Canadians face deadline to oppose Bill C-22
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
The EFF urged Canadians to sign the CCLA's petition opposing Bill C-22 before the Senate acts.
The bill would expand compelled data retention and backdoor powers over encrypted services.
Background
Bill C-22, also called the Lawful Access Act, is a Canadian bill that gives authorities expanded tools to compel telecom and technology providers to assist investigations, including data retention and access to subscriber information. It has passed the House of Commons and is now before the Senate. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a privacy advocacy group, published a Deeplinks blog post by Joe Mullin urging Canadians to sign a petition by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) opposing the bill before the Senate acts.
How it unfolded
- Apr 20, 2026The House of Commons completed second reading and referred Bill C-22 to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU).
- May 7, 2026 to Jun 2, 2026SECU held recorded meetings 37 through 40 examining the bill's scope and hearing from affected parties.
- Jun 18, 2026SECU reported the bill back with a decryption carve-out amendment; the House adopted the report and passed third reading the same day, and the bill received first reading in the Senate.
- Oct 8, 2026Senators debated the bill at second reading, the most recent recorded floor activity.
- Oct 17, 2026Wired reported that DuckDuckGo and NordVPN signaled they would weigh an exit, per Shattered's account.
- Oct 19, 2026Bill C-22 remained at second reading in the Senate as of this date.
- Oct 22, 2026EFF published a Deeplinks blog post urging Canadians to sign CCLA's petition opposing Bill C-22 before the Senate acts.
Who’s saying what
- EFF
- Bill C-22 is a massive expansion of surveillance powers that threatens the privacy and security of millions of people, and its backdoor provision is a clear recipe for weakening encryption.
- CCLA
- The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is urging all Canadians to sign its petition opposing the bill.
- Some senators
- Some Canadian senators have expressed concerns and suggested, as CCLA and Citizen Lab have, that the bill may not be compatible with privacy protections in the Canadian constitution.
- Signal
- Signal has told lawmakers directly it would rather quit the Canadian market than rewrite its encryption.
- Shattered
- The decryption carve-out sounds like a flat ban on backdoors but is not, because it only protects a provider when it genuinely cannot decrypt the data itself.
Still unverified
None of the major providers have announced an exit date; nothing requires action today.