> Heck, China, Israel, India, South Korea, and Taiwan all have larger tech industries than Canada and have much stricter internet speech requirements (and in Israel and Taiwan's case are much smaller than Canada population wise).

That's actually not true for most of those countries. None of those countries other than maybe China have laws requiring encryption backdoors.

Suspicionless bulk metadata retention is also illegal in the EU, and no such law existing in many of those other democracies you listed.

Oh cool, we should set up stricter free speech restrictions in order to encourage our nascent tech sector. Sure thing champ.

Canadian tech is nonexistent because we continue to see ourselves as a colony instead of a country, a resource-extraction post-national economic state instead of a people.

A lot of the Indian tech industry is really just the tech industry from other countries being outsourced to there.

And why, pray tell, is that the case? Because the Liberal government has created a terrible environment for Canadian businesses over the last 11 years, ballooning the size of the public service and the amount of regulations and bureaucratic oversight, as well as trying to pick winners by handing out subsidies to all the wrong companies in service of their ideological agenda. They would rather companies fail than succeed without their "help". That, and they've done everything in their power to keep the housing bubble juiced instead of allowing an RE correction. But hey, running the country into the ground while trying to blame everything on the orange man gets you elected, so I don't expect any course correction.

The premise seems wrong here. As someone who worked my whole career in Canadian tech I assure you it exists.

Because US has far better opportunities and more money.

My personal experience in doing business in Canada: each industry is monopolized by two or three companies, you need to get their “blessing” before you can do anything in that sector. Government contracts aren’t much, but even with that, it’s nepotism based, you will get a contract knowing someone who will indirectly get benefits from you, for example you will hire people they know, so kinda laundering the money. Lengthy regulations, you might wait months to get an SFOC for example (in drones, where you might need a special flight operation certificate) to do a simple operation, only to repeat that for another test. Securing clients, a combination of low on money and usually clients prefer US based companies, your best bet is securing a big client that will be your backbone, so back to point one where you need a blessing from a big company. And Im talking here about a business where there’s an opportunity to scale up, so food truck business and the local plumbing work aren’t part of that.

> Heck, China, Israel, and India all have larger tech industries than Canada and have much stricter internet speech requirements.

It's almost like all three of those involve absolutely enormous captive markets, including for their defence/espionage purposes.

> Canadian tech is nonexistent because every Canadian pension fund, family office, and bank prefers to invest in American equities over Canadian equities.

Off-topic but I suspect it's also that oil and gas and real estate are the "easy" money in Canada and that's where investment goes. Canadian investors are risk adverse because they can be. That and there's a colonial-descended cultural bias towards credentials and established players.

But yeah, I'm furiously writing code for a product living off my savings, and would love to get investment to build a startup off of it, but every time I sniff around the Canadian "investor" scene it becomes clear to me that they'd have no time for somebody like me.

3 from Ontario and 4 from Quebec. As a western Canada resident it has been real old that we have been steamrolled by the east for the past decade.

The confirmation email takes a few minutes.

You know the conservatives are supporting this bill as well... right?

And when Harper was in power they were trying to push something similar?

And that the petition linked here is an NDP petition?

Partisan grandstanding won't fix the issue. A mobilized public will.

You cannot be serious. The Freedom convoy may have been misinformed but the government response was an absolute disaster and the courts have agreed.

That is a lie. None of those countries other than maybe China have laws requiring encryption backdoors.

Suspicionless bulk metadata retention is also illegal in the EU, and no such law existing in many of those other democracies you listed.

> even in the US you "cannot yet fire in a crowded theatre".

Actually, you can yell "fire" if there is a fire.

Note that the "can't yell fire" quote comes from a decision involving folks who were distributing pamphlets opposing the WWI draft. It was written by Holmes, who also wrote "three generations of idiots are enough" to justify a eugenics law, in a case that didn't involve any idiots.

Moreover, the "fire" decision was overturned by Brandenberg v Ohio.

Two things can be true at the same time.

That you're right about "Freedom" Convoy (and "Alberta" seppies) etc.

And that this a bad and harmful bill.

Given CSIS has plenty of powers already and hasn't done anything to deal with the actions far right American (and domestic) groups, I don't see why I would trust them with my or my family's chat histories or why I should have to live without Signal or ProtonMail, etc. as product offerings in my country.

"Canada doesn't have the free speech laws like we do in the US..."

Yep. And that is a very good thing. Hate speech is illegal here.

The comment you've replied to is clearly not "partisan bluster". While it may be a tad hyperbolic, with the Stanley Cup line, it's driving a valid point that while Canada is facing a number of very real challenges, the government in power is spending its time on internet censorship bills.

These bills are of almost no benefit to the average Canadian, and the point is that the government should focus more on things that matter to citizens. Instead of playing into people's fear and exposing them to potential government overreach, privacy violations, data breaches, etc., Canada's leadership should focus back on the economy.

Your comment actually seems to be the bluster, considering the ranting and swearing.

It's partisan to deny your country is falling to shit just because you voted for the parties that made it fall to shit.

> It's online and easy to read

That's not true. Most people are not legal experts with extensive expertise in technology, knowledge of how Canadian courts will interpret the legislation, and knowledge of how governments around the world are trying to attack encryption (ex: they do their best to hide and not to explicitly say it in the legislation).

> And let's be real: 99% of the industry already logs everything.

That's your opinion. That's not a real scientific claim, and yet you are using it to justify an unprecedented attack on privacy rights.

Suspicionless metadata retention has been illegal in the European Union since 2014, and it violates the Charter. There is no world in which it is acceptable.

An RCMP witness speaking about the bill during a recent committee meeting literally said the legislation will help them "solve the problem of encryption": https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/05/rcmp-confirms-bill-c-22-...

how would they force vpns like mullvad to turn over the log when there isn't any?

are they just going to ban specific vpn providers then ? this is absurd!