The Bill gives the government and law enforcement agencies far-reaching powers to collect information on Canadians without proper oversight and in contravention of privacy rights protected in the Charter.

It allows our national security force, CSIS, to carry out undefined “measures” against perceived threats, including anything that interferes with Canada’s “economic or financial stability”.

The problem is that a wide range of legitimate groups involved in advocacy on environmental, First Nations, labor and social justice issues might well be regarded by the government as a threat to the country’s “economic stability”.

Five former supreme court justices, two former privacy commissioner, the Canadian Bar Association are just a few of thousands of people opposed to this bill.

This is what University of Ottawa Law Professor Craig Forcese says about Bill C-51:

“CSIS may come to judges asking them to bless in advance constitutional breaches. The proceeding will be secret. Only the government will be represented. There is no appeal mechanism. The person affected will not know about it. They may never know who caused the problems that they then would encounter… We just have never seen anything like this in Canada before.”