To My Member of Parliament,

I agree with the Canadian Constitution Foundation that bills C-2 and C-8 threaten Canadians’ constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, including my right to security against unreasonable searches, and my freedom of expression.

My concerns include the following:

• Bill C-8 would allow the minister to secretly order telecommunications service providers like Telus, Bell and Rogers to cut someone off from their phone or Internet, without any safeguards to prevent this power from being used to silence political dissidents;

• Bill C-8 would allow the minister to require that telecommunications companies weaken their encryption standards, and to potentially engage in unconstitutional searches;

• Bill C-2 would create new provisions that would enlist financial institutions in snooping;

• Bill C-2 would allow Canada Post to open letter mail without a warrant;

• Bill C-2 would allow police to demand basic subscriber information from any online service provider, from doctors to dating apps, without judicial authorization; 

• Bill C-2 would ban cash transactions over $10,000, raising privacy concerns, and

• Bill C-2 could allow the minister to enlist electronic service providers in secret spying, potentially even by requiring mandatory “backdoors” into encrypted services.

I urge you to fix these bills before they pass so that they adequately protect civil liberties.