The News Rundown

Minister says MPs must ‘choose’ victims by fast-tracking lawful access bill

Bill C-22 was pushed through the House of Commons this week using the Liberal majority. The Bill seeks to modernize law enforcement and CSIS access to all digital data from telecoms, internet providers, and tech companies.
It streamlines access to subscriber information and production orders while creating new requirements for companies to retain certain metadata for up to 6 months and build technical capabilities to comply with lawful access warrants.
Metadata is not the data you access but where you go online, who you call, and generally what you do without providing the actual data.
Tech companies including the biggest of them all, Google and Apple briefly testified and submitted concerns. Google said that the bill creates “surveillance infrastructure”, has the potential to break end-to-end encryption, and allow for ministerial orders on spying.
Apple felt that the Bill could compel companies like themselves to install backdoors into their products or services. Apple also said that the legislation could compel it to weaken security features but we’ve seen in other cases that Apple just pulls that feature out of a specific market.
Signal, the company that runs one of the most prolific encrypting messaging apps said that they would likely have to pull their services from Canada. NordVPN said the same thing.
In the lead up to the legislation passing, the government said that people must “choose” whether to stand with law enforcement and victims of crime or those committing the crimes.
This is an emotional ultimatum designed to make any opposition in the House or in the media feel bad about even asking questions.
Why, a government based on trust with the population, should have to do this is up for debate.
This brings flashbacks to 2012 and the Conservatives where Vic Toews “with ‘us’ or with the ‘child pornographers’ when that government was trying to modernize internet legislation.
The government claimed that they were fast tracking C-22 before the summer recess. Processes like debate, committee discussion, and witness discussion was rushed.
The government tabled a time allocation motion limiting discussion on all of that. They told the committees they had to stop meeting, changes to the Bill were prevented, and ultimately debate in the House of Commons was stymied.
Michael Geist, the internet law prof, calls it "incredible" and "astonishing."
He said this because the government has tacitly admitted that they are working with deeply flawed legislation.
To summarize, the surveillance backdoors, the threat to encryption, metadata policies, and perhaps most egregious, the idea that metadata could be shared with foreign intelligence services back up why this legislation has been called flawed.
For all we heard of elbows up in the election campaign, giving data to the US on this file is not something we would have expected following the election.
The media fell for this, hook line, and sinker. The policy details around metadata retention, encryption safeguards, and companies needing access capacity was all conveniently ignored.
For some reason most of the media has went along with offering very little resistance to this piece of legislation. Because the victim framing allows for media to take the high ground and stand with victims. No matter how unreal that may be.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, once an advocacy group centred around good internet law has since become a leftist advocacy group in the United States, criticized the passing of C-22 heavily.
They mentioned no serious debate on the Bill or amendments, they also highlighted all the risks that come from the technological side and brought forward opposition from civil liberties groups and tech.
The CBC at issue panel appeared to having buyers remorse. They cited the use of the majority to shut down debate. The panel also brought up Steven MacKinnon’s comments about TinFoil hats.
Government House leader Steven MacKinnon said, “I hope that the conspiracies and the tinfoil hats are something that will fade away over time, but we can now safely say that it is the Liberal Party that’s the party that’s most clearly for law and order in the country.”
The panel was very alarmed that this and the entire process of pushing 9 bills through the house happened - largely because it can damage the trust between the party and the electorate.
Prior to the passage of C-22 the Conservatives called for the Bill to be split in two with the Supported Authorized Access to Information Act being withheld.
This would allow for lowering the legal threshold for law enforcement and intelligence bodies to access basic subscriber information to speed up investigations.
Conservative Public Safety Critic Frank Caputo said, "The Liberals are attempting to ram Bill C-22 in a speedy and undemocratic way. They're using their manufactured majority in what might be the most aggressive programming motion I've ever seen.”
The legislation has been passed and going forward there is little to no recourse to undo this legislation outside of the courts.
The media’s continued spiral to irrelevance over the years makes things like this happening all the more possible.
Supplementals:

The Government of British Columbia has terminated its agreement with the contractor chosen two years ago to design and build the new replacement George Massey Tunnel.
The provincial government is now moving forward with a new bidding process to seek a new team of contractors.
This reverses the previous contract award announced in July 2024 to a private consortium called Cross Fraser Partnership — a group comprised of various major European firms with previous proven experience in building major tunnel projects, as well as some Canadian firms.
Cross Fraser Partnership was led by the Canadian division of France-based Bouygues Construction, in partnership with Spanish construction company Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, Quebec-based Pomerleau, architectural and engineering firm Arcadis (formerly known as IBI Group), and Netherlands-based dredging and marine services firm Boskalis.
Bouygues is perhaps best known for playing a key part in building the 50-km-long Channel Tunnel, also known as the Chunnel, between France and the United Kingdom.
Despite this significant commercial pivot, the province maintains that the toll-free, eight-lane immersed tube tunnel remains on schedule to open in 2030. While the official budget remains listed at $4.15 billion, local critics and city officials warn that project costs could balloon to anywhere between $9 billion and $11 billion under the new multi-contract model.
"Maybe we should just build a bridge." is the prevailing public opinion, after dealing with the tunnel replacement fiasco for almost a decade. That’s the kind of exasperated public sentiment the BC NDP government has to contend with now, after announcing this week yet another complication in the rolling nine-year political boondoggle that is the Massey tunnel replacement project.
Turns out, maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea to craft a plan that involves sinking six football fields' worth of concrete, weighing roughly as much as the Empire State Building, onto the bottom of the country’s largest salmon-producing watershed between Delta and Richmond.
The proposal is such a complicated engineering and environmental headache that even the French company that built the world’s longest undersea tunnel—the so-called Chunnel between France and England—couldn’t come to terms with the province on how to get the work done.
BC New Democrats, however, are unrepentant at the tortured pace taken to resolve the worst traffic bottleneck in the province. Former premier John Horgan started the government down this path in 2017, based not on practicality or science but on political retribution against the BC Liberals.
In 2017, the newly elected BC NDP scrapped the previously approved 10-lane bridge project. That bridge was months away from construction, had a fully secured fixed-price bid of $2.6 billion (well under its $3.5 billion budget), and would have been open to commuters years ago. But premier Christy Clark had angered local mayors by announcing it without any consultation.
Horgan leapt on the discontent, cancelled the bridge, wrote off $100 million in sunk costs, and then slow-played next steps for years to save money. Instead, the NDP spent an estimated $300 million just reviewing and reversing the plan, pushing the timeline out by over a decade. “I think we can get going on this quite quickly,” he claimed in 2019.
Successive NDP transportation ministers were instead given the unenviable task of obfuscating and spinning delays. Claire Trevena did nothing, then retired. Rob Fleming ragged the puck until 2021 before finally signing off on the tunnel plan—and then retiring. Mike Farnworth, the current minister, will likely be long retired too before the (highly optimistic) completion date of 2030.
Had the NDP simply proceeded with the BC Liberal bridge, drivers would have been cruising over the traffic bottleneck for more than four years. A perfect project? No. But a complete one.
Motorists would also, however, have been paying bridge tolls. That was thanks to the late-stage BC Liberal government’s penchant for pinching pennies on the backs of folks like motorists, disabled bus passengers and pregnant mothers. And it did nothing to help sell the bridge as the easier, cheaper solution. Still, it means that much of budget would have been paid back by now and made free for everyone, similar to the tolls on the Coquihalla highway between Hope and Kamloops.
The province is still publicly clinging to a project budget of $4.15 billion. However, that figure was established in 2021. In the five years since, Canada has experienced record inflation, rising labor costs, and severe supply chain spikes. Industry insiders and the BC Conservatives suggest the actual cost under the new fractured multi-contract model will easily double, landing between $9 billion and $11 billion.
The province may be calculating it can better hide the true cost overruns through a series of small contracts with local companies after deciding this week to break apart a large design-build contract with a consortium of three European builders. Keeping tabs on that kind of creative accounting should be a top priority of the independent auditor general.
Municipal critics have also noted that the BC NDP previously rejected federal funding offers that could have alleviated surrounding regional bottlenecks. This includes a rejected multi-million dollar federal offer to build a second exit out of Ladner via a Highway 99 overpass—a fix now deemed entirely unaffordable by local municipalities.
Opposition Conservative transportation critic Harman Bhangu said he thinks the tunnel project will likely cost closer to $9 billion. But when he asked Farnworth for details during ministry estimates in the legislature this spring, he was stonewalled by a minister who had no answers, years into what can charitably be called a political mess. Farnworth said: “The decision is made. It’s the project the region wanted. We are building a tunnel. That’s it.”
It's not just the Conservatives looking for investigation into this, local leaders like Delta Councillor Dylan Kruger are calling the project a "sham" and demanding an independent, third-party investigation into how the project has been managed.
There are several problems with this story that the media isn't telling. The BC NDP claims that breaking the massive project into smaller "work packages" will allow local Canadian firms to bid. However, building a deep-water immersed tube tunnel requires highly specialized marine engineering. The initial 2024 bidding process yielded only international consortiums because few domestic firms possess this expertise. The media isn't asking: If local firms couldn't build it as a whole, can they realistically build it in pieces, or will this just result in outsourcing to identical international firms at a higher premium?
While often framed as a green project because it includes a cycling corridor, local politicians and agricultural groups point out that the massive footprint of building tunnel approaches on land will actually pave over acres of prime agricultural land in Delta and Richmond. It is also actively disrupting the wildlife and tattered remains of Deas Island Regional Park.
The abrupt cancellation of the Cross Fraser Partnership contract is also not an isolated incident. This aligns with a broader, quiet pattern of the BC NDP breaking or "re-pacing" major infrastructure contracts. For instance, the province recently nixed contracts for five long-term care facilities and the Burnaby Hospital expansion under similar procurement disputes.
With this political boondoggle, British Columbians are left with nearly a decade of consultations, a discarded bridge that would already be open today, and a newly fired contractor that leaves the province holding a five-year-old, pre-inflation budget that no one in the construction industry believes.
Supplementals:

About 3.4 million Albertans will receive $100 energy rebate from provincial government

Albertans will get a $100 energy rebate from the provincial government. All they need to do is apply on the online portal starting July 1.
This $100 rebate replaces the scaling fuel tax relief triggered when oil prices are high.
Previously the fuel tax of 13 cents per litre would be suspended when oil was at $90 per barrel or higher during the last 20 days of trading leading up to the 16th day of the month preceding the start of the next quarter.
The tax would increase to 4.5 cents between $85 and $90. Then 9 cents between $80 and $85 ad the tax would be served in full when oil prices were below $80.
The $100 is a one time top up being billed as a general affordability measure but the province’s legislation does mandate the province provide relief if oil sits at or above $90 per barrel.
So while this is a one time top up and that angle has drawn criticism, specifically from the NDP, the province is legally required to do something if the price of oil exceeds $90 per barrel.
NDP leader Naheed Nenshi cited the “affordability crisis of Alberta” and recent clawbacks that people living on AISH have seen calling what the government is governing for “is not the world most Albertans are living in.”
The rebate will be available to those who make under $225,000 per year.
This of course evokes the memories of the 2006 prosperity bonus or Ralph bucks sent by the Klein government at the height of one of Alberta’s oil booms, back then everyone in the province got $400.
Crunching some math, the price of WTI oil has hovered at around $89 over the last 20 days with prices taking a nose dive at the announcement of the Iran peace deal.
That would mean that the gas tax would have been at 4.5c per litre. But for interest sake let’s assume it would have been at the higher 13c.
Assuming someone dedicates their entire refund to fuel, that would represent 769 litres of gas. Most modern vehicles have gas tanks that hold between 50L and 55L. Assuming the max, someone would be able to avoid the fuel tax entirely for 14 full fill ups. Obviously if you drive something more hungry for gas you get less.
If you fill up every 2 weeks, that’s enough to cover you for 28 weeks or half a year. If you take this a different way, you could then have 14 weeks and put the remaining $50 towards utilities.
Rather than an omnibus essentials benefit it’s better to think of this as an energy rebate - but the province wanted people to make their own decision about where the money should be spent.
The province said that they wanted this relief to expand to people who also don’t drive.
The economics of it do not go as far as a broad based fuel cut.
However, Moshe Lander, an economist at Concordia University who served as Alberta’s senior economist during the Klein-era payments, said that good politics and good economics do not necessarily mix.
He said that while it may buy some popularity, it’s not life changing, he said, “I don’t think this is life-changing wealth. If your affordability issues hinge on 400 Dani dollars or something, you’ve got much bigger problems that aren’t being addressed.”
While the economics of it for the province may not make sense, the suggestion that it won’t help people is absurd. More people are getting a top up, even those who don’t drive, and tackling affordability front and centre is one of the most important things a government can do.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Canada imposes 10% tariff on canned vegetables, excludes U.S., others

Canada announced a 10 per cent tariff on imports of canned vegetables on Friday, saying the measure, which excludes the United States, was aimed at addressing challenges facing its domestic producers.
The tariff, which takes effect on Friday for a maximum of 200 days, will also not apply to canned vegetables from Mexico, Israel, Chile because of free trade agreements, as well as developing countries due to Canadian trade obligations, Canada’s finance ministry added.
The ministry said in a statement that the measure was provisional while it waited for the Canadian International Trade Tribunal to complete an inquiry to study whether increased imports of canned vegetables were harming domestic processors.
World Trade Organization rules allow import taxes if increased imports threaten serious injury to domestic producers. Even though Canada and the European Union share a free trade agreement via ⁠CETA, this specific 10% surtax is a provisional safeguard measure which is allowed.
The tribunal is expected to conclude its work by Sept. 9 and the tariff would be stopped if it shows Canadian vegetable producers were not adversely impacted by canned imports.
The 10% surtax applies to these specific canned goods originating from the affected countries: sweetcorn, green beans and wax beans, peas, mixed vegetables (including pea and carrot mixes), white, black, red, or pinto beans, and chickpeas.
Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said in the statement: “With the imposition of this provisional safeguard measure, our priority remains a balanced approach that not only provides relief to our canned vegetables sector but also protects food security and affordability for Canadians.”
Such safeguards are historically “fairly unusual” but other, similar inquiries may happen given global commercial volatility, McCarthy Tetrault LLP trade lawyer Gajan Sathananthan told Bloomberg in April. Other countries have also imposed restrictions on vegetable imports recently — for instance, in February the European Union placed large anti-dumping duties on Chinese sweetcorn, which it said was typically sold in cans.
Unsaid by news reports, the country most impacted by this tariff news is China. The mainstream narrative says Canada is protecting its growers from global gluts. The untold story is that Canada is reacting to a domino effect of aggressive trade barriers elsewhere.
This measure responds to "trade diversion" after the European Union placed heavy anti-dumping duties on Chinese canned products (like sweetcorn) earlier this year, causing that cheap supply to flood the Canadian market instead.
Blocked from Europe, massive volumes of cheap Chinese inventory immediately rerouted toward Canada. Canada’s "global" safeguard is actually a defensive shield against a trade war it didn't start, preventing the domestic market from becoming a dumping ground for the world's displaced supply.
Ironically, this means that the tariff also applies to European Union Member States such as major agricultural exporters like France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain which also face the 10% surtax on their canned exports to Canada.
Other developed non-exempt nations include major economies like the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand which do not qualify for the developing nation exemption for these specific goods, meaning their canned vegetable exports are subject to the tariff.
The timing of this tariff is highly strategic regarding Canada’s relationship with the United States. This tariff rollout coincided with tense global trade dynamics. Donald Trump explicitly stated that he would "rather terminate" than renew the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
By carving out an explicit exemption for the U.S. and Mexico, Canada is actively shielding its North American supply chains from disruptions. This acts as a quiet policy olive branch to Washington, signaling that Canada is willing to align with U.S. protectionist stances against overseas supply chains (primarily China) ahead of grueling CUSMA review deadlines.
The other untold story is that while policy announcements feature imagery of small-scale, local family farms, the structure of Canada’s agricultural processing sector tells a different story. The inquiry from CITT was specifically initiated to protect vegetable processors (the industrial canning facilities), not just the primary growers. And Canadian canning industry is heavily consolidated, dominated by giant brands and multi-national corporations, like Green Giant, Nortera, Conagra and Sun-Brite. These are the corporations that are benefiting the most from this announcement. In reality, a consumer-facing tariff like this functions as a corporate subsidy for massive commercial operations.
A major component of the unsaid corporate benefits also revolves around private labels (generic store brands). A significant portion of the canned vegetables processed by giants like Nortera do not feature a brand name; they are packaged as store brands for Canada’s highly criticized grocery oligopoly. This means that grocery monoliths like Sobeys, Metro, Loblaws and Walmart will all benefit from this tariff as well.
And finally, the media quotes Champagne talking about how this will help 'food affordability', key Liberal buzzwords for the problem of the day. In reality, the media rarely digs into the socioeconomic impact of targeting this specific aisle of the grocery store. And as we know, inflation has already squeezed Canadian grocery budgets for years.
Canned vegetables are a non-perishable staple disproportionately relied upon by food banks, low-income families, students, and remote northern communities where fresh produce is prohibitively expensive. Tariffs are paid by the importing companies, who invariably pass those costs directly down to the shelf price. Imposing a 10% tax on a vital survival food group during a cost-of-living crisis creates a severe ethical contradiction for a government simultaneously campaigning on lowering grocery bills.
And finally, importers are already hunting for ways to legally circumvent the tariff codes. Slight alterations in how a vegetable is processed—such as imported vegetables preserved in vinegar, lightly pickled, or mixed into fully prepared standard meals—frequently fall under entirely different tariff chapters. A deep dive into customs logic shows that savvy international exporters can bypass the 10% penalty entirely by modifying their recipes or changing how the customs paperwork is filed, rendering the tariff less effective while complicating border enforcement.
In the end, someone will be making money off of this announcement, and it won't be Canadians at the grocery store. That's why it's important that Canada works in lockstep with countries like the EU and US to protect our domestic supply, rather than reacting late on trade matters that can harm us. And tariffs, as we've seen, can harm much more than help. The media surface level reporting doesn't actually tell the full story of what's happening.
Supplementals:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-imposes-temporary-10-tariff-on-canned-vegetables

Quote of the Week

“The decision is made. It’s the project the region wanted. We are building a tunnel. That’s it.” - BC Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth on the George Massey tunnel replacement boondoggle.

Word of the Week

Diversion - an action that turns something away from its intended course

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Show Data

Episode Title: Bills and Beans
Teaser: The Carney Liberals ram the lawful access bill through the House of Commons, the BC NDP fires the Massey Tunnel contractor, and Albertans will receive a $100 energy rebate. Also, Canada tariffs canned vegetables at 10%.
Production Code: WC-473-2026-06-20
Recorded Date: June 20, 2026
Release Date: June 21, 2026
Duration: 1:16:34
Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX