Latest news with #EmergenciesAct
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Christine Van Geyn: Do police have the right to peer at you in your car with a drone?
Can police use a drone with a zoom lens to peer into the interior of vehicles stopped at red lights? Can police enter a home's private driveway and look in the windows of vehicles? Can the government track the cellphone location data of millions of Canadians to track their movements? And can a private foreign company scour the internet collecting photos of Canadians for use in facial recognition technology that is sold to police? These questions are not hypotheticals; they are real live issues in Canadian law. We are living in the mass surveillance era. But many Canadians do not have a thorough understanding of how far surveillance goes, or what the limits on it are, or whether our legal protections are adequate. The police in Kingston, Ont., are ticketing drivers at red lights for merely touching or holding their cellphones based on evidence collected by a drone. The Supreme Court recently heard a case about police entering a private driveway and not just looking in a truck window, but opening the door and collecting evidence — all without a warrant. The Alberta Court of Kings Bench just considered a case involving the facial recognition technology of Clearview AI. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian government was tracking the cellphone location data of 33 million Canadians. After the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act, the government ordered the freezing of bank accounts of a police-compiled 'blacklist' of demonstrators, which was distributed by the government to a variety of financial institutions and even lobby groups. What these cases are demonstrating is that we have entered the era of mass surveillance, and Canada's legal protections are inadequate. First, Canada's privacy legislation is outdated. Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne has said we are at a 'pivotal time' for privacy rights in Canada. Former Ontario Privacy Commissioner Dr. Ann Cavoukian has also called for updates to Canadian privacy laws, 'so they apply to all data, including anonymized data.' Much has changed since the current federal privacy legislation was drafted in the early 2000s, but efforts to modernize this law died when Parliament was prorogued. Second, when it comes to state intrusions, the concept of privacy may be inadequate. Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Supreme Court has interpreted this right to mean the protection of a person's 'reasonable expectations of privacy' against state intrusions. The notion of 'reasonable expectations of privacy' has become a mantra in Section 8 jurisprudence. But some academics have said that in the era of mass surveillance, this guiding principle is an inadequate gatekeeper. In a lecture for the Canadian Constitution Foundation's new free course on privacy rights, Osgoode Hall Law professor François Tanguay-Renaud proposes a thought experiment that reveals the inadequacy of 'privacy' as an organizing principle. What if the police were recording people on the street, with drones following people and recording their movements as they went about their day, zooming in on their cellphones and recording their conversations? In such a scenario, where people are in plain view, privacy is an inadequate concept to limit what we all see intuitively as oppressive state conduct. At one time, this hypothetical might have been considered far-fetched. Today it is eerily similar to the Kingston police drone scenario. In Kingston, police are using a drone to take aerial images peering into cars and zooming in on cellphones. Those drivers do have reasonable expectations of privacy inside their cars, but what would limit this police conduct if they surveilled citizens on sidewalks or parks, where they were in plain view without those privacy expectations? A principled line must be drawn between things done in plain sight that police can view and constant surveillance using enhanced technology. It may not be possible to draw that line on the basis of the existence or not of 'reasonable expectations of privacy.' There are other values that could serve as guiding or informing principles for Section 8. There is nothing in the text of Section 8 that mandates the gatekeeper of the right be 'reasonable expectations of privacy' rather than another interest, like dignity, liberty, security, anonymity, public confidence in the administration of justice, and many more. Indeed, American jurisprudence has been moving away from the concept of 'reasonable expectations of privacy' as the sole guiding principle for their 4th Amendment. To meet the challenges of the surveillance era, it is well past time for Parliament and the provincial legislatures to update privacy laws. But as recent police conduct shows, it's time for our Section 8 jurisprudence to be revisited as well, to meet the emerging challenges of the surveillance state. National Post Christine Van Geyn is the litigation director for the Canadian Constitutional Foundation. Canadians who want to learn more about their privacy rights in Canada can sign up for the Canadian Constitution Foundation's free course at Opinion: In 2020 the world shut down, and Canadians lost their privacy rights Facial recognition tool used by RCMP deemed illegal mass surveillance of unwitting Canadians
National Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- National Post
Christine Van Geyn: Do police have the right to peer at you in your car with a drone?
Can police use a drone with a zoom lens to peer into the interior of vehicles stopped at red lights? Can police enter a home's private driveway and look in the windows of vehicles? Can the government track the cellphone location data of millions of Canadians to track their movements? And can a private foreign company scour the internet collecting photos of Canadians for use in facial recognition technology that is sold to police? Article content Article content These questions are not hypotheticals; they are real live issues in Canadian law. We are living in the mass surveillance era. But many Canadians do not have a thorough understanding of how far surveillance goes, or what the limits on it are, or whether our legal protections are adequate. Article content Article content Article content The police in Kingston, Ont., are ticketing drivers at red lights for merely touching or holding their cellphones based on evidence collected by a drone. The Supreme Court recently heard a case about police entering a private driveway and not just looking in a truck window, but opening the door and collecting evidence — all without a warrant. The Alberta Court of Kings Bench just considered a case involving the facial recognition technology of Clearview AI. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian government was tracking the cellphone location data of 33 million Canadians. After the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act, the government ordered the freezing of bank accounts of a police-compiled 'blacklist' of demonstrators, which was distributed by the government to a variety of financial institutions and even lobby groups. Article content Article content What these cases are demonstrating is that we have entered the era of mass surveillance, and Canada's legal protections are inadequate. Article content Article content First, Canada's privacy legislation is outdated. Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne has said we are at a ' pivotal time ' for privacy rights in Canada. Former Ontario Privacy Commissioner Dr. Ann Cavoukian has also called for updates to Canadian privacy laws, 'so they apply to all data, including anonymized data.' Much has changed since the current federal privacy legislation was drafted in the early 2000s, but efforts to modernize this law died when Parliament was prorogued. Article content Second, when it comes to state intrusions, the concept of privacy may be inadequate. Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Supreme Court has interpreted this right to mean the protection of a person's 'reasonable expectations of privacy' against state intrusions. The notion of 'reasonable expectations of privacy' has become a mantra in Section 8 jurisprudence. But some academics have said that in the era of mass surveillance, this guiding principle is an inadequate gatekeeper.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Justin Trudeau was bad, but Mark Carney will be far worse
Justin Trudeau's time as prime minister will be remembered as one of the most destructive eras in Canadian history. Under his watch, Canada's national identity was diluted, civil liberties were trampled, economic competitiveness cratered and divisions between citizens deepened beyond repair. From draconian COVID crackdowns to the reckless invocation of the Emergencies Act against peaceful protesters, Trudeau normalized authoritarianism under the guise of tolerance and progress. While smiling for Vogue covers, he reduced a proud, hard-won heritage into little more than a backdrop for photo ops and platitudes. But if you think it can't get worse, think again. Hell has a basement. Enter Mark Carney. At first glance, Carney appears to be a competent alternative to Trudeau's ideological theatrics. But look again, and you'll see that Carney represents something far more troubling: a globalist technician, carefully engineered for this moment. This is a man who speaks in the bland-sounding language of 'stakeholders' and 'transitions' while quietly planning the most radical transformation in the country's history. Carney's ascent was no accident. After years operating quietly behind the scenes — as governor of the Bank of Canada, then governor of the Bank of England — he became a darling of the World Economic Forum, a fixture at Bilderberg, and a loyal lieutenant of the Trilateral Commission. His path wasn't earned through public mandate or electoral battle. It was conferred, behind closed doors, by institutions whose interests lie not with Canadian sovereignty but with expanding technocratic control over Western democracies. He didn't rise because of popular support. He was selected, groomed and installed. He openly boasts about being a globalist. In a recent interview, Carney declared: 'I know how the world works, I know how to get things done, I'm connected. People will charge me with being elitist or a globalist, to use that term, which is, well, that's exactly, it happens to be exactly what we need.' In other words, he sees his elitism not as a flaw, but a qualification. That alone should set off alarm bells. When a man auditioning to lead a country tells you outright that his loyalty lies with an international ruling class, believe him. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously said that politicians should campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Carney doesn't bother with either. He governs in code, the sterile dialect of central bankers and global technocrats. Terms like 'stakeholder capitalism' and 'net-zero alignment' mask a project not of service, but submission. To Carney, Canada is not a nation to be cherished or defended. It is a laboratory. A staging ground for a larger project, one in which democracy is treated as a nuisance to be managed rather than a right to be respected. What does that mean in practice? It means the full deployment of Central Bank Digital Currencies, allowing the government and financial institutions to control when, how and where citizens spend their money. It means debanking political dissidents without trial, as already seen under Trudeau but set to be systematized under Carney's colder, more organized hand. It involves reshaping Canada's economy around Environment, Social and Governance or ESG scores. Real industries — such as oil, gas, mining and farming — will be suffocated under a mountain of climate bureaucracy designed not to 'save the planet' but to entrench an elite class of corporate monopolies aligned with the new order. In Carney's Canada, owning a gas-powered vehicle will be viewed with suspicion, and farmers will be compelled to reduce production to meet arbitrary emissions targets. Essentially, ordinary working Canadians will likely be penalized for their way of life. At the same time, multinational corporations will be rewarded with government-financed green subsidies for pledging allegiance to ESG benchmarks they helped design themselves. The truly unsettling part is that Carney's political resume is nonexistent. No years spent fighting unpopular causes. No accountability to any constituency. No democratic reckoning at all. His entire career has been about bypassing democracy itself. In a sense, Carney represents the logical next step after Trudeau's demolition job. Trudeau destabilized Canada's foundations. Carney is stepping in to rebuild it, not as a nation of free citizens, but as an administrative region within a larger, borderless system of corporate governance. A system where people are no longer protected by a social contract but managed like livestock: monitored, nudged and corrected under the pretext of global crises — climate, pandemics, inequality, disinformation — manufactured or manipulated to justify endless 'emergency' rule. The message to Canadians is simple: You had your fun with elections. Now the grown-ups will take it from here. Trudeau moved the furniture; Carney wants to demolish the entire structure and replace it with something unrecognizable. Millions voted for Carney because he projected calm and stood firm against Donald Trump's rhetoric. He seemed like the man for the moment — measured, confident, in control. But buyer's remorse is coming fast. And with Carney, there are no refunds. John Mac Ghlionn is a writer and researcher who explores culture, society and the impact of technology on daily life. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
03-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Justin Trudeau was bad, but Mark Carney will be far worse
Justin Trudeau's time as prime minister will be remembered as one of the most destructive eras in Canadian history. Under his watch, Canada's national identity was diluted, civil liberties were trampled, economic competitiveness cratered and divisions between citizens deepened beyond repair. From draconian COVID crackdowns to the reckless invocation of the Emergencies Act against peaceful protesters, Trudeau normalized authoritarianism under the guise of tolerance and progress. While smiling for Vogue covers, he reduced a proud, hard-won heritage into little more than a backdrop for photo ops and platitudes. But if you think it can't get worse, think again. Hell has a basement. Enter Mark Carney. At first glance, Carney appears to be a competent alternative to Trudeau's ideological theatrics. But look again, and you'll see that Carney represents something far more troubling: a globalist technician, carefully engineered for this moment. This is a man who speaks in the bland-sounding language of 'stakeholders' and 'transitions' while quietly planning the most radical transformation in the country's history. Carney's ascent was no accident. After years operating quietly behind the scenes — as governor of the Bank of Canada, then governor of the Bank of England — he became a darling of the World Economic Forum, a fixture at Bilderberg, and a loyal lieutenant of the Trilateral Commission. His path wasn't earned through public mandate or electoral battle. It was conferred, behind closed doors, by institutions whose interests lie not with Canadian sovereignty but with expanding technocratic control over Western democracies. He didn't rise because of popular support. He was selected, groomed and installed. He openly boasts about being a globalist. In a recent interview, Carney declared: 'I know how the world works, I know how to get things done, I'm connected. People will charge me with being elitist or a globalist, to use that term, which is, well, that's exactly, it happens to be exactly what we need.' In other words, he sees his elitism not as a flaw, but a qualification. That alone should set off alarm bells. When a man auditioning to lead a country tells you outright that his loyalty lies with an international ruling class, believe him. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously said that politicians should campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Carney doesn't bother with either. He governs in code, the sterile dialect of central bankers and global technocrats. Terms like 'stakeholder capitalism' and 'net-zero alignment' mask a project not of service, but submission. To Carney, Canada is not a nation to be cherished or defended. It is a laboratory. A staging ground for a larger project, one in which democracy is treated as a nuisance to be managed rather than a right to be respected. What does that mean in practice? It means the full deployment of Central Bank Digital Currencies, allowing the government and financial institutions to control when, how and where citizens spend their money. It means debanking political dissidents without trial, as already seen under Trudeau but set to be systematized under Carney's colder, more organized hand. It involves reshaping Canada's economy around Environment, Social and Governance or ESG scores. Real industries — such as oil, gas, mining and farming — will be suffocated under a mountain of climate bureaucracy designed not to 'save the planet' but to entrench an elite class of corporate monopolies aligned with the new order. In Carney's Canada, owning a gas-powered vehicle will be viewed with suspicion, and farmers will be compelled to reduce production to meet arbitrary emissions targets. Essentially, ordinary working Canadians will likely be penalized for their way of life. At the same time, multinational corporations will be rewarded with government-financed green subsidies for pledging allegiance to ESG benchmarks they helped design themselves. The truly unsettling part is that Carney's political resume is nonexistent. No years spent fighting unpopular causes. No accountability to any constituency. No democratic reckoning at all. His entire career has been about bypassing democracy itself. In a sense, Carney represents the logical next step after Trudeau's demolition job. Trudeau destabilized Canada's foundations. Carney is stepping in to rebuild it, not as a nation of free citizens, but as an administrative region within a larger, borderless system of corporate governance. A system where people are no longer protected by a social contract but managed like livestock: monitored, nudged and corrected under the pretext of global crises — climate, pandemics, inequality, disinformation — manufactured or manipulated to justify endless 'emergency' rule. The message to Canadians is simple: You had your fun with elections. Now the grown-ups will take it from here. Trudeau moved the furniture; Carney wants to demolish the entire structure and replace it with something unrecognizable. Millions voted for Carney because he projected calm and stood firm against Donald Trump's rhetoric. He seemed like the man for the moment — measured, confident, in control. But buyer's remorse is coming fast. And with Carney, there are no refunds.
National Post
01-05-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Don Braid: Jason Kenney refutes Alberta's 'fringe' separatists, says Carney has 'clean slate' with province
Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberals are back in power. It's great news for Alberta separatists. Article content Article content Various independence-boosting groups can now continue to farm rage and raise money. A Conservative victory would have been bad for business. Article content Former premier Jason Kenney took a run at the new Republican Party of Alberta, formerly the Buffalo Party. Article content 'One of many cynical fundraising grifts that will seek to monetize people's frustration,' he said on X. 'These guys have learned from the MAGA industry how to do this. It's big business in the U.S. Article content Article content He challenged the carbon tax, Bill C-69, the plastics ban and application of the Emergencies Act, winning as often as he lost. Article content He launched a referendum on reforming equalization that carried but was ignored by Ottawa, despite their constitutional duty to take it seriously. Article content No Alberta premier, including Danielle Smith, has done more to check Ottawa's powers since Peter Lougheed in the 1980s. Article content Article content 'Resentment and anxiety in Alberta are a very real thing,' Kenney said in an interview. Article content Article content 'Alberta and the resource-producing parts of western Canada have totally legitimate grievances about the direction of policy under the Trudeau government, and totally legitimate anxieties about where this will go under Carney. Article content Article content 'It's the job of the provincial government to defend Alberta's interests in the federation . . . it's the job of any premier to raise those issues. Article content 'But when it comes to separation, I think the so-called separatist movement in Alberta has never been a serious enterprise. Article content 'Over about a dozen federal and provincial elections, they have only managed to elect a candidate in one riding. That was Gordon Kessler in 1982, as a Western Canada Concept candidate in a byelection — at the height of the National Energy Program, in the heart of rural Alberta.'
