The petition to withdraw and amend the bill was presented to the House of Commons today [1]. People whining about how there's nothing they can do basically don't engage in democracy and thats how you end up in a US situation..
I emailed 9 senators and heard back from one. Emailed the other 8 today. Even when you engage, there's little positive feedback. The older I get, the more I believe this is a feature of the system and not a bug.
Haha. You don't email them, you cut off their funding and smear their public image. This is how you make them move, not with emails. It takes some work though.
Careful there, too much of this kind of thinking and the MPs are going to find child porn on your phone, you sick criminal thief trying to overthrow the government.
I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy. If this is true and POSIWID, then mass democracy only ever nullifies any real extent of democracy. As I see it, the only real solution is to replace power. I don't know how to do that. Do you?
This is why it's so important to have guardrails that limit what the government can do. The US tried to do that, and has probably been the most successful at it - though there's still been a lot of scope creep outside their constitution already. And that's probably a one-way street.
The public would rather be safe than be free. We see that time and time again with how people are tough on crime, how they want government to step in if they are ever defrauded or stolen from. Politicians are simply mirroring the people's wishes.
There are lots of laws in Canada that are not enforced. Ap owners/controllers will wait to see how the government wants to handle this. If the government starts making demands then they will pull out, but I doubt the bill itself will trigger anything immediate.
You're not wrong, the unelected senate generally chooses to defer to the elected lower chamber and only truly contentious legislation have been "killed" (as in dropped dead) at the Senate (think abortion and climate change).
Generally the Canadian Senate will propose amendments to the bill after its study (around a quarter of the time if I recall, not always), but the lower chamber has no obligation to agree, so it has some sway in that consultative sense. And the Senate has been more active in proposing amendments to legislation after independent senators became a thing.
At this point, I think the soft landing that privacy advocates can hope for are amendments that curtail the worst aspects of this legislation.
> also expand the sharing of Canadians’ personal data with foreign law enforcement, including the United States. Canada has been negotiating a cross-border data-sharing agreement with the U.S. that would allow American police to get information about Canadian internet users without any Canadian court oversight.
This is actually even more amazing to me that with all the talk of data sovereignty, the EU and Canada are still negotiating reciprocal Cloud Act treaties that will give the US government warrantless access to basically all digital services and communications. The UK and Australia have already codified these agreements with the US.
Trump's loud mouth brought these issues to the forefront, but really it seems like everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
I wonder why the Canadian government would share citizens data with the u.s. while all this 51st state talk and terrif stuff is going on, does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
> does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
It probably is reciprocal, but in reality Canadian companies sell very little (if any) digital services to Americans. There isn't much they can even access. It's why the arrangement is so lopsided.
We have a Canadian Constitution and the Charter of rights and freedoms, section 8 covers search and privacy, it even looks like a warrant is needed for messages just laying around a server https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2013/2013scc16/2013scc1... but this bill aims to put a harpoon through our charter rights!
You should probably educate yourself about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has so far held up far better than the Amendments. Its language is far more specific and precise, and the document itself provides justification and context for its requirements... Unlike the amendments, which have largely been re-interpreted and gutted by partisan judges into absurdity.
Do the 13th, or the 14th, or the 4th amendment mean anything these days?
>> everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. It will not go back to normal. US politics has changed. The US people have changed. There won't be a Trump 2.0 but there will be other equally horrible leaders. Maybe not the next president, but likely the one after that. Canada must adapt to the new realty rather than deny and wait.
Canadians acting like the consequences will never be the same because of one man, when you can walk over the French-German border today with a passport instead of a rifle.
I wouldn't except a liberal MP to vote against this, it's their own plan. I wouldn't expect a conservative MP to vote against this, they believe in neoliberalism and entrenching gov and corporate power the same way the liberals do (see bill C-39, supported by both the liberals and conservatives).
Luckily we don't have a two party system in canada.
there is literally nothing people can do. the party in charge has a majority government and a media biased enough to sell this bill as a positive thing.
the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp, and instagram all blocked canadians from using those services. the liberal party and the media would still find a way to blame trump for it, and the pm's popularity would increase.
Canada has problems - a state media that barks the party line isn't one of them. One political party would love you to believe that and it's aligned with the party south of the border that's trying to destroy media credibility across the board, but that's a political effort because transparency is an impediment to their agenda.
This isn't to say there aren't biases in media - there always is, everyone is biased in their own way - but the presence of that bias can be understood and having a robust pipeline for news is more important that trying to futilely eliminate all bias.
Canada has a free press, and many of its largest media outlets (the Sun, the National Post, the Globe, etc.) are strongly right-leaning and had no problems tarring Trudeau's Liberals night and day when he was in power. This is a problem you've invented, not the actual issue here.
what are you even on about, this is complete nonsense
nevermind half the population doesn't even pay attention to traditional "the media" these days
the bulk of "the media" in Canada is US owned, not "state funded" (which is only the CBC) and I haven't gotten any particular pro-vibes around this bill from them
I've never gotten such vibes either (that being said the alignment of the CBC isn't exactly neutral either, their french counterpart seems more neutral).
But I have spent/wasted enough time online to know that Conservatives do truly believe that the CBC is very biased against them and thus should be defunded (or, alternatively, they often suggest giving the same amount of money to Rebel News).
Is the worldwide liberal conspiracy in the room with us right now? Because all I see all over the place are various reactionary movements gaining power, ruining everything, and continuing to blame liberals for the failings of their quarter-brained policies.
I'm not sure what more to do then to annoy my friends and family and speak with my MP (done), who had already voted against it. Canada's political system seems healthy compared to the USA, but it doesn't feel healthy objectively.
Don’t use Canadian or 14 eyes products. Keep your cell on an airplane mode most or all times. Use cash as much as possible. That however is a technical response to a political one, which usually won’t last long or it will be ineffective or even illegal, a proper political response is the right way.
I read it a few weeks ago. Something that really bothers me is that parts are written like big tech ToS that are designed to make it sound like they’re doing something for you, but they’re not.
The restrictions on powers are one example. There’s almost nothing there, but they say something like “are not allowed to compel service providers to retain data that will identify the content of your communications.”
That’s bullshit weasel words. Everyone is keeping that stuff and nothing restricts the “written sometime in the future” rules from compelling service providers to produce all of the data they’ve collected. There’s also no restriction on compelling real time wire taps.
If that was a real restriction it would say something like “retain, capture, or produce.”
There are also gag orders falling out of the sky like it’s raining and no mechanism to eventually force transparency when they’re used. They also have broad latitude to define and redefine a ton of rules that haven’t even been written yet.
I know of some places that do conferences and I don’t know what they’ll do if classified as a service provider. Imagine KYC on a couple hundred people trying to participate in a 2 hour conference.
Edit: And I think it’s a big win for organized crime. The police will only know how to use the easy tooling to catch the lowest level, dumbest criminals. The higher up criminals will (or probably already do) use private servers for communication.
Does anyone think organized crime is relying on WhatsApp or Snapchat? That’s what the low level suckers will be using (and getting caught by) so everyone can pretend the police are doing their job.
I remember a few people who opposed this bill, including a Canadian professor of law/lawyer Michael <something>, who wanted to oppose this. What happened to that? HN had blog posts about it I believe.
michael geist. yes pretty much everybody knowledgeable about this bill, regardless of political stripes are against this bill. except for the party in power.
the media spends almost all of their time attacking the opposition leader instead of the current pm (who has a majority gov), so people are unfortunately quite under informed on c22 and other things the gov is doing.
How do you guys know about Michael Geist? I know about him from X. I've come to assume that if you're not on X, you probably aren't informed on any of the negative aspects of what the Liberals are doing because state funded media is state funded and is following the money. But I'd be happy to know people can be informed on Facebook or wherever.
I'm Canadian, and this matters a lot to me, but people don't care
The culture here is so mired in political apathy that it feels futile to even bother. People just do not care at all
I'm not a huge activist but I have been involved in a number of things when they matter a lot to me over the past twenty years or so, starting in college, but not a single one of them has ever gone my way
I'm unemployed now and worried I'm going to have an incredibly hard time ever finding work in software again, and AI is taking over, and here I am. Defeated again
I don't have it in me to fight this stuff anymore. The machine has won against me at least
I'm Canadian, too. I think most Canadians are just not informed. Most Canadians still get their news from state funded media which of course spin for the state because 'follow the money'.
We have a very complacent population, which explains the lack of innovation coming out of the country. People's idea of "business' right now is simply renting out their basement.
Most go to work, accept whatever policy the government decides is good for them, and don't push back as their living conditions decline. Given that, is it surprising that we don't see much activism?
I wish it was different but I don't know what to do. Perhaps Canadians should steal a page from the French?
hey bud, right there with you. these are the hardest times we've faced in a very long time, but humans are nothing if not adaptable. we're fucked today but we'll see about tomorrow. wishing you the best.
Sounds like you’re just as apathetic as those you despise.
Watching our provinces fall one by one to corrupt/kleptocratic “conservative” governments has certainly done a number on me, but it’s only made me more vocal and more involved in local advocacy.
All that apathy out there is an opportunity to awaken care and turn the tide.
Well, I'm American, and I watched my peers lose this fight 10+ years ago.
I was in school when the Snowden leaks came around, and asked dozens of students and teachers what they thought about it. The majority of them had no idea what had happened, some even outright rejecting it as a foreign smear campaign. A handful of people showed interest, but lost interest when there was no connection to aliens or the Bermuda triangle. My freedom-loving cohort was too preoccupied with YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for it to matter.
Fast forward to today, you're probably running USA-designed spyware on whatever computer and phone you import from America. Canada already belongs to FIVE EYES, your mobile handset market is almost entirely captured by pushover US corporations that backdoor Push Notifications and rename lakes apropos of nothing.
No matter what happens with this bill, the threat of surveillance will loom long over Canadians. Political motivation is important, but trusting the United States is an albatross on the neck.
I’m also Canadian and I don’t share your pessimism at all.
The people I know are not apathetic and I’m sorry that things don’t go your way politically, but that’s life. For example, the recent Vancouver election didn’t go my way - big whoop.
But the Vancouver elections are a microcosm of left-leaning Canadians across the country. There's no hope for the foreseeable future while boomer power remains.
Fun fact: the government is already talking to companies who have customers to prep the infrastructure needed to handover any data requested, as in, they are almost guaranteed it will pass.
The bill is going to pass, there is quite literally nothing I can do to stop it.
And when I say literally nothing, I mean literally nothing. My MP (the man I voted for) crossing the floor to join the current ruling party showed me exactly how much political power I have: absolutely fuck all.
Unfortunately, our state funded media have no interest in pushing back on that because they're state funded by the state pushing the bill. And, in my experience, if you're not on X, you just don't know about these things. That's most Canadians. We're doomed until boomer power fades.
This govts to attitude to the dignity of its citizens is demoralizing. I have more hope in the outcome of a US annexation than I do for any significant positive policy direction. it’s done. Bureaucracy has triumphed and there’s nothing to save.
the largest voting block in canada (seniors) aren't really capable of understanding this issue let alone prioritizing it. in fact, for liberal voters the only thing they care about is opposing and antagonizing trump, or at least the appearance of doing so. keeping housing unaffordable is a distant second priority.
so bills like this will continue to go through since the liberals have a majority and the PMs popularity counterintuitively goes up as things go from bad to worse. im finding it hard to have any motivation to oppose this bill since resistance seems to be futile.
the dark liberal decade gets longer and darker in canada.
It does not and it's quite confusing. You'll often see people use the term LPC or Liberal and avoid lower-case liberal due to the confusion of that word. In Canada the Liberal party is a fiscally centrist/corporate & socially liberal(ish) (aka it's similar to the traditional British definition of Liberal). The Conservatives are a large right wing reactionary block that seems to be perpetually in the minority but with a large loyal voting block while the actual opposition mostly comes from three parties that rotate in and out of relevance as a left-wing voice BQ (Bloq-quebecois), NDP (New Democratic Party - fading since the death of Jack Layton), and the Greens (Environmental sorta, but also weirdly anti-science sometimes). And that's on the national level - at the provincial level it gets even weirder with the BCLiberals (recently named BCUP) being socially and fiscally conservative and opposed by the BC NDP and other minor parties.
Liberal doesn't mean the same as it does in the US because it barely has a consistent meaning up here.
I'm also in Canada no its not this is a stupid take both Liberals and Conservatives push the same neo-libral crap. The only difference is the Cons want to push a culture war on us. Go back to Russia bot
[1] https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Peti...
Paula Simons has also been actively listening to Canadians on this subject. https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/
Generally the Canadian Senate will propose amendments to the bill after its study (around a quarter of the time if I recall, not always), but the lower chamber has no obligation to agree, so it has some sway in that consultative sense. And the Senate has been more active in proposing amendments to legislation after independent senators became a thing.
At this point, I think the soft landing that privacy advocates can hope for are amendments that curtail the worst aspects of this legislation.
This is actually even more amazing to me that with all the talk of data sovereignty, the EU and Canada are still negotiating reciprocal Cloud Act treaties that will give the US government warrantless access to basically all digital services and communications. The UK and Australia have already codified these agreements with the US.
Trump's loud mouth brought these issues to the forefront, but really it seems like everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
It probably is reciprocal, but in reality Canadian companies sell very little (if any) digital services to Americans. There isn't much they can even access. It's why the arrangement is so lopsided.
Well, they might have their own Fourth Amendment if they chose to fight against the British instead of with them during the American revolution!
History aside, now they have what they have.
Do the 13th, or the 14th, or the 4th amendment mean anything these days?
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. It will not go back to normal. US politics has changed. The US people have changed. There won't be a Trump 2.0 but there will be other equally horrible leaders. Maybe not the next president, but likely the one after that. Canada must adapt to the new realty rather than deny and wait.
Luckily we don't have a two party system in canada.
I think this bill is absolutely horrible.
What do you want me to do?
the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp, and instagram all blocked canadians from using those services. the liberal party and the media would still find a way to blame trump for it, and the pm's popularity would increase.
This isn't to say there aren't biases in media - there always is, everyone is biased in their own way - but the presence of that bias can be understood and having a robust pipeline for news is more important that trying to futilely eliminate all bias.
nevermind half the population doesn't even pay attention to traditional "the media" these days
the bulk of "the media" in Canada is US owned, not "state funded" (which is only the CBC) and I haven't gotten any particular pro-vibes around this bill from them
But I have spent/wasted enough time online to know that Conservatives do truly believe that the CBC is very biased against them and thus should be defunded (or, alternatively, they often suggest giving the same amount of money to Rebel News).
Signal for messaging
Ente Photos
NotesNook for notes
A good VPN: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
If you need other replacements lmk.
The restrictions on powers are one example. There’s almost nothing there, but they say something like “are not allowed to compel service providers to retain data that will identify the content of your communications.”
That’s bullshit weasel words. Everyone is keeping that stuff and nothing restricts the “written sometime in the future” rules from compelling service providers to produce all of the data they’ve collected. There’s also no restriction on compelling real time wire taps.
If that was a real restriction it would say something like “retain, capture, or produce.”
There are also gag orders falling out of the sky like it’s raining and no mechanism to eventually force transparency when they’re used. They also have broad latitude to define and redefine a ton of rules that haven’t even been written yet.
I know of some places that do conferences and I don’t know what they’ll do if classified as a service provider. Imagine KYC on a couple hundred people trying to participate in a 2 hour conference.
Edit: And I think it’s a big win for organized crime. The police will only know how to use the easy tooling to catch the lowest level, dumbest criminals. The higher up criminals will (or probably already do) use private servers for communication.
Does anyone think organized crime is relying on WhatsApp or Snapchat? That’s what the low level suckers will be using (and getting caught by) so everyone can pretend the police are doing their job.
the media spends almost all of their time attacking the opposition leader instead of the current pm (who has a majority gov), so people are unfortunately quite under informed on c22 and other things the gov is doing.
The culture here is so mired in political apathy that it feels futile to even bother. People just do not care at all
I'm not a huge activist but I have been involved in a number of things when they matter a lot to me over the past twenty years or so, starting in college, but not a single one of them has ever gone my way
I'm unemployed now and worried I'm going to have an incredibly hard time ever finding work in software again, and AI is taking over, and here I am. Defeated again
I don't have it in me to fight this stuff anymore. The machine has won against me at least
Most go to work, accept whatever policy the government decides is good for them, and don't push back as their living conditions decline. Given that, is it surprising that we don't see much activism?
I wish it was different but I don't know what to do. Perhaps Canadians should steal a page from the French?
Watching our provinces fall one by one to corrupt/kleptocratic “conservative” governments has certainly done a number on me, but it’s only made me more vocal and more involved in local advocacy.
All that apathy out there is an opportunity to awaken care and turn the tide.
Get off your ass and help.
I was in school when the Snowden leaks came around, and asked dozens of students and teachers what they thought about it. The majority of them had no idea what had happened, some even outright rejecting it as a foreign smear campaign. A handful of people showed interest, but lost interest when there was no connection to aliens or the Bermuda triangle. My freedom-loving cohort was too preoccupied with YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for it to matter.
Fast forward to today, you're probably running USA-designed spyware on whatever computer and phone you import from America. Canada already belongs to FIVE EYES, your mobile handset market is almost entirely captured by pushover US corporations that backdoor Push Notifications and rename lakes apropos of nothing.
No matter what happens with this bill, the threat of surveillance will loom long over Canadians. Political motivation is important, but trusting the United States is an albatross on the neck.
The people I know are not apathetic and I’m sorry that things don’t go your way politically, but that’s life. For example, the recent Vancouver election didn’t go my way - big whoop.
And when I say literally nothing, I mean literally nothing. My MP (the man I voted for) crossing the floor to join the current ruling party showed me exactly how much political power I have: absolutely fuck all.
so bills like this will continue to go through since the liberals have a majority and the PMs popularity counterintuitively goes up as things go from bad to worse. im finding it hard to have any motivation to oppose this bill since resistance seems to be futile.
the dark liberal decade gets longer and darker in canada.
Liberal doesn't mean the same as it does in the US because it barely has a consistent meaning up here.