Come back with a warrant by Rosalyn Davis (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/aoPzWb
Lawful Access
The Hidden Lawful Access Tradeoff: How Bill C-22 Lowers the Evidentiary Standards for Police Access to Subscriber Information
The return of lawful access in Bill C-22 has unsurprisingly focused on the government’s significant shift on warrantless access to subscriber information, which was the headline concern with Bill C-2, the previous lawful access proposal. As noted in my initial summary of the bill, Bill C-22 establishes court oversight for subscriber information with the warrantless access piece limited to requiring telecom companies to confirm whether they provide service to a given individual. That is a positive step, but there is a tradeoff, namely that the evidentiary standard needed to obtain an order for access to subscriber information is actually being lowered.
The Lawful Access Privacy Risks: Unpacking Bill C-22’s Expansive Metadata Retention Requirements
Much of the discussion around the new lawful access bill (Bill C-22) has focused on provisions that improved upon Bill C-2, notably the decision to scrap the warrantless information demand power by requiring judicial oversight for access to subscriber information. Yet despite that improvement, there remain serious privacy concerns with the government’s latest iteration of lawful access. Buried in the second half of Bill C-22 is a provision granting the government the power to require “core providers” to retain categories of metadata, including transmission data, for up to one year. This is mandatory metadata retention that would require telecom and electronic service providers to store information about the communications of all their users, regardless of whether those users are suspected of anything. It is one of the most privacy invasive tools a government can deploy and the international experience suggests that there are major privacy risks.
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).
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.
Recent Posts
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 262: Zack Shapiro on the Claude AI Native Law Firm 
The Online Streaming Act in Jeopardy: U.S. Takes Aim at the CUSMA Cultural Exemption With Threats of Bill C-11 Retaliation 
The Hidden Lawful Access Tradeoff: How Bill C-22 Lowers the Evidentiary Standards for Police Access to Subscriber Information 
The Lawful Access Privacy Risks: Unpacking Bill C-22’s Expansive Metadata Retention Requirements 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 261: Ian Goldberg on the Privacy Risks of Age Assurance Technologies
