The federal government’s Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, has been much criticized for its domestic privacy implications. Less widely discussed is that it could also present a serious threat to data privacy from foreign governments, especially the ever more aggressive Donald Trump administration in the United States.

Research by the Citizen Lab and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) on Bill C-22 and on its predecessor Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, which contained the same provisions concerning foreign data sharing, indicates the current legislation might quietly pave the way to giving U.S. law enforcement unprecedented access to personal data stored in Canada, even if held by Canadian companies.

This is especially concerning in light of recent news that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sought detailed information from Google about a Canadian man living in Canada after he criticized the Trump administration and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) on social media. 

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Such a degree of extraterritorial privacy invasion puts in an even more alarming light what were already disturbing implications associated with this bill.

Bill C-22 would provide expanded surveillance powers to Canadian law enforcement and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, including the ability to order any business involving digital services to build new technical surveillance capabilities, mandatory one-year metadata retention and a lower legal threshold to obtain subscriber data.

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has indicated he is open to amending the bill in response to vociferous opposition from human rights and civil liberties advocates, legal scholars, prominent technology companies and other businesses, the other federal parties and the non-profit encrypted messaging provider Signal.

However, the Liberals have pushed to conclude Commons committee study of the bill despite severe procedural deficiencies, such as committee members not receiving key witness briefs prior to the deadline for amendments.

The analysis by Citizen Lab — an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the University of Toronto, focused on the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights and global security — suggests the legislation may be preparing the way for Canada to eventually implement one or both of two cross-border law enforcement data-access agreements.

One is a potential agreement under the U.S. CLOUD Act, whichwould allow U.S. law enforcement to request personal data directly from Canadian........

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