Jenny Kwan, a member of parliament from the left-leaning New Democratic Party, said the bill "should be alarming to many Canadians".
A big chunk of the new legislation deals with curbing the flow of fentanyl and illegal weapons across the US-Canada border - an issue that US President Donald Trump has used as justification for his tariffs on Canada.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree says Ottawa continues to have “difficult conversations” with New Delhi about the 2023 killing of a Canadian Sikh leader, but the Prime Minister’s Office has declined to say if the matter was raised earlier this week in talks between Mark Carney and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi.
Mr. Carney ducked a question Tuesday about whether he and Mr. Modi had discussed the killing of the Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, during a one-on-one meeting that day at the G7 leaders’ summit in Kananaskis, Alta.
The Globe and Mail pressed the PMO on Wednesday about whether Mr. Nijjar’s slaying and Indian foreign interference were part of the discussions. Sikh organizations and human-rights activists have also sought clarification on what was discussed.
Mr. Carney’s press secretary, Audrey Champoux, would not comment on Wednesday. She referred The Globe to a statement the two leaders released Tuesday: “Prime Minister Carney raised priorities on the G7 agenda, including transnational crime and repression, security, and the rules-based order.”
After the meeting, the two leaders announced that they would designate new high commissioners and restore regular diplomatic services to citizens in both countries.
Bilateral relations went into a deep freeze in 2024, after then-prime minister Justin Trudeau and the RCMP said there was evidence linking agents of the Modi government to Mr. Nijjar’s slaying.
Canada expelled the Indian high commissioner and five other diplomats over the killing. India denied any role and responded with similar diplomatic expulsions.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan, an outspoken human-rights activist, said in a June 17 letter to Mr. Carney that re-establishing diplomatic normalcy with India when it has yet to account for its role in the death of Mr. Nijjar “sends a deeply painful message to Sikh Canadians who continue to live under threat.”
Major Sikh organizations and human-rights advocates also wrote a separate letter to Mr. Carney on Tuesday, saying the Nijjar killing was part of a co-ordinated campaign of transnational repression that “continues to violate Canadian sovereignty.”
Like another government before them, the Liberals are trying to satiate law enforcement’s perennial desire for warrantless access to personal information in the digital age by linking it to a perceived emergency.
The Conservatives under Stephen Harper did it in 2013, when Vic Toews, the public safety minister, famously said of a Liberal opposition critic that, “He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
Mr. Toews was talking about the 2012 Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, which would have given police unprecedented powers to monitor Canadians’ internet activities without a warrant.
The bill did not in fact mention children or internet predators anywhere except in its title, and the Conservatives abandoned it in 2013 under a withering public outcry.
The Carney Liberals are now throwing around the words “fentanyl,” “sex offenders” and “money laundering” in Bill C-2, and suggesting Canada’s borders are porous, for the same purpose.
The government’s inclusion of warrantless information demand powers in Bill C-2 may make this the most dangerous lawful access proposal yet, exceeding even the 2010 bill led by Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. The initial concern regarding the bill’s warrantless disclosure demand unsurprisingly focused on whether the proposal was consistent with Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence upholding the reasonable expectation of privacy in basic subscriber information (there is a strong argument it is not). The application of this new power was generally framed as a matter for telecom and Internet companies, given that companies such as Bell, Rogers, and Telus are typically the focal point for law enforcement seeking information on subscriber activity. However, it has become increasingly apparent that this is an overly restrictive reading of the provision. The Bill C-2 information demand power doesn’t just target telecom providers. It targets everyone who provides services with the prospect of near limitless targets for warrantless disclosure demands.