Canada’s Liberal government has introduced Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, 2026, a surveillance bill that compels electronic service providers to store Canadians’ metadata for a year and hands police and intelligence agencies new tools to access it.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The bill follows a failed first attempt, Bill C-2, which collapsed under the weight of near-universal criticism from opposition parties, rights groups, and the tech industry.
This is a mandatory data retention regime that forces companies to hold location data, device information, and other sensitive metadata on every Canadian, not just those suspected of crimes, ready for law enforcement retrieval via warrant. The logic is familiar: build the haystack first, search it later.
Hellbound and Down 