Ottawa--Canada's privacy commissioner warned Friday that a proposed toughening of the nation's counterterrorism laws would expose too much personal information, with little or no oversight.
In an open letter, Commissioner Daniel Therrien expressed concern at the "unprecedented" scale of information sharing between government departments allowed under the anti-terror bill currently under consideration.
The bill would dramatically expand the powers of Canada's spy service to include disrupting terror threats, and lower the threshold for detaining suspects in terror cases and the standard for prosecution.
It would also allow intergovernmental sharing of information on alleged threats and suspects, which was previously illegal under privacy laws.
"All Canadians -- not only terrorism suspects -- will be caught in this web," Therrien said.
"Bill C-51 opens the door to collecting, analyzing and potentially keeping forever the personal information of all Canadians in order to find the virtual needle in the haystack. To my mind, that goes too far."
Security agencies, he said, would potentially be aware of all interactions between Canadians and their government, including tax filings, business dealings and vacation travel.
He said the bill would give 17 government departments and agencies "almost limitless powers to monitor and profile ordinary Canadians," and 14 of them are not subject to independent oversight.
"While the potential to know virtually everything about everyone may well identify some new threats, the loss of privacy is clearly excessive," Therrien said.
Opposition parties have called for stronger oversight of security agencies, but the government has insisted the current policies are sufficient, saying any trampling of Canadians' constitutional rights would require ministerial and judicial authorization.
The measure was drafted in response to the October 20 and 22 attacks in rural Quebec and in the capital Ottawa targeting soldiers and parliament.
The government says Canada must act more quickly to thwart threats to national security.
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