By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer

For many, the newly proposed Bill C-2 (also known as the Strong Borders Act) is cause for concern. According to a joint press release, it has received pushback from over 300 organizations. 

The federal government has touted the bill as a way to “strengthen our laws and keep Canadians safe by ensuring law enforcement has the right tools to keep our borders secure, combat transnational organized crime, stop the flow of illegal fentanyl, and crack down on money laundering.” The bill proposes a wide range of national security measures, including expanded surveillance powers, broader data collection and analysis, enhanced information sharing between federal and foreign government agencies, and changes to asylum claims. 

Among the organizations urging the federal government to withdraw Bill C-2 is the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), which aims to preserve and further “civil liberties and human rights.” The joint letter describes the bill as “a multi-pronged assault on the basic human rights and freedoms Canada holds dear,” as it “weakens our constitutional foundations on firmly domestic matters, including an enormous and unjustified expansion of power for police and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to access the data, mail, and communication patterns.”

The Peak spoke with Aislin Jackson, a staff lawyer in BCCLA’s policy department, for more information.

Bill C-2 is “an omnibus bill that touches on a bunch of different areas that are only vaguely related to one another,” Jackson said. But, they acknowledged that “some of the information sharing provisions that are in the bill could potentially be defended. When it comes to being able to information share within the government, that could make a lot of sense.” 

However, “on privacy grounds, I would expect there to be constitutional challenges to this legislation,” they said, referencing parts 14 and 15 of the bill. 

Part 14 concerns the “timely gathering and production of data and information during an investigation,” while part 15 establishes the “Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act.”

Jackson said these are “new powers for police and CSIS to demand information, including warrantless powers. The new act in part 15 “would allow for secret orders to be made, requiring companies to potentially gather information they otherwise wouldn’t.” 

This ability “raises the spectre of not only potentially undermining cybersecurity and muzzling these companies from being able to disclose those changes to their clients, but also conscripting these private companies into the surveillance state,” Jackson added.

“The most vulnerable people are affected, but also all of us in terms of our privacy rights.” — Aislin Jackson, staff lawyer, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association

In its current form, the bill would allow companies to not only obtain “information from online service providers, but potentially analog service providers” without “ever going in front of a court to be reviewed for charter compliance.” This includes data from “a niche dating site” or “a support message board for a particular medical condition that you have.” 

So, the act “is in tension with our charter values, especially relating to informational privacy,” Jackson said. The Peak reached out to the Minister of Public Safety, who proposed the bill, and was directed to the Department of Justice Canada. The department said, “The charter statement for Bill C-2 explains some of the considerations that support the reasonableness of the legislative proposals.” They also said “care was taken to strike a balance” between “state interest” and “its impacts on privacy interests” in developing Bill C-2.

“In many ways, it seems like we’re falling into this race to the bottom in terms of privacy protections and also the refugee provisions as well, like the one-year time window that people have from first entering Canada to making a claim.” 

The part of the bill relevant to refugee status referenced by Jackson “means that there we’re not just coming down towards the US level, because they also have a one-year ban,” but becoming even stricter than the US. Under Bill C-2, “asylum claims would also have to be made within a year of entering the country, including for international students and temporary residents.” 

Jackson described a hypothetical scenario in which “someone came here as a tourist, and then years later became a human rights advocate, or perhaps came out as queer, or the conditions on the ground in their country might change due to a foreign invasion or an international coup.” Since a year had already lapsed, that person would not be eligible for asylum despite their need and qualification as a refugee.

“The most vulnerable people are affected, but also all of us in terms of our privacy rights,” Jackson said. “Our behaviour [would be] distorted by the feeling of those eyes on us, even if we’re not actively being surveilled at that moment. It calls to mind Michel Foucault’s idea of the Panopticon,” they added, “a digital panopticon that everyone’s living in at all times.” 

The Peak was also directed to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for a statement. They said Bill C-2 will help “streamline the application process at all points of entry; refer complete claims to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada more quickly; improve decision timelines and remove inactive cases from the system; [and] facilitate voluntary departures and support vulnerable claimants.” They stated “these reforms reflect the government’s ongoing commitment to a fair, efficient, and rules-based asylum system that meets today’s migration challenges.”

Jackson encourages those concerned to write to their MPs. 

“Public pushback is one of the ways that when really problematic legal access provisions have come up in the past, they’ve been defeated.”