Law and Border

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has joined nearly forty organizations and over 120 experts in calling for the bill to be withdrawn. They argue that it not only “undermines migrant rights” but constitutes “a sweeping omnibus bill that raises significant privacy concerns.” Bill C-2 would empower law enforcement to demand private information from companies without a warrant and with a lower burden of proof. “Law enforcement officials will be able to extract highly revealing information about people with these demands,” the CCLA warns, “including whether they’ve purchased something at any company, interacted with any website, or stayed at any hotel. These demands will occur in secrecy, and organizations are given only 5 days to challenge overbroad demands in court.”

The organization also flags the bill’s broad information-sharing provisions, which allow federal departments to share private data — and raise the prospect of similar arrangements with the United States. These provisions are paired with expanded surveillance powers, a disconcerting development in an era of increasingly invasive digital spying. And just to round things out, Bill C-2 also shields the state from meaningful scrutiny. Legal expert Michael Geist calls it “lawful access on steroids” and warns of “expansive warrantless disclosure with unprecedented secrecy.”

Parliament returns in September, and both the House of Commons and the Canadian public will be paying much closer attention to the border security bill. What happens between Canada and the US in the meantime is anyone’s guess — summer tends to be quiet, but relations are unlikely to thaw. For months, Trump has gone back and forth on his reasons for levying tariffs on Canada — citing everything from fentanyl to “weak” border security, military spending, trade imbalances, the digital services tax, and more. Just as erratic as his reasons have been are the tariffs themselves, which he has alternately imposed and walked back.

Elbows Down

Canada has already beefed up border security — under the previous Liberal government — dropped its digital services tax, and promised increased military spending. Yet Carney now admits a tariff-free trade deal is unlikely — despite the broad free-trade agreements that have been in place between the two countries for decades, including the one Trump renegotiated during his first term.

There are at least three ways to read the motivations behind the Liberal government’s draconian border bill. One is that it genuinely believes the bill — as part of a broader package — might convince the Trump administration to strike a reasonable trade bargain. In this view, the border is simply a means to an economic end — a bargaining chip. That’s the most cynical interpretation, but perhaps the most plausible.

A second reading is that Carney prefers to govern in a more aggressive, “law and order” style, echoing the approach of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives between 2006 and 2015. Here the border bill isn’t a tool — it’s the point.

A third possibility is that the bill is primarily a technocratic effort: a modernization of the state’s enforcement and data-gathering apparatus, of the kind many liberal democracies have pursued without fully reckoning with the trade-offs between national security and individual rights. Carney is, after all, a technocrat right out of central casting: a Goldman Sachs alum turned central banker, and a man who treats political challenges as problems of administration, the successful management of which are reflected in market confidence. In the flush of patriotic fervor stirred by Trump’s threats, this aspect of his political character was either downplayed or ignored. But if technocracy is what is driving the border bill, no one paying attention should be surprised — only those who believed Carney’s economic brilliance alone would somehow leave Trump in the dust.

As a thought experiment, we might ask whether Carney would be tabling his bill absent Trump’s trade threats — and it’s reasonable to think that he wouldn’t. Nor, likely, would he be spending billions more on the armed forces. Carney’s goal, above all, is to grow the Canadian economy, using state power to “catalyze” private sector investment and growth. A heavily securitized border and expanded surveillance capacity may serve that purpose — or may simply reflect a managerial logic in which institutional capacity is an end in itself, pursued without much democratic deliberation. He may believe in these tools as necessary to modern governance. But in either case, had Trump not upended the framework of free trade between Canada and the United States, there’s a good chance there would no border bill at all — or at least a far weaker one.

Big Brother in Search of a Trade Deal

Faced with real or perceived security and economic threats from the US, the Carney government must explain how it can simultaneously treat the Americans as an existential threat to Canadian sovereignty and propose to neutralize that threat by giving them everything they want. That includes a potential information-sharing arrangement under the guise of border security and deeper military integration — almost guaranteed to follow from the government’s increased defense spending.

Canada’s PATRIOT Act in miniature is reminiscent of the post-9/11 era of American panic and security overreach, which found its mirror in Canada through anti-terror and surveillance laws passed by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. This time, however, the overreaction isn’t driven by a terrorist attack but by the hope of a trade deal — one that, in the worst-case scenario, doubles as a performance of Canadian sovereignty by caving into American demands.

The border bill comes at a time when many Canadians, rattled by the specter of Donald Trump’s return, may be more inclined to wave through sweeping changes. That Trump represents a serious external threat may be beyond question — but it’s not a justification for massive security overreach at home. The Liberal government may be counting on the public to overlook the dangers of Bill C-2 while the country remains in a state of shock and worry — just as both the United States and Canada did in the years after 9/11. But one hopes Canadians will recognize the risks for what they are and demand the bill be rescinded or defeated as passions calm.

Right now, the Liberals are trying to have it both ways: treating the US at once as a threat and a foil, and as a trusted partner with whom Canada is keen to do business. In walking that line, they appear willing to sacrifice fundamental privacy rights and migrant protections — all while staying in step with the Trump administration. It’s both bad strategy and bad policy. Scrapping Bill C-2 would be a good place to stop pretending both stories can be true.