Canadians: Stop the Omnibus (Bill C-2 and now also C-12, C-8, and C-9)
Canadians: Stop the Omnibus (Bill C-2 and now also C-12, C-8, and C-9)
If you are living in Canada or are a Canadian citizen living anywhere in the world, is it a terribly bad idea to inform yourself about important issues that promise to significantly negatively impact you and your loved ones?
Too Long; Didn't Read: At stake are multiple issues regarding Canada's treatment of human rights, constitutional rights, and privacy rights. Help in signing 2 petitions against Bill C-2, one on the House of Commons website and another one from Greenpeace. Help in creating new petitions on the House of Commons website to address many of the same concerns from Bill C-2 that were simply repackaged as Bills C-12, C-8, and C-9. Use linked online tools to express concerns to your Members of Parliament. Use links to contact details for Parliamentary Committees to write directly to those who can make amendments.
Omnibus legislation skips the normal Parliamentary procedure in multiple ways:
- It hastens the process, meaning that the typical time allotted is greatly reduced. The activities which get unduly rushed include listening to informed statements from expert witnesses, having healthy debate amongst Members of Parliament, proposing well-written amendments, and generally improving legislation to make it better for Canadians.
- It also means grouping together many different parts of legislation together into one package. A suitable witness for one portion of the legislation may not get heard due to not having broad knowledge of all of the topics, meaning that valuable and relevant information does not get heard and considered.
- It further means pressuring Members of Parliament to unduly vote the legislation through. Normally, there is much more time and effort allocated to improving legislation and normally, Members of Parliament have more of an opportunity to reject legislation if sufficient improvements cannot be made.
- It also means that the knowledge and experience of many Members of Parliament who serve as experts on various Parliamentary Committees will not be properly employed. Instead of assigning each portion of the legislation to the corresponding experts amongst our Members of Parliament, one Parliamentary Committee will have to act as generalists on all of these combined issues.
"What does that mean for me?"
One piece of omnibus legislation, known as Bill C-2, attempts to make significant changes to a wide variety of topics--too many topics for any one person to be able to act as an expert on the entirety of the changes.
Bill C-2 makes significant changes to many of Canada's laws and procedures in various areas:
A] Adding the ability to revoke immigration status for entire groups of people without the normal legal hearing process
B] Disappearing doctor/lawyer/accountant privilege of your information
C] Women's rights
D] Authorizing other people to open and read our confidential letter mail, which Canada Post employees have faithfully protected against happening since the time of Confederation
E] Impacting the ability to protest against important issues, such as wars or environmental concerns
F] A disappearance of decades' worth of protections offered to Canadians by the wise jurisprudence of our Supreme Court
G] Information about Canadians that is stored safely and separately in various government departments will be amalgamated into comprehensive profiles about Canadians and made available to a much greater number of eyes
H] Sensitive data about Canadians being prepared to be shared with foreign entities
I] Multiple old pieces of legislation that had previously failed the Parliamentary process due to well-debated and well-supported reasons now becoming reintroduced as a part of this bill
J] Introducing the possibility to break encryption on our encrypted communications
K] Violating Canada's commitments to international human rights law
"That's way too complicated. Simplify it for me."
Okay, here it is: The legislation is too complicated! So, Canadians are asking the government to withdraw the legislation in its current form and break it up into its individual components. Members of Parliament would then be able to give those individual components the normal Parliamentary process, including having each of: relevant expert witnesses, sufficient time for informed debate, the proper expert Parliamentary Committees being assigned, and sufficient time to put in proper amendments.
In short, Canadians want the government to do things by the book, and follow the normal and proper Parliamentary procedures for all of these issues, one-at-a-time.
"Make it even simpler for me."
Some people have put together a petition. Other people have created tools for sending messages to our Members of Parliament. Provide your name and contact information, verify your email address, and that's it.
A petition exists on a Government of Canada website: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Sign/e-6627
a) You must be a Canadian citizen or a resident of Canada.
b) You will need to provide your name, your email address, your phone number, and your partial address.
c) Your partial address consists of your postal code plus province or else just your country if you are living outside of Canada.
d) There is no minimum age requirement for anyone signing a petition, but each person must have a unique email address. Check out https://tuta.com/ if your family member needs a new email account.
e) Even "a Member [of Parliament] may sign a petition." https://www.ourcommons.ca/procedure/procedure-and-practice-3/ch_22_2-e.html
f) Do not submit fake information, since doing so "may be dealt with as a breach of privilege."
g) The prayer request of this Petition e-6627 is to withdraw Bill C-2, allowing the legislation to be properly broken down, so that each individual component may receive proper due diligence. If you agree with this goal, please sign the petition.
Open Media offers a tool for expressing your concerns: https://action.openmedia.org/page/173242/action/1
a) You must provide your name, your email address, and a Canadian mailing address.
The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group offers a tool for expressing your concerns: https://iclmg.ca/stop-bill-c-2/
a) You must provide your name, your email address, and your location.
"Where's the news on this topic? I like to read news!"
Here you go: https://www.redreview.ca/p/bill-c-2-would-align-canadas-security
https://amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/bill-c-2-canada-attack-right-to-seek-asylum/
https://migrantrights.ca/actionslist/stopc2/
https://ccla.org/privacy/ccla-joins-calls-for-withdrawal-of-bill-c-2/
https://act.greenpeace.ca/en-ca/stop-strong-borders-act
https://citizenlab.ca/2025/06/a-preliminary-analysis-of-bill-c-2/
"What else can I do?"
You can send a link to this message to anyone else on your list of contacts who is living in Canada or who is a Canadian citizen living anywhere in the world.
C-2's omnibus legislation builds atop of 2024's C-70 omnibus legislation. If you have a group of friends who care about saving Canada, would it be really difficult to take over the task of raising a new corresponding petition for 2024's C-70 omnibus legislation? For the proposed text to use, see https://mander.xyz/post/26444218