Eric Smith, Canadian Telecommunications Association Senior Vice President
Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***Check Against Delivery***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wednesday, May 27, 2026 Thank you, Chair, and members of the Committee, for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the Canadian Telecommunications Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Association is dedicated to building a better future for Canadians through connectivity. Our members include service providers, manufacturers, and other organizations that invest in, build, maintain, and operate Canada\u2019s world-class telecommunications networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having listened to the discussions before this Committee, it is clear that there is broad agreement on two important principles. First, Canadians\u2019 privacy rights must be protected. Second, law enforcement and national security agencies must have the ability to access information, through lawful processes, to support legitimate investigations and protect public safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The central question, therefore, is not whether these objectives matter. It is how to appropriately balance them. That balance is critically important because Canadians use digital services every day with the expectation that their personal information will be handled securely and that any access to that information will occur within a clear, proportionate, and accountable legal framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We appreciate the efforts of government in consulting with stakeholders and making Bill C-22 an improvement over the earlier proposals in Bill C-2. We are not against the bill. However, we have remaining concerns which are set out in a written brief that has been provided to the Committee. I will touch on three of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first deals with the confirmation of service demand in Part 1 of Bill C-22 and the requirement that demands must be responded to in as little as 24 hours. While most service providers have processes in place to deal with urgent requests from law enforcement, treating all confirmation of service demands with the same level of urgency and a 24-hour turnaround time is impractical and unrealistic. The number of requests, the complexity of searches, and the fact that not all service providers have staff available on a 24\/7 basis makes an across the board 24-hour response time near impossible to facilitate. A more workable response time would be no less than 3 business days, which would be suitable for most situations and would not prevent service providers from responding to truly urgent requests in a shorter period as they do today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second concern is the requirement to retain broad categories of metadata for as long as one year. You have already heard from other witnesses about the privacy concerns this requirement raises. We are also concerned about the security, as well as the lack of guardrails around the use of metadata. The metadata provisions of Bill C-22 should either be removed or substantially restricted, both in retention time and purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, there is the issue of reimbursement for the substantial cost of providing lawful access services. These are state-mandated tools and services created for the exclusive use of law enforcement and security agencies and are not part of normal commercial operations. In a previous government consultation on lawful access, law enforcement agencies submitted that communication service providers \u201cshould be able to recover reasonable costs incurred providing court-ordered assistance.<\/span><\/strong>\u201d1<\/sup> Likewise, the Lawful Access Advisory Committee (LAAC) established by the RCMP and CSIS has as one of its key principles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n ….a commitment to a cost neutral and fair compensation model: The lawful access community acknowledges that CSPs are private or semi-private companies and deserve fair compensation for the effort required to develop, maintain, and operate capabilities that is not part of their normal business processes<\/span><\/em><\/strong>.2<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n These economic realities are recognized in other jurisdictions such as the UK which reimburses telecom providers for both capital and operational costs associated with the creation of interception capabilities and the production of communications data. This concept should be included in Bill C-22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reimbursing service providers reflects the philosophy underpinning UK laws that while private companies have a statutory duty to assist with the implementation of warrants, they should not be expected to act as an uncompensated arm of the state. Government funding also helps ensure market fairness and competitiveness, mitigates financial impact on smaller businesses, provides oversight over the quality, standard, and security of intercept capabilities, and prevents citizens from facing increased monthly bills to pay for law enforcement investigation infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In closing, we understand the need to update Canada\u2019s lawful access framework. With targeted refinements, Bill C-22 can provide a framework that balances the interests of privacy and public safety, and that is proportionate, accountable, and that does not pass the costs to Canadian consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you. I would be pleased to answer your questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1<\/sup> Summary of Submissions to the Lawful Access Consultation<\/em> (2003) \u2013 Chapter 3: Comments by Law Enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2<\/sup> Special Report on the Lawful Access to Communications by Security and Intelligence Organizations<\/em>, The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, September 2025 \u2013 paragraph 118.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having listened to the discussions before this Committee, it is clear that there is broad agreement on two important principles. First, Canadians\u2019 privacy rights must be protected. Second, law enforcement and national security agencies must have the ability to access information, through lawful processes, to support legitimate investigations and protect public safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[],"class_list":["post-4718","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadatelecoms.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/4718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadatelecoms.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadatelecoms.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadatelecoms.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadatelecoms.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
6:30 p.m. ET<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n