- Windscribe said Bill C-22 will not change its privacy policies
- Bill would require service providers to retain user metadata
- Canada’s Senate to debate Bill C-22 in September
A Reddit user recently asked Windscribe a blunt question: Is paying for a Canada-based VPN a privacy issue, given the surveillance bill making its way through Parliament?
The company’s official support account responded without coverage. Windscribe will continue to operate exactly as it has, according to the account, with “no changes to our registration or privacy policies.”
Canada is introducing laws that really complicate things for the company, Windscribe added, but that’s an inside job to figure out and not something subscribers should expect to feel.
It’s a calmer message than the one Windscribe was conveying in May, when it said it would rather relocate its headquarters than start signing up users. That put it alongside Signal and NordVPN, and made it one of the loudest voices among the best VPN providers fighting the bill.
Bill C-22, formally the Legal Access Act, was passed by the House of Commons on June 18 and is now in the Senate, which will not begin its study until Parliament returns in September.
Windscribe and Bill C-22: What the VPN Provider Said
Is paying for Windscribe a privacy issue given they are based in Canada and the likely upcoming Bill C-22? I would love to subscribe if it weren’t for this.
from r/Windscribe
Pressed further into the thread, Windscribe drew a line between where the company is registered and where its infrastructure resides.
Incoming laws could see it served with a court order forcing it to start registering users, the support account acknowledged. Your answer is jurisdictional: a virtual private network (VPN) that operates outside of Canada does not have to comply with Canadian law.
This echoes the path the company has been signaling since May, when CEO Yegor Sak told the Globe and Mail that he was actively exploring taking Windscribe out of the country.
Windscribe was also careful to separate the provider’s obligations from the user’s responsibility. No law currently prevents Canadians from using a VPN, he noted, and the risk he describes only reaches customers if a provider stands by and starts logging traffic.
For anyone uncomfortable with the paper trail, Windscribe’s suggestion was simple: pay in crypto, so neither the government nor the card issuer sees the purchase.
What’s next for Canada’s Bill C-22?
Introduced in March by Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, Canadian Bill C-22 would allow the government to force electronic service providers to retain user metadata and create technical capabilities for law enforcement access.
The House passed it on third reading on June 18 after the government decided to limit debate, and the Senate will take it up on September 21, according to Parliament’s own LEGISinfo tracker.
Late amendments reduced the maximum metadata retention period from twelve months to six and added a clause stating that the law cannot be interpreted as mandating decryption unless the provider already has the keys.
Still, law professor Robert Diab argues that this is not enough, as ministerial orders could still sweep away the metadata of people without any suspicion.
The government has consistently rejected the surveillance framework, insisting that the bill does not build backdoors and that authorities still need judicial authorization to obtain data.
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