Apple and Google are advocating for court supervision of Canada’s lawful-access legislation.

      Apple and Google have officially advocated for changes to Bill C-22, the Canadian government's lawful-access legislation that is currently progressing through the House of Commons. They contend that the proposed bill could lead to secret orders compelling them to alter the encryption that secures their software and devices.

      Both companies are seeking to ensure that judicial oversight be incorporated into the procedure before relevant ministers can issue such orders. A report from Reuters detailing this lobbying was published on Tuesday.

      This bill aims to replace a previous, broader lawful-access framework that was included in Bill C-2, known as the Strong Borders Act, introduced in June 2025. Due to pressure from civil-liberties organizations, legal professionals, and opposition parties, the government was compelled to extract the surveillance components and reintroduce them as a separate bill, resulting in C-22.

      C-22 mandates the retention of metadata for up to one year, reduces the threshold for police access to subscriber information, and empowers ministers to require electronic service providers to develop technical means for surveillance.

      The main concern from Apple and Google revolves around the technical-capability provision. As it stands, the relevant minister can secretly issue an order requiring a service provider to modify their systems to grant government investigators access to specific data, without prior judicial review.

      Apple's official submission, reported by CBC earlier this month, expressed that this provision jeopardizes user data and could effectively necessitate that the company weaken its encryption for all users to allow limited access for Canadian authorities. Google has presented a similar stance in its submission.

      Neither company is requesting the outright removal of the bill from Parliament; rather, they are advocating for judicial approval to be required for technical-capability orders and for the limitations on secrecy to be curtailed in both scope and duration.

      This position is considerably more restrained than that of Signal, the encrypted messaging company, which has threatened to exit the Canadian market altogether if C-22 remains unchanged.

      The political landscape has become more intense in the past two weeks. The chairs of the U.S. House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees contacted Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree this month to express concerns that the bill poses a risk to U.S. national security and the stability of cross-border data exchanges.

      Michael Geist, an internet law expert from the University of Ottawa and a longtime critic of C-22, has characterized the government's disregard for these apprehensions as a repeat of the approach taken with the Online News Act, which led to a similar dispute across the Pacific in 2023, ultimately resulting in many affected platforms withdrawing.

      C-22 reflects a broader trend. Earlier this year, the UK enacted investigatory powers legislation that forced changes to Apple’s iCloud encryption. Australia has its own assistance-and-access policy that grants similar authority to its agencies. The ongoing European debate regarding backdoors in end-to-end encrypted messaging continues to develop.

      The core question that arises in each of these cases is whether judicial oversight should serve as a minimum standard that surveillance powers cannot fall below. Apple and Google’s intervention regarding C-22 is essentially a request for Canada to acknowledge this baseline.

      The bill is presently being reviewed in committee, with the upcoming public scrutiny focusing on whether the technical-capability provisions will be modified or remain unchanged. Royal Assent is anticipated in the fall.