If Signal Leaves Canada, Bill C-22 Has Already Failed the Trust Test

Signal is warning it may leave Canada rather than comply with Bill C-22. That should move this debate from technical committee talk to a national trust test.

A Facebook warning from Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis points to the issue Canadians should be watching now: Bill C-22, the Liberal government’s Lawful Access Act, 2026, is no longer an abstract privacy debate. Signal says it may leave Canada if it is forced to comply with the bill in a way that compromises its privacy promises to users.

The bill is not law yet. Parliament’s LEGISinfo page shows Bill C-22 was introduced on March 12, 2026, passed second reading and was referred to the House public safety committee on April 20, 2026. It has not reached report stage, third reading, the Senate, or royal assent. That means this is exactly when Canadians should be applying pressure — before the architecture is locked in.

Ottawa’s official line is that Part 2 of the bill does not create new interception powers. Public Safety Canada says the framework is meant to ensure electronic service providers can comply with existing lawful orders under the Criminal Code and the CSIS Act. The government argues police and national security agencies need modern tools because communications technology has moved far beyond the old voice-telephony world.

That concern is real. Police need lawful, warrant-backed tools to investigate terrorism, child exploitation, organized crime and foreign threats. But the question is not whether criminals should be immune from investigation. The question is whether Ottawa’s answer creates a permanent vulnerability for everyone else.

The Justice Department’s own Charter statement says Bill C-22 would create mandatory operational requirements for certain electronic service providers and would also allow the Public Safety Minister to issue orders to providers that are not in the core class, subject to Intelligence Commissioner approval. It also says the bill would prohibit providers from disclosing the existence or content of certain ministerial orders, except where permitted.

That is where the trust problem begins. A secret order system, mandatory technical capabilities, administrative penalties and broad electronic-service-provider language are not minor housekeeping. If a secure messaging company believes compliance could require weakening encryption or building exploitable access points, Canadians should not be told to “just trust us.” They should be shown the hard limits in black and white.

Civil liberties groups are sounding the same alarm from another direction. A joint April letter calling for Bill C-22’s withdrawal argues the bill could compel digital service providers to create or maintain surveillance capabilities, collect and retain detailed metadata, and expand privacy and cybersecurity risk. The letter’s critics may phrase it sharply, but the core question is fair: what prevents lawful access from becoming a metadata dragnet?

Signal’s warning matters because it shows the practical consequence. If privacy-first platforms decide Canada is becoming too legally risky, ordinary Canadians lose secure tools — journalists, lawyers, dissidents, victims of abuse, business owners, political staff and families. The people most likely to keep using insecure channels are not the criminals with technical workarounds. It is everyone else.

The Liberal government should be forced to answer five simple questions before Bill C-22 moves another inch:

• Will the bill explicitly ban any requirement to weaken, bypass or undermine end-to-end encryption?
• Will metadata retention be tightly limited, targeted and warrant-linked — not population-wide by default?
• Will companies be allowed to disclose enough about orders to permit public accountability and court challenge?
• Will Parliament see a full privacy, cybersecurity and business-impact assessment before third reading?
• Will independent experts be heard before committee, including cryptographers and secure-communications providers?

Canadians can support law enforcement without handing Ottawa a blank cheque over digital infrastructure. The proper standard is narrow, warrant-based, technically safe, independently reviewed and transparent wherever secrecy is not absolutely necessary.

If Bill C-22 cannot meet that standard, it should be withdrawn or rewritten. Because if Signal leaves Canada, the message will be obvious: the law failed the trust test before it ever protected anyone.