Under the purported guise of “cybersecurity” and “telecommunications infrastructure”, Canada would under Bill C8, be able to cut off all telecommunications to a person, force that person to hand over whatever information the government demands, and prohibit said person from saying a word about this to anyone. All it takes in reviewable “reasonableness”; perhaps that is Canada’s stereotypical way of adding “niceness” to its digital police state?
Under a “reasonable” threat, all telecommunications services can be severed:
15.2 (1) If there are reasonable grounds to believe that it is necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption or degradation, the Minister may, by order and after consultation with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and with the persons the Minister considers appropriate,
(a) prohibit a telecommunications service provider from providing any service to any specified person, including a telecommunications service provider; and
(b) direct a telecommunications service provider to suspend providing for a specified period any service to any specified person, including a telecommunications service provider.
Meanwhile… in Canada…
Oh, and the people ordered by the government to do this aren’t allowed to say anything, or indeed is a targeted person allowed to say anything about this:
(3) The order may also include a provision prohibiting the disclosure of its existence, or some or all of its con tents, by any person.
And certainly no one is getting compensated for any of this.
(8) No one is entitled to any compensation from His Majesty in right of Canada for any financial losses resulting from the making of an order under subsection (1).
This is a sop to privacy, the bill states the government may “not permitted to order a telecommunications service provider to intercept a private communication or a radio-based telephone communication”… but it doesn’t prohibit it from demanding any such communications that are intercepted, especially when the government now has the power to demand “any information that the Minister believes on reasonable grounds is relevant”:
15.4 The Minister may require any person to provide to the Minister or any person designated by the Minister, within any time and subject to any conditions that the Minister may specify, any information that the Minister believes on reasonable grounds is relevant for the purpose of making, amending or revoking an order under section 15.1 or 15.2 or a regulation under paragraph 15.8(1)(a), or of verifying compliance or preventing noncompliance with such an order or regulation.
Oh, and even to the Canadian Parliament only summary matters are required to be presented to it from time to time.
Clearly, they authority for all of this is based off of Section 31 of the Canadian Charter…
The full bill can be read here, or below:
