OpenMedia Testifies Before SECU: Limited Amendments Will Not Fix Bill C-22

Bill C-22 is designed to be maximally flexible for the government and minimally protective for Canadians. It is a foundational problem that light amendments cannot fix.

On June 2, 2026, OpenMedia’s Executive Director, Matt Hatfield, testified before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) on Bill C-22, the so-called ‘Lawful Access Bill.’ 

When SECU first began the study of this broken legislation just one month ago, only three witness meetings were promised; a low number for any major legislation, and astonishingly low for legislation this controversial. At the time, not a single witness from any rights defending organization had been called to testify.

The concerns about the bill’s sweeping surveillance powers have grown exponentially since, with numerous domestic and foreign corporations, including privacy-first messaging app, Signal, and popular VPN companies Proton, Windscribe, and NordVPN, joining Apple and Meta’s threat to leave Canada if the bill passes.

Since the liberal government first introduced lawful access provisions in Bill C-2 in 2025 and now Bill C-22, our OpenMedia community has sent close to 25,000 messages to Parliament opposing Canada to move forward with such sweeping surveillance powers.

After submitting our brief to the SECU on May 15 (officially published since June 4), we’re grateful to finally have the opportunity to testify at the committee on June 2. With the Public Safety Minister actively pushing Bill C-22 to pass both the House of Commons and Senate by June 19, we seized the opportunity to explain to the committee: light amendments cannot do the job of making this Bill safe.

While the Public Safety Minister has said the government will amend C-22 to bring it in line with our allies' lawful access, like the US’s CALEA framework, the comparison doesn't hold up. CALEA covers only telecoms and has no mass metadata retention requirement. C-22 would apply to telecoms, online services, and hardware makers, and mandate a year’s pre-emptive metadata retention on every Canadian, not just those accused of a crime.

CALEA itself is becoming a cautionary tale. The law has been in effect since the 1990s, its surveillance backdoors have become a major security liability. In 2024, Chinese state hackers used it to compromise the systems of America's largest telecoms, affecting more than a million people. In February 2026, the FBI flagged the CALEA’s backdoors had led to breaches in their systems.

The Canadian government has promised amendments to Bill C-22 to protect encryption, but the real threat is in circumventing it. C-22 can compel access to data before it's encrypted or while it's decrypted, which defeats the purpose of encryption entirely without technically "breaking" its technical standard. 

Throughout Bill C-22, the definitions and protections are structured to be maximally flexible for the government and minimally protective for Canadians,  including a Cabinet power to reinterpret any term in the legislation by regulation.

That’s a foundational problem of C-22, not a simple definitional problem to fix.

Desperate to defend his increasingly controversial legislation, the Minister has attempted to frame opposition as foreign Big Tech interference; the truth is pushback has been driven first and foremost by ordinary Canadians and homegrown companies. OpenMedia's community has sent nearly 25,000 messages to MPs, and over 300 organizations have opposed the bill's privacy provisions.

This process has been pushed so quickly that the system is not keeping up. OpenMedia submitted our brief more than two weeks ago, on May 15, yet on the day we took our seat at the committee table, members still hadn't received it due to the sheer volume of submissions Parliament has been fielding.

It's a symptom of a rushed, under-resourced process for a bill with massive stakes for every person in Canada. Canadians deserve a Parliament that has the time and resources to actually scrutinize legislation this consequential, not a sprint to a deadline driven by Ministerial pressure.

We'll keep pushing until this bill is made safe or withdrawn entirely. If you haven't already, send a message to your MP today!

For anyone who wants to learn more, the recording and full text of our testimony are available here.