It took him awhile. Perhaps he was distracted by those Chinese pandas. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to have finally understood that Canadians aren’t inclined to meekly surrender age-old rights, including cherished privacy rights, to accommodate the Conservatives’ ever-expanding tough-on-crime agenda.

Faced with a backlash from even its own supporters over Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ ghastly Internet surveillance law, the government has wisely chosen to back off and rethink. Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act that was tabled Tuesday, will now go before a parliamentary committee where Government House Leader Peter Van Loan promises “the government is open to a broad range of amendments” before it becomes law. Let’s hope so.

As drafted, the bill is a mess. And Canadians know it. The Twitterverse was alive Thursday with sarcastic criticism of the legislation.

Toews has managed to offend Conservative MPs (and the grassroots) with his ham-fisted efforts to cudgel critics of the bill into acquiescence with the claim that an MP “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.” That was too much even for some supporters to swallow.

The bill’s most odious provision contains an assault on e-privacy. It would allow the security services and police to compel telecommunications service providers to hand over information on a targeted subscriber — name, address, phone number, email address, Internet service provider and IP address — without first getting a judge’s approval. At present, providers can choose to cooperate with police but aren’t obliged to do so. As well, companies would be required to configure their equipment to let the authorities monitor subscribers’ actions, for months at a time, subject to warrant.

C-30 is “a major intrusion into our personal lives,” warns Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian. It is indeed.

Any licence to snoop at will without benefit of a judge’s approval amounts to a Big Brother assault on online privacy. It is rich coming from a Tory government that shredded the mandatory long-form census and the long-gun registry in the name of defending personal freedom. In Toews’ mind the state apparently has no business knowing how many bathrooms or guns you have, but if it has a hankering to look over your shoulder on the Web, that’s just peachy. The hypocrisy of this bid to seize the power to keep citizens under surveillance on a whim was breathtaking.

Granted, the government can’t be faulted for wanting to nab cyber criminals. The public would expect judges to swiftly approve surveillance in cases where kids are at risk, where a terrorist attack is being planned or where a computer-chewing virus is being spread. But the key here is to let the judges decide. That is a vital check on abuse. And it is hardly an onerous one.

In the past six years, Ontario police alone have charged more than 1,800 people in connection with child abuse and exploitation on the Internet. Two weeks ago, police nabbed 60 more suspects and — better yet — rescued 22 children who were at risk. Police are getting faster and smarter at keeping up with offenders. And there’s no evidence that the need to get a judge’s okay is holding them back.