- Google and Apple urge Canadian lawmakers to provide explicit protections for end to end encryption
- Tech giants warn that as it stands, Canada’s Bill C-22 could weaken overall user security
- The proposed law has already faced strong backlash from Meta, Signal, VPN providers and privacy advocates.
Google and Apple have stepped up their opposition to Canada’s controversial Bill C-22, warning that the proposed legislation could force them to compromise end-to-end encryption and create massive cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
What is also known as the Legal Access Act, proposed by Canada’s ruling Liberal Party and currently being debated in the House of Commons, aims to give law enforcement greater access to data to investigate security threats. However, technology companies fear that the legislation would give the government unlimited authority to issue secret orders without judicial oversight.
For ordinary citizens, the stakes could not be higher. If the bill passes in its current form, the devices and secure messaging apps that users rely on every day could be secretly compromised. To protect your digital footprint from government overreach, use the The best VPNs or encrypted messaging applications are becoming an increasingly essential step. But even the most powerful privacy tools run into trouble if the device’s underlying encryption is legally required to include a backdoor.
In testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, representatives from Google and Apple pressed lawmakers to add explicit protections for encryption.
“The secret orders are out of step with those in other democratic countries and would severely restrict companies’ ability to be transparent with users about how their data is protected,” said Jeanette Patell, Canada’s head of government affairs and public policy at Google, as reported by PakGazette.
The ongoing backlash against Bill C-22
In a brief submitted to the committee, Google warned that the bill establishes a “surveillance infrastructure” and grants broad powers to the Minister of Public Safety. The search giant warned that without a stronger definition of what constitutes a “systemic vulnerability,” the law could be used to impose backdoors.
“Without a stronger definition of ‘systemic vulnerability,’ the law could be used to decrease overall user security, creating backdoors that would break end-to-end encryption and create significant cybersecurity risks, facilitating foreign interference, and weakening overall user privacy,” Google said in its filing.
The company was absolute in its stance on user privacy: “Google has never built a backdoor or other mechanism to bypass end-to-end encryption in our products. If we say a product is end-to-end encrypted, it is end-to-end encrypted.”
Regarding Canada’s Bill C-22: @ProtonVPN is Swiss. Compliance with foreign surveillance orders without Swiss legal process is a criminal offence. It’s not happening. We will stand up for our Canadian users and never compromise them. We will fight the application of C-22 by all available means. pic.twitter.com/zXjx9AaMG5May 19, 2026
Google is not fighting this battle alone. The bill has faced strong pushback from encrypted messaging app Signal, as well as Meta and major VPN providers such as Windscribe, ExpressVPN, and Proton VPN.
Apple has also drawn a hard line. When asked by a Conservative member of parliament whether Apple would pull out of Canada if it were forced to build a backdoor, Erik Neuenschwander, Apple’s senior director of user privacy and child safety, kept up the pressure on lawmakers.
“I can’t speculate what would happen in that situation,” Neuenschwander said, according to PakGazette. “Through this engagement and continued dialogue, we hope to achieve positive amendments to the bill.”
Apple’s threat is far from empty. The iPhone maker recently demonstrated its willingness to move away from markets rather than compromise user security, famously removing its end-to-end encryption feature from iCloud in the UK after receiving a secret order.
It remains to be seen whether Canada will force a similar technological exodus.
