Google showed up to Parliament Hill this week with a blunt message for the Liberal government. Bill C-22 isn’t a modernization of Canadian law enforcement. It’s a surveillance regime that goes further than anything in the democratic world, and nobody at Google was even consulted before it was written.
Jeanette Patell, Google’s director of government affairs and public policy for Canada, and Kate Charlet, a former Pentagon and White House national security official who now leads Google’s cybersecurity and privacy policy, came before the committee yesterday with a list of concerns that should make every Canadian uncomfortable.
Patell didn’t mince words on where Google stands. “Google has never built a backdoor or any other mechanism to circumvent end-to-end encryption in our products. When we say a product is end-to-end encrypted, it is.”
“The proposed framework for secret ministerial orders is unprecedented and undermines accountability and user trust,” Patell told the committee. “Part two gives the Minister of Public Safety sweeping powers to issue secret orders, mandating providers to create or maintain data interception capabilities while permanently prohibiting companies from disclosing the existence of these orders.”
The Minister of Public Safety would get the power to secretly order Google to redesign its products to include surveillance capabilities. And Google would be permanently banned from telling you it happened, similar to what Apple said yesterday.
Patell was direct about what that actually means. “As written, this could give the government the power to secretly force companies to redesign products to include invasive surveillance capabilities and to do so without sufficient safeguards or oversight.”
It gets worse. The bill’s definition of what counts as a security vulnerability is so narrow that it opens the door to dismantling entire layers of privacy protection Canadians currently rely on. “Without stronger definitions, the law could be used to force the dismantling of critical privacy architecture such as breaking encryption, overriding users’ data deletion controls or building remote access capability. All of which could facilitate foreign interference and weaken global user privacy at a time when cyber threats are increasing in frequency and sophistication.”
And Ottawa drafted all of this without even picking up the phone to call Google first.
When committee member Claude DeBellefeuille (BQ MP) asked whether Google was consulted before the bill was tabled, Patell’s answer was telling. “I don’t believe we were in a consultation process prior to tabling.”
Charlet, the former Pentagon official who has seen surveillance regimes across multiple governments, was asked directly whether Bill C-22 is more intrusive than American laws. Her answer was short and devastating. “The essentially unbounded nature of the powers that are afforded to direct product changes by companies in secrecy and without judicial oversight in the case of the ministerial orders goes beyond any regime that I am familiar with.”
Not more intrusive than some democracies. Beyond any regime she has ever seen. That’s a former White House national security staffer saying Canada’s Liberal government has drafted a surveillance bill that outpaces anything in the democratic world.
The bill also goes after metadata in a way that treats ordinary Canadians like criminals by default. “Such requirements would make general conservation of metadata mandatory without distinguishing between, without setting aside people’s communication data. It would treat all Canadians like potential suspects.”
Google isn’t opposed to helping law enforcement. Patell made that clear. Canada already has a court-based system that works. “Canada already has an effective, transparent system where law enforcement can apply to the courts for reasonable assistance orders, subject to judicial oversight. Secret orders are out of step with other democratic countries.”
So why does Carney’s government need secret ministerial orders with no judicial oversight, no transparency and a permanent gag on the companies receiving them?
Google doesn’t have an answer for that. Neither, it seems, does Ottawa.
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