I’ve written extensively about Bill C-4 and the government’s effort to bury political party privacy rules that largely eliminate privacy obligations for federal political parties and apply the new rules retroactively to May 2000. This past week’s Law Bytes podcast featured Senate hearings on the bill, which ultimately resulted in an amendment to require the government to establish actual privacy obligations within three years. The government yesterday rejected the amendment and the bill received royal assent in a lightning-fast process.
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A Tale of Two Bills: Lawful Access Returns With Changes to Warrantless Access But Dangerous Backdoor Surveillance Risks Remain
The decades-long battle over lawful access entered a new phase yesterday with the introduction of Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act. This bill follows the attempt last spring to bury lawful access provisions in Bill C-2, a border measures bill that was the new government’s first piece of substantive legislation. The lawful access elements of the bill faced an immediate backlash given the inclusion of unprecedented rules permitting widespread warrantless access to personal information. Those rules were on very shaky constitutional ground and the government ultimately decided to hit the reset button on lawful access by proceeding with the border measures in a different bill.
Lawful access never dies, however. Bill C-22 cover the two main aspects of lawful access: law enforcement access to personal information held by communication service providers such as ISPs and wireless providers and the development of surveillance and monitoring capabilities within Canadian networks. In fact, the bill is separated into two with the first half dealing with “timely access to data and information” and the second establishing the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act (SAAIA).
Words Are Not Enough: Countering Relentless Antisemitic Violence in Canada With Action
On a hot August day nearly 32 years ago, I was married at the Shaarei Shomayim synagogue in Toronto. My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that I leafed through my wedding album this weekend as I grappled with the news that gunfire targeted the synagogue on Friday night, the third such attack on a synagogue in Toronto in a matter of days. The photos of my grandparents – Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives in Canada – looked back at me as if to warn that the risks are real.
The gun violence sparked the usual political tweets denouncing the shooting, pledging support, and unconvincingly stating that antisemitism has no place in Canada. Yet the predominant emotion that would have once greeted this news – shock – is no more. Over the past two-and-a-half years, Canadian Jewish communities from coast to coast have faced relentless antisemitic incidents: schools hit with gunfire, synagogues firebombed, community centres and old-age homes vandalized, hospitals protested, summer camps threatened, Jewish students and campus groups vilified, and Jewish-owned businesses boycotted.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 260: What the Government Didn’t Want You To Hear About Bill C-4 And Its Weak Political Party Privacy Rules
Last spring, the government quietly inserted provisions that exempt political parties from the application of privacy protections in Bill C-4, an “affordability measures” bill. The government barely acknowledged the provision in its study of the bill at the House of Commons and refused to even hear witnesses on the issue. The Senate didn’t play along however. It conducted hearings on the privacy rules and the Senators didn’t like what they heard, amending the bill by including a sunset clause on the privacy provisions that gives that the government three years to come up with something better. The bill heads back to the House of Commons, where the government can either accept the change and have the bill pass or reject the change and send it back again to the Senate.
This Law Bytes podcast episode tells the story of what the Senate heard on Bill C-4. It is what the government did not want Canadians to hear and would prefer to ignore altogether. There were witnesses from advocacy groups, but the episode focuses on testimony from privacy commissioners (current and former) along with Elections Canada leadership.
Why the Online Harms Act is the Wrong Way to Regulate AI Chatbots
In the wake of reports that AI Minister Evan Solomon may press AI companies such as OpenAI to more aggressively report potential safety risks identified in private chats to law enforcement, attention has quickly turned to the Online Harms Act as a potential regulatory solution. The Online Harms Act or Bill C-63, died on the order paper last year, but is expected to return in some form in the coming months. Given that the Act is tailor made to address online harms, it isn’t surprising that some would suggest that it could be expanded to cover AI chatbots.
Yet the law was deliberately designed to avoid doing what politicians want the AI companies to do as it expressly exempted private communications and proactive monitoring from its scope. Indeed, applying the Online Harms Act to AI chatbots would not simply extend existing online safety rules to a new technology. It would require dismantling core privacy safeguards which were added after the government’s earlier online harms proposal faced widespread criticism for encouraging platform monitoring and rapid reporting to law enforcement. In effect, proposals to use online harms to regulate AI chatbots risks reviving many of the same surveillance concerns that forced the government back to the drawing board just a few years ago.
Recent Posts
Government Enacts Political Party Anti-Privacy Rules With Bill C-4 Royal Assent Sprint 
A Tale of Two Bills: Lawful Access Returns With Changes to Warrantless Access But Dangerous Backdoor Surveillance Risks Remain 
Words Are Not Enough: Countering Relentless Antisemitic Violence in Canada With Action 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 260: What the Government Didn’t Want You To Hear About Bill C-4 And Its Weak Political Party Privacy Rules 
Why the Online Harms Act is the Wrong Way to Regulate AI Chatbots
