Subhead: An investigation into the militarization, surveillance, and foreign influence behind Canada’s ‘Strong Borders Act’
Author: Helene Saleska, News Editor
In December 2024, the Government of Canada announced a $1.3 billion CAD plan to expand militarization and surveillance along the U.S.-Canada border. The plan includes the deployment of drones, helicopters, and mobile surveillance towers as part of a new Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Aerial Intelligence Task force, along with a commitment to 24-hour aerial surveillance. Nicknamed the ‘Strong Borders Act,’ the project is now part of Bill C-2, introduced in the House of Commons in June.
By increasing border surveillance, imposing new immigration and visa restrictions, and expanding law enforcement powers, Bill C-2 is a direct attack on human rights. It limits migrants’ abilities to claim refugee status and broadly revokes many resident and work visas. The bill also undermines the rights of all Canadians by expanding private, military, and police surveillance capabilities, while allowing broad international data sharing. To many, Bill C-2 is an effort to appease U.S. President Donald Trump, who repeatedly accuses Canada of allowing undocumented migration as well as gun and drug smuggling into the U.S.
Consequently, this bill begs the question of whether Canada, in the name of security, is pursuing the same political path of racist exclusion, surveillance, and human rights abuses as the United States.
Canada’s recent trend towards increased security and militarization demonstrates how Western settler-colonial states reinforce each other’s ability to oppress and control certain groups by sharing tactics, technology, and information, particularly in the realm of border security and surveillance. While Canada is often perceived as the United States’ friendly next-door neighbor, Canada’s reciprocal relationship with the United States and Israel perpetuates the narrative that the need for increased ‘security’ justifies violating necessary protections of human rights.
U.S. Immigration: A template for Canada?
Since January, the world has watched Trump’s escalating use of inhumane migrant detention centres for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, illegal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on both public spaces and private homes, broad interpretation of immigration law, and increased militarization.
Arizona State Senator Analise Ortiz told //The Tribune// in an interview that ICE agents sometimes wait for days outside schools and hospitals—places once considered ‘sensitive locations’ where people should feel safe.
“There are very clear constitutional concerns about how ICE is policing and surveilling people in our communities,” she said.
ICE Agent Howard Bolick, who refuses to go back to the job under the current leadership, also spoke to //The Tribune// about the blatant human rights abuses the agency is committing.
“[The border patrol under Trump] is constantly trying to expand their mission, they get into investigations that they don’t know how to do, and civil rights to them is just something to be worked around,” Bolick said.
He explained that even his ICE unit, Homeland Security Investigations, which is charged with handling only high-level criminal investigations, is now doing raids of places like Home Depot, explicitly racial profiling by using “brown skin” or “speaking Spanish” as a justification for arrest.
Bolick emphasized that these practices do not make the country safer; in fact, they do the opposite. He fears that the critical investigation into organized crime and trafficking executed by agents in his time is now being abandoned in favour of indiscriminate arrests and imprisonments, targeting ethnicity while disregarding due process.
U.S. border militarization is not new, nor are the inadequacies of U.S. immigration policies for migrants. But Trump has escalated enforcement to unprecedented heights—increasing ICE surveillance and deploying the National Guard on civilians—under the auspices of public safety.
These developments serve as a warning for Canada, where a similar pattern is emerging: Bill C-2 threatens to upend the lives of migrants and breach the privacy rights of all Canadians. And this is not an anomaly. Like the U.S., Canada receives much of its military and surveillance technology from Israel, making the parallels between these two nations overwhelmingly stark.
A shared infrastructure of surveillance
In July, Canada approved $37.2 million CAD in exports of military aid to Israel—but the aid flows in the other direction too: Canada imports Israeli military and surveillance technology. Just as Canadian aid to Israel supports the enormous surveillance apparatus and militarization of Palestine, the technologies made in Israel with Canadian money go to increasing surveillance on Canadians.
Israel is one of the world’s largest manufacturers and exporters of high-tech military and surveillance technology, often testing spyware and AI surveillance on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank before exporting them, where they are used to oppress other groups of people around the world.
As of August 2025, Electronic Frontier Foundation mapped 579 surveillance towers across the U.S.-Mexico border, creating what they call a ‘virtual wall.’ Most were developed and installed by Elbit Systems—Israel’s largest military and surveillance contractor.
In my home state of Arizona, 55 Elbit Integrated Fixed Towers now stand on and around both the U.S.-Mexico border and the Tohono O’odham Indigenous Nation’s border. The towers increase the mortality risks of migrants crossing the desert from Mexico into the south of the U.S. by pushing them towards more dangerous desert routes.
But Canada is not just a bystander in this system. It plays a role in enabling the U.S.’s application of this technology and maintains its own secretive technology-sharing agreements with Israel. Public information about Canada’s military trade deals, purchases, and production cooperation partnerships is detailed by the Database of Israeli Military and Security Export. This details Canada’s purchase of Israel’s Iron Dome radar technology, frequent deals with Elbit Systems, and annual military imports from Israel of up to $100 million CAD.
Concerns about Israeli surveillance technology in Canada extend beyond the military, with researchers uncovering possible use of spyware by provincial police on Canadian citizens. In March, Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto discovered evidence of a sale to Canada from an unknown vendor of an Israeli ‘mercenary spyware’ technology called //Graphite//, developed by Paragon Solutions. Researchers believe it was used by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in investigations against citizens, which the OPP neither confirms nor denies. The spyware from Paragon Solutions has also been found on the cell phones of journalists and human rights activists around the world.
Lack of oversight
Canada is sacrificing its commitment to privacy in the name of expanding surveillance.
Kate Robertson, senior researcher at Citizen Lab, explained in an interview with //The Tribune// that although Canada has historically been much more forceful in protecting citizens’ privacy than the United States, its privatization of surveillance systems and increasing use by police forces is going unchecked.
“We’re now seeing gaps in laws that are growing into, frankly, chasms about the privatization of surveillance, and the shift to […] policing that [is] increasingly distant from oversight and meaningful controls by privacy regulators in the courts,” Robertson reported.
She also stressed the need for increased parliamentary oversight of new surveillance technology.
“We have pointed to the need for Parliament to play its critical function in regulating and overseeing surveillance systems that include the growing adoption and use of mercenary spyware, but also other forms of algorithmic or AI-fueled surveillance systems that are currently falling through the cracks.”
Datasharing: Is Canada complicit in the U.S.’s disregard of migrant rights?
With the U.S. expanding its control over immigration, Canada is preparing to grant the U.S. further access to personal information about migrants and Canadians. The two countries are currently negotiating the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use Of Data (CLOUD) Act Agreement, which proposes to allow any U.S. law enforcement officer to receive personal data from any electronic communication or computing service in Canada, all without Canadian judicial oversight.
According to Citizen Lab, Bill C-2 is a precursor to this law enforcement data-sharing agreement between the U.S. and Canada. The agreement could outright assist the U.S. in committing more atrocities against migrants and people of colour.
As stated in Citizen Lab’s report, the sharing of this personal data, especially under the current U.S. administration, could make “the Canadian government and technology sector complicit in the data-fuelled criminalization and persecution of historically marginalized groups in the U.S. —groups whose equality and human rights, if they were in Canada, would be constitutionally guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Kate Robertson described how this agreement opens the floodgates for privacy breaches and human rights abuses by the U.S.
“When we’re talking about a new data sharing agreement under the CLOUD Act, we’re actually talking about […] Canada ceding sovereignty to the law enforcement authorities across the border to directly issue surveillance orders on companies or entities in Canada, without the involvement of the Canadian courts.”
Robertson also expressed concern about how this shared data could be used by the U.S.
“There’s a high potential that some of the surveillance and information collection will be targeted towards migrants and refugees on both sides of the border, and with potentially significant consequences leading to family disruption or persons being deported to countries where they have fewer rights,” she said.
This is yet another example of how a vast expansion in security and surveillance by the U.S., funded and militarized by Israel, encourages Canada’s disregard for migrant rights.
Canada’s longstanding history with the U.S.
Although the proposed CLOUD Agreement is much more extreme, Canada’s complicity in U.S. efforts for global domination is not new. For decades, Canada has participated in data sharing efforts, military alliances, and restrictive immigration agreements with the U.S.
According to a report from Queens University, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Canada and Israel worked together in pioneering the new market for developing ‘counter-terrorism’ military technology and aid for the U.S.’s ‘War on Terror.’
In an interview with //The Tribune//, François Crépeau, McGill professor emeritus in the Faculty of Law, explained how the Canadian border has been used by the U.S. for greater military power.
“This border has been a testing ground for American surveillance, with drones being deployed ten years ago, which then served in wars. But at the time, they were tested on the Canadian border,” Crépeau said.
He also spoke to the lack of oversight in data surveillance and data sharing when it comes to the Canada-U.S. border, even now, before any potential consequences of Bill C-2 or the CLOUD Agreement have come into effect.
“Databases, including those that contain personal information of migrants, are exchanged between countries easily. When 9/11 happened, Canada accepted within weeks to transfer all passengers’ information to the U.S. for flights going from Canada to the U.S., without restriction. The U.S. could even publish all that information online,” Crépeau said.
He explained the tightening of the already very restrictive immigration policy for refugees coming through the U.S. from a third country under the later stages of the Trudeau and Biden administrations.
“[As a result of this renegotiation], there is no possibility to come across the terrestrial border from the U.S. to claim asylum in Canada, unless you are a U.S. citizen. You will be returned automatically.”
The foundation of xenophobic policy, privacy violations, and data sharing that was built before Trump—and thus before Bill C-2—is now allowing both governments to easily push these policies to their extremes. These policies, like the rhetoric of ‘security’ that governments use, were built for exploitation, not protection.
Bigger than a Bill
McGill students and anyone calling Canada home must advocate against Bill C-2 to prevent its passage in Parliament. Through Bill C-2 and the CLOUD Agreement, Canada is set to facilitate a breach of privacy rights and deepen its complicity in violence against marginalized and colonized people all around the world—from Gaza to the U.S. to Mexico, and beyond.
But we must remember that this is also bigger than any bill or presidential administration, that every struggle against pervasive state oppression is both ideologically and quite literally materially connected. Canada is working together with the U.S. and Israel to increase the use of the border as a tool for state surveillance and, therefore, for racial oppression and exclusion. Addressing these underlying issues will require institutional changes to dismantle the military industrial complexes, which fuel narratives and systems that call for increased ‘security’ while trampling human rights.
