e-7416 (Justice)

Petition to the House of Commons

• Bill C-22 authorizes regulations requiring designated "core providers" to collect and retain metadata on all Canadians for up to one year without any individual being under suspicion or investigation, and grants the Minister of Public Safety power to impose these same requirements on any electronic service provider by ministerial order. Such metadata can reveal highly sensitive information including patterns of movement, association, medical activity, religious participation, and political activity;
• The definition of electronic service provider is broad enough to include any online service, including encrypted messaging apps, VPNs, email providers, banking apps, and cloud storage services;
• Bill C-22 grants the Minister of Public Safety broad authority to compel any electronic service provider to implement interception capabilities or technical assistance measures that could weaken encrypted systems, with compliance being mandatory. This creates cybersecurity vulnerabilities exploitable by criminals and hostile foreign actors, as demonstrated by the 2024 Salt Typhoon attack on United States telecoms;
• Suspicionless, indiscriminate bulk metadata retention and interception capabilities raise serious concerns under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects Canadians against unreasonable search and seizure; and
• The government retains broad regulatory power to redefine key terms including "encryption" and "systemic vulnerability" without returning to Parliament, rendering the bill's stated privacy protections unreliable.