Come back with a warrant by Rosalyn Davis (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/aoPzWb
Lawful Access
The Year in Review: Top Ten Posts
This week’s Law Bytes podcast featured a look at the year in review in digital law and policy. Before wrapping up for the year, the next three posts over the holidays will highlight my most popular posts, podcast episodes, and Substacks of the past year. Today’s post starts with the top posts, in which two issues dominated: lawful access and antisemitism. While most of the top ten involves those two issues, the top post of the year featured an analysis of the government’s approach to the digital services tax, which ultimately resulted in an embarrassing climbdown by the government.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 254: Looking Back at the Year in Canadian Digital Law and Policy
Canadian digital law and policy in 2025 was marked by the unpredictable with changes in leadership in Canada and the U.S. driving a shift in policy approach. Over the past year, that included a reversal on the digital services tax, the re-introduction of lawful access legislation, and the end of several government digital policy bills including online harms, privacy, and AI regulation. For this final Law Bytes podcast of 2025, I go solo without a guest to talk about the most significant developments in Canadian digital policy from the past year.
Reversing the Reversal?: Government Puts Privacy Invasive Lawful Access Back on the Agenda
Last month, the government seemingly reversed course on its lawful access plans to grant law enforcement powers to demand warrantless access to personal information from any provider of a service in Canada. Buried in Bill C-2, a border measures bill, the lawful access provisions were the most expansive in Canadian history covering everyone from telecom providers to physicians to hotels. The bill sparked widespread opposition amid concerns that it was inconsistent with multiple Supreme Court of Canada decisions and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yet it now appears that the reversal was short lived. Yesterday, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangree, Transport Minister Steve McKinnon, Secretary of State for Combatting Crime MP Ruby Sahota and a group of Liberal MPs held a press conference to urge swift passage of lawful access.
Government Reverses on Bill C-2: Removes Lawful Access Warrantless Demand Powers in New Border Bill
The government today reversed course on its ill-advised anti-privacy measures in Bill C-2, introducing a new border bill with the lawful access provisions (Parts 14 and 15) removed. The move is welcome given the widespread opposition to provisions that would have created the power to demand warrantless access to information from any provider of a service in Canada and increased the surveillance on Canadian networks. The sheer breadth of this proposed system was truly unprecedented and appeared entirely inconsistent with Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That was the immediate reaction when the bill was tabled in June (my posts here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Law Bytes podcasts on the topic here, here, and here) and there was never a credible response forthcoming from government officials. Indeed, if anything, meetings with department officials made plain that this was an embarrassingly rushed, poorly drafted piece of legislation that required a reset.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 245: Kate Robertson on Bill C-2’s Cross-Border Data Sharing Privacy Risks
Bill C-2, the government’s proposed lawful access legislation, has been the subject of several prior episodes covering warrantless disclosure of information as part of the new information demand power in Part 14 of the bill as well as some of the surveillance technology capabilities found in Part 15. Those remain major issues, but there is another element of the bill that deserves greater attention, particularly at this moment when the Canada – US relationship is increasingly fraught. That issue involves mandated data sharing with implications for Canada’s international treaty obligations under the “Second Additional Protocol” to the Budapest Convention as well as the US Cloud Act. Kate Robertson, a lawyer and senior research associate at the Citizen Lab in the Munk School at the University of Toronto, wrote an extensive brief on these issues soon after the bill was introduced. She joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about a critical Bill C-2 issue that has thus far attracted limited attention.
Recent Posts
The Year in Review: Top Ten Posts 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 254: Looking Back at the Year in Canadian Digital Law and Policy 
Confronting Antisemitism in Canada: If Leaders Won’t Call It Out Without Qualifiers, They Can’t Address It 
“Shock” and the Bondi Beach Chanukah Massacre 
The Catch-22 of Canadian Digital Sovereignty
