[1] https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Peti...
Good start. Calls are also excellent. Then get your neighbors to do the same.
For controversial stuff, you want tens to hundreds of outreach events recorded. It doesn’t take all that much for electeds to spell a festering primary threat.
i know i voted against the referendum question last week to consider moving to a US inspired elected senate system. i dont think we need that pageantry
I'm familiar with American and Swiss elections. In both, the principal threat to an incumbent is from an own-party challenger to their seat.
For an incumbent, particularly one in a comfortable seat, an opposition candidate is usually not an issue. But someone from inside the camp is annoying and requires rhetorical contorting and lots of spending, spending that can then leave one vulnerable to an otherwise-benign opposition candidate. (Also, motivated activists are annoying in the best way.)
A smart elected–in these systems–will thus take a call to defuse anger before it develops into organized activism.
It does technically have power, but it's like the King's power to veto UK legislation - he can do it precisely once and then he'll be stripped of the power.
Parties select their representatives who run in the election.
The system basically guarantees that insiders cannot be removed.
If they receive 100 calls of people saying they're strongly against a bill and no for they might reconsider their position.
Also calling is a better signal of showing you care then emailing.
Paula Simons has also been actively listening to Canadians on this subject. https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/
Dial #lever and say “cut off”.
They don’t need to. When the informed minority on an issue gets lazy, stupid or cynical, however, the system dies.
Generally the Canadian Senate will propose amendments to the bill after its study (around a quarter of the time if I recall, not always), but the lower chamber has no obligation to agree, so it has some sway in that consultative sense. And the Senate has been more active in proposing amendments to legislation after independent senators became a thing.
At this point, I think the soft landing that privacy advocates can hope for are amendments that curtail the worst aspects of this legislation.
This is actually even more amazing to me that with all the talk of data sovereignty, the EU and Canada are still negotiating reciprocal Cloud Act treaties that will give the US government warrantless access to basically all digital services and communications. The UK and Australia have already codified these agreements with the US.
Trump's loud mouth brought these issues to the forefront, but really it seems like everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
It probably is reciprocal, but in reality Canadian companies sell very little (if any) digital services to Americans. There isn't much they can even access. It's why the arrangement is so lopsided.
Well, they might have their own Fourth Amendment if they chose to fight against the British instead of with them during the American revolution!
History aside, now they have what they have.
I just wish that they would have also included a constitutional review council that reviews legislation before it comes law like France did (Constitutional Council), because a massive amount of damage can be done while waiting for the Canadian Supreme Court to rule on something.
Do the 13th, or the 14th, or the 4th amendment mean anything these days?
We have lots of examples of that. Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner? Or do you dispute that the text of the charter is unclear?
If it's the latter, you're free to read it for yourself. Is there a lot in https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html#h-44 that you find unclear?
Plenty, it's just usually against unpopular targets. The most notable recent one being the trucker protest[1]. And what were the consequences for those in charge for this charter violation? I believe the answer is "nothing".
So what we have in Canada is a charter that theoretically protects citizens, but in practice can be violated by the government with impunity.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-federal-cou...
Surely you can see a difference between an one-off that after the fact was found to be illegal, and hasn't been repeated, versus a pattern of the courts making batshit insane rulings?
Since you think that the truckers had to right to do what they did... If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
No piece of paper can ever prevent a government from doing something illegal, or from passing an illegal law. The courts are only ever an after-the-fact remedy.
In the US, meanwhile, that remedy doesn't even work.
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. It will not go back to normal. US politics has changed. The US people have changed. There won't be a Trump 2.0 but there will be other equally horrible leaders. Maybe not the next president, but likely the one after that. Canada must adapt to the new realty rather than deny and wait.
Luckily we don't have a two party system in canada.
I think this bill is absolutely horrible.
What do you want me to do?
the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp, and instagram all blocked canadians from using those services. the liberal party and the media would still find a way to blame trump for it, and the pm's popularity would increase.
That is literally what is going to happen if this legislation is allowed to pass. WhatsApp will block Canada, and Apple will remove any impacted service from Canada, like iMessage.
This isn't to say there aren't biases in media - there always is, everyone is biased in their own way - but the presence of that bias can be understood and having a robust pipeline for news is more important that trying to futilely eliminate all bias.
* https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/tumbler-ridge-c...
Major Canadian news outlets like CTV News were blindly following that article, and saying "something has to be done" about encrypted messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLHkcOmcZOA
CTV news anchor Carolyn Jarvis was continuously pushing for AI-powered mass surveillance of all private messages in Canada throughout the news segment. And CTV News also falsely labeled Liz Repking as a "cybersecurity expert" and let her promote her anti-privacy views: https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2026/10/07/they-have-a-shared-r...
Other articles on the subject had various anti-privacy/anti-encryption dog whistles like "going dark" included in them.
The US mainstream media is equally stupid -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- CNN or Fox both make me want to gouge my eyes out.
Those of us on the (real) left have been pointing out the problem with the broadcast media for decades. Concentration of ownership and private interests are the problem, and frankly the CBC is the least worst of the bunch here in the country.
Canada is currently under a mass nationalist fervour under which the Carney gov't is getting away with a lot. The thing is the stuff he is getting away with... is exactly the stuff the Conservatives also wanted to do anyways. So people on the right frothing at the mouth about the liberals just baffles me. He is literally implementing the full CPC platform from the last election.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-two-prom...
nevermind half the population doesn't even pay attention to traditional "the media" these days
the bulk of "the media" in Canada is US owned, not "state funded" (which is only the CBC) and I haven't gotten any particular pro-vibes around this bill from them
But I have spent/wasted enough time online to know that Conservatives do truly believe that the CBC is very biased against them and thus should be defunded (or, alternatively, they often suggest giving the same amount of money to Rebel News).
Also, if you're in a tech sphere then there's even a notable bias of folks in SF that are happy to have left whatever other part of the US they used to reside in.
https://www.bcbc.com/insight/oecd-predicts-canada-will-be-th...
The only significant opposition to this bill has been coming from the NDP, which was decimated to a small number of seats by people piling into the Liberals because of nationalism and by its previous pathetic fealty to the Liberals in the last two parliaments.
Signal for messaging
Ente Photos
NotesNook for notes
A good VPN: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
If you need other replacements lmk.
The restrictions on powers are one example. There’s almost nothing there, but they say something like “are not allowed to compel service providers to retain data that will identify the content of your communications.”
That’s bullshit weasel words. Everyone is keeping that stuff and nothing restricts the “written sometime in the future” rules from compelling service providers to produce all of the data they’ve collected. There’s also no restriction on compelling real time wire taps.
If that was a real restriction it would say something like “retain, capture, or produce.”
There are also gag orders falling out of the sky like it’s raining and no mechanism to eventually force transparency when they’re used. They also have broad latitude to define and redefine a ton of rules that haven’t even been written yet.
I know of some places that do conferences and I don’t know what they’ll do if classified as a service provider. Imagine KYC on a couple hundred people trying to participate in a 2 hour conference.
Edit: And I think it’s a big win for organized crime. The police will only know how to use the easy tooling to catch the lowest level, dumbest criminals. The higher up criminals will (or probably already do) use private servers for communication.
Does anyone think organized crime is relying on WhatsApp or Snapchat? That’s what the low level suckers will be using (and getting caught by) so everyone can pretend the police are doing their job.
https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/30/turns-out-br...
The culture here is so mired in political apathy that it feels futile to even bother. People just do not care at all
I'm not a huge activist but I have been involved in a number of things when they matter a lot to me over the past twenty years or so, starting in college, but not a single one of them has ever gone my way
I'm unemployed now and worried I'm going to have an incredibly hard time ever finding work in software again, and AI is taking over, and here I am. Defeated again
I don't have it in me to fight this stuff anymore. The machine has won against me at least
Most go to work, accept whatever policy the government decides is good for them, and don't push back as their living conditions decline. Given that, is it surprising that we don't see much activism?
I wish it was different but I don't know what to do. Perhaps Canadians should steal a page from the French?
Watching our provinces fall one by one to corrupt/kleptocratic “conservative” governments has certainly done a number on me, but it’s only made me more vocal and more involved in local advocacy.
All that apathy out there is an opportunity to awaken care and turn the tide.
Get off your ass and help.
I was in school when the Snowden leaks came around, and asked dozens of students and teachers what they thought about it. The majority of them had no idea what had happened, some even outright rejecting it as a foreign smear campaign. A handful of people showed interest, but lost interest when there was no connection to aliens or the Bermuda triangle. My freedom-loving cohort was too preoccupied with YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for it to matter.
Fast forward to today, you're probably running USA-designed spyware on whatever computer and phone you import from America. Canada already belongs to FIVE EYES, your mobile handset market is almost entirely captured by pushover US corporations that backdoor Push Notifications and rename lakes apropos of nothing.
No matter what happens with this bill, the threat of surveillance will loom long over Canadians. Political motivation is important, but trusting the United States is an albatross on the neck.
The people I know are not apathetic and I’m sorry that things don’t go your way politically, but that’s life. For example, the recent Vancouver election didn’t go my way - big whoop.
the media spends almost all of their time attacking the opposition leader instead of the current pm (who has a majority gov), so people are unfortunately quite under informed on c22 and other things the gov is doing.
The votes for this bill seem to indicate that nearly all MPs regardless of party voted in favour, and none of them voted against.
And when I say literally nothing, I mean literally nothing. My MP (the man I voted for) crossing the floor to join the current ruling party showed me exactly how much political power I have: absolutely fuck all.
so bills like this will continue to go through since the liberals have a majority and the PMs popularity counterintuitively goes up as things go from bad to worse. im finding it hard to have any motivation to oppose this bill since resistance seems to be futile.
the dark liberal decade gets longer and darker in canada.
Liberal doesn't mean the same as it does in the US because it barely has a consistent meaning up here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada
it's a bit of a misnomer imo. if we're talking about classical liberalism, the conservatives fit that label better. if we're talking about "liberals" i.e. the left, the NDP would fit that label better. the modern Liberals are more like neoliberal technocrats, who favour top-down state interventionism and who are the ones driving surveillance bills and attacking privacy.
Please cease this kind of behavior immediately. We're supposed to be the only dumbshits around here.
Yours truly,
'Merica
Caniba