Author Archives: ICLMG CSILC

ICLMG’s submission to the People’s Consultation on AI

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On March 23, 2026, the ICLMG made a submission to the People’s Consultation on Artificial Intelligence. The PCAI was launched by a group of 160 civil society organizations, including the ICLMG, in response to the federal government’s woeful track record on public consultations regarding artificial intelligence policy and regulations, specifically its Fall 2025 30-day “national sprint” consultation on AI. The submissions will be sent to the Canadian government in the following weeks.

To read our full submission, click here.

Excerpt: Concerns and recommendations

Overarching concerns

Through our work, we have documented how a lack of regulation of artificial intelligence tools and how they are used can have significantly negative impacts on the rights and livelihoods of people in Canada and internationally. This includes its use to power surveillance tools, to profile individuals, to attempt to predict unlawful activity or to make potentially life-altering decisions in a wide-range of sensitive areas, including employment, immigration, border security, law enforcement, and intelligence gathering. We are particularly aware of the interest among government, law enforcement and intelligence agencies to harness AI tools, and to work with private contractors developing those tools, for counter-terrorism and national security purposes. We’ve seen how AI models are inaccurate, biased, and misleading. A study from September 2025 shows that every AI model of every major AI company deliberately lies to users: OpenAI Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, xAI’s Grok, and Meta’s Llama all showed the same deceptive behavior. The paper seems to suggest that it’s unclear if safety training actually stops deception, or just teaches AI to hide it better.” We have also seen how such tools can be used to violate fundamental rights and can either be shared with, sold to, leaked, or stolen by a wide range of actors who can use the tools for their own nefarious purposes. Given all this, we are acutely aware of the need to regulate the development and use of AI tools in the private and public sectors.

We believe that the government should bear in mind the following concerns and principles in developing any further legislation or regulations to govern the use of AI overall, and specifically in the areas of national security and law enforcement.

Specific areas of concern:

A. Regulation of AI must be grounded in human rights, Charter rights and international human rights law

B. Definitions

I. AI legislation should clearly define terms and categories (such as high impact systems)

II. Definition of harms must include group-based harms

C. The government must develop AI legislation that includes regulations for the national security-related use of AI in both the public and private sectors

D. Need for more consultation

E. Need for independent oversight and review

F. Banned uses of AI

Recommendations

  1. AI regulation must be grounded in a human rights-first approach, should include human rights-based assessments, and ensure that rights protections are built into the legislation, especially protection of privacy rights.
  2. AI legislation should take an approach that addresses the roots of AI companies’ algorithms and business models and their significant human rights implications.
  3. AI legislation should clearly define terms and categories (such as high impact systems). Those definitions should not be left to regulation nor to “people responsible for AI systems.”
  4. Definition of harms must include group-based harms.
  5. AI legislation should apply to both the public and private sectors, including government national security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies; and there should be no exemption in AI regulations for national security related technology.
  6. The government must hold open, inclusive and meaningful consultations, before and after tabling legislation, with a broad range of stakeholders and the public.
  7. The consultations should not be led by the Minister of AI or the Ministry of Industry.
  8. The enforcement of AI regulations should fall to an independent regulator, and AI regulations should be periodically reviewed for effectiveness and impact, especially given that AI technology, and its usage, will continue to evolve.
  9. The government should, via legislation, establish a list of banned uses of AI, with the possibility of adding more banned uses by regulation. We recommend that the initial list include:
    • deploying subliminal, manipulative, or deceptive techniques to distort behaviour and impair informed decision-making;
    • exploiting vulnerabilities related to age, disability, or socio-economic circumstances to distort behaviour;
    • biometric categorisation systems inferring sensitive attributes (race, political opinions, trade union membership, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, or sexual orientation)
    • social scoring, i.e., evaluating or classifying individuals or groups based on social; behaviour or personal traits, causing detrimental or unfavourable treatment of those people;
    • assessing the risk of an individual committing criminal offenses solely based on profiling or personality traits;
    • compiling facial recognition databases by untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage;
    • inferring emotions in workplaces or educational institutions;
    • ‘real-time’ remote biometric identification (RBI) in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement.
    • decision-making regarding people’s lives (immigration status/removal orders, social benefits, health-related decisions, etc.).
    • decision-making regarding the deployment and/or the control of autonomous weapons.

To read the rest of our submission, click here.

Since you’re here…

… we have a small favour to ask. Here at ICLMG, we are working very hard to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called “war on terror” in Canada. We do not receive any financial support from any federal, provincial or municipal governments or political parties. You can become our patron on Patreon and get rewards in exchange for your support. You can give as little as $1/month (that’s only $12/year!) and you can unsubscribe at any time. Any donations will go a long way to support our work.panel-54141172-image-6fa93d06d6081076-320-320You can also make a one-time donation or donate monthly via Paypal by clicking on the button below. On the fence about giving? Check out our Achievements and Gains since we were created in 2002. Thank you for your generosity!
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CMPAC presents ICLMG’s Tim McSorley with its Community Partner Award

Khaled Al-Qazzaz, CMPAC’s Executive Director, presents ICLMG’s Tim McSorley with their Community Partner Award.

During the recent Parliamentary Iftar dinner hosted by the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council (CMPAC), Tim McSorley, our National Coordinator, was honoured to receive the Community Partner Award for his dedicated partnership and steadfast contributions in service of the Muslim community.

We are deeply touched to receive this award, immensely grateful for the important advocacy of CMPAC (a member of the ICLMG coalition), and looking forward to continuing our partnership of defending the civil liberties of the Muslim community and of all people in Canada.

Thank you!

Tim McSorley’s statement on social media:

Last week, I had the honour of attending the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Parliamentary Iftar. It was wonderful to sit down to break bread with friends, colleagues, MPs and senators, and members of the broader Muslim community – many of whom I knew and had deep respect for the work that they do in their communities and across Canada to uphold justice and build togetherness. Something we desperately need right now.

So it was incredibly humbling to be recognized with CMPAC’s Community Partner award that night, for the work that I do with the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group to defend civil liberties in Canada from the impact of national security and anti-terrorism laws, including confronting systemic racism, Islamophobia and racial and religious profiling. It was particularly meaningful to be recognized, given how many organizations and individuals have been doing incredible, tireless work at a particularly difficult time, when we see rising instances of hate, racism and xenophobia both in Canada and internationally. I also can’t talk about the work of the ICLMG, and would never be in a position for this kind of award, if it weren’t for the incredible work of my colleague, Xan Dagenais, ICLMG’s research and communications coordinator.

My award followed wonderful and thoughtful remarks from Imam Sikander Hashmi, Executive Director, Canadian Council of Imams, and MPs Salma Zahid and Jenny Kwan, who both were also presented with awards. It inspired me to think about the importance of coming together and working collectively for peace and justice, and how that is also reflected in the ICLMG coalition, bringing together organizations from across sectors, including human rights, legal, faith based, environmental, labour and humanitarian groups. It allows us an opportunity to share across sectors and communities, to learn from each other, to build and show solidarity and to take on difficult issues in a thoughtful way, but also in a way that no one group could do on its own. This includes work like addressing systemic racism in the treatment of Muslim-led charities and humanitarian organizations, the push for greater border securitization at the expense of protecting and welcoming migrants and refugees, addressing the secretive and rights-violating tools used by national security agencies, and confronting the genocide in Gaza and Canada’s complicity in that and other human rights abuses around the world.

I’m incredibly thankful to CMPAC for the recognition, and humbled, but also energized to continue working together. And grateful to CMPAC for bringing us together and the work they do for justice, peace and a better Canada and world. Ramadan Mubarak!

Since you’re here…

… we have a small favour to ask. Here at ICLMG, we are working very hard to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called “war on terror” in Canada. We do not receive any financial support from any federal, provincial or municipal governments or political parties. You can become our patron on Patreon and get rewards in exchange for your support. You can give as little as $1/month (that’s only $12/year!) and you can unsubscribe at any time. Any donations will go a long way to support our work.panel-54141172-image-6fa93d06d6081076-320-320You can also make a one-time donation or donate monthly via Paypal by clicking on the button below. On the fence about giving? Check out our Achievements and Gains since we were created in 2002. Thank you for your generosity!
make-a-donation-button

Government must take immediate action to address serious concerns with Canada’s No Fly List regime following independent review

The serious flaws and violations of the law uncovered in the first ever rigorous and independent review of Canada’s secretive No Fly List regime require an immediate response and urgent action on the part of the Canadian government.

For 20 years, Canada has operated a troubling, secretive regime that prevents individuals, including Canadians, from flying out of or returning to Canada, undermining Charter rights and due process in the courts. The newly released report from the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency – the independent federal watchdog tasked with examining Canada’s national security activities – offers an unprecedented look at the internal workings of Canada’s no fly list regime, formally known as the Passenger Protect Program (PPP). NSIRA’s troubling findings reaffirm the fact that secret lists based on overly broad national security concerns are a recipe for rights violations.

Among the report’s findings are that:

  • On at least six occasions since the Secure Air Travel Act (SATA), which governs the PPP, came into force in 2015, Public Safety Canada failed to review the list within 90 days, in contravention of the law
  • Two individuals continued to be listed despite recommendations of their removal, without evidence as to why
  • Three individuals have continued to be listed for reasons that are not in compliance with the Secure Air Travel Act, in contravention of the law
  • While, by law, the list is reviewed every 90 days, an unknown number of individual cases are not being updated because the individuals are no longer under investigation
  • Government departments that sign-off on the 90 day review are not actually reviewing the list
  • The government has failed to appropriately identify or mitigate risks of listed peoples’ mistreatment by foreign entities when the list is shared with foreign airlines, in violation of Canada’s Avoiding Complicity in Foreign Mistreatment Act
  • A lack of clear or consistent guidance around risk factors, including those used in deciding when to list or delist an individual, run the risk of unreasonable or unfair treatment
  • Decisions at time of boarding a plane did not match decisions taken when an individual was listed
  • Even when individuals were able to apply to the Minister for a review of their listing, indicators that an individual posed a risk under the SATA regime were not consistently applied, not clearly interpreted, and decisions made were not consistently documented
  • There is a lack of internal oversight or feedback mechanisms to address or reconcile these issues
  • There is an overall lack of coordination, leadership and rigour in administering the SATA
    In many cases, even when a listed individual is not subject to a denial of boarding, the result is still that they miss their flight. This is due to, for example, the amount of time that Public Safety takes to decide on what direction to provide to the airline, or the amount of time taken to carry out additional questioning of the listed person.

It is incredibly alarming that, because of a combination of administrative errors, lack of investigation, or incoherent policies, an unknown number of individuals currently on Canada’s No Fly List are essentially in an administrative black hole. Worse still is that individuals who are not deemed a threat under the criteria of the SATA, or who have been recommended to be delisted, remain on the list.

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