Senate Passes Bill C-4 While Sharply Criticizing Political Parties

Bill C-4 has passed the Senate with a three-year sunset clause, giving federal political parties a time limit to self-regulate their use of voter data and remain exempt from privacy laws. OpenMedia explains why this moment matters and what comes next in the fight to hold parties accountable for how they handle our data.

On February 12, 2026, OpenMedia’s Executive Director, Matt Hatfield, testified at the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (LCJC) on Bill C-4, the so-called “Making Life more Affordable for Canadians” Act. Sounds positive, right? That’s exactly why parties buried changes with nothing to do with affordability in Part 4 of this bill, including proposals that would immunize  political parties from complying with federal or provincial privacy laws, instead giving them sweeping self-regulation authority over how they handle highly sensitive voter data, including retroactive immunity from any privacy law backdated to 2000.

We’ve been on this file for some time. In 2024, we released a detailed report on the first layer of the political party privacy iceberg; the quite concerning things we know from purely public sources. Last October, we submitted a brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) to call for stronger voter privacy protections in Part 4 of Bill C-4. Unfortunately, the bill was eventually passed in the House unanimously in December 2025. Canada’s three great federal political parties don’t all agree on much, but when it comes to external accountability, they were pleased to come together to say no one should look closely at what they’re doing with our data.

On our testimony

During our opening remarks on February 12, we drove home with senators that Part 4 of Bill C-4 creates a dangerous democratic loophole, where the parties that compete for power are allowed to set their own privacy rules. We emphasized this is not just bad today, but a worsening problem: with the ever-evolving potential in emerging technologies, especially AI-driven microtargeting and surveillance-based political profiling, the proposed legislation will create dramatically increasing risks over the next few years. 

We asked for Federal political parties in Canada to be subject to the same privacy laws as everyone else, and implored the Senate to fulfill their function as a “chamber of sober second thought”, serving as an essential safeguard against the parties’ short-term partisan self-interest determining Canadian law.

Our words had an impact. After our testimony, several senators raised concerns that Bill C-4 includes significant privacy changes that are not clearly related to affordability measures. Some argued the government was attempting to quietly alter important privacy rules within a broader bill to speed its passage. We were pleased to see that the LCJC committee seemed determined to do something about it.

Debate in the Senate

Bill C-4 was being simultaneously reviewed by two Senate committees: the LCJC being responsible for examining Part 4 (which deals with privacy rules for political parties), and the National Finance studying the tax measures and responsible for final proposal of any amendments to Bill C-4, with consideration of the LCJC’s recommendations.

In LCJC’s February 18 report, the committee sharply criticized Part 4 for being inadequate to protect Canadians’ privacy, democratic interests, and national security, and called for either its removal from Bill C-4, temporary application, or further study before permanent implementation––a HUGE win for our fight!

But hold your horses: on February 25, 2026, resolutions to strike Part 4 or add additional privacy safeguards were defeated by the full Senate. One key resolution did win majority support: a three year ‘sunset’ clause for Part 4 of Bill C-4, meaning that without further legislation, the impunity of federal parties will expire in 2029. Proponents of the sunset clause asked MPs in the House to take this issue seriously in the meantime, and create more binding privacy law for their parties that C-4’s self-rule setting.

What this decision means

This is a small, incremental win; but even with the sunset amendment, federal political parties in Canada will remain largely exempt from federal and provincial privacy laws. Instead of being subject to independent oversight and enforceable legal standards, and other basic privacy protections recommended by experts and civil society organizations, they will legally operate under self-regulated privacy policies that they design and enforce themselves for collecting, using, and storing voter data, with retroactive immunity reaching back to 2000.

Modern political campaigning is continuous, data-driven, and increasingly reliant on predictive analytics. Campaign databases now include or infer sensitive characteristics such as age, ethnicity, religion, language, gender, or race, which raises human rights implications.

This gap is especially concerning at a time when emerging technologies, especially AI-driven microtargeting, can be used to influence and profile individual voters in unprecedented ways. As political persuasion becomes more individualized and opaque, the decision not to wholly remove Part 4 leaves a significant gap in Canada’s privacy framework that undermines Canadian democracy.

What does it means to our fight

While this outcome is not what we Canadians need, it was the most the Senate felt comfortable doing in the face of near unanimous support for Bill C-4 at the House (MP Elizabeth May of the Green Party voted against Bill C-4). The sunset clause represents a crucial opportunity for us to build real change on this crucial issue.

Years of advocacy brought these issues into the national spotlight. The concerns raised by Canadians are now part of the official parliamentary record, documented in committee hearings, Senate debate, and expert testimony. Public awareness of the privacy loophole for political parties is stronger than ever. And IF the sunset clause is accepted by the House, the dismal new status quo of political parties setting their own rules for privacy will not be permanent. 

There’s two next steps: first, there is no guarantee the House will accept even this extremely modest limit on permanent privacy impunity for their parties. We’ll be launching an urgent action urging MPs to do the reasonable, democratic thing and accept this version of Bill C-4. Second, whether the House accepts this limit or not, Canadians deserve better than either no privacy law for political parties––as is the case toda––or a water-downed version that masks the absence of real protections. 

This moment underscores the need for separate, dedicated legislation that would subject political parties to clear, enforceable privacy standards and independent oversight. That’s what experts from every privacy authority, a wide range of civil society groups, and even a committee of MPs back in 2018 told our government to do. The UK and France both subject their parties to some form of privacy law; we should not, and will not, settle for less in Canada.

In other words, the fight is not over. Our fight for voter privacy has entered a new phase, and OpenMedia will continue working to advocate for Canadians' voter privacy and protect Canada’s democratic integrity. 

For anyone who wants to learn more about our testimony on February 12, you may access the recording and full text of our testimony here.

*OpenMedia is a grassroots community of 230,000 Canadians working to protect an open and surveillance-free Internet. Support our work and help defend privacy, security, and democracy in Canada.