Boundless boundaries of the Strong Borders Act

Days before Parliament recessed for the summer, the Government of Canada introduced the Strong Borders Act, ostensibly to increase security of the Canada/US border and help stem the flow of fentanyl and other contraband. 

The proposed law does “more to expand the state’s power to access private data in Canada than any law in the past decade” and will have profound privacy implications. Hundreds of privacy professionals, lawyers, academics, and civil society organizations concerned about the sweeping surveillance powers it grants, including secret FISA-style orders, and have called for it to be withdrawn.

Among other things, Bill C-2 is designed “to facilitate access to basic information that will assist in the investigation of federal offences through an information demand or a judicial production order to persons who provide "services to the public.” That provision gives almost unlimited power for the Canadian government — and possibly foreign ones — to collect information about individuals and organizations in Canada from anyone who provides “services to the public”. Importantly, “services” is undefined.

Many provisions in the Act will grant new search powers that are unrelated to the border, and many of the law's 16 parts amend existing statutes that now allow “police services” to collect information by adding wording so that police services “and other law enforcement agencies” will be able to collect information. 

Given the broad language of the new law, it is easy to imagine an information demand asking for details about where specific Canadians have traveled within and beyond the country's borders; what schools, clubs, and activities they participate in; and whether they are members of a specific synagogue, mosque, or church and how often they attend. It's even easier to imagine foreign governments using that power to gather details about the lives, activities, and associations of émigrées, and use that to exert control over their lives and activities, or for ideologically-driven individuals to leverage this law to identify and persecute people for their religious beliefs, political views, or personal preferences.

Penalties for failing to comply include up to five years in prison and multi-million-dollar fines for individuals and for companies, both of which are calculated on global income.