Robert Diab is a professor in the Faculty of Law at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. His writing examines privacy, freedom of expression and the regulation of digital technology. He co-authored Search and Seizure (2023) with Chris Hunt and co-founded the Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law in 2014.
DI has documented statements by Robert Diab on Canada, Cybersecurity, and Law Enforcement, among other topics. Read the quotations, original sources and related cases below.
Role at the time: Law professor at Thompson Rivers University
Condemned
Statement summary
Diab criticizes the breadth of the amended retention power.
“This is still a power to order the retention of almost everyone’s metadata without individualized suspicion for a significant period of time.”
Open source (opens in a new tab)Robert Diab examines Bill C-22 after the Commons amendmentsEncryption and metadata-retention sections
Why we used this label
The case concerns Bill C-22 Part 2's proposed mandatory capabilities, metadata retention and safeguards. Diab criticizes the breadth of the amended retention power.
Baltej Dhillon defends Bill C-22's lawful-access capability framework. Paula Simons, Yuen Pau Woo and Robert Diab question its privacy, cybersecurity and oversight safeguards. The House-passed text caps metadata retention at six months. As of October 24, 2026, it was before a Senate committee.
