Why we’ve joined over 200,000 Canadians in saying no to Bill C-51

Canadian parliament will be voting on Bill C-51 this week, legislation designed to get tough on terrorism.

We’re all for that.

However, this legislation appears to erode basic civil liberties in the process, by giving government agencies wide sweeping powers to setup dragnet surveillance, and share collected information on law-abiding citizens – with little oversight or accountability.

From a business standpoint, we’re concerned that Bill C-51 will undermine trust in Canada’s technology sector.

We know that many of our customers, including Canadian government agencies, consciously choose Canadian cloud service providers because of the invasive privacy issues prevalent south of the border. The U.S. tech industry has lost billions in revenue because of this, and we don’t want that to happen here.

Furthermore, we believe this legislation provides too much leeway for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) to take unjustified actions against Canadian cloud service providers through the use of overreaching digital disruption techniques. False attribution of content, planting of malware, and network “takedowns” could become routine – without judicial supervision.

We understand the dangers of terrorism and the government’s need to protect us, however, we also believe that legislation like Bill C-51 should aim to strike a fair balance between these needs and the rights and freedoms we hold dear as Canadians.

To read more and contact your member of parliament, visit https://stopc51.ca/

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