaging in "democratic" avenues of influence.
Good start. Calls are also excellent. Then get your neighbors to do the same.
For controversial stuff, you want tens to hundreds of outreach events recorded. It doesn’t take all that much for electeds to spell a festering primary threat.
electeds? primary threat? i think that might backfire in the canadian senate
i know i voted against the referendum question last week to consider moving to a US inspired elected senate system. i dont think we need that pageantry
I'm familiar with American and Swiss elections. In both, the principal threat to an incumbent is from an own-party challenger to their seat.
For an incumbent, particularly one in a comfortable seat, an opposition candidate is usually not an issue. But someone from inside the camp is annoying and requires rhetorical contorting and lots of spending, spending that can then leave one vulnerable to an otherwise-benign opposition candidate. (Also, motivated activists are annoying in the best way.)
A smart elected–in these systems–will thus take a call to defuse anger before it develops into organized activism.
Ah, to clarify, Canada's upper house is basically a house of lords equivalent that we expect to be full of puffed up nobodies that get paid a too generous stipend to sit there and keep their mouths shut. Canada has one elected congress body (the one we all talk about) and then this vestigial senate which is generally expected to sit there and silently approve everything that passes through it.
It does technically have power, but it's like the King's power to veto UK legislation - he can do it precisely once and then he'll be stripped of the power.
Yeah, I think it'd be excellent if we could just disband our upper house and while it's worth pushing them to act on this bill I loathe the senate's continued existence and would rather be in a position where this emergency call happened prior to it passing the house.
That actually sounds crazy to me. At least for the House of Commons. I'm amenable to upper chambers of bicameral legislatures being indirectly elected. That's how the US Senate used to be before the constitution was amended.
I think you're misreading. MPs are directly elected. Anyone can run to be an MP (You have to collect 50 to 100 signatures from supporters and fill out some paperwork). Whoever wins the most votes in a riding becomes MP.
It's the property of a candidate being affiliated with a party - an indirect part of the election - that is run by the parties rules that are generally less than entirely democratic in nature.
The only thing that takes the Westminster system away from enabling real democracy is political parties, and they hadn't been invented when the system was designed. It took around 400 years before someone finally found the hack to break it. The original designers would have never envisioned the possibility that it could be hacked like that.
Liberals NDP and Greens would never form a government with the Conservatives so the liberals are effectively always in power.
Which means insiders in the liberal party are in charge and voting is partly irrelevant unless you're voting for the conservatives, but they would need an actual straight majority.
The Green party is not a force in Canadian politics,they have one seat and barring radical events will never have another.
Th Bloc has 21 seats, and has had as many as 54. They would certainly ally with the conservatives. (Not the modern maple maga variety, but old school PC).
Marty Deacon (Ontario) Committee chair 613-943-3429
Tony Ince (Nova Scotia) Deputy chair 343-991-5540
Andrew Cardozo (Ontario) Committee member 613-996-9545
Katherine Hay (Ontario) Committee member 343-991-5536
Rebecca Patterson (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-2185
Hassan Yussuff (Ontario) Committee member 613-944-1108
Kim Pate (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-9220
John M. McNair (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-995-5060
Victor Boudreau (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-947-4110
Judy A. White (Newfoundland and Labrador) Committee member 613-996-2433
Paula Simons is almost certainly against Bill C-22, so it probably won't be of any use to contact her about rejecting it. I would focus efforts on other Senators.
You won't be able to convince representatives with facts and logic. So many people want their attention that they can't pay enough attention to your arguments to be convinced. Contacting them is about showing that you care about it.
If they receive 100 calls of people saying they're strongly against a bill and no for they might reconsider their position.
Also calling is a better signal of showing you care then emailing.
Haha. You don't email them, you cut off their funding and smear their public image. This is how you make them move, not with emails. It takes some work though.
Careful there, too much of this kind of thinking and the MPs are going to find child porn on your phone, you sick criminal thief trying to overthrow the government.
I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy. If this is true and POSIWID, then mass democracy only ever nullifies any real extent of democracy. As I see it, the only real solution is to replace power. I don't know how to do that. Do you?
This sounds like an interesting argument, but it's damn hard to parse. I think you're saying that real democracy needs political (in the widest sense) engagement, which can't be got from the majority of people, so letting everyone participate without regard to such engagement gets in the way of real democracy, and therefore you suggest to "replace" (redistribute) power?
Anyway, this really needs an explanation of what your idea of "real democracy" is, and what "replace power" is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the answer to your question of "how" is likely: at your own peril. ;)
LBO maybe. Optimal governance would fix all bad mechanisms e.g. incentive traps, shooting self in the foot stuff, obvious inefficiencies, etc. - so it would result in a better future with more growth and wealth.
The difference can be used to bargain with incumbents to compensate for their current position, while installing a new type of government in its place that is better.
It's a pretty hard problem but I don't think it's impossible. I'm pursuing this kind of thing in Finland presently.
This is why it's so important to have guardrails that limit what the government can do. The US tried to do that, and has probably been the most successful at it - though there's still been a lot of scope creep outside their constitution already. And that's probably a one-way street.
> I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy.
Why not? Is it just that you have not experienced it, or is there a more principled argument?
My personal experience is that democracy feels to work much better in smaller (sub 10 million people) than larger, but it could also just be correlation not causation.
> Compulsory voting is an instrument to build authoritarianism, not to prevent it.
On what basis does someone make this claim? Authoritarianism is a broad stroke. Most of the time, they eliminate voting, not make it compulsory.
Classically, an authoritarian power only care about voting to initially take hold of power. Every attempt to coerce voting (one way or the other) after that is performative, not instrumental.
I'm not saying you shouldn't sign petitions, but no law has ever been changed or stopped because of a petition. Look at the most popular petitions to amend laws. They ignored all of them, from firearms to electoral reform. Petitions give the government a good excuse to do something they want to do anyway, but won't change their mind about something they're set on.
The only thing that will change their minds is taking their seat, but without electoral reform you can be quite certain that only those loyal to Liberal, NDP and CPC will get elected. And PQ, but they're just Quebec NDP.
The general public of Canada is more concerned with Trump than what any Canadian politician is up to, so good luck.
There are lots of laws in Canada that are not enforced. Ap owners/controllers will wait to see how the government wants to handle this. If the government starts making demands then they will pull out, but I doubt the bill itself will trigger anything immediate.
Signal, NordVPN, Psiphon VPN, Tailscale, Windscribe, and DuckDuckGo have already confirmed that they will stop offering their services in Canada, and not route any of their European services through Canadian proiders.
We have a version of this law in India which is even worse and has been used extensively by the govt to crack down on dissent and to do wholesale censoring of content that the establishment doesn't like.
All of this is done with ZERO due process - even the minimal due process that has been built into these draconian laws.
You're not wrong, the unelected senate generally chooses to defer to the elected lower chamber and only truly contentious legislation have been "killed" (as in dropped dead) at the Senate (think abortion and climate change).
Generally the Canadian Senate will propose amendments to the bill after its study (around a quarter of the time if I recall, not always), but the lower chamber has no obligation to agree, so it has some sway in that consultative sense. And the Senate has been more active in proposing amendments to legislation after independent senators became a thing.
At this point, I think the soft landing that privacy advocates can hope for are amendments that curtail the worst aspects of this legislation.
Dear Merica
We decided to get it over with and HELP pull the roof down on our heads, the simple fact is that there is a direct linear relationship between how advanced our technology gets and how poor our overall experience of it becomes.
> also expand the sharing of Canadians’ personal data with foreign law enforcement, including the United States. Canada has been negotiating a cross-border data-sharing agreement with the U.S. that would allow American police to get information about Canadian internet users without any Canadian court oversight.
This is actually even more amazing to me that with all the talk of data sovereignty, the EU and Canada are still negotiating reciprocal Cloud Act treaties that will give the US government warrantless access to basically all digital services and communications. The UK and Australia have already codified these agreements with the US.
Trump's loud mouth brought these issues to the forefront, but really it seems like everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
I wonder why the Canadian government would share citizens data with the u.s. while all this 51st state talk and terrif stuff is going on, does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
> does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
It probably is reciprocal, but in reality Canadian companies sell very little (if any) digital services to Americans. There isn't much they can even access. It's why the arrangement is so lopsided.
We have a Canadian Constitution and the Charter of rights and freedoms, section 8 covers search and privacy, it even looks like a warrant is needed for messages just laying around a server https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2013/2013scc16/2013scc1... but this bill aims to put a harpoon through our charter rights!
Canada is relatively unique among the common wealth countries as its founders were smart enough to remove parliamentary supremacy and have real judicial review.
I just wish that they would have also included a constitutional review council that reviews legislation before it comes law like France did (Constitutional Council), because a massive amount of damage can be done while waiting for the Canadian Supreme Court to rule on something.
You should probably educate yourself about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has so far held up far better than the Amendments. Its language is far more specific and precise, and the document itself provides justification and context for its requirements... Unlike the amendments, which have largely been re-interpreted and gutted by partisan judges into absurdity.
Do the 13th, or the 14th, or the 4th amendment mean anything these days?
Examples of what? An insurrectionist assuming the office of president? SCOTUS approving gerrymandering aimed at suppressing minority votes? Armed, masked thugs with a license to kill asking for your papers when you walk the street? Trump running for a third term in office? Immigrants arrested, held without trial, and deported without due process or access to a lawyer?
We have lots of examples of that. Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner? Or do you dispute that the text of the charter is unclear?
> Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner?
Plenty, it's just usually against unpopular targets. The most notable recent one being the trucker protest[1]. And what were the consequences for those in charge for this charter violation? I believe the answer is "nothing".
So what we have in Canada is a charter that theoretically protects citizens, but in practice can be violated by the government with impunity.
I don't understand a bit of your complaint. As you yourself described, the system worked exactly as intended. The government does something illegal, the courts mull over it, and decide that it was, in fact, illegal. The government's currently not doing it.
Surely you can see a difference between an one-off that after the fact was found to be illegal, and hasn't been repeated, versus a pattern of the courts making batshit insane rulings?
Since you think that the truckers had to right to do what they did... If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
No piece of paper can ever prevent a government from doing something illegal, or from passing an illegal law. The courts are only ever an after-the-fact remedy.
In the US, meanwhile, that remedy doesn't even work.
If what the government did was illegal, why were the people responsible not convicted and punished? The truckers who did illegal things got time for it. Even the guy who hacked/leaked the donor list got his conviction.
The charter is meaningless weasel words and is used just as often to curtail the rights of Canadians as it is to protect them.
The situation is exactly "tails I win, heads you lose" but in favour of whoever has the majority of MPs. They can take illegal action to thwart political opponents and face no consequences. Just as how police officers should be punished when they break the law (but often aren't), those who hold political office should be punished when they step outside their bounds.
> If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
That's a fair point. Though the truckers are just an example.
I just don't think the charter offers guarantees anywhere as strong as the US constitution. For example, Canada's hate speech laws have taken a big chunk out of both the right to free speech and now the freedom of religion[1] set out in the charter.
>> everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. It will not go back to normal. US politics has changed. The US people have changed. There won't be a Trump 2.0 but there will be other equally horrible leaders. Maybe not the next president, but likely the one after that. Canada must adapt to the new realty rather than deny and wait.
Canadians acting like the consequences will never be the same because of one man, when you can walk over the French-German border today with a passport instead of a rifle.
The public would rather be safe than be free. We see that time and time again with how people are tough on crime, how they want government to step in if they are ever defrauded or stolen from. Politicians are simply mirroring the people's wishes.
You say that, but mass surveillance was never on any ballot I recall seeing. All these laws always seem to get quietly pushed without consulting anybody other than the security services.
I wouldn't except a liberal MP to vote against this, it's their own plan. I wouldn't expect a conservative MP to vote against this, they believe in neoliberalism and entrenching gov and corporate power the same way the liberals do (see bill C-39, supported by both the liberals and conservatives).
Luckily we don't have a two party system in canada.
Official party status impacts a party’s ability to fight something like this through procedural means - but it doesn’t impact my MP’s ability to vote against it.
And i’m quite sure we’ll be seeing a green party or ndp with official party status again - two parties just isn’t as entrenched systemically as it is in the states.
Raise awareness about the legislation and what it means for the average person (bans on iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, VPNs, etc...) You need to also start emailing and calling members of the Senate, telling them to reject the bill.
there is literally nothing people can do. the party in charge has a majority government and a media biased enough to sell this bill as a positive thing.
the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp, and instagram all blocked canadians from using those services. the liberal party and the media would still find a way to blame trump for it, and the pm's popularity would increase.
> the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp
That is literally what is going to happen if this legislation is allowed to pass. WhatsApp will block Canada, and Apple will remove any impacted service from Canada, like iMessage.
> If that's true, wouldn't it be a good thing? It would be repealed.
The Liberals will not be able to quickly reverse the legislation when that happens, and they may even be stupid/evil enough to double down on it. It can also take a year or more for the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation.
> But I don't think that's true. They will comply. They always comply.
It is true. Apple for example removes impacted services when a country targets it, like ADP in the UK. So iMessage will no longer work for Canadians.
WhatsApp will not compromise their global security and value of their brand for a tiny market like Canada.
The law in the UK that makes ADP illegal is basically the same as the Canadian one: it says all messaging and cloud storage (for consumers) has to be backdoored. Apple responded by disabling the non-backdoored version, which is ADP. They'll do the same in Canada, and WhatsApp was always backdoored so doesn't need to change.
Canada has a free press, and many of its largest media outlets (the Sun, the National Post, the Globe, etc.) are strongly right-leaning and had no problems tarring Trudeau's Liberals night and day when he was in power. This is a problem you've invented, not the actual issue here.
what are you even on about, this is complete nonsense
nevermind half the population doesn't even pay attention to traditional "the media" these days
the bulk of "the media" in Canada is US owned, not "state funded" (which is only the CBC) and I haven't gotten any particular pro-vibes around this bill from them
I've never gotten such vibes either (that being said the alignment of the CBC isn't exactly neutral either, their french counterpart seems more neutral).
But I have spent/wasted enough time online to know that Conservatives do truly believe that the CBC is very biased against them and thus should be defunded (or, alternatively, they often suggest giving the same amount of money to Rebel News).
Is the worldwide liberal conspiracy in the room with us right now? Because all I see all over the place are various reactionary movements gaining power, ruining everything, and continuing to blame liberals for the failings of their quarter-brained policies.
Canada has problems - a state media that barks the party line isn't one of them. One political party would love you to believe that and it's aligned with the party south of the border that's trying to destroy media credibility across the board, but that's a political effort because transparency is an impediment to their agenda.
This isn't to say there aren't biases in media - there always is, everyone is biased in their own way - but the presence of that bias can be understood and having a robust pipeline for news is more important that trying to futilely eliminate all bias.
Just recently there was a large number of anti-encryption and anti-private messaging news reports/articles in Canada. They all came from a single shitty article from The Canadian Press News that was written by Nono Shen.
Major Canadian news outlets like CTV News were blindly following that article, and saying "something has to be done" about encrypted messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLHkcOmcZOA
CTV news anchor Carolyn Jarvis was continuously pushing for AI-powered mass surveillance of all private messages in Canada throughout the news segment. And CTV News also falsely labeled Liz Repking as a "cybersecurity expert" and let her promote her anti-privacy views: https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2026/10/07/they-have-a-shared-r...
Other articles on the subject had various anti-privacy/anti-encryption dog whistles like "going dark" included in them.
Bell is highly integrated with the government to the point of being defacto state funded. CTV does defend the interests of Bell, which includes continuing to get nice government contracts and free money to build out their infrastructure. What would be the value of being a dissenting voice? Bringing CRTC scrutiny?
All of this can be true without stupidly calling it "state sponsored."
The US mainstream media is equally stupid -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- CNN or Fox both make me want to gouge my eyes out.
Those of us on the (real) left have been pointing out the problem with the broadcast media for decades. Concentration of ownership and private interests are the problem, and frankly the CBC is the least worst of the bunch here in the country.
Canada is currently under a mass nationalist fervour under which the Carney gov't is getting away with a lot. The thing is the stuff he is getting away with... is exactly the stuff the Conservatives also wanted to do anyways. So people on the right frothing at the mouth about the liberals just baffles me. He is literally implementing the full CPC platform from the last election.
It's true the liberal party is aligned with the democratic party and otherwise joined at the hip, but I wouldn't say the democrats are trying to destroy media credibility across the board, the media has already done that themselves.
I'm not sure what more to do then to annoy my friends and family and speak with my MP (done), who had already voted against it. Canada's political system seems healthy compared to the USA, but it doesn't feel healthy objectively.
People keep thinking “healthy” politics is a lack of dissent. I hear this all the time from people.
When I lived in Singapore I heard how lucky they were to live in a country where there wasn’t much disagreement (the truth is it had been squeezed out of the population)
As someone who’s met countless Canadians who are thankful and grateful to be in the US and not in a perpetual decline that’s been the case in Canada for year now, I beg to differ.
Do you think that perhaps a sample of Canadians that emigrated to the US might not be representative of all Canadians?
Also, if you're in a tech sphere then there's even a notable bias of folks in SF that are happy to have left whatever other part of the US they used to reside in.
It has the same problem that the US has, which is it is stuck in a two party duopoly, with both major parties sharing fundamentally the same political economic outlook. Just with different takes on culture wars stuff.
The only significant opposition to this bill has been coming from the NDP, which was decimated to a small number of seats by people piling into the Liberals because of nationalism and by its previous pathetic fealty to the Liberals in the last two parliaments.
Unfortunately Signal has threatened to leave the Canadian market should this bill go through, as have NordVPN, Windscribe, DuckDuckGo's VPN, Psiphon VPN, and Proton VPN. I imagine more may follow suit.
That's the biggest problem with iOS because Apple can be ordered to block them from the App Store and it would be instantly kill these privacy services market share.
One of the main lobbyists behind Bill C-22, The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) has been trying to target Tor's funding for years now. So unfortunately it would be unsurprising to see them convince the Liberals to try and target Tor.
Don’t use Canadian or 14 eyes products. Keep your cell on an airplane mode most or all times. Use cash as much as possible. That however is a technical response to a political one, which usually won’t last long or it will be ineffective or even illegal, a proper political response is the right way.
Oh yeah totally, you'll 100% beat surveillance with a chinese phone and a Russian email service. No way anyone at all will spy on you that way.
The best privacy tech comes from people who live in these 5 and 14 eyes countries. Try a little bit of threat modeling instead of thinking about the problem emotionally.
The only reference to membership I see from the Commissioner for Lobbying states [1]:
> Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has two classes of members: ordinary members and voting members. Membership in CCLA shall be available to persons interested in furthering the Corporation's purposes and who have applied for and been accepted into membership in the Corporation by resolution of the board or in such other manner as may be determined by the board, in accordance with any membership criteria set by the board. Voting members are members who have been accepted as voting members by the board. A voting membership expires 12 months after the date of board acceptance, unless renewed by the board.
I don't see anything to this effect on the website, like a membership application form.
This is in contrast to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association which just published the decision this week to have a flat $5 open membership.
I'm Canadian, and this matters a lot to me, but people don't care
The culture here is so mired in political apathy that it feels futile to even bother. People just do not care at all
I'm not a huge activist but I have been involved in a number of things when they matter a lot to me over the past twenty years or so, starting in college, but not a single one of them has ever gone my way
I'm unemployed now and worried I'm going to have an incredibly hard time ever finding work in software again, and AI is taking over, and here I am. Defeated again
I don't have it in me to fight this stuff anymore. The machine has won against me at least
I'm Canadian, too. I think most Canadians are just not informed. Most Canadians still get their news from state funded media which of course spin for the state because 'follow the money'.
We have a very complacent population, which explains the lack of innovation coming out of the country. People's idea of "business' right now is simply renting out their basement.
Most go to work, accept whatever policy the government decides is good for them, and don't push back as their living conditions decline. Given that, is it surprising that we don't see much activism?
I wish it was different but I don't know what to do. Perhaps Canadians should steal a page from the French?
hey bud, right there with you. these are the hardest times we've faced in a very long time, but humans are nothing if not adaptable. we're fucked today but we'll see about tomorrow. wishing you the best.
Sounds like you’re just as apathetic as those you despise.
Watching our provinces fall one by one to corrupt/kleptocratic “conservative” governments has certainly done a number on me, but it’s only made me more vocal and more involved in local advocacy.
All that apathy out there is an opportunity to awaken care and turn the tide.
Well, I'm American, and I watched my peers lose this fight 10+ years ago.
I was in school when the Snowden leaks came around, and asked dozens of students and teachers what they thought about it. The majority of them had no idea what had happened, some even outright rejecting it as a foreign smear campaign. A handful of people showed interest, but lost interest when there was no connection to aliens or the Bermuda triangle. My freedom-loving cohort was too preoccupied with YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for it to matter.
Fast forward to today, you're probably running USA-designed spyware on whatever computer and phone you import from America. Canada already belongs to FIVE EYES, your mobile handset market is almost entirely captured by pushover US corporations that backdoor Push Notifications and rename lakes apropos of nothing.
No matter what happens with this bill, the threat of surveillance will loom long over Canadians. Political motivation is important, but trusting the United States is an albatross on the neck.
I’m also Canadian and I don’t share your pessimism at all.
The people I know are not apathetic and I’m sorry that things don’t go your way politically, but that’s life. For example, the recent Vancouver election didn’t go my way - big whoop.
But the Vancouver elections are a microcosm of left-leaning Canadians across the country. There's no hope for the foreseeable future while boomer power remains.
I read it a few weeks ago. Something that really bothers me is that parts are written like big tech ToS that are designed to make it sound like they’re doing something for you, but they’re not.
The restrictions on powers are one example. There’s almost nothing there, but they say something like “are not allowed to compel service providers to retain data that will identify the content of your communications.”
That’s bullshit weasel words. Everyone is keeping that stuff and nothing restricts the “written sometime in the future” rules from compelling service providers to produce all of the data they’ve collected. There’s also no restriction on compelling real time wire taps.
If that was a real restriction it would say something like “retain, capture, or produce.”
There are also gag orders falling out of the sky like it’s raining and no mechanism to eventually force transparency when they’re used. They also have broad latitude to define and redefine a ton of rules that haven’t even been written yet.
I know of some places that do conferences and I don’t know what they’ll do if classified as a service provider. Imagine KYC on a couple hundred people trying to participate in a 2 hour conference.
Edit: And I think it’s a big win for organized crime. The police will only know how to use the easy tooling to catch the lowest level, dumbest criminals. The higher up criminals will (or probably already do) use private servers for communication.
Does anyone think organized crime is relying on WhatsApp or Snapchat? That’s what the low level suckers will be using (and getting caught by) so everyone can pretend the police are doing their job.
I remember a few people who opposed this bill, including a Canadian professor of law/lawyer Michael <something>, who wanted to oppose this. What happened to that? HN had blog posts about it I believe.
Pretty much every group in Canada is opposed to this bill, except for law enforcement, the Brampton city mayor, and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P).
michael geist. yes pretty much everybody knowledgeable about this bill, regardless of political stripes are against this bill. except for the party in power.
the media spends almost all of their time attacking the opposition leader instead of the current pm (who has a majority gov), so people are unfortunately quite under informed on c22 and other things the gov is doing.
tbf the way they post these things online is pretty confusing...
i do not have much faith in the senate but i would be pleasantly surprised. the fact 100 of them were appointed by the previous liberal government does not have me optimistic however.
Unfortunately, our state funded media have no interest in pushing back on that because they're state funded by the state pushing the bill. And, in my experience, if you're not on X, you just don't know about these things. That's most Canadians. We're doomed until boomer power fades.
The bill is going to pass, there is quite literally nothing I can do to stop it.
And when I say literally nothing, I mean literally nothing. My MP (the man I voted for) crossing the floor to join the current ruling party showed me exactly how much political power I have: absolutely fuck all.
Fun fact: the government is already talking to companies who have customers to prep the infrastructure needed to handover any data requested, as in, they are almost guaranteed it will pass.
the largest voting block in canada (seniors) aren't really capable of understanding this issue let alone prioritizing it. in fact, for liberal voters the only thing they care about is opposing and antagonizing trump, or at least the appearance of doing so. keeping housing unaffordable is a distant second priority.
so bills like this will continue to go through since the liberals have a majority and the PMs popularity counterintuitively goes up as things go from bad to worse. im finding it hard to have any motivation to oppose this bill since resistance seems to be futile.
the dark liberal decade gets longer and darker in canada.
> in fact, for liberal voters the only thing they care about is opposing and antagonizing trump, or at least the appearance of doing so. keeping housing unaffordable is a distant second priority.
This is a conservative talking point. I'm a liberal voter, and I know lots of people who voted for the liberal party. None of them want to oppose and antagonize Trump for just for the sake of it. Most Canadians and liberal voters just want Trump to follow his own agreement in regards to trade, to stop with the 51st state rhetoric and his unnecessary antagonism of Canada.
Most Canadians I know have friends and family in America and don't want a rift between our countries. It's that Trump has seemingly gone after Canada for made up reasons just to cause problems that has made Canadians angry.
it's not a conservative talking point. i know many people who voted liberal to "stick it to trump" (their words). all they do is talk about trump. they have no idea what is happening in their own country, it's just trump vs canada and carney is the hero. it's ridiculous. and the media fuels it constantly.
as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
>it's not a conservative talking point. i know many people who voted liberal to "stick it to trump" (their words). all they do is talk about trump. they have no idea what is happening in their own country, it's just trump vs canada and carney is the hero. it's ridiculous. and the media fuels it constantly.
The liberal voters I talk to are very rational, normal people. I also disagree the media fuels it constantly. Trump does a lot of exceptional things that make it into the news and so its difficult not to speak about his actions. It's not difficult for Carney to appear hero-like when compared with Trump. All Carney has to do is appear to be the rational foil to Trump's insanity.
> as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
To be honest, I have not done a ton of research into it, but on the face of it, it looks like its a terrible and unnecessary bill.
While I voted liberal and in general support Carney, I don't worship him, or feel that he can do no wrong. I disagree with him and the liberal party on several things, this being one of them.
i know there are rational, normal people who are liberal supporters, just like there are rational, normal people who voted for trump. but i think broadly speaking, trump supporters and liberal supporters have a lot in common despite large difference in political beliefs.
Yet you have not provided any minimal amount of reasoning or evidence to support this claim. You're just being purposefully inflammatory and not responding to anything that is being said.
It does not and it's quite confusing. You'll often see people use the term LPC or Liberal and avoid lower-case liberal due to the confusion of that word. In Canada the Liberal party is a fiscally centrist/corporate & socially liberal(ish) (aka it's similar to the traditional British definition of Liberal). The Conservatives are a large right wing reactionary block that seems to be perpetually in the minority but with a large loyal voting block while the actual opposition mostly comes from three parties that rotate in and out of relevance as a left-wing voice BQ (Bloq-quebecois), NDP (New Democratic Party - fading since the death of Jack Layton), and the Greens (Environmental sorta, but also weirdly anti-science sometimes). And that's on the national level - at the provincial level it gets even weirder with the BCLiberals (recently named BCUP) being socially and fiscally conservative and opposed by the BC NDP and other minor parties.
Liberal doesn't mean the same as it does in the US because it barely has a consistent meaning up here.
it's a bit of a misnomer imo. if we're talking about classical liberalism, the conservatives fit that label better. if we're talking about "liberals" i.e. the left, the NDP would fit that label better. the modern Liberals are more like neoliberal technocrats, who favour top-down state interventionism and who are the ones driving surveillance bills and attacking privacy.
This govts to attitude to the dignity of its citizens is demoralizing. I have more hope in the outcome of a US annexation than I do for any significant positive policy direction. it’s done. Bureaucracy has triumphed and there’s nothing to save.
The meta analysis on this is is quite interesting
HN tends to have a positive opinion on modern Canada.
They then find it difficult to understand why it moves towards a tech dystopia.
How will these HNers square the circle of their cognitive dissonance.
how is it cognitive dissonance when canada is mostly in the right about a lot of issues that america is in the wrong about? just because you disagree with some dickhead politican's point of view doesn't mean you disagree with the country. there's plenty of shitty bills like this being thrust upon americans against their will. what a weird argument.
Canadians can’t help it. They’ve been spoon fed their whole lives whenever they complain that “yeah but we’re not the US!” (even if the US does better on that particular issue)
The petition to withdraw and amend the bill was presented to the House of Commons today [1]. People whining about how there's nothing they can do basically don't engage in democracy and thats how you end up in a US situation..
[1] https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Peti...
I emailed 9 senators and heard back from one. Emailed the other 8 today. Even when you engage, there's little positive feedback. The older I get, the more I believe this is a feature of the system and not a bug.
I feel most of us have been conditioned to prefer only the mildest and most inoffensive ways of protesting as valid and consider the rest impossible. In my view, governments today ignore protests because they don't actually threaten anything. A protest with teeth might be mass absenteeism from work, refusing to pay taxes, something that actually hurts.. although in this case it's probably a bit much, when the threat of real protest is completely gone you end up with authoritarian governments.
France does protests more effectively. The government is paying attention there and trying very hard to hide the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
They are protesting against the same things that would make their situation better (like increasing the retirement age)
But they're too stupid to realize that
Or even just peacefully blocking the entrance to parliament and forcing them to arrest you to do their jobs.
The fact is this political system of ours is heavily balanced in favor of those with the endless budgets and resources to spend engaging in "democratic" avenues of influence.
> emailed 9 senators and heard back from one
Good start. Calls are also excellent. Then get your neighbors to do the same.
For controversial stuff, you want tens to hundreds of outreach events recorded. It doesn’t take all that much for electeds to spell a festering primary threat.
electeds? primary threat? i think that might backfire in the canadian senate
i know i voted against the referendum question last week to consider moving to a US inspired elected senate system. i dont think we need that pageantry
> electeds? primary threat?
I'm familiar with American and Swiss elections. In both, the principal threat to an incumbent is from an own-party challenger to their seat.
For an incumbent, particularly one in a comfortable seat, an opposition candidate is usually not an issue. But someone from inside the camp is annoying and requires rhetorical contorting and lots of spending, spending that can then leave one vulnerable to an otherwise-benign opposition candidate. (Also, motivated activists are annoying in the best way.)
A smart elected–in these systems–will thus take a call to defuse anger before it develops into organized activism.
Ah, to clarify, Canada's upper house is basically a house of lords equivalent that we expect to be full of puffed up nobodies that get paid a too generous stipend to sit there and keep their mouths shut. Canada has one elected congress body (the one we all talk about) and then this vestigial senate which is generally expected to sit there and silently approve everything that passes through it.
It does technically have power, but it's like the King's power to veto UK legislation - he can do it precisely once and then he'll be stripped of the power.
> Canada has one elected congress body
Canadian MPs are electeds. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Canadian Senate being referred to as an elected body—it’s irrelevant to the above.
Yeah, I think it'd be excellent if we could just disband our upper house and while it's worth pushing them to act on this bill I loathe the senate's continued existence and would rather be in a position where this emergency call happened prior to it passing the house.
There are no primaries in Canada at all.
Parties select their representatives who run in the election.
The system basically guarantees that insiders cannot be removed.
That actually sounds crazy to me. At least for the House of Commons. I'm amenable to upper chambers of bicameral legislatures being indirectly elected. That's how the US Senate used to be before the constitution was amended.
I think you're misreading. MPs are directly elected. Anyone can run to be an MP (You have to collect 50 to 100 signatures from supporters and fill out some paperwork). Whoever wins the most votes in a riding becomes MP.
It's the property of a candidate being affiliated with a party - an indirect part of the election - that is run by the parties rules that are generally less than entirely democratic in nature.
The British system which Canada basically copied is entirely designed to prevent real democracy.
The only thing that takes the Westminster system away from enabling real democracy is political parties, and they hadn't been invented when the system was designed. It took around 400 years before someone finally found the hack to break it. The original designers would have never envisioned the possibility that it could be hacked like that.
Do you have several parties or just two?
Liberals NDP Greens Conservative
Liberals NDP and Greens would never form a government with the Conservatives so the liberals are effectively always in power.
Which means insiders in the liberal party are in charge and voting is partly irrelevant unless you're voting for the conservatives, but they would need an actual straight majority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiership_of_Stephen_Harper
The Green party is not a force in Canadian politics,they have one seat and barring radical events will never have another.
Th Bloc has 21 seats, and has had as many as 54. They would certainly ally with the conservatives. (Not the modern maple maga variety, but old school PC).
Except with the minority, the NDP got a few of their platform issues through.
Except for my entire 20s the conservatives were in power, so...
Honestly senators probably don't have the time to answer everybody directly even if their concerns have an impact on their decision
Colin Deacon seems to care: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7519403...
Paula Simons has also been actively listening to Canadians on this subject. https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/
Members of the Senate committee reviewing C-22:
Marty Deacon (Ontario) Committee chair 613-943-3429 Tony Ince (Nova Scotia) Deputy chair 343-991-5540 Andrew Cardozo (Ontario) Committee member 613-996-9545 Katherine Hay (Ontario) Committee member 343-991-5536 Rebecca Patterson (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-2185 Hassan Yussuff (Ontario) Committee member 613-944-1108 Kim Pate (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-9220 John M. McNair (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-995-5060 Victor Boudreau (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-947-4110 Judy A. White (Newfoundland and Labrador) Committee member 613-996-2433
Paula Simons is almost certainly against Bill C-22, so it probably won't be of any use to contact her about rejecting it. I would focus efforts on other Senators.
You won't be able to convince representatives with facts and logic. So many people want their attention that they can't pay enough attention to your arguments to be convinced. Contacting them is about showing that you care about it.
If they receive 100 calls of people saying they're strongly against a bill and no for they might reconsider their position.
Also calling is a better signal of showing you care then emailing.
Why not both?
Haha. You don't email them, you cut off their funding and smear their public image. This is how you make them move, not with emails. It takes some work though.
Careful there, too much of this kind of thinking and the MPs are going to find child porn on your phone, you sick criminal thief trying to overthrow the government.
This also. It's a race who's going to find CP where. Or whatever else.
That's politics 101. Read up Mark Twain's Running For Governor.
Where’s the cut-of-their-funding lever?
Dial #lever and say “cut off”.
I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy. If this is true and POSIWID, then mass democracy only ever nullifies any real extent of democracy. As I see it, the only real solution is to replace power. I don't know how to do that. Do you?
This sounds like an interesting argument, but it's damn hard to parse. I think you're saying that real democracy needs political (in the widest sense) engagement, which can't be got from the majority of people, so letting everyone participate without regard to such engagement gets in the way of real democracy, and therefore you suggest to "replace" (redistribute) power?
Anyway, this really needs an explanation of what your idea of "real democracy" is, and what "replace power" is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the answer to your question of "how" is likely: at your own peril. ;)
LBO maybe. Optimal governance would fix all bad mechanisms e.g. incentive traps, shooting self in the foot stuff, obvious inefficiencies, etc. - so it would result in a better future with more growth and wealth.
The difference can be used to bargain with incumbents to compensate for their current position, while installing a new type of government in its place that is better. It's a pretty hard problem but I don't think it's impossible. I'm pursuing this kind of thing in Finland presently.
This is why it's so important to have guardrails that limit what the government can do. The US tried to do that, and has probably been the most successful at it - though there's still been a lot of scope creep outside their constitution already. And that's probably a one-way street.
Most of Europe is far more successful than the US at restricting what the government can do, it's just restricted differently.
> do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy
They don’t need to. When the informed minority on an issue gets lazy, stupid or cynical, however, the system dies.
> I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy.
Why not? Is it just that you have not experienced it, or is there a more principled argument?
My personal experience is that democracy feels to work much better in smaller (sub 10 million people) than larger, but it could also just be correlation not causation.
Voting for every little thing is compulsory in Australia and it’s honestly really annoying.
It also hasn't stopped Australia's descent into tech authoritarianism either.
By what logic it is supposed to stop descent into authoritarianism? Сompulsory voting is an instrument to build authoritarianism, not to prevent it.
> Compulsory voting is an instrument to build authoritarianism, not to prevent it.
On what basis does someone make this claim? Authoritarianism is a broad stroke. Most of the time, they eliminate voting, not make it compulsory.
Classically, an authoritarian power only care about voting to initially take hold of power. Every attempt to coerce voting (one way or the other) after that is performative, not instrumental.
I think because it stops only stupid people from voting for stupid leaders. It forces smart people to participate.
I have noticed that the list of potential leaders is made up of a disproportionate number of stupid, ignorante or corrupt people.
> Voting for every little thing is compulsory in Australia
Like what?
Indeed. I've also sent several emails to my MP. Sadly I've received no response. :-/
Hmm that's odd, it was presented by my MP but wasn't aware of a chance to sign it
I'm getting an error loading the page.
I'm not saying you shouldn't sign petitions, but no law has ever been changed or stopped because of a petition. Look at the most popular petitions to amend laws. They ignored all of them, from firearms to electoral reform. Petitions give the government a good excuse to do something they want to do anyway, but won't change their mind about something they're set on.
The only thing that will change their minds is taking their seat, but without electoral reform you can be quite certain that only those loyal to Liberal, NDP and CPC will get elected. And PQ, but they're just Quebec NDP.
The general public of Canada is more concerned with Trump than what any Canadian politician is up to, so good luck.
If the bill isn't dramatically changed or killed, all the major messaging services along with tons of other services will end up blocking Canada.
There are lots of laws in Canada that are not enforced. Ap owners/controllers will wait to see how the government wants to handle this. If the government starts making demands then they will pull out, but I doubt the bill itself will trigger anything immediate.
Signal, NordVPN, Psiphon VPN, Tailscale, Windscribe, and DuckDuckGo have already confirmed that they will stop offering their services in Canada, and not route any of their European services through Canadian proiders.
Hopefully it doesn’t get CRA (tax) enforcement where the little guy is relentlessly pursued while the rich are too much trouble to go after.
Canadian law enforcement have publicly stated that they intend to target encrypted messaging apps as soon as possible if the legislation become law.
Or some will bend their knees and things will continue as normal.
Important services have already said they won't. It will be a disaster.
They will say that regardless of their intentions - that doesn't mean we should ignore that possibility but that isn't a great indicator.
Apple in fact did withdraw their security features in Britain over a similar law. It's not simply crying wolf, these companies will withdraw.
We have a version of this law in India which is even worse and has been used extensively by the govt to crack down on dissent and to do wholesale censoring of content that the establishment doesn't like.
All of this is done with ZERO due process - even the minimal due process that has been built into these draconian laws.
It's very rare for the senate to kill a bill. I would say that we alreadt ran out of time.
You're not wrong, the unelected senate generally chooses to defer to the elected lower chamber and only truly contentious legislation have been "killed" (as in dropped dead) at the Senate (think abortion and climate change).
Generally the Canadian Senate will propose amendments to the bill after its study (around a quarter of the time if I recall, not always), but the lower chamber has no obligation to agree, so it has some sway in that consultative sense. And the Senate has been more active in proposing amendments to legislation after independent senators became a thing.
At this point, I think the soft landing that privacy advocates can hope for are amendments that curtail the worst aspects of this legislation.
Dear Canada,
Please cease this kind of behavior immediately. We're supposed to be the only dumbshits around here.
Yours truly,
'Merica
The truth is this can happen in any country, but the rich people who are causing it go after the most lucrative governments first.
Dear Merica We decided to get it over with and HELP pull the roof down on our heads, the simple fact is that there is a direct linear relationship between how advanced our technology gets and how poor our overall experience of it becomes.
Caniba
Most of the world has become the dumbshits emulating Trumpism. Source: am French citizen..
Is your president emulating Trump? Is he one of the smartshits?
> also expand the sharing of Canadians’ personal data with foreign law enforcement, including the United States. Canada has been negotiating a cross-border data-sharing agreement with the U.S. that would allow American police to get information about Canadian internet users without any Canadian court oversight.
This is actually even more amazing to me that with all the talk of data sovereignty, the EU and Canada are still negotiating reciprocal Cloud Act treaties that will give the US government warrantless access to basically all digital services and communications. The UK and Australia have already codified these agreements with the US.
Trump's loud mouth brought these issues to the forefront, but really it seems like everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
I wonder why the Canadian government would share citizens data with the u.s. while all this 51st state talk and terrif stuff is going on, does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
> does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
It probably is reciprocal, but in reality Canadian companies sell very little (if any) digital services to Americans. There isn't much they can even access. It's why the arrangement is so lopsided.
I think reciprocity would be in violation of the 4th amendment, and why don't Canadians have protection in the same way!
> why don't Canadians have protection in the same way
Well, they might have their own Fourth Amendment if they chose to fight against the British instead of with them during the American revolution!
History aside, now they have what they have.
We have a Canadian Constitution and the Charter of rights and freedoms, section 8 covers search and privacy, it even looks like a warrant is needed for messages just laying around a server https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2013/2013scc16/2013scc1... but this bill aims to put a harpoon through our charter rights!
Canada is relatively unique among the common wealth countries as its founders were smart enough to remove parliamentary supremacy and have real judicial review.
I just wish that they would have also included a constitutional review council that reviews legislation before it comes law like France did (Constitutional Council), because a massive amount of damage can be done while waiting for the Canadian Supreme Court to rule on something.
You should probably educate yourself about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has so far held up far better than the Amendments. Its language is far more specific and precise, and the document itself provides justification and context for its requirements... Unlike the amendments, which have largely been re-interpreted and gutted by partisan judges into absurdity.
Do the 13th, or the 14th, or the 4th amendment mean anything these days?
We'll need to see some examples of this. Especially given the topic at hand.
Examples of what? An insurrectionist assuming the office of president? SCOTUS approving gerrymandering aimed at suppressing minority votes? Armed, masked thugs with a license to kill asking for your papers when you walk the street? Trump running for a third term in office? Immigrants arrested, held without trial, and deported without due process or access to a lawyer?
We have lots of examples of that. Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner? Or do you dispute that the text of the charter is unclear?
If it's the latter, you're free to read it for yourself. Is there a lot in https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html#h-44 that you find unclear?
> Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner?
Plenty, it's just usually against unpopular targets. The most notable recent one being the trucker protest[1]. And what were the consequences for those in charge for this charter violation? I believe the answer is "nothing".
So what we have in Canada is a charter that theoretically protects citizens, but in practice can be violated by the government with impunity.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-federal-cou...
I don't understand a bit of your complaint. As you yourself described, the system worked exactly as intended. The government does something illegal, the courts mull over it, and decide that it was, in fact, illegal. The government's currently not doing it.
Surely you can see a difference between an one-off that after the fact was found to be illegal, and hasn't been repeated, versus a pattern of the courts making batshit insane rulings?
Since you think that the truckers had to right to do what they did... If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
No piece of paper can ever prevent a government from doing something illegal, or from passing an illegal law. The courts are only ever an after-the-fact remedy.
In the US, meanwhile, that remedy doesn't even work.
If what the government did was illegal, why were the people responsible not convicted and punished? The truckers who did illegal things got time for it. Even the guy who hacked/leaked the donor list got his conviction.
The charter is meaningless weasel words and is used just as often to curtail the rights of Canadians as it is to protect them.
The situation is exactly "tails I win, heads you lose" but in favour of whoever has the majority of MPs. They can take illegal action to thwart political opponents and face no consequences. Just as how police officers should be punished when they break the law (but often aren't), those who hold political office should be punished when they step outside their bounds.
> If what the government did was illegal, why were the people responsible not convicted and punished?
So, just to clarify, do you believe the executive responsible should go to prison as soon as one of their decisions is found to be illegal?
Or is there a higher bar that needs to be crossed? Where, roughly, would you put this bar?
> If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
That's a fair point. Though the truckers are just an example.
I just don't think the charter offers guarantees anywhere as strong as the US constitution. For example, Canada's hate speech laws have taken a big chunk out of both the right to free speech and now the freedom of religion[1] set out in the charter.
[1] https://www.cccb.ca/media-release/proposed-restrictions-on-r...
FATCA shows how promised reciprocity works (spoiler: it does not)
>> everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. It will not go back to normal. US politics has changed. The US people have changed. There won't be a Trump 2.0 but there will be other equally horrible leaders. Maybe not the next president, but likely the one after that. Canada must adapt to the new realty rather than deny and wait.
Exactly. If it’s happened once, it will happen again.
Correction: it has already happened twice.
Canadians acting like the consequences will never be the same because of one man, when you can walk over the French-German border today with a passport instead of a rifle.
Yeah, I'm pretty certain the Americans don't want the solution the Germans got to correct that problem.
Yeah, it’s nowhere near as bad as things were in 1940, so I don’t think that it’s even the same problem.
It took world war splitting country ... and AfD won loval elections.
The public would rather be safe than be free. We see that time and time again with how people are tough on crime, how they want government to step in if they are ever defrauded or stolen from. Politicians are simply mirroring the people's wishes.
You say that, but mass surveillance was never on any ballot I recall seeing. All these laws always seem to get quietly pushed without consulting anybody other than the security services.
I don't think that's true. Even the privacy hating general public of the UK is against mass surveillance of private messaging.
https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/30/turns-out-br...
Crime limits regular citizens free. Scared to go out at night, open their door or go to certain parts of town. Safety allows freedom.
Be the change you want to see in the world! If you disagree with this bill don’t sit idle!
I too receive auto-replies from my MP.
I have an MP i can reliably count on to vote against bullshit like this, which means i have nobody who is accountable to me to write emails to.
Liberal MPs are going to vote as party says without exceptions. Aslos this https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/liberal-star-candidate-...
I wouldn't except a liberal MP to vote against this, it's their own plan. I wouldn't expect a conservative MP to vote against this, they believe in neoliberalism and entrenching gov and corporate power the same way the liberals do (see bill C-39, supported by both the liberals and conservatives).
Luckily we don't have a two party system in canada.
If not living in Quebec does any other party even hold party status?
Official party status impacts a party’s ability to fight something like this through procedural means - but it doesn’t impact my MP’s ability to vote against it.
And i’m quite sure we’ll be seeing a green party or ndp with official party status again - two parties just isn’t as entrenched systemically as it is in the states.
Green? NDP?
They don't have enough seats.
I am Canadian.
I think this bill is absolutely horrible.
What do you want me to do?
Raise awareness about the legislation and what it means for the average person (bans on iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, VPNs, etc...) You need to also start emailing and calling members of the Senate, telling them to reject the bill.
Drive to Ottawa and take over the downtown core.
This is a coordination problem, so people can't do anything.
It’s over. If it got this far, they wanted this.
there is literally nothing people can do. the party in charge has a majority government and a media biased enough to sell this bill as a positive thing.
the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp, and instagram all blocked canadians from using those services. the liberal party and the media would still find a way to blame trump for it, and the pm's popularity would increase.
> the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp
That is literally what is going to happen if this legislation is allowed to pass. WhatsApp will block Canada, and Apple will remove any impacted service from Canada, like iMessage.
If that's true, wouldn't it be a good thing? It would be repealed.
But I don't think that's true. They will comply. They always comply.
> If that's true, wouldn't it be a good thing? It would be repealed.
The Liberals will not be able to quickly reverse the legislation when that happens, and they may even be stupid/evil enough to double down on it. It can also take a year or more for the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation.
> But I don't think that's true. They will comply. They always comply.
It is true. Apple for example removes impacted services when a country targets it, like ADP in the UK. So iMessage will no longer work for Canadians.
WhatsApp will not compromise their global security and value of their brand for a tiny market like Canada.
The law in the UK that makes ADP illegal is basically the same as the Canadian one: it says all messaging and cloud storage (for consumers) has to be backdoored. Apple responded by disabling the non-backdoored version, which is ADP. They'll do the same in Canada, and WhatsApp was always backdoored so doesn't need to change.
Remember that media bias comes from being state funded media. Of course they're going to massage the narrative towards the party giving them funding.
Canada has a free press, and many of its largest media outlets (the Sun, the National Post, the Globe, etc.) are strongly right-leaning and had no problems tarring Trudeau's Liberals night and day when he was in power. This is a problem you've invented, not the actual issue here.
what are you even on about, this is complete nonsense
nevermind half the population doesn't even pay attention to traditional "the media" these days
the bulk of "the media" in Canada is US owned, not "state funded" (which is only the CBC) and I haven't gotten any particular pro-vibes around this bill from them
I've never gotten such vibes either (that being said the alignment of the CBC isn't exactly neutral either, their french counterpart seems more neutral).
But I have spent/wasted enough time online to know that Conservatives do truly believe that the CBC is very biased against them and thus should be defunded (or, alternatively, they often suggest giving the same amount of money to Rebel News).
Is the worldwide liberal conspiracy in the room with us right now? Because all I see all over the place are various reactionary movements gaining power, ruining everything, and continuing to blame liberals for the failings of their quarter-brained policies.
there is no worldwide liberal conspiracy, i'm talking about the Liberal party of Canada
https://liberal.ca
Canada has problems - a state media that barks the party line isn't one of them. One political party would love you to believe that and it's aligned with the party south of the border that's trying to destroy media credibility across the board, but that's a political effort because transparency is an impediment to their agenda.
This isn't to say there aren't biases in media - there always is, everyone is biased in their own way - but the presence of that bias can be understood and having a robust pipeline for news is more important that trying to futilely eliminate all bias.
A group of newspapers / media outlets friendly to the government gets $35,000 per employee.
Just recently there was a large number of anti-encryption and anti-private messaging news reports/articles in Canada. They all came from a single shitty article from The Canadian Press News that was written by Nono Shen.
* https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/tumbler-ridge-c...
Major Canadian news outlets like CTV News were blindly following that article, and saying "something has to be done" about encrypted messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLHkcOmcZOA
CTV news anchor Carolyn Jarvis was continuously pushing for AI-powered mass surveillance of all private messages in Canada throughout the news segment. And CTV News also falsely labeled Liz Repking as a "cybersecurity expert" and let her promote her anti-privacy views: https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2026/10/07/they-have-a-shared-r...
Other articles on the subject had various anti-privacy/anti-encryption dog whistles like "going dark" included in them.
CTV is owned by Bell Media.
Bell is highly integrated with the government to the point of being defacto state funded. CTV does defend the interests of Bell, which includes continuing to get nice government contracts and free money to build out their infrastructure. What would be the value of being a dissenting voice? Bringing CRTC scrutiny?
All of this can be true without stupidly calling it "state sponsored."
The US mainstream media is equally stupid -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- CNN or Fox both make me want to gouge my eyes out.
Those of us on the (real) left have been pointing out the problem with the broadcast media for decades. Concentration of ownership and private interests are the problem, and frankly the CBC is the least worst of the bunch here in the country.
Canada is currently under a mass nationalist fervour under which the Carney gov't is getting away with a lot. The thing is the stuff he is getting away with... is exactly the stuff the Conservatives also wanted to do anyways. So people on the right frothing at the mouth about the liberals just baffles me. He is literally implementing the full CPC platform from the last election.
It's true the liberal party is aligned with the democratic party and otherwise joined at the hip, but I wouldn't say the democrats are trying to destroy media credibility across the board, the media has already done that themselves.
there is bias though. even prominent journalists agree, and cbc (the state-owned media) is rated as left-leaning.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-two-prom...
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/cbc-news-media-bias
Being left/right leaning is not the same as towing the party line.
Don't blow it, Canada. You think Rogers is bad now....
I'm not sure what more to do then to annoy my friends and family and speak with my MP (done), who had already voted against it. Canada's political system seems healthy compared to the USA, but it doesn't feel healthy objectively.
Thank you for speaking with your MP!
Call/contact senators is my next step, because the Senators are the next-to-last step for this bill.
People keep thinking “healthy” politics is a lack of dissent. I hear this all the time from people.
When I lived in Singapore I heard how lucky they were to live in a country where there wasn’t much disagreement (the truth is it had been squeezed out of the population)
it's not healthy, even compared to the states. it's just not crazy like the states.
US politics might be "crazy" but definitely healthier than the managed decline we're seeing in Canada.
As a Canadian-America - nope, Canada is far better off than the US. I don't know if the US has a route out of the hole it's digging at this point.
As someone who’s met countless Canadians who are thankful and grateful to be in the US and not in a perpetual decline that’s been the case in Canada for year now, I beg to differ.
Do you think that perhaps a sample of Canadians that emigrated to the US might not be representative of all Canadians?
Also, if you're in a tech sphere then there's even a notable bias of folks in SF that are happy to have left whatever other part of the US they used to reside in.
Politically or economically? Because economically Canada is headed to the bottom of the G20.
https://www.bcbc.com/insight/oecd-predicts-canada-will-be-th...
It has the same problem that the US has, which is it is stuck in a two party duopoly, with both major parties sharing fundamentally the same political economic outlook. Just with different takes on culture wars stuff.
The only significant opposition to this bill has been coming from the NDP, which was decimated to a small number of seats by people piling into the Liberals because of nationalism and by its previous pathetic fealty to the Liberals in the last two parliaments.
So let's assume it goes forward, what are my options to maintain privacy?
GrapheneOS for phone
Signal for messaging
Ente Photos
NotesNook for notes
A good VPN: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
If you need other replacements lmk.
Unfortunately Signal has threatened to leave the Canadian market should this bill go through, as have NordVPN, Windscribe, DuckDuckGo's VPN, Psiphon VPN, and Proton VPN. I imagine more may follow suit.
That's the biggest problem with iOS because Apple can be ordered to block them from the App Store and it would be instantly kill these privacy services market share.
Will TOR be blocked?
One of the main lobbyists behind Bill C-22, The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) has been trying to target Tor's funding for years now. So unfortunately it would be unsurprising to see them convince the Liberals to try and target Tor.
any serious answer to that question would need more context, and will have to wait until after the bill passes to see how companies/services react.
Don’t use Canadian or 14 eyes products. Keep your cell on an airplane mode most or all times. Use cash as much as possible. That however is a technical response to a political one, which usually won’t last long or it will be ineffective or even illegal, a proper political response is the right way.
Oh yeah totally, you'll 100% beat surveillance with a chinese phone and a Russian email service. No way anyone at all will spy on you that way.
The best privacy tech comes from people who live in these 5 and 14 eyes countries. Try a little bit of threat modeling instead of thinking about the problem emotionally.
https://bitchat.free/ is one, if you can convince any of your friends to use it.
Also if Canadian, join the CCLA. They are the ones fighting for these rights.
https://ccla.org/
How does one join the CCLA?
The only reference to membership I see from the Commissioner for Lobbying states [1]:
> Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has two classes of members: ordinary members and voting members. Membership in CCLA shall be available to persons interested in furthering the Corporation's purposes and who have applied for and been accepted into membership in the Corporation by resolution of the board or in such other manner as may be determined by the board, in accordance with any membership criteria set by the board. Voting members are members who have been accepted as voting members by the board. A voting membership expires 12 months after the date of board acceptance, unless renewed by the board.
I don't see anything to this effect on the website, like a membership application form.
This is in contrast to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association which just published the decision this week to have a flat $5 open membership.
[1]: https://lobbycanada.gc.ca/app/secure/ocl/lrs/do/vwRg?cno=376...
They don't fight for these rights.
I'm Canadian, and this matters a lot to me, but people don't care
The culture here is so mired in political apathy that it feels futile to even bother. People just do not care at all
I'm not a huge activist but I have been involved in a number of things when they matter a lot to me over the past twenty years or so, starting in college, but not a single one of them has ever gone my way
I'm unemployed now and worried I'm going to have an incredibly hard time ever finding work in software again, and AI is taking over, and here I am. Defeated again
I don't have it in me to fight this stuff anymore. The machine has won against me at least
I'm Canadian, too. I think most Canadians are just not informed. Most Canadians still get their news from state funded media which of course spin for the state because 'follow the money'.
We have a very complacent population, which explains the lack of innovation coming out of the country. People's idea of "business' right now is simply renting out their basement.
Most go to work, accept whatever policy the government decides is good for them, and don't push back as their living conditions decline. Given that, is it surprising that we don't see much activism?
I wish it was different but I don't know what to do. Perhaps Canadians should steal a page from the French?
I would love if more of the world's populations were as politically active as the French
And riot/loot?
Well we shouldn't leave all of the looting to Private Equity firms
hey bud, right there with you. these are the hardest times we've faced in a very long time, but humans are nothing if not adaptable. we're fucked today but we'll see about tomorrow. wishing you the best.
Thanks dude, back at you.
Sounds like you’re just as apathetic as those you despise.
Watching our provinces fall one by one to corrupt/kleptocratic “conservative” governments has certainly done a number on me, but it’s only made me more vocal and more involved in local advocacy.
All that apathy out there is an opportunity to awaken care and turn the tide.
Get off your ass and help.
Well, I'm American, and I watched my peers lose this fight 10+ years ago.
I was in school when the Snowden leaks came around, and asked dozens of students and teachers what they thought about it. The majority of them had no idea what had happened, some even outright rejecting it as a foreign smear campaign. A handful of people showed interest, but lost interest when there was no connection to aliens or the Bermuda triangle. My freedom-loving cohort was too preoccupied with YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for it to matter.
Fast forward to today, you're probably running USA-designed spyware on whatever computer and phone you import from America. Canada already belongs to FIVE EYES, your mobile handset market is almost entirely captured by pushover US corporations that backdoor Push Notifications and rename lakes apropos of nothing.
No matter what happens with this bill, the threat of surveillance will loom long over Canadians. Political motivation is important, but trusting the United States is an albatross on the neck.
I’m also Canadian and I don’t share your pessimism at all.
The people I know are not apathetic and I’m sorry that things don’t go your way politically, but that’s life. For example, the recent Vancouver election didn’t go my way - big whoop.
But the Vancouver elections are a microcosm of left-leaning Canadians across the country. There's no hope for the foreseeable future while boomer power remains.
I read it a few weeks ago. Something that really bothers me is that parts are written like big tech ToS that are designed to make it sound like they’re doing something for you, but they’re not.
The restrictions on powers are one example. There’s almost nothing there, but they say something like “are not allowed to compel service providers to retain data that will identify the content of your communications.”
That’s bullshit weasel words. Everyone is keeping that stuff and nothing restricts the “written sometime in the future” rules from compelling service providers to produce all of the data they’ve collected. There’s also no restriction on compelling real time wire taps.
If that was a real restriction it would say something like “retain, capture, or produce.”
There are also gag orders falling out of the sky like it’s raining and no mechanism to eventually force transparency when they’re used. They also have broad latitude to define and redefine a ton of rules that haven’t even been written yet.
I know of some places that do conferences and I don’t know what they’ll do if classified as a service provider. Imagine KYC on a couple hundred people trying to participate in a 2 hour conference.
Edit: And I think it’s a big win for organized crime. The police will only know how to use the easy tooling to catch the lowest level, dumbest criminals. The higher up criminals will (or probably already do) use private servers for communication.
Does anyone think organized crime is relying on WhatsApp or Snapchat? That’s what the low level suckers will be using (and getting caught by) so everyone can pretend the police are doing their job.
I remember a few people who opposed this bill, including a Canadian professor of law/lawyer Michael <something>, who wanted to oppose this. What happened to that? HN had blog posts about it I believe.
Pretty much every group in Canada is opposed to this bill, except for law enforcement, the Brampton city mayor, and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P).
michael geist. yes pretty much everybody knowledgeable about this bill, regardless of political stripes are against this bill. except for the party in power.
the media spends almost all of their time attacking the opposition leader instead of the current pm (who has a majority gov), so people are unfortunately quite under informed on c22 and other things the gov is doing.
CPC should take down the punching bag if they're tired of it being used.
really insightful comment.
> except for the party in power.
The votes for this bill seem to indicate that nearly all MPs regardless of party voted in favour, and none of them voted against.
> The votes for this bill seem to indicate that nearly all MPs regardless of party voted in favour, and none of them voted against.
Where did you see that? Every non Liberal MP voted against C-22.
these votes? where only liberal mp's voted yea?
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/45/1/172?view=par...
I'm embarrassed, I searched for the vote, and looked at the results of wrong bill C-22:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/votes/44/1/190?view=par...
I didn't even read the text or look at the date... Reading what that C-22 was actually about I'm glad that one got a near unanimous yes vote.
And seeing the actual results makes me more hopeful that the senate may not allow it through.
tbf the way they post these things online is pretty confusing...
i do not have much faith in the senate but i would be pleasantly surprised. the fact 100 of them were appointed by the previous liberal government does not have me optimistic however.
Liberalism is all about government control. Many here seem to think you can have one without the other, and it's just not possible.
"liberalism" isn't really a word that refers to any coherent concept. It can mean whatever you need it to mean.
Unfortunately, our state funded media have no interest in pushing back on that because they're state funded by the state pushing the bill. And, in my experience, if you're not on X, you just don't know about these things. That's most Canadians. We're doomed until boomer power fades.
The bill is going to pass, there is quite literally nothing I can do to stop it.
And when I say literally nothing, I mean literally nothing. My MP (the man I voted for) crossing the floor to join the current ruling party showed me exactly how much political power I have: absolutely fuck all.
Fun fact: the government is already talking to companies who have customers to prep the infrastructure needed to handover any data requested, as in, they are almost guaranteed it will pass.
Do you have a source for that?
the largest voting block in canada (seniors) aren't really capable of understanding this issue let alone prioritizing it. in fact, for liberal voters the only thing they care about is opposing and antagonizing trump, or at least the appearance of doing so. keeping housing unaffordable is a distant second priority.
so bills like this will continue to go through since the liberals have a majority and the PMs popularity counterintuitively goes up as things go from bad to worse. im finding it hard to have any motivation to oppose this bill since resistance seems to be futile.
the dark liberal decade gets longer and darker in canada.
> in fact, for liberal voters the only thing they care about is opposing and antagonizing trump, or at least the appearance of doing so. keeping housing unaffordable is a distant second priority.
This is a conservative talking point. I'm a liberal voter, and I know lots of people who voted for the liberal party. None of them want to oppose and antagonize Trump for just for the sake of it. Most Canadians and liberal voters just want Trump to follow his own agreement in regards to trade, to stop with the 51st state rhetoric and his unnecessary antagonism of Canada.
Most Canadians I know have friends and family in America and don't want a rift between our countries. It's that Trump has seemingly gone after Canada for made up reasons just to cause problems that has made Canadians angry.
it's not a conservative talking point. i know many people who voted liberal to "stick it to trump" (their words). all they do is talk about trump. they have no idea what is happening in their own country, it's just trump vs canada and carney is the hero. it's ridiculous. and the media fuels it constantly.
as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
>it's not a conservative talking point. i know many people who voted liberal to "stick it to trump" (their words). all they do is talk about trump. they have no idea what is happening in their own country, it's just trump vs canada and carney is the hero. it's ridiculous. and the media fuels it constantly.
The liberal voters I talk to are very rational, normal people. I also disagree the media fuels it constantly. Trump does a lot of exceptional things that make it into the news and so its difficult not to speak about his actions. It's not difficult for Carney to appear hero-like when compared with Trump. All Carney has to do is appear to be the rational foil to Trump's insanity.
> as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
To be honest, I have not done a ton of research into it, but on the face of it, it looks like its a terrible and unnecessary bill. While I voted liberal and in general support Carney, I don't worship him, or feel that he can do no wrong. I disagree with him and the liberal party on several things, this being one of them.
i know there are rational, normal people who are liberal supporters, just like there are rational, normal people who voted for trump. but i think broadly speaking, trump supporters and liberal supporters have a lot in common despite large difference in political beliefs.
Yet you have not provided any minimal amount of reasoning or evidence to support this claim. You're just being purposefully inflammatory and not responding to anything that is being said.
Does "liberal" mean the same thing it does in the USA?
You can think of them as the equivalent of the DNC-preferred wing of the democrats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada
In Canada, it just refers to the Power Corporation
It does not and it's quite confusing. You'll often see people use the term LPC or Liberal and avoid lower-case liberal due to the confusion of that word. In Canada the Liberal party is a fiscally centrist/corporate & socially liberal(ish) (aka it's similar to the traditional British definition of Liberal). The Conservatives are a large right wing reactionary block that seems to be perpetually in the minority but with a large loyal voting block while the actual opposition mostly comes from three parties that rotate in and out of relevance as a left-wing voice BQ (Bloq-quebecois), NDP (New Democratic Party - fading since the death of Jack Layton), and the Greens (Environmental sorta, but also weirdly anti-science sometimes). And that's on the national level - at the provincial level it gets even weirder with the BCLiberals (recently named BCUP) being socially and fiscally conservative and opposed by the BC NDP and other minor parties.
Liberal doesn't mean the same as it does in the US because it barely has a consistent meaning up here.
No, I probably should have used "Liberal" to indicate I'm talking about the Liberal Party of Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada
it's a bit of a misnomer imo. if we're talking about classical liberalism, the conservatives fit that label better. if we're talking about "liberals" i.e. the left, the NDP would fit that label better. the modern Liberals are more like neoliberal technocrats, who favour top-down state interventionism and who are the ones driving surveillance bills and attacking privacy.
Love this. Looking forward to a private keys being `4` because the govt needs it that way.
This govts to attitude to the dignity of its citizens is demoralizing. I have more hope in the outcome of a US annexation than I do for any significant positive policy direction. it’s done. Bureaucracy has triumphed and there’s nothing to save.
Same here. We've disqualified our own sovereignty.
Traitor.
traitor to what? what does our country even stand for?
You should leave and revoke your citizenship.
The meta analysis on this is is quite interesting HN tends to have a positive opinion on modern Canada. They then find it difficult to understand why it moves towards a tech dystopia.
How will these HNers square the circle of their cognitive dissonance.
Read the above to find out!
how is it cognitive dissonance when canada is mostly in the right about a lot of issues that america is in the wrong about? just because you disagree with some dickhead politican's point of view doesn't mean you disagree with the country. there's plenty of shitty bills like this being thrust upon americans against their will. what a weird argument.
When did I mention america?
Canadians can’t help it. They’ve been spoon fed their whole lives whenever they complain that “yeah but we’re not the US!” (even if the US does better on that particular issue)
surely the government is only wrong about privacy. they're right about everything else.