Rob Currie, a professor at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie, has written a rather good and interesting note on Bill C-30 (the “Lawful Access” Bill or “Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act”) and the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention, which Canada is a signatory to.
He discusses Canada’s participation in the Cybercrime Convention, the fact that Canada has not yet ratified based on an absence of investigative tools that are a prerequisite to ratification and the wider objectives of the Convention.
He also questions why the broader cybercrime enforcement objectives of Bill C-30 have not been part of the Government’s communications:
“So, to cooperate properly with its treaty partners, towards the very salutary public policy goal of combating cybercrime, Canada does actually need quite a lot of the tools contained in Bill C-30. I am mystified as to why this isn’t part of the debate. The federal government has been quite ham-handed in how it has tried to sell the legislation to the public, using an American-style emotive title that misleads people about what is actually in the Bill and what it is for. It could probably get a lot more traction by saying to Canadians, ‘hey, the police need tools to combat identity theft, and cyber-attacks, and yes, child predators of various kinds on the internet. And we have agreed with a group of very civilized countries that we’re all going to do this, and share the evidence with each other so that we can catch these dangerous criminals.’ As it is, the public has not been fooled by the child porn aspect and is swayed by emotive counter-arguments, such as ‘the government wants to invade your privacy’ and ‘Big Brother wants to watch you on the internet.’
Why does the government never mention the Cybercrime Convention? Did it forget? Are they undertaking some kind of Scalia-inspired rejection of international law as a reason for doing anything? It is passing odd.
The debate among most legal commentators has, to its credit, not been focused on the investigative tools themselves, but rather the lack of judicial oversight or other civilian control which the government wishes to provide to law enforcement under the Bill.”
For the complete post see:
Cybercrime Convention: The Missing Part of the C-30 Debate
For our earlier post on some of the competition law and enforcement implications of Bill C-30 see:
The Internet and Predators Act – What’s all the Hubub? How would it Impact Canadian Competition Law?
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