Well, no, this is a recently inserted block of text in the bill (confirm at the link above):
Exception
(2. 7)(b) However, a copy of the warrant is not required to be given
to a person under subsection (2. 6) if the judge or justice who issues
the warrant sets aside the requirement in respect of the person, on
being satisfied that doing so is justified in the circumstances.
| many of these rules appear geared toward global information sharing
Investigative work *should* be difficult.
| It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
This frame of thinking is critical with laws too! When the law fails how do you want it to fail? So you need to think about that when evaluating this (or any other) law. When it is abused, how does it fail? Are you okay with that failure mode? How easy is it to be abused? Even if you believe your current government is unlikely to abuse it do you believe a future government might? (If you don't believe a future government might... look south...)
A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals. We generally have this philosophy because it is needed to keep a government in check. It doesn't matter if everyone involved has good intentions. We're programmers, this should be natural too! It doesn't matter if we have good intentions when designing a login page, you still have to think adversarially and about failure modes because good intentions are not enough to defend against those who wish to exploit it. Even if the number of exploiters is small the damage is usually large, right?
This framework of thinking is just as beneficial when thinking about laws as it is in the design of your programs. You can be in favor of the intent (spirit of the law), but you do have to question if the letter of the law is sufficient.
I wanted to explain this because I think it'll help facilitate these types of discussions. I think they often break down because people are interpreting from very different mental frameworks. Disagree with me if you want, but I hope making the mental framework explicit can at least improve your arguments :)
Like are you envisioning a "I totally have a warrant but I don't have to give it to you" type situation? I think it's fairly unlikely, and you would likely be able to get the search ruled inadmissible if a cop tried it.
Improperly down voted comments typically even out in the end anyway.
The public must have the ability to easily verify police conduct is appropriate, and it must match the cadence of the police work.
Er, the warrant is still there to be examined later, no? It's just not necessarily shown to the subject at the time of investigation.
And everyone should be skeptical enough of government power that they mentally switch out "can" with "will".
Where did you get that idea?
edit: it seems the comment I replied to was edited
When people criticized the left, nobody was arrested, nobody got put in jail. During Obamas term, despite the fact that the Patriot act was renewed, nobody ever went to
Its only when right wing people started getting deplatformed for anti vax or race realism rhetoric is when this whole idea started that "liberal governments are actually evil and want to control every citizen and suppress free speech", which all contributed to Trumps victories, and consequently Republicans proved that they were the ones anti free speech in the first place.
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...
That's not the truth. Everyone's affected and the risk will only continue to rise if we let such bills pass. One day it will be too late to do anything, as mass surveillance will be so entrenched as to not be able to form any kind of opposition or to do any kind of serious journalism without getting squished in the beginning before you even get started.
This has been the sentiment since early days of patriot act, and we have plenty of history that shows this is absolutely not the case, not just in us but world wide. China has some of the strongest anti-free speech laws for a first world countries, and its obviously going to surpass US pretty soon in terms of being the number one superpower.
You can't keep fear mongering with the same bullshit over and over and then expect people to believe it every time. At this point, its pretty clear that people who are against stuff like this are the ones who actually want enough "freedoms" for their own nefarious means.
Even if you are right, would you rather live in a society with strict rules, or one with lots of freedoms that eventually destroys itself? Because thats really the only 2 options. The idea that people can have personal freedoms while also expecting mutual cooperation as default has literally been disproven by prisoners dilema.
Why should Trump's actions be the measure to okay to Canada's measures against personal freedom? Trump and Canada can both take away personal freedoms and both are bad.
Can we stop with this nonsense at any point?
The government can declare an emergency. Certain actions can be taken during an emergency which are outside what is typically allowed or bypass normal processes. The actions are subject to a mandatory judicial review within 60 days. The judicial review happened. The government was found to have acted out of line. It's current working its way through appeal courts.
The way you phrase this is, imo, intentionally implying "the government is ALLOWED to freeze your accounts at will". The reality is more in line with "I can murder someone at will.". Yes, yes I can. Because we don't have precogs and a pre-crime division. That doesn't mean it's allowed or accepted.
Direct your energy at this law. This is _actually_ a huge fucking problem.
Found the federal govt employee or boomer who bought real estate in the 90s
/s
The federal housing minister literally 2 days ago stood up in the House of Commons and associated the housing cost catastrophe with the war in Iran that's been happening for a week.
Thankfully prices on that front are slowly declining. Another $200k to go at least before they make any sense.
You can tell where things will land with this generally it's not bad.
If it were Texas or the South where the justice dept. leans a different way it could be a problem.
Canada is a bit like Europe where they have statist mentality, kind of hints of lawful, bureaucratic authoritarianism - not arbitrary or political or regime driven, but kind of an inherent orientation towards 'rules' etc. where the system can tilt wayward, but that's completely different than regime, or 'deep institutional' issues and state actors that do wild things.
That is to say, though the "vibe" may be as you say, the law now permits, if not now, at some future instance people with different perspectives or vibes can use the law as written, to other ends.
In short, yeah it may not be Texas now, but a "Texas-like" vibe could germinate and use the laws in the books later.
Bill C-22 (Canada, 2026) updates laws to give police and security agencies faster and clearer access to digital data during investigations. It expands authorities to obtain subscriber information, transmission data, and tracking data from telecom and online service providers and from foreign companies. The bill also creates a framework requiring electronic service providers to support access requests.
The push by the government here is because Canada is the only one of the Five-Eyes countries that doesn't have these powers, and for the government that's a bad thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
- Call your MP (find yours at ourcommons.ca). - Back organisations that fight back (OpenMedia and CCLA have killed surveillance bills in the past - Submit written opposition.
The Cannabis Act angle is interesting.. extends full computer search-and-seizure powers to cannabis enforcement.
I wish some of our leaders would be more forthcoming about the amount of foreign pressure their governments are under. We talk about the negative influence on social media and politics of countries we are not allied with often but there is an astonishing silence when it comes to the biggest player. There is a very real threat to local values and democracy.
Everyone in opposition of this bill simply has something to hide and is afraid that perfectly lawful legislation such as this will expose their criminal activity.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-man-finds-stolen-truc...
Without diving into hyperbole and far-fetched dystopic speculation, what exactly is the problem?
I'm frustrated our governments keep trying to foist essentially the same garbage upon us that has already been rejected over and over before.
Why do we need what amounts to a massive, state-level surveillance apparatus, steeped in legislated secrecy, plugged directly into the backbone of every internet provider?
Would you be OK if police officers followed you around everywhere you go, recording who you talk to, and when and where you interacted - not because there's any suspicion upon you, but simply to collect and preserve all the metadata they might need to find that person up to a year later - "just in case" - to question them about your conversations? Because that's more or less what's being proposed here. The only difference is it happens opaquely within the technical systems of ISP's and service providers where it isn't as apparent to the general public.
It gets even worse if you presume the information will be stored by private contractors, who will inevitably be victims of data breaches, and will be sitting on a vast new trove of records subject to civil discovery, etc.
> The SAAIA ... establishes new requirements for communications providers to actively work with law enforcement on their surveillance and monitoring capabilities .... The bill introduces a new term – “electronic service provider” – that is presumably designed to extend beyond telecom and Internet providers by scoping in Internet platforms (Google, Meta, etc.).
As the article points out, jurisprudence from the Supreme Court of Canada has taken a dim view of warrantless disclosure of personal information. What precisely is insufficient in regard to existing investigative powers of law enforcement and their prerogative to pursue conventional warrants? Why do they need to deputize the platforms who you've (in many people's cases) entrusted with your most personal data?
To be frank, this is the sort of network I would expect in an authoritarian country, not here. The potential for abuse is too high, the civil protections too flimsy, and the benefits purported don't even come close to outweighing the risks introduced to our maintaining a healthy, functioning democracy.
In the "old days" when all we had is telephone law enforcement could wiretap your phone with a warrant. As I understand it with an order from a judge your phone could be tapped or your mail could be read. You wouldn't (obviously) be served that warrant or even be aware of it. This was part of a few existing laws/acts. I.e. that's the status quo. If we were a surveillance state back then, we'll be that again.
The other difference from the "old days" is that some of the communication companies are global and not Canadian. I.e. your encrypted conversations go perhaps [to] a Meta data-center in California.
If we remove the ability of law enforcement to monitor and access evidence of criminal activity with a warrant from a judge we are increasing the ability of criminal organizations to operate and coordinate. That is the balance here.
It is true there are other important differences. E.g. the amount of information, its persistence, the ability of hackers and other actors to potentially access it. This isn't easy. But doing nothing is also not great?
I'm also Canadian and I have to admit I haven't been following the details here. It's hard to separate signal from noise and it seems everyone cries wolf all the time over everything. I will read it in more detail and try to form an opinion.
Mere proposals of such a thing should be illegal and people engaged in development imprisoned and banned from holding public office.
I'd say this is pretty disappointing that they keep pushing these kinds of mass surveillance laws "just in case".
A preferable alternative is to have the hosts moderate the content they serve that is publicly available. But there are cons to that too - what content should be reported etc.
The ‘meta-data’ seems to be run off the mill things that telcos and isps already collect. I’m not seeing the tyranny of the police being able to ask bell if this number they have is a customer of theirs so they can ask a judge to get the list of people buddy called.
"A Tale of Two Bills: Lawful Access Returns With Changes to Warrantless Access But Dangerous Backdoor Surveillance Risks Remain"
not
"Canada's bill C-22 mandates mass metadata surveillance of Canadians (michaelgeist.ca)"
I expect we will see more and more of these things and people agreeing to them with the world plunged into more chaos.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...
https://wicks.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-...
As a foreigner, It would be near impossible for one company to ask every govt in that world to make this happen (with current political weather conditions).
HN people will always find someway to connect this to their most hated companies (be it Meta, Google, Microsoft)
Near impossible? No, meta is frequently making themselves part of conversation on various regulations in the country.
Some people a) believe that the limit is actually "no force legally allowed" or b) are opposed to any limit on the force used.
I think that's a pretty charitable reading of their position.
*Well, either that or I vote strategically for the candidate I can tolerate who I also think has a chance of winning my riding.
This lazy comment behaviour is for reddit where you’ll be welcomed with open arms.
as long as there's a minority government though, public outrage will kill the bill