Over the past week, a growing number of tech companies have warned that they may be forced to leave Canada if Bill C-22, the lawful access bill, remains unchanged. The government’s response to warnings from Signal, Windscribe, NordVPN, Apple, and Meta is that the companies are misreading the bill. But the prospect of a tech exodus from Canada rests on clear-cut privacy and security risks that do not apply in the U.S. or Europe. When Yegor Sak, the Toronto-headquartered CEO of Windscribe, told the Globe and Mail last week that he is actively looking at moving the company out of Canada or when Signal’s Vice President of Strategy and Global Affairs Udbhav Tiwari told the same paper that Signal “would rather pull out of the country than be compelled to compromise on the privacy promises we have made to our users,” those statements are a direct response to the government’s legislative choices in the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act (SAAIA), the second half of Bill C-22, that will have serious economic implications for the future of the tech sector in Canada.

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