The clips below are dry but must listens. Maybe Canadian politicians aren’t interested in us or what we believe in (regulating and punishing corporate law violators and genocidal nations like Israel and USA, safe drinking water, global warming), but we can be assured Nazi USA will use this bill against us, and worse, we can be assured Carney betrayed Canadians to the ugly stupid painted orange Nazi rapist led Nazi regime of the USA (dems = repuglicans, same as the Harper-Con Carney “Liberals” are same party as Pee Pee’s CPC).
@bhaggart.bsky.social:
@jimbostanford.bsky.social’s analysis is absolutely, 100% correct.
Any substantive agreement with the US will place Canada in a subservient position for years to come. It’ll tie us to them. That Mark Carney continues to pursue an agreement with Trump’s US is a mistake of historic proportions.
Carney has shown himself to be worse and more evil and anti Canadian than Harper; Carney’s not serving Canada or Canadians, he’s serves hatred, racism, genocidal Zionism, the IDU, and USA and Israel, and billionaires.
@tomgoldsmith.bsky.social:
“A bad deal with Trump is worse than no deal. Canadians know that standing up to our suddenly-hostile neighbour is daunting. But voters affirmed their readiness for that challenge just months ago.”
@jimstanford.bsky.social’s analysis in this piece is bang on.
@cykonot.bsky.social:
He tore up his own deal lol, i have no idea what your liberals are doing but i don’t think agreements with trump are worth anything unless they give you leverage to enforce them.
Dude does transactions, not real deals
@mythsout.bsky.social:
There is no appeasing a fascist. Canada’s current crop of politicians both provincial and federal, are either cowards or dumber than a bag of hammers, neither of which will serve Canadians well.Carney is highly intelligent, stupidity is not the problem. He’s betraying us, intentionally, serving billionaires, Nazi USA/Israel and Zionism. He’s openly selling us out. Palling around into the wee hours with Doug Ford, the 2nd most evil premier in Canada after Danielle Smith, shows more of his true colours. Fascist having a private love-in with another fascist.
@davidmoscrop.com:
Canada’s border bill is a dangerous rights grab that must be defeated!
The Great Canadian Rights Grab by David Moscrop, July 22, 2025, Jocobin Magazine
To keep the US happy, Mark Carney’s Liberal government is pushing Bill C-2 — expanding surveillance, limiting refugee protections, and eroding privacy in the name of national security. It’s Canada’s own PATRIOT Act, minus the excuse of an actual attack.
As Canadians began to tune out politics for the summer, Mark Carney’s Liberal government pushed forward with a border bill reminiscent of conservative security crackdowns on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel. Framed as a matter of getting things done at speed and scale — and with an eye toward placating the Trump administration in hopes of securing a trade deal — the Carney government tabled a bill that would grant extraordinary new powers to the state. Critics warn the bill carries significant risks.
The Liberals don’t seem especially troubled by these critiques — but they should be. Amnesty International has denounced the proposed law as an “attack” on the rights of asylum seekers, arguing it “would make it virtually impossible for most people entering Canada via the US to have their refugee claim reviewed by the Immigration and Refugee Board.”
For a party that just won an election by running against Donald Trump and threats to Canadian sovereignty from the Yankee menace — “Elbows Up” and all that — Bill C-2 is a particularly cynical offering. Just months ago, Carney was warning that Trump was trying to “break” Canada, “so that America can own us,” and demanding that the president drop his fifty-first state rhetoric before any cooperation between the two countries would resume. Now Canada is not only open for business — it appears keen to comply with US demands, including a dangerous border security law that won’t bring the country any closer to a fair and lasting trade deal. Not that the legislation would be any better if it did.
Law and Border
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has joined nearly forty organizations and over 120 experts in calling for the bill to be withdrawn. They argue that it not only “undermines migrant rights” but constitutes “a sweeping omnibus bill that raises significant privacy concerns.”
Bill C-2 would empower law enforcement to demand private information from companies without a warrant and with a lower burden of proof. “Law enforcement officials will be able to extract highly revealing information about people with these demands,” the CCLA warns, “including whether they’ve purchased something at any company, interacted with any website, or stayed at any hotel. These demands will occur in secrecy, and organizations are given only 5 days to challenge overbroad demands in court.”
The organization also flags the bill’s broad information-sharing provisions, which allow federal departments to share private data — and raise the prospect of similar arrangements with the United States.
These provisions are paired with expanded surveillance powers, a disconcerting development in an era of increasingly invasive digital spying. And just to round things out, Bill C-2 also shields the state from meaningful scrutiny. Legal expert Michael Geist calls it “lawful access on steroids” and warns of “expansive warrantless disclosure with unprecedented secrecy.”
Parliament returns in September, and both the House of Commons and the Canadian public will be paying much closer attention to the border security bill. What happens between Canada and the US in the meantime is anyone’s guess — summer tends to be quiet, but relations are unlikely to thaw. For months, Trump has gone back and forth on his reasons for levying tariffs on Canada — citing everything from fentanyl to “weak” border security, military spending, trade imbalances, the digital services tax, and more. Just as erratic as his reasons have been are the tariffs themselves, which he has alternately imposed and walked back.
Elbows Down
Canada has already beefed up border security — under the previous Liberal government — dropped its digital services tax, and promised increased military spending. Yet Carney now admits a tariff-free trade deal is unlikely — despite the broad free-trade agreements that have been in place between the two countries for decades, including the one Trump renegotiated during his first term.
There are at least three ways to read the motivations behind the Liberal Harper-Carneygovernment’s draconian border bill. One is that it genuinely believes the bill — as part of a broader package — might convince the Trump administration to strike a reasonable trade bargain. In this view, the border is simply a means to an economic end — a bargaining chip. That’s the most cynical interpretation, but perhaps the most plausible.
A second reading is that Carney prefers to govern in a more aggressive, “law and order” style, echoing the approach of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives between 2006 and 2015. Here the border bill isn’t a tool — it’s the point.
A third possibility is that the bill is primarily a technocratic effort: a modernization of the state’s enforcement and data-gathering apparatus, of the kind many liberal democracies have pursued without fully reckoning with the trade-offs between national security and individual rights. Carney is, after all, a technocrat right out of central casting: a Goldman Sachs alum turned central banker, and a man who treats political challenges as problems of administration, the successful management of which are reflected in market confidence. In the flush of patriotic fervor stirred by Trump’s threats, this aspect of his political character was either downplayed or ignored. But if technocracy is what is driving the border bill, no one paying attention should be surprised — only those who believed Carney’s economic brilliance alone would somehow leave Trump in the dust.
As a thought experiment, we might ask whether Carney would be tabling his bill absent Trump’s trade threats — and it’s reasonable to think that he wouldn’t. Nor, likely, would he be spending billions more on the armed forces. Carney’s goal, above all, is to grow the Canadian economy, using state power to “catalyze” private sector investment and growth.
A heavily securitized border and expanded surveillance capacity may serve that purpose — or may simply reflect a managerial logic in which institutional capacity is an end in itself, pursued without much democratic deliberation. He may believe in these tools as necessary to modern governance. But in either case, had Trump not upended the framework of free trade between Canada and the United States, there’s a good chance there would no border bill at all — or at least a far weaker one.
Big Brother in Search of a Trade Deal
Faced with real or perceived security and economic threats from the US, the Carney government must explain how it can simultaneously treat the Americans as an existential threat to Canadian sovereignty and propose to neutralize that threat by giving them everything they want. That includes a potential information-sharing arrangement under the guise of border security and deeper military integration — almost guaranteed to follow from the government’s increased defense spending.
Canada’s PATRIOT Act in miniature is reminiscent of the post-9/11 era of American panic and security overreach, which found its mirror in Canada through anti-terror and surveillance laws passed by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. This time, however, the overreaction isn’t driven by a terrorist attack but by the hope of a trade deal — one that, in the worst-case scenario, doubles as a performance of Canadian sovereignty by caving into American demands.
The border bill comes at a time when many Canadians, rattled by the specter of Donald Trump’s return, may be more inclined to wave through sweeping changes. That Trump represents a serious external threat may be beyond question — but it’s not a justification for massive security overreach at home. The Liberal Harper-Carneygovernment may be counting on the public to overlook the dangers of Bill C-2 while the country remains in a state of shock and worry — just as both the United States and Canada did in the years after 9/11. But one hopes Canadians will recognize the risks for what they are and demand the bill be rescinded or defeated as passions calm.
Right now, Liberals Harper-Carney Cons are trying to have it both ways: treating the US at once as a threat and a foil, and as a trusted partner with whom Canada is keen to do business. In walking that line, they appear willing to sacrifice fundamental privacy rights and migrant protections — all while staying in step with the Trump administration. It’s both bad strategy and bad policy. Scrapping Bill C-2 would be a good place to stop pretending both stories can be true.
David Moscrop is a writer and political commentator. He hosts the podcast Open to Debate and is the author of Too Dumb For Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones.
@ba55fr33k.bsky.social:
there is no advantage appeasing a madman
giving trump what he asks for wont stop him from changing his mind and tarrifing us anyway
we need to stand up to america, their country is unravelling and getting weaker by the day
@cba-nationalmag.bsky.social:
If Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election was meant to be a rejection of authoritarian trends south of the Canadian border, legal experts say things are not off to a good start with Bill C-2.
@hollylake.bsky.social has that story. nationalmagazine.ca/en-ca/articl…
A big brother bill
Experts say Bill C-2 lowers the bar and broadens the scope to allow more access by police and intelligence agents to Canadians’ private data by Holly Lake 21 Jul. 2025, The Canadian Bar Association National Magazine
If Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election was meant to be a rejection of authoritarian trends south of the Canadian border, things are not off to a good start.
That’s Robert Diab’s conclusion given what’s been rolled into Bill C-2, the government’s Strong Borders Act, tabled in June.
While past governments have unsuccessfully attempted to make it easier for police to access Canadians’ private data, specifically the subscriber information attached to an internet service provider account or an internet protocol address, he says the current government’s kick at the legal access can is in a league of its own.
“(The provisions) do more to expand the state’s power to access private data in Canada than any law in the past decade,” Diab, a professor of law at Thompson Rivers University, specializing in law and technology, and constitutional rights, wrote in a piece for Tech Policy.
In an interview with National, he says he was surprised by how many new search powers have been rolled into the omnibus bill, how extensive they are and how many are unrelated to border security.
Among the lawful access provisions buried among border security measures, the bill proposes expanding the legal definition of subscriber information. While there’s currently no definition in the Criminal Code, in 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada in R v Spencer defined it as “the name, address, and telephone number” of a customer associated with an internet protocol (IP) address.
Last year, in R v Bykovets, the Court went a bit further, defining subscriber information as “the name, address, and contact information” associated with an individual IP address.
The definition proposed in C-2 includes “information that the subscriber or client provided to the person in order to receive the services,” “identifiers assigned,” and “information relating to the services provided to the client.”
This would capture types of services, information that identifies devices and equipment, account numbers and pseudonyms.
‘Astonishing breadth of demand’
The definition isn’t restricted to information associated with an IP address, nor is it just aimed at internet service providers. The bill empowers police and Canada’s spy agency to make an information demand to any “person who provides services to the public, or any subscriber to the services of such person.” That could include everything from a hospital, a women’s shelter, a psychiatrist or a financial institution.
Of particular concern is that these demands can be made of a service provider without a warrant or any judicial authorization as long as there are reasonable grounds to suspect a federal offence has been or will be committed, which the sought information will help investigate.
“I think it’s quite astonishing the breadth of the demand here,” says Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law.
“The problem is that there are really an unlimited number of potential uses.”
He wonders about physicians and lawyers, who have ethical and legal obligations to keep that kind of information secret, as it’s either privileged or subject to intense privacy rules.
“Are we expecting lawyers to have to go to court to maintain solicitor-client privilege every time there’s a request?
The irony is the suggestion that there’s some significant problem with the status quo that requires law enforcement to get a warrant for this information, given the large number of requests made yearly through the existing system. According to Rogers’ annual transparency report, in 2023, the company received nearly 169,000 requests from a court order/warrant for customer information. Shaw received more than 1,100 such requests. Customer information was shared by Rogers in more than 160,000 cases, and by Shaw in 1,425 instances.
As the Supreme Court noted in Bykovets, requiring police to get judicial authorization before obtaining an IP address “is not an onerous investigative step.”
In light of this, Geist isn’t sure why Bill C-2’s lawful access rules are needed, but he says the floodgates will open if the ability to access subscriber information without a warrant is granted.
He points to the fact that in 2011, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada asked Canadian telecom and internet providers for data on the number of requests for subscriber information they’d received from law enforcement. What was provided by just nine providers showed that in the year prior, more than a million requests had been made, many of which were generally restricted to child abuse investigations.
This was before the Supreme Court’s decision in Spencer, which challenged the practice and found that a reasonable expectation of privacy attaches to subscriber information. The Court said this could only be done based on exigent circumstances, ie, an emergency, or pursuant to a reasonable law.
‘A dramatically low standard’
David Fraser, a partner at McInnes Cooper in Halifax who specializes in privacy and technology, says law enforcement officers can access this information every day through general production orders, which require reasonable grounds to believe an offence has been committed.
He says the proposed reasonable suspicion standard is “dramatically low” and expects it to be challenged in court.
“It’s the lowest standard in criminal law, so I would say this is vulnerable to being overturned.”
Building on Spencer, in Bykovets, the Supreme Court found that just as information attached to an IP address has a reasonable expectation of privacy, so does the IP address itself. Any request for this information from the state is a “search” under section 8 of the Charter, which guarantees the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. The Court was clear that the section’s primary goal is the protection of privacy and an individual’s “right to be left alone.”
“If s. 8 of the Charter is to meaningfully protect the online privacy of Canadians in today’s overwhelmingly digital world, it must protect their IP addresses,” it said.
“Viewed normatively, it is the key to unlocking a user’s Internet activity and, ultimately, their identity.”
However, Spencer left open the question of what would constitute a reasonable law authorizing the search of subscriber information.
“To this day there’s uncertainty as to whether a demand for a subscriber ID should require a warrant on reasonable suspicion or probable grounds,” Diab says.
In Bykovets, while the Court wasn’t deciding what would be a reasonable law authorizing the demand for an IP address, it did gesture at the existence of the production order in the code for transmission data, which is what police could and have used to get an IP address. That is available on reasonable suspicion.
“So if that’s appropriate for a mere IP address, one would infer that subscriber information, which seems more invasive because it more immediately ties you to a clear search history, would require something more,” Diab says.
“That’s what I assume a court will say.”
Bill C-2 also proposes limiting the period a production order can be challenged to five days after it is issued.
“In my opinion, that’s completely deranged and designed to make it impossible to challenge a production order,” Fraser says.
“It’s five days after the order is issued, not five days after it’s served. So you can have a cop sit on an order for five days and then deliver it, and you have no authorized recourse.”
In the production order challenges he’s been involved in, it took more than five days for the company to decide whether to take that dramatic step.
“I’m willing to bet a Superior Court would be more than happy to get its mitts on that and say it’s completely unreasonable,” Fraser says.
Secrecy baked into bill
If passed, Bill C-2 would enact the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act, which would create a framework for the government to mandate electronic service providers, including internet providers and platforms like Gmail, iCloud, Zoom and social media, to grant lawful access to “authorized persons” to places where data is stored or transmitted.
Diab says this could include access to things like files, email, and chats, or installing equipment to provide direct access to intercept communications in real time.
While authorities would need a warrant in both cases, he says this gives police and intelligence agents too much power.
One possible scenario is where the minister compels a provider to install a device that gives police or intelligence agencies access to private information they don’t have a warrant for or goes beyond the scope of their authorization.
“There aren’t ready means for this to come to light,” Diab says.
“So much of what will take place will be hidden behind the curtain of confidentiality between the authorities and providers that there will be very little oversight.”
That’s because it will be illegal for any service provider to say that they’re subject to a government order or to describe the order.
This is not unlike the technical capability notice the UK government reportedly issued to Apple earlier this year, requiring the company to create a backdoor for accessing encrypted user data stored on iCloud.
Diab says the notion that authorities can access communications, stored files, or stored data of any Canadian in secret is “discomforting” and a step backward from the Supreme Court’s pronouncements on section 8 not only protecting a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy, but also an interest in anonymity when online.
“Those assumptions are challenged here, and not in a way that can be contested under the Charter.”
Those aren’t the only secrecy and transparency concerns baked into the bill.
Geist says that for more than a decade, the transparency system in place in Canada has meant we’ve known something about the scope of disclosures to law enforcement from the likes of Rogers, Telus, Bell, and large internet companies. However, that won’t continue with such a broad range of actors subject to information demands.
Further, if passed, the bill would allow law enforcement to force the recipient of an information demand to not disclose it for a year and grant providers legal immunity for voluntarily providing information.
“Every law firm isn’t going to provide a transparency report on how many requests they’ve faced. That’s just not going to happen,” Geist says.
“If you open up the system in the way the government proposes, all of this will go underground.”
Opening the door to more data-sharing and abuse
Fraser says the authorized access provisions are also ripe for abuse.
While a service provider in Canada can push back against an order if it will create a systemic vulnerability related to its electronic protections, “in a whole bunch of ways this entire scheme of the bill will create systemic vulnerabilities.”
“If you require Rogers, Bell or Telus to install a particular device so that the RCMP can directly jack in, that same device can be used by Chinese hackers or other bad guys,” he says.
The bill also expands police power in Canada to allow them to compel a foreign company that provides services to the public to produce subscriber information and transmission data. Given how up in arms American politicians have been in the Apple case, with the UK government ordering the company to do something that will have consequences for American users, that’s likely to go over like a lead balloon.
“It’s pretty offensive for the Canadian government to tell a non-Canadian company what to do,” Fraser says.
Diab says data-sharing is a big driver behind this ‘big brother’ bill. In a technical briefing in June, the government acknowledged that the intent of some of what’s proposed in C-2 is to help Canada implement and ratify a new data-sharing treaty, known as the “Second Additional Protocol” to the Budapest Convention.
The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has raised concerns about what this legislation might mean for data-sharing with American law enforcement.
In an analysis, the group, which focuses on research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security, points out that this comes at the same time as closed-door negotiations of a potential bilateral law enforcement data-sharing agreement under U.S. legislation — the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act.
“This is meant to enable Canadian law enforcement to work in coordination with law enforcement in foreign countries to help them, to kind of reciprocate,” Diab says.
“It will just mean that the data shared in abusive circumstances can have even greater impact. Data breaches or improper access won’t be limited to police in Canada, but it will (be able to be shared) around the world, so it’s even more concerning.”
So in addition to opening the floodgates to a wide array of data-mining practices, the Citizen Lab warns the bill opens the door to information sharing with law enforcement in states like Mississippi, Idaho, or Tennessee, where abortion is illegal, by compelling warrantless access to information about whether a person has obtained services from an abortion clinic in Canada.
Overreach at every turn
Unsurprisingly, legal experts, academics, and civil liberties groups have fiercely criticized the proposed legislation. There have been repeated calls for the government to withdraw it from more than 300 organizations and 120 experts, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, the BC Civil Liberties Association, and the Citizen Lab.
“At every turn it’s overreach,” Fraser says.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said in June that C-2 is Charter compliant, as did the government’s Charter statement that followed. He insisted he’d never table a bill that posed a threat to Canadians’ civil liberties.
“It needed to be in line with the values of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” he told reporters.
“I fundamentally believe that we can strike a balance that, while expanding powers in certain instances, does have the safeguards and the protections in place like protecting individual freedoms or rights.”
While there may be a case for new police powers in the digital era, Geist says they should be in a standalone bill and debated on their merits. The fact that the government hoped this could be fast-tracked without people paying attention seems opportunistic.
“It establishes a terrible precedent, and it’s really disturbing to see the extent to which the government is burying deeply problematic privacy provisions in this bill.”
He says it all reminds him of a quote from Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who famously said: “You have no privacy, get over it.”
“It feels like that’s the sort of position the government is taking here. If there’s any solace, it’s that I don’t think the Supreme Court of Canada is going to be prepared to take the same position.”
Ian Runkle, aka Runkle of the Bailey @ianrunkle.bsky.social:
So, the Canadian government has said they’re bringing in a “Border Security” bill.
It also gives them insane abilities to spy on Canadians.
Canadian Bill C-2 Gives The Government Huge Power To Spy On Citizens 17:47 Min. by @RunkleOfTheBailey, June 23, 2025
@scotthrm.bsky.social:
Freakin scary stuff.Carney running and winning as a liberal when he is anything but ought to terrify every Canadian. Him caving consistently to the USA Nazis is more reason to be terrified. But, his bills C5 and C2 are horror shows. I do not believe he came up with them, I believe Nazi USA and genocidal Israel did for obvious reasons. When they’re done killing and deporting all the rich white supremacists intend stateside and when Palestinians and all other Arabs have been exterminated, they’ll start abusing, killing and deporting Canadians to make it easier to steal our water, minerals, oil and gas, and country. I am horrified by Carney’s betrayals, pro genocidal views, and his white privilege and hideous racism, but I am more horrified by the Canadians that worship him, and refuse to see the monster lurking in vivid colour that we easily see every time he opens his backstabbing mouth.
A worse surveillance law snuck into the border bill: Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act 17:56 PrivacyLawyer David Fraser, June 14, 2025
Bill C-2, the so-called Strong Borders bill is a Trojan horse that contains a new law that allows the government to order backdoors in the communications infrastructure you use every day. The government can issue secret orders and service providers are prohibited by law from disclosing vulnerabilities that bad guys could be using to illicitly access data. This is the part of the “border bill” you haven’t heard enough about.
Read Bill C-2 yourself. Scroll down to Parts 14 and 15: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en…
@johncarter1852:
I am from the US, trust me this is how it starts.
@robertdiab:
Very helpful David, but deeply disturbing.
@markphippsify:
Yes, this is a horrible erosion of rights
@The-KP:
It has the stink of America on it.
@PubliusUSA:
Fascists will be fascists.
@brokencountry283:
Fascism
#LawfulAccess is back: An overview of Part 14 of Bill C-2: Strong Borders Act
18:59 Min by PrivacyLawyer David Fraser, June 8, 2025
The newly elected Canadian government has introduced a bill in Parliament that addresses a whole bunch of concerns raised by the Trump government about the Canada-US border. But buried in the Bill are a whole bunch of measures that Canadian police have been clamoring for as the Supreme Court of Canada have swatted down efforts to get warrantless access to information about internet users. Here are my thoughts on Part 14 of the Bill, and my comments on the REALLY problematic Part 15 will follow.
@gullybull5568:
By ISREAL UPON CANADA.
@derekcox6531:
I have so many misgivings about this bill. It is so vague,so broad and so obviously begging to be used by overzealous law enforcement to trample the rights of Canadians at the mere whim of said law enforcement. This bill becoming law WILL lead to Canadians’ rights being curtailed and eroded over time.
@martinrev8487:
So, privacy is officially dead.
Good to know.
@BurgerofMan:
If they can ‘open’ the mail, they can ‘add’ stuff. Incriminating stuff…
@BC-li6zc:
Well it official Canada is a police state.
@squatch545:
A corporate police state at that.
@DawgPro:
Have we become the 51st state?
Certainly feels like it.
@z0rch:
How to join the Untied States without joining the United States.
@Sisyphus-eh5gz:
Perfectly predictable to all those who’ve been paying attention these past 10 years. Yet most people are clueless and voted for this gov’t because ‘Carney will be stronger against Trump.’ Idiots. We deserve what’s coming.
@karenho.bsky.social:
We should have listened when the modems screamed at us.