For those Canadians whose eyes have been focused south of the border over the past few days, following the revelation of the Verizon court order and speculation about the PRISM program, it's worth remembering that Canada is in the national security / surveillance business as well.
Canada has a "Canada Patriot Act" in the form of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which amended the CSIS Act and the National Defence Act (read Part V.1). Canada has an equivalent of the American Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established under the CSIS Act. In addition, Canada's Communications Security Establishment is part of the Five Eyes signals intelligence community.
This article from today's Globe & Mail is worth a read, as it lays out Canada's own "metadata collection": Data-collection program got green light from MacKay in 2011 - The Globe and Mail.
Michael Geist has a great overview of this topic in his recent post "Why Canadians should be demanding answers about secret surveillance programs".
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