The encrypted-messaging service says it could leave Canada if Bill C-22 ultimately requires technology that compromises private communications.
The Canadian
Tech
October 8, 2026
4 min read
Encrypted-messaging service Signal says federal amendments to Bill C-22 have not resolved its concerns about Canada’s proposed lawful-access regime. The company continues to warn that it could withdraw from the Canadian market if the final law forces providers to weaken the privacy architecture protecting users’ conversations.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree introduced changes in June, including language clarifying that a company without an encryption key would not be compelled to decrypt data it holds. Signal vice-president Udbhav Tiwari told an Ottawa panel this week that the revisions do not go far enough to protect end-to-end encryption or limit broader technical demands.
The dispute turns on a basic property of secure messaging: a service designed not to possess a user’s decryption key cannot produce readable content without changing that design. Building a special access mechanism for one authorized request can create a vulnerability that other governments or attackers may seek to exploit.
Law-enforcement agencies argue that digital evidence can be essential to investigations and that communications services should comply with lawful orders. The policy challenge is distinguishing targeted access to information a company actually holds from a requirement to redesign a secure product so that private content becomes technically available.
Bill C-22 is still part of an evolving legislative process. Parliament should make the technical obligations explicit before passage, because ambiguity carries costs on both sides: investigators need workable rules, while Canadians need assurance that a legal access power will not quietly become a permanent weakness in tools used by journalists, officials and the public.
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