[gpm]

This bill, which is almost entirely about giving the government the ability to restrict where ISPs purchase services from (e.g. routers) despite what the national post would have you believe, probably isn't corrupt at all, it's just a matter of national security to not give groups like China the ability to take down our internet.

That said it certainly could enable corruption. "Pay us (the cabinet ministers) some money or we won't let ISPs buy equipment from you". There's just no evidence that is why it is being passed.

[txrx0000]

That "almost entirely" part is the problem. They sneak in a clause that makes those restrictions also apply to which customers ISPs can serve.

Even the supposed intended purpose of restricting equipment may be malicious. Why should the government be able to restrict whose equipment or which fibre operators the ISP can use?

If equipment is the concern, then they can just regulate the actual imported equipment. Canada probably already has such oversight like the US's FCC.

[gpm]

Regulating imported equipment doesn't give you the ability to go back retroactively and say "shit, actually we need you to pull out all the equipment from <company> because it's a security problem". Or the ability to regulate what software updates are applied. And so on and so forth. And the government should have the ability to do that because it is a matter of geopolitics and national security to maintain the independence of our telecommunications infrastructure.

They did not slip in a clause which allows them to restrict which customers ISPs can serve, despite the headline saying otherwise.

[txrx0000]

I'm pretty sure there are already laws that allow the government to deal with devices used for spying. There's no need to introduce this broad-spectrum bill that controls way more than it should.

You may have charitable interpretations, but 15.2(2)(d) can be used to effectively ban anyone from accessing the Internet. And it can certainly be used to throttle web services the government doesn't like.

[gpm]

I don't have more charitable interpretations, I have more correct interpretations. The cannons of statutory interpretation are not a matter of charity, they are a matter of how laws are read. 15.2(2)(d) cannot as a matter of law be used to effectively ban anyone from the internet at all.

I do not believe the government currently has the authority to force telecoms to remove suspected compromised equipment. They've tried without a law. Telecoms have resisted, successfully. You're probably right if they only needed to remove devices they could prove were currently being used for spying, but national security demands that they can do that to devices that they merely suspect are compromised, and that fails on both fronts.

[txrx0000]

> 15.2(2)(d) cannot as a matter of law be used to effectively ban anyone from the internet at all.

How laws are read can change. It may not fly in court today, but what about 5 or 10 years later? They may not immediately ban anyone, but just slightly throttling the services they don't like with national security as an excuse is detrimental to the free Internet. People will get used to it and then one day, it would be interpreted as "it's ok to allow egregious usage limits", which is effectively a ban. It happens gradually.

> I do not believe the government currently has the authority to force telecoms to remove suspected compromised equipment.

Good. This is the way it should be. The burden of proof is on the government. You cannot assume guilty until proven innocent. If the government really suspects that there is some malicious equipment that slipped past their equivalent of FCC undetected, then they could impose import restrictions to make it impractical for telecom operators to purchase said equipment.

There is a lot they could do on the import regulation side, such as restricting OTA updates for critical equipment to domestic servers, or even restrict firmware updates to offline flashing only. They could make some equipment prohibitively expensive. There are plenty of ways to deal with it besides introducing a law like this.

[gpm]

> How laws are read can change.

They are more likely to ignore the law than to change the fundamental principles of how the words are read. It's easier. See the US.

Worrying about this sort of lawless action when writing laws is pointless because no matter how well laws are written they don't stop someone from simply ignoring them.

> Good. This is the way it should be.

I have no interest in rolling over and handing the keys to our communications infrasturcture to foreign powers because the government was not fast enough to realize they needed to ban a company, or because foreign politics shifted and what was a safe enough bet not longer is.

It's not a matter of guilt or innocence. It's not a matter of punishment. It's a matter of maintaining our independence.

[opengrass]

Huawei gear has been banned no problem. It would not be that terribly worded.

[gpm]

Huawei gear has not been banned, unfortunately. There's been some progress in removing it, but ultimately the telecoms have refused to do so fully. Laws to get this done were in the process of being passed, but not passed, when the Trudeau government fell.

Here's a source from not that long ago: https://mobilesyrup.com/2025/01/14/telcos-slow-removal-huawe...