House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Friday that he is “very concerned” Canada’s expanding censorship and surveillance laws could erode the free-speech and privacy rights of Americans.
Jordan made the comments in a sit-down with Elie Cantin-Nantel of EMCN Media, an independent Canadian digital media venture. The interview came weeks after he and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) sent a letter to Canada’s public safety minister raising the same concerns.
The Ohio Republican said Canada’s Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, would reach beyond Canadian borders because Americans routinely communicate with and travel to the country.
“Are Americans in jeopardy of their privacy, their communications, their Fourth Amendment liberties that we have under our Constitution?” Jordan said. “We’re seeing this infringement on American liberties and, frankly, American companies being required to do things.”
In their May letter to Minister Gary Anandasangaree, Jordan and Mast wrote that the bill would “drastically expand Canada’s surveillance and data access powers in ways that create significant cross-border risks to the security and data privacy of Americans.”
The Judiciary chairman also pointed to Canada’s Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, which removed a religious exemption from the country’s hate-speech law. Jordan noted that a Canadian minister had described passages of Romans as hateful.
“Quoting scripture is now somehow a crime,” Jordan said. “This is always where it leads.”
Jordan’s comments come as high-profile speech cases mount across the West. Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan was arrested by five armed officers at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2025 over posts on X criticizing transgender ideology, and the Metropolitan Police later apologized and paid a settlement.
A spokesman for Anandasangaree, Simon Lafortune, has said the concerns reflect “a misunderstanding of how Bill C-22 would function,” insisting the measure does not require companies to weaken encryption.
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