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Apple and Meta Oppose Canada’s Bill C-22, Saying It Threatens Encryption

High-profile pushback is pressuring lawmakers to tighten safeguards as they review the proposal in committee.

The watchdog that handles grievances about telecommunications companies in Canada says complaints about phone, internet and television services were up 43 per cent halfway through its reporting year. People use electronics outside a coffee shop amid a nationwide Rogers outage, affecting many of the telecommunication company's services, in Toronto, Friday, July 8, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston
Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Two smartphones with Apple and Meta logos sit on a desk in front of a lit government building at dusk, surrounded by maps, papers, and a laptop.
Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree speaks during a press conference at Cartier Square Drill Hall in Ottawa.

Overview

  • Apple, which issued a public statement Thursday through Reuters, said Bill C-22 could let the government force backdoors into products and pledged it would not weaken end-to-end encryption.
  • Meta executives told MPs Thursday that the bill’s technical assistance rules could conscript private firms into a surveillance role and even require installing government spyware, which they said would undermine secure messaging.
  • The Public Safety Minister’s office countered that the bill does not mandate backdoors or device surveillance and said any access to data would still require legal authorization such as a court warrant.
  • U.S. House chairs Jim Jordan and Brian Mast sent a letter Thursday warning the bill could create cross-border risks to Americans’ data and urged Canada to coordinate using the CLOUD Act framework.
  • The draft would require providers to enable monitoring capabilities and keep certain metadata for up to a year, a cache experts say could become a hacker target and a movement map of ordinary users.