Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has said the original intention of Bill C-2 wasn't to grant, without first obtaining a warrant, access to information about people’s use of medical services such as doctors or psychiatrists.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Ottawa is preparing to reintroduce its shelved border-security bill Thursday with a suite of changes after criticism that the proposed legislation expanded police forces’ warrantless powers and allowed wide-ranging information to be shared with foreign law-enforcement agencies.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree is poised to introduce a revised version of Bill C-2, which would have granted the police and spy agency a string of powers, including to demand without a warrant information about which services Canadians have used.
A notice has been placed on the House of Commons order paper stating the minister’s plans to reintroduce the bill, which has been stalled for months.
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Police services and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which was consulted on the drafting of the bill, have been urging the government to grant them “lawful access” powers, arguing that Canada is lagging behind its Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partners in what is allowed.
The powers in the original version of Bill C-2 would have allowed law enforcement and the spy agency to ask a hotel, for example, if a person of interest is staying with them without first obtaining a warrant.
It would have permitted the police or CSIS to demand, without a warrant, information about a range of other services people have used, including cellphones, psychological counselling and renting a car.
Mr. Anandasangaree has said the original intention of the bill was not to grant, without first obtaining a warrant, access to information about people’s use of medical services such as doctors or psychiatrists.
Critics of the bill, which include civil liberties groups, have expressed hope that the new version of Bill C-2 will have a far narrower scope.
Bill C-2 was the first substantive government bill to be introduced after last year’s election but it faced such steep opposition that Mr. Anandasangaree halted it and split the omnibus border and immigration bill in half last year.
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He stalled several controversial sections of the original bill to carry out further consultations, including one that would have enabled Canada Post employees to open people’s mail.
Parts of the bill have progressed through the parliamentary process as Bill C-12, which this week is being debated and amended in the Senate.
Tamir Israel, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s privacy, surveillance and technology program, said he hoped the scope of several measures in Bill C-2 would be limited and safeguards introduced to protect Canadians’ privacy.
These include information sharing with foreign law enforcement. American law enforcement agencies such as the police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement could potentially take advantage of the proposed new powers to gather information on people who have come to Canada, he warned. He said this could potentially lead to people being investigated for legal activities in Canada that may be criminalized in U.S. states.
Other civil liberties advocates have warned that the information-sharing powers could lead to foreign agencies finding out, for example, if someone who lives in a place where abortion is illegal attended a clinic offering such a procedure in Canada. They want the scope of what can be shared with foreign entities to be limited.
Government public-safety officials have also been re-examining a section of Bill C-2 that would enable orders to be issued requiring social-media companies, e-mail and cellphone providers, and other digital services to re-engineer their platforms to help CSIS and the police access information.
Bill C-2 now says that a service provider need not comply with the order if compliance would mean introducing a vulnerability into their system.
But tech experts, including at the non-profit Internet Society, have warned the wording is not sufficient to protect systems from hacking.
The new powers would give the federal government the right to force telecoms and other tech companies to install “technical capabilities” in their systems to give them access to Canadians’ communications and data.
The measures, critics say, have a broader reach than a similar law in the United States and could apply to mobile phones, operating systems, laptops or content hosts in Canada. Privacy experts have warned the new powers in the bill could allow spyware to be inserted into Canadians’ internet operating systems or devices such as phones or computers, but accessing Canadians’ data would first require judicial approval.
Matt Hatfield, executive director of advocacy group OpenMedia, warned against introducing changes to a system that could make it more vulnerable to hackers. He warned that adding surveillance technology to systems puts them at risk of being accessed as a backdoor by foreign spy agencies.
“There are several key areas we are looking for improvements on, including a greatly reduced scope so it would apply to telecoms firms and not any firm handling data in Canada,” he said.
Cybersecurity experts also want to refine a clause in the bill prohibiting electronic service providers from warning each other of vulnerabilities found in their systems, which they fear could weaken protections against hackers.