Sach's Notes

Bills of the 45th Parliament

9 min read

Bills to care about

Bill C-5 — One Canadian Economy Act (Royal Assent)

  • Full text
  • received royal assent on 2025 June 26
  • Basically the federal government can just say “the provincial/territorial regulation is close enough to the federal regulation, so you don’t need to apply/get approved again”
  • 8 (3) The federal regulatory body responsible for the administration and enforcement of a federal requirement may decide, in accordance with subsection (2), whether a provincial or territorial requirement is comparable to the federal requirement.
  • The “reducing minimum sentencing for multiple crimes” refers to the following:
    • 14 (1) Paragraph 742.‍1(c) of the Act is replaced by the following: - (c) the offence is not an offence under any of the following provisions: - (i) section 239, for which a sentence is imposed under paragraph 239(1)‍(b) (attempt to commit murder), - (ii) section 269.‍1 (torture), or - (iii) section 318 (advocating genocide);

Bill C-8 — Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act ^d80c30

  • awaiting royal assent as of 2026/06/04
  • cybersecurity bill
  • Part 1 - government can order telecom companies to remove specific products or vendors from their networks if the government deems them a security threat
    • eg. banning Chinese equipment makers
    • existed informally before, but now there are monetary penalties
  • Part 2 - requires “vital” services and systems to maintain a cybersecurity program
    • must build and operate their own, keep it up to date and whatnot
    • must report any cyber incidents to the government
    • government can issue “secret cyber security directions”
      • emergency orders in response to a threat
      • not made public! (not in the Canada Gazette)
      • secrecy deemed necessary because it doesn’t make sense to publicly say “Hey nuclear site, here’s where you’re insecure”
      • this is in-line with how CSIS and CSE already operate
    • sector regulations (OSFI for banks, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Canadian Energy Regulator, etc.) each enforce their own shit
  • Part 3 - Review entire law within 5 years

Bill C-11 — Military Justice System Modernization Act (Royal Assent)

  • main purpose is that military court no longer responsible for crimes of a sexual nature
  • includes mandatory review in 2029 regarding stats on these offenses, as well as the outcomes
  • CBC - apparently military police has been shit about passing cases to civilian courts, and hasn’t tracked any of it

Bill C-12 — Strengthening Canada’s Immigration and Borders Act ^24e15f

  • long-ass summary
  • adds more drug stuff as concerns
  • give coast guard services from Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to Minister of National Defence
  • amends Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
    • eliminate designated countries
    • prevent some claimants if they haven’t started or aren’t yet in Canada
    • Immigration and Refugee Board must give decisions and reasons
    • under 18-year-olds get special representation
  • increased penalties for money laundering and terrorist financing
  • more strict on former sex offenders
  • not in the summary:
    • you have to apply within 1 year of arriving after Canada (retroactively applied post 2020 I believe)
      • so if you came in 2021 and haven’t applied yet, RIP

Bill C-14 - Bail and Sentencing Reform Act (Royal Assent)

  • TODO

Bill C-16 — Protecting Victims Act ^442ce3

  • Full text
  • big-ass bill, meant to give victims greater protection against coersion, expand murder to include coercision, introduces minimum sentencing (!!), criminalizes AI deepfake nudes/near-nudes
    • and more, it’s a big bill

Bill C-22 — An Act respecting lawful access

  • Full text
  • completed second reading on 2026 April 20
  • this was stripped bill C-2 to allow that to proceed, but here it is again
  • would require companies offering telecom services to produce transmission data or subscriber info that it possesses/controls
  • ability to act on voluntarily providing info without a warrant
  • “ripple warrants” - judge can authorize obtaining data for “similar” devices not known at time of warrant
  • IMPORTANT: requires telecom, internet and social media companies to enable police/CSIS easier access to data, if they have a warrant
    • retain metadata for up to one year
    • it says they don’t have to comply if doing so would introduce a “systemic vulnerability”, but that’s pretty vague
    • wouldn’t cover browsing history, messages, but could include logs (eg. phone numbers you’ve contacted) and location tracking
  • the controversy here is whether or not this would require undermining encryption, or require tech companies to introduce backdoors
  • bill bans companies from revealing the existence of orders
  • Apple says it may withdraw some privacy services from Canada if C-22 is passed
    • the same thing happened in the UK when similar laws (requests?) were passed

News articles

  • Your metadata may be kept for a year under lawful access bill. What to know (CBC)
    • privacy experts say it’s risky and “unprecedented”
    • VPN operators say they’d rather pull out of Canada than comply (eg. NordVPN, Windscribe, Signal (Global))
    • apparently metadata was “quietly” added

Bill C-25 — Strong and Free Elections Act

  • prohibitions related to foreign interference in electoral process
  • tightens rules around money in politics
    • prohibits accepting anonymous contributions
  • bans internal party vote problems
    • apparently people were bussing in people to secure Liberal party nominations (see Han Dong in Toronto (2019))
  • more limitations on disinformation
  • stronger privacy rules for voters personal information

Bill C-26 — An Act to authorize certain payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the purpose of improving housing supply

  • literally just “we authorize $1.7B to pay to the provinces and territories to improve housing supply, amount to be determined by the Minister of Finance”
  • TODO: Is this just a common thing that happens? Feels procedural

Bill C-30 — Spring Economic Update 2026 Implementation Act (Royal Assent) ^64b6a3

  • S.C. 2026, c. 22
  • bruh they snuck in some bullshit about letting the cabinet permit the use of pesticides deemed unsafe by Health Canada, wtf.

Bill C-37 — First Nations Clean Water Act

  • provisions for clean drinking water and managing waste water
  • reintroduction of the former C-61 (44-1)

  • interestingly, comes into force 1 year after royal assent (if it gets that far)

Bill S-4 — An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act

  • lets the Minister of Natural Resources to give exemptions
    • 6 month exemption if there’s something that needs changing in the Act, or labelling shit
      • also “exceptional circumstances”??
    • 3 year exemption if it’s beneficial for the public interest, and “sufficient resources” exist
      • can be extended to 6??
    • implementation plan is required for exemption
  • strengthens penalties and fines and such if you violate the Energy Efficiency Act
  • widen scope of act
    • include online sales and digital labels
    • allows digital/remote inspection
    • minister can make changes to regulations without going to the Governor in Council each time
      • TODO: Who tf is this?
  • context:
    • The Energy Efficiency Act is old, from 1992
    • main point back then was to reduce high-energy consumer products, and give consumers more info

Bill S-209

  • goal is to block young people from accessing porn
  • actual effect leads to porn sites requiring ID verification before accessing their page
  • there’s also some stuff about maybe ISPs would have to block certain IPs who don’t comply

Bills you can probably ignore

Bill C-9 — Combatting Hate Act ^f2ba73

  • At consideration in the HoC of Senate amendments as of 2026/06/04
  • adds an offence for displaying hate symbols (eg. Nazi swastika, SS bolt)
    • exemption for legitimate purposes (journalism, education, art, religion)
  • protecting religious/cultural spaces
    • adds intimidation offence for entering buildings
  • contentious due to ‘criminalizing freedom of expression’

Bill C-32 - Supply bill

Bill C-33 - Supply bill

Bill C-225 - An Act to amend the Criminal Code (Royal Assent)

  • S.C. 2026, c.12
  • new specific offense for first degree murder against intimate partner
    • even if it’s “manslaughter” if you’ve been coercive etc. then it’ll be treated as first degree
    • potential life sentence, and ineligible for parole for 10-25 years
  • other new offences related to intimate partner stuff
  • more increased detention periods

Bill C-235 — Respecting Families of Murdered and Brutalized Persons Act

TODO

Bill C-259 — Fair Representation Act

  • private member’s bill
  • basically “Unions can’t be controlled by employers”

Bill C-263 — Silver Alert National Framework Act

Bill C-267 - National Framework on the Durability of Electronic Products and Essential Home Appliances Act

Bill S-2 — An Act to amend the Indian Act (new registration entitlements)

  • repeal definition of “mentally incompetent Indian” in section 2(1)
    • “an Indian who… has been found to be mentally defective… for the administration of estates of mentally defective or incompetent persons”
    • definition is used to describe Indians to whom large swathes of this act shall not apply
  • TODO: ngl it’s a long bill
  • AI Summary:
    • expand and clarify Indigenous registration elements
    • address historical exclusions
    • new rights to have their name removed, but does not affect their descendents (??)
    • replaces 2-parent rule with 1-parent rule
    • returns rights to name that were unduly removed
    • returns rights to women who lost rights under marriage
    • un-fucks “mentally incompetent Indians” as “Dependent Persons”

Bill S-205 ^24778b

  • “Tona’s Law”
  • amends Corrections and Conditional Release Act
    • jailed people gotta get a mental health check
    • sentence reduction if unfairness in administration of sentence

Bill S-233 ^c8791d

  • amend the Criminal Code (assault against persons who provide health services and first responders)
  • Similar to C-321 (44-1)
    • also about assaulting health services and first responders

Bill S-242

  • requires the Minister for Women and Gender Equality to try to prevent intimate partner violence via annual meetings federal and provincial ministers, and to make some reports
  • it’s just that. It’s like 1 page

Bill S-246 — Wartime Service Recognition Act

  • completed first reading of the HoC on 2026 June 6, it’s guaranteed gonna pass
  • genuinely who cares
  • they want clarification on recognition of “wartime service”, and “on respect for their sacrifice”, whatever that means
  • it’s just definitions and “we love veterans” rhetoric
  • ngl I’m kind of against it? It feels like they’re adding extra work for the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Veterans Affairs, do we really need to make them even more busy?

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