Tell the Senate:
Reform surveillance Bill C-22!

Bill C-22, the so-called "Lawful Access Act," has passed first reading in the Senate1— and if passed, threatens to break Canadian privacy for good. The version they’re considering still requires digital service providers to retain metadata about every Canadians' day-to-day online activity for six months, and gives the Minister of Public Safety power to issue secret orders that force apps, messaging services, and other providers to build government backdoors into their systems — all without meaningful judicial oversight.

Despite urgent warnings from civil society groups, experts, and major privacy-focused companies — including Signal, DuckDuckGo, Proton, Windscribe, NordVPN, Apple, and Meta — that the bill threatens encryption, Bill C-22 is still badly broken.2,3 A serious study by Senators will be the last chance to delete the worst parts of this broken legislation.

If enough of us speak up NOW, the Senate will act! Tell senators they need to reform Bill C-22 and fix its dangerous surveillance powers. Sign the petition today!

To: Senate of Canada

We call on the Senate to give the surveillance powers of Bill C-22 the full study the House did not. The House rushed this dangerously broad legislation through clause-by-clause review without hearing wide witness testimony or duly considering needed fixes, as committee MPs themselves flagged. The Senate must fully study Bill C-22, hear all interested parties, and reform it to place limits on its surveillance powers before it becomes law.

*A Canadian postal code is required to sign this petition.

This campaign is hosted by OpenMedia. We will protect your privacy, and keep you informed about this campaign and others. Find OpenMedia's privacy policy here.

What’s wrong with Bill C-22?

Bill C-22 allows Canada’s government to install backdoors that compromise privacy into any electronic service provider in Canada it chooses.4 Companies can also be forced to track and retain six months of the movements and metadata of every user on their services to provide to law enforcement on warranted demand. 

This extraordinary set of powers is not just a threat to our privacy from future state overreach; because technical backdoors cannot be made for just the ‘good’ guys, they will compromise our privacy to all the Internet’s ‘bad’ guys too, including hostile state actors, individual hackers, and increasingly, rogue AI agents like Claude Fable.

Who's calling for fixes

Opposition has come from across Canada and the whole political spectrum. More than 300 organizations have opposed the bill's privacy provisions;5 more than 25 civil liberties, refugee rights, and privacy organizations, joined by 15 leading privacy scholars, have called for the bill's withdrawal;6 and OpenMedia's community has sent nearly 25,000 messages to MPs asking for the Bill to be dropped.7 

Signal has said it will leave Canada rather than comply; Windscribe is preparing to relocate its headquarters, with NordVPN warning it may follow; Apple, Meta, Proton, and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce have all raised alarms. Even the bill's own watchdog, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, told the committee it lacks the access it would need to oversee these new powers.8

Why the Senate must give this bill a thorough study

The House didn't have time to do it right. At the June 2 committee hearing, MPs learned that expert briefs, including ones from the Canadian Bar Association and OpenMedia, still hadn't been given to committee members by the time amendments were due,9 despite being submitted more than two weeks beforehand.10 Two days later, the committee moved to a clause-by-clause review anyway, and made only minimal government-approved changes to the Bill’s dangerously broad text.11

Bill C-22 grants sweeping new surveillance powers that will change the lives of all Canadians. We deserve better than a process even MPs on the committee called out as “unacceptable.” The Senate is unlikely to drop a majority government supported bill entirely, but can still play the role  where that thorough review now must happen.

Sources

  1. C-22 An Act respecting lawful access – LEGISinfo
  2. Signal, DuckDuckGo among firms weighing Canada exit over lawful access bill – Global News
  3. Apple, Meta warn Canadian bill could force them to weaken encryption – Reuters
  4. Civil Society to Parliament: Kill Bill C-22 – OpenMedia
  5. OpenMedia Testifies Before SECU: Limited Amendments Will Not Fix Bill C-22 – OpenMedia
  6. See 4
  7. See 5
  8. Government prematurely ends debate on Bill C-22 without dealing with dangerous surveillance powers – OpenMedia
  9. STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY AND NATIONAL SECURITY, Evidence, TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2026 – Parliament of Canada
  10. OpenMedia to SECU: Withdraw Bill C-22 or gut its surveillance provisions – OpenMedia
  11. See 4

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Press: Matt Hatfield | Phone: +1 (888) 441-2640 ext. 0 | press[at]openmedia.org