The conservatives and the new Democrats do not agree much, but it seems that both have problems with the provisions hidden in the bill C-2, the Body Law of the Carney government.
The 140 -page bill would modify many existing laws, from the Criminal Code to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Law, the Canada Post Corporation Law and the Ocean Law.
Much is about the border and movement of people and goods, lawful and illegal, through that border, as its full name suggests: an act that respects certain measures related to the security of the border between Canada and the United States and respects other related security measures.
But some parliamentarians have difficulty seeing how everything in the bill is “related” to the border.
Civil freedom groups are concerned that the bill C-2 proposed by the federal government, the strong border law, provides the agencies of application of the law that sweep new powers, as facilitating that the police seek in their activities and data on the Internet without their knowledge or a court order.
“I think the title of the law is to show for the Trump administration,” said Democratic Deputy Jenny Kwan. “Many of the components in Bill Target Canada processes that have nothing to do with the United States”
Conservative deputy Michelle Rempel Garner said that C-2 includes “HIE provisions” that are “a massive poison pill.”
A long fight for ‘legal access’
Perhaps the most controversial parties of the bill are related to police powers and “legal access”, the police capacity to demand information on Internet suppliers and other online companies.
Police have been looking for such powers for two decades in Canada, and there have been several attempts to approve legislation.
The last effort determined to expand police powers through the Internet was carried out by the Stephen Harper government in 2014, when it was packaged as the Law of Protection of Children of Internet predators. He crumbled after the Minister of Public Security, Vic Toews, challenged critics to “be with us or stand with children’s pornographs.”
The Carney government also resorted to the spectrum of child pornography to present the case of its bill.
And, in fact, those who work in child protection have advised for a long time for a legal access version that will force Internet suppliers to cooperate with the application of the law.
Waiting times for orders
“There are pieces of information that are only in possession of [internet] Companies, “said Monique St. Germain, lawyer of the Canadian Child Protection Center.
She said it can have been obtaining authorizations for months to link the IP address of a computer to a suspect, and sometimes that means that important evidence is lost.
The liberal government proposed a new border legislation this week. But critics say they are worried that the law does more harm than good. The Dayal Pratyush reports of the CBC.
And Thomas Carrique, of the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, says that communications and encryption technology used by criminals have run before existing legislation.
“We are certainly not advocating without restrictions,” he said. “[C-2] It presents by law what the police would have access to reasonable suspicions. And in a modern technical society, this is minimal naked information. “
Reasonable privacy expectations
But the Supreme Court of Canada ruled its historic decision of 2014 r v. Spencer that the information that the police expect to obtain through the border bill is within the limits of the reasonable privacy expectation of a person.
“Frankly, I thought that the perspective that the Government returned to legislation without a court order, without judicial supervision, simply disappeared,” said Michael Geist, who owns the president of Canada’s investigation on the Internet and the Electronic Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.
He says that now it seems that there is an effort for “hidden” ancient provisions of the legislation failed in this bill, “on which there is very little to do with legal access.”
He hopes that Canadians “feel they have been deceived” since they learn that a bill “designed to deal with border and border security” has elements that “have nothing to do with the border.”
Troke limits content
The data in question would not include the real content of the messages exchanged through the Internet. To listen to conversations or read emails, the police would still need a court order.
Rather, it is biographical information about the sender in question, and there is a debate about how significant the interest interest in that.
“I think what is wondered is relatively limited, but I recognize that it is not a universally shared opinion,” said Richard Fadden, former director of the Canada Intelligence Agency, CSIS.
“If it goes back to 20 or 30 years, I had telephone guides that allowed the police to make more or less the same.”
But Geist said the police could get much more through C-2 than ever through an old telephone guide.
He said the police could ask an Internet company what kind of thing has been doing an online client, when he was doing them and where.
Geist says that suppliers would also have to reveal what communication services the users of subscribers, such as a Gmail account.
Public Security Minister Gary Anandasangaree said that bill C-2, known as the strong edges law, entails the correct balance between expanding the powers of border agents and police officers, while protecting the individual rights of Canadians.
Shakir Rahim, a lawyer from the Canadian association of civil liberties, said that such information provides “a history of background on our lives” and that his group has “serious concerns that this bill does not meet the letter.”
Rahim says that the requirement to obtain an order offers “a certain level of protection” that such access is sought in a specific way.
“But this legislation changes that. It takes away that protection,” he said.
That problem is aggravated, says Geist, by the very low bar established to allow the police to demand such information, “any violation of any act of Parliament”, giving the example of camping without permission.
Opposition matches worried about snowing
Rempel Garner raised those concerns in the House of Commons.
“If I use an online service or not, where I use an online service, if I leave an online service, if I start an online service, how long I use an online service, everything that C-2 says I would do, that is my personal information,” he said.
“That is not a government issue, certainly not without a court order. There must be a line drawn here.”
Conservative deputy Michelle Rempel Garner said that bill C-2, the Strong edges law, contains “HIE provisions.” Public Security Minister Gary Anandasangaree replied that the bill “does not violate civil liberties or the rights of individual Canadians.”
Public Security Minister Gary Anandasangaree, who has a history of asylum and human rights, said he would never advance a bill that threatens civil freedoms.
“I needed to be in line with the values of the Charter of Canadian rights and freedoms,” said the day the bill was presented. “I believe fundamentally that we can achieve a balance that, although expanding the powers in certain cases, has the safeguards and protections established as protecting individual freedoms or rights.”
The KWAN of the NDP is not convinced.
“I know the minister says this and believes it,” he said. “But in reality, if we look at the bill, the minister is creating a situation in which his personal information is revealed without his consent.”
A need for ‘careful review’
Even some of those who widely support the legal access provisions in C-2 wish to have been submitted in a separate bill.
Fadden says that CSIS is too busy to waste time in fishing expeditions, and would expect the agency to establish its own protocols with which agents would have to fulfill before contacting Internet suppliers.
It does not rule out the risk of abuse and overreach, but argues that these risks also exist under the current system of arrest orders.
Even so, you want the changes to have not been buried in an OMNIBUS bill apparently on the border.
“I understand the desire to do it that way, but I don’t think people allow people to understand what Fadden said.
“I am not sure when the parliamentary committees analyze the bill together, particularly given their focus on the borders, that this will receive the attention it deserves … the people on the side of civil liberties are raising concerns that deserve discussion.”
