Civil liberties groups, legal experts and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce have been sounding the alarm for months on the privacy and cybersecurity issues contained in the Carney government’s Lawful Access Act, or Bill C-22. In a not-so-surprising twist, American lawmakers have now also added their voice to those warning about the bill. 

Last week, the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees sent a letter to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, highlighting their issues with the bill: “[I]f enacted, Bill C-22 would allow Canadian government officials to compel American companies to build backdoors into their encrypted systems, thereby introducing systemic vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers, foreign adversaries, and cybercriminals.” 

The letter goes on to note that Bill C-22 sets a dangerous precedent when it comes to maintaining strong encryption standards. “American companies operating in Canada would face a difficult choice: compromising the security of their entire user base — including US citizens — or risking exclusion from the Canadian market.”

It’s tempting to write off these American politicians as needlessly inserting themselves into our domestic political discourse and/or being severely hypocritical considering Americans have a law on the books that allows them to seize data stored anywhere in the world so long as it stems from an American-headquartered service provider. 

But that would be wrong, because in this instance, the Americans are right.

Two of the most troubling aspects of the bill are metadata retention and introducing measures that would compel electronic service providers — companies like Rogers or Bell that provide internet services, messaging apps, cloud providers or social media platforms — to introduce and then maintain a permanent backdoor surveillance mechanism for law enforcement and CSIS, breaking........

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