Days before Parliament recessed for the summer, the Government of Canada introduced the Strong Borders Act, ostensibly to increase security of the Canada/US border and help stem the flow of fentanyl and other contraband.
The proposed law does “more to expand the state’s power to access private data in Canada than any law in the past decade” and will have profound privacy implications. Hundreds of privacy professionals, lawyers, academics, and civil society organizations concerned about the sweeping surveillance powers it grants, including secret FISA-style orders, and have called for it to be withdrawn.
Among other things, Bill C-2 is designed “to facilitate access to basic information that will assist in the investigation of federal offences through an information demand or a judicial production order to persons who provide “services to the public.” That provision gives almost unlimited power for the Canadian government — and possibly foreign ones — to collect information about individuals and organizations in Canada from anyone who provides “services to the public”. Importantly, “services” is undefined.
Many provisions in the Act will grant new search powers that are unrelated to the border, and many of the law’s 16 parts amend existing statutes that now allow “police services” to collect information by adding wording so that police services “and other law enforcement agencies” will be able to collect information.
In addition, the “demands” may be made by public officers “appointed or designated to administer or enforce a federal or provincial law and whose duties include the enforcement of this Act or any other Act of Parliament.”
Penalties for failing to comply include up to five years in prison and multi-million-dollar fines for individuals and for companies, both of which are calculated on global income.
