This committee meeting was part of the clause-by-clause study of Bill C-22, an act respecting lawful access. The witnesses were Richard Bilodeau (Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Safety), Richard Burchill (Director General, Technical Investigation Services, RCMP), Ramzi Nashef (Director General, Policy, Planning and Accountability, CSIS), Normand Wong (Acting General Counsel, Justice), Kimberly Gibner (Deputy Assistant Deputy Minister, Justice), Aaron Gilkes (Acting Officer-in-Charge, RCMP Lawful Access), and Shannon Hiegel (Director General, National Security Policy, Public Safety).
Richard Bilodeau stated that both part 1 and part 2 of Bill C-22 are important for addressing gaps in lawful access, and that the legislation is the result of years of policy work to balance law enforcement needs with Charter rights. He noted that part 2 creates consistency across core providers like telecoms, and that the bill is designed to help law enforcement and intelligence services fill identified gaps, but he declined to say whether part 1 alone would be sufficient.
Richard Burchill said the RCMP works within whatever legislative context Parliament provides, and that if passed, parts 1 and 2 would give timely, structured access to data. He explained that the confirmation of service demand is a codification of existing practices, and that the proposed tools would help investigations by documenting requests and adding scrutiny, but he could not estimate how often the new powers would be used.
Ramzi Nashef said CSIS’s role is to provide insights on balancing security tools with privacy, not to advocate for a position. He noted that CSIS already operates under a “reasonable grounds to suspect” standard for investigations under section 12 of the CSIS Act, and that the confirmation of service demand would be an additional tool at the same standard to determine which provider holds a phone number or IP address before seeking judicial authorization for more invasive information.
Normand Wong argued that raising the standard for the confirmation of service demand to “reasonable grounds to believe” would undermine the bill’s objective of timely access, as police often cannot meet that threshold at the start of an investigation. He said the “reasonable grounds to suspect” standard already exists in the Criminal Code for similar tools like transmission data and financial data production orders, and that the confirmation of service demand is a low-privacy step to identify which provider holds information.
Kimberly Gibner said the “reasonable grounds to suspect” standard was a conscious policy choice calibrated to the minimally intrusive nature of the confirmation of service demand, which simply asks whether a provider serves a given phone number or IP address. She disagreed that different types of subscriber information attract different privacy expectations, and argued that the definition is designed to be non-exhaustive because service providers capture identifying information in varied ways.
Aaron Gilkes described the current investigative process, where police often cannot confirm which provider holds information without a court order, which can stall investigations. He said the confirmation of service demand would allow police to quickly identify the correct provider and then move to a subscriber information production order, speeding up investigations and potentially eliminating innocent parties early. He disagreed with the suggestion that the scope of subscriber information could be overly broad, noting that police typically seek basic identifiers.
Shannon Hiegel said the confirmation of service demand is a building block at the very start of an investigation, allowing police to take a first step when they have an IP address but no provider name. She cited examples like tips from the U.S. child sexual exploitation centre, where IP addresses are currently put on the shelf, and argued that the lower standard is justified because the information is minimal and all investigative steps are ultimately disclosed in court.
A procedural debate occurred over whether to invite the Privacy Commissioner and other witnesses to testify on part 2, with Conservative members seeking unanimous consent to invite Windscribe, DuckDuckGo, and NordVPN, which was denied each time. The committee also observed a moment of silence for an OPP officer killed in the line of duty.
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