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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Thanks go out to RodgeGrabTheCat and Rentlar for pointing out the ever-changing landscape of this legislation.
Greenpeace talks about how C-2 has been repackaged into C-2 plus C-12, C-8, and C-9. Many of the problems which people expressed concerns about still remain. C-2 has also not been withdrawn and may continue to remain a threat.
In the same article, Greenpeace also still points us to sign their C-2 petition and so the C-2 petitions are still important.
Greenpeace Petition Link
https://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/act/stop-bill-c-2-defend-our-human-rights-privacy/
https://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/story/72808/carneys-bills-explained-c-2-c-12-c-8-and-c-9/ October 23, 2025 "Let's break down the biggest issues with Bill C-2 (now broken down into C-2 and C-12), and Bill C-8 and Bill C-9. All three Bills are being considered by the Federal government and pose serious concern to human rights, constitutional rights, and privacy rights."
Bill C-12
"the new Bill C-12 repackages Bill C-2 'leaving intact the measures to block refugee hearings, impose arbitrary retroactive one-year bars, and grant ministers mass immigration status-cancellation powers.' This would allow the government to cancel en masse people's immigration applications and even cancel visas or permanent residence cards of people already in the country."
Bill C-8
"give the Minister powers to break encryption security and install backdoors into Canada’s networks for surveillance purposes. This means that the government could surveil all your online activities from banking to personal communications."
"the bill would authorize warrantless seizure of sensitive private information; and collect and share communications, metadata, locational, and financial data."
Bill C-9
"Bill C-9 criminalizes protest, dissent, free expression, and assembly in a clear violation of charter rights."
"Bill C-9's intimidation and obstruction offences are overly broad, vague, and pose the risk of criminalizing peaceful protests."
Read for yourself and consider sending in your respectfully worded opinions by email correspondence to the Parliamentary Committees linked below.
Bill C-12 Links
https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/45-1/c-12
https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-12/first-reading
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/SECU?parl=45&session=1 (no meetings have been scheduled yet)
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/SECU/Contact
Bill C-8 Links
https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/en/bill/45-1/c-8
https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/c-8/first-reading
https://www.ourcommons.ca/committees/en/SECU/StudyActivity?studyActivityId=13156377
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/SECU/Contact (yes, the same committee as C-12)
Bill C-9 Links
https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/45-1/c-9
https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-9/first-reading
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/JUST/StudyActivity?studyActivityId=13154115
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/JUST/Contact
New Petitions
How can we organize new petitions? The C-2 House of Commons petition was put together by a Facebook group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/VictoriaProtests/
I am not on Facebook and the same may be true of many Lemmy users.
If you are one of the users on Facebook, would it be difficult for you to join their group and point them at this thread?
Lemmy has users who will sign a petition. Lemmy probably does not have people who will band together to create petitions since you have to trust another person with your real name and your email address.
Facebook users know each other by name. Facebook users are suitable for banding together to create petitions.
Dual Lemmy-Facebook users can let the rest of us know about new petitions. Lemmy users can act as additional votes on each petition. Lemmy users can also spread news to their contacts outside of Lemmy.
Maybe this time when creating petitions, focus more on the issues and less on who to blame. Some people refused to sign the petition against C-2 because they felt that it was an attack on the party that they voted for. It's supposed to be about the issues. But, people are sensitive to the wording. Let's not lose valuable votes.
At the end of the day when a bad law gets enacted, no one is able to tell the police "Oh, I am sorry, you cannot arrest me because I voted for Party X." You will get laughed at and still go to jail or get kicked out of the country for doing things that are normal to you right now. Focus on the issues because it is the issues that matter for every Canadian.
Petitions are also a great way for youth to get involved in the political process and actually have a vote.
If you can help, please act quickly. C-12 has been sent to committee. C-8 is about to start committee meetings. C-9 has already started being discussed in committee meetings. Some of these laws may get passed before the end of 2025 if people don't collaborate on creating new corresponding petitions.