{"id":72859,"date":"2025-10-30T15:21:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T19:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/canada\/?p=72859"},"modified":"2025-12-22T16:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T21:12:08","slug":"carneys-new-laws-are-building-a-freedom-repression-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/canada\/en\/story\/72859\/carneys-new-laws-are-building-a-freedom-repression-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Surveillance, privacy violations, deportations: How Carney\u2019s new laws are building a freedom repression machine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Prime Minister Carney is in the midst of trying to pass a very ambitious political agenda, which is made of lots and LOTS OF BILLS or new laws that he needs to convince the other parties to support him on. Many of these Bills have names that at first glance might not raise alarm bells for many Canadians:<\/p>\n\n

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Bill C-5: One Canadian Economy and Building Canada Act<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill C-2: Strong Borders Act<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill C-12 Strengthening Canada\u2019s Immigration System & Borders<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill C-8: Cyber security<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill C-9: Combatting hate<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

Are you asleep?<\/p>\n\n

But within all of these bills are new and very broad powers<\/strong> for our federal government that individually could infringe on our freedoms, and when assembled together, Transformer-style, could create a machine of repression working to protect the profits of corporations and powerful individuals over the freedoms and interests of the rest of us.<\/strong> All it would take is a federal government with the incentive to use those powers for bad. Maybe a government under immense pressure from someone like President Trump.<\/p>\n\n

Click here to jump to the bottom of the blog to find links to all the Parliamentary Committee Hearings featuring stakeholders and experts on the subject that have occurred thus far on these bills.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n

How would this repression machine built out of these Bills work?<\/h2>\n\n

Bill C-5<\/strong> has already passed and been made law. It is supposed to speed up approvals for projects deemed in Canada\u2019s so-called \u201cnational interest\u201d by allowing them to skip over other laws and processes to be built faster<\/a>. The kind of projects being selected so far are exclusively industrial: mines, ports, liquid natural gas export facilities, etc. These are the kind of projects that local communities, environmental groups, and Indigenous nations often oppose because of the environmental, cultural, and health impacts. And Bill C-5 will heighten the potential for these conflicts, because it is allowing these projects to skip over the existing standards and processes, like environmental impact assessments, where communities have opportunities to better understand the projects and raise their concerns.<\/p>\n\n

Just because the process is being skipped doesn\u2019t mean that people won\u2019t still protest the projects that they don\u2019t see as beneficial to their communities. In fact, by skipping public consultations and environmental reviews the federal government is giving even more reasons for people to be upset and protest.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Here is where Bill C-9 comes in.<\/p>\n\n

Status: Bill C-9<\/strong> (combatting hate) has not passed. <\/p>\n\n

What are the potential risks here?<\/strong> At the moment it is being discussed by the Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Human Rights. This bill would <\/strong>undermine our right to peaceful protest<\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>by allowing police to detain people first and ask questions later in the context of public demonstrations. It gives the government and police a lot of power to control where and how people can protest, under the guise of combatting hate. Even if you did not break the \u201cprotest rules\u201d that would be set out in Bill C-9, you could still end up under the scrutiny of police and security services because of Bill C-2 and Bill C-8.<\/p>\n\n

Status: Bill C-2 <\/strong>(strong borders) has not passed. <\/p>\n\n

Should I be worried? <\/strong>It claims to be about borders, but it also contains new sweeping surveillance powers for police and security services. In its original form C-2 would allow authorities to collect your personal information without needing any warrant from a judge<\/a>, as long as they merely suspected you might<\/em> commit a federal crime, or they think your information may assist them in an investigation into a crime. <\/p>\n\n

A community member who doesn\u2019t want one of the C-5 \u201cnational projects\u201d in their backyard, and who is vocal about this, could in theory be targeted because they \u201cmight\u201d do something illegal to interfere with the project. Authorities could demand all kinds of service providers<\/a> hand over that person\u2019s private information, including digital services they subscribe to, health services they\u2019ve received, even things like car rentals and hotel stays, etc. This would allow authorities to pry into that person\u2019s private life with no real oversight and search for supposed criminality<\/em> in that person\u2019s behaviour, without authorities ever having to provide proof that the person is actively committing a crime. <\/p>\n\n

Bill C-2 also contains efforts to create a new data sharing treaty with the United States<\/a>. So any private information collected on individuals here could end up in the hands of US authorities.<\/p>\n\n

Status: Bill C-8<\/strong> (cyber security) has also not passed.<\/p>\n\n

Why should I care? <\/strong> It would also allow warrantless access to private digital information<\/a>, in this case requiring telecommunications providers to allow backdoor access to police and security services, including access to your encrypted data and messages. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has warned that it could allow for the \u201cinappropriate collection and sharing of subscriber account information, communication data, website visits, metadata, location data and financial data.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

These kinds of invasive surveillance and data collection powers have been used to treat innocent people like criminals. In particular they have been used to target racialized<\/a> and Indigenous people<\/a>. And Bill C-2 and C-8 will amp up the power to surveil, collect private information, and treat people like criminals \u2013 without proof of a crime and with little to no oversight. <\/p>\n\n

And what if a person who chooses to protest a C-5 \u201cnational project\u201d impacting their community is not a Canadian citizen, but an international student on a visa? Or a permanent resident? Here\u2019s where Bill C-12 comes in.<\/p>\n\n

Status: Bill C-12 <\/strong>(immigration system and borders) has not passed, but is being considered by Parliament right now. <\/p>\n\n

It would give the federal government broad powers to cancel the legal status of immigrants, migrants and refugee claimants if it were deemed in the \u201cnational interest\u201d to do so<\/a>. A government interested in punishing people who protest its agenda could try and use these broad powers to kick out non-citizens and create a chilling effect. We have already seen a similar power at work in the United States, when international students who protested the genocide in Palestine were targeted and their student visas cancelled<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

While this kind of abuse by our government could and would no doubt be challenged in the courts, legal action could be too late to stop people being detained, or deportation proceedings from starting, and too late to stop the harm done to people\u2019s lives. Again, as we\u2019ve seen happening right now in the United States, while some deportations have been deemed illegal by the US courts<\/a>, the rulings have come long after some people have been deported, sent to imprisonment in other countries, been detained for long periods, and their families and communities terrorized by immigration enforcement (ICE) raids.<\/p>\n\n

How would this repression machine protect the interests and profits of the powerful?<\/h2>\n\n

We don\u2019t need to imagine a dystopic future to see how our government and tax payer funded security services already act to protect private profits often at the cost of the public\u2019s interests and freedoms. We already know that the RCMP employed a campaign of criminalization, harassment and violent raids against the Wet\u2019suwet\u2019en to protect the interests of Coastal Gaslink and TC Energy<\/a>, two fossil fuel companies. We also recently learned from reporting in The Narwhal<\/a> and access to information documents obtained by Greenpeace Canada<\/a> that CSIS and TC Energy have actively worked together to increase the sharing of classified intelligence from CSIS to corporations. That means our tax payer funded security services are sharing classified intelligence directly to an oil company to help them protect their interests. <\/p>\n\n

If there were a concerted protest effort around any of the C-5 so-called \u201cnational interest projects\u201d you can easily see how our government and security services could act to protect the investments and interests of private companies, even if it means violating the rights of people and communities voicing legitimate opposition. They already do it. <\/p>\n\n

This isn\u2019t only relevant for people protesting environmental and human rights issues, this repression machine could be turned on anyone or any group. <\/p>\n\n

If we need an example of what\u2019s possible when a government decides to do anything and everything to further its agenda and neutralise opposition we know where to look. People in Canada have made it pretty clear that we do not want to follow in the footsteps of Trump\u2019s America – but PM Carney\u2019s agenda is leading us down that path by granting the government far too much power to control, surveil, and punish. <\/p>\n\n

What can we do?<\/h2>\n\n

We need to send a loud clear message to our representatives in Parliament, that creating a repressive, surveillance state is NOT what we voted for. The majority of these bills are still being considered, there is still an opportunity to change them or take them back to the drawing board completely.<\/p>\n\n