second reading

Bill C-22 Just Passed Second Reading. With a Liberal Majority, the Path to Royal Assent Is Now Mostly Clear.

On April 20, 2026, the House of Commons passed Bill C-22 — the Lawful Access Act, 2026 — at second reading. The bill is now at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, the last stage where substantial amendments are realistic before the Liberal majority votes it through. The bill mandates one year of metadata retention by "core providers," authorizes the Public Safety Minister to issue secret capability orders to electronic service providers, and lowers the police access threshold for subscriber information from "reasonable grounds to believe" to "reasonable grounds to suspect." Opposition is from a wide coalition: academic privacy law, civil-society groups, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, technology firms including Meta and Apple, and the Department of Justice's own Charter statement, which is silent on the metadata-retention question. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has no statutory oversight role under the bill as drafted.