Anti-COVID mandate doctor turned Conservative MP warns against dystopian Liberal internet bill

OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — A Canadian doctor who was critical of COVID lockdowns and is now a Conservative MP warned against a new Liberal bill that would give extra powers to police to monitor and search Canadians’ online digital activity without a warrant.

“You should be very concerned about Bill C22,” wrote Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Dr. Matt Strauss in a recent X post, which included a video of him speaking in the House of Commons about the bill this week. 

“It’s straight out of 1984.”

Strauss was, of course, referring to George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel 1984.

While speaking to the House of Commons about Bill C-22, Strauss said that his own experience reading 1984 gave him nightmares.

“At around age 13, I was horrified to read the following excerpt from chapter 1 of George Orwell’s 1984,” noted Strauss.

He shared the passage from the novel: 

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made would be picked up by it. Moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often or on what system the thought police plugged in was guesswork.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Bill C-22 was introduced recently by Canadian Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree.

This bill was introduced purportedly to address privacy concerns relating to another bill, Bill C-2, that would have permitted police and government officials to open and examine Canadians’ personal mail and would also ban cash donations over $10,000.

Strauss said that this passage, even 27 years ago, “gave me a chill down the spine.”

“Could people really live with the government listening to their every utterance, watching their every move? How could the human spirit ever flourish in the utter absence of basic privacy?” he recalled.

After backlash late last year about Bill C-2, Anandasangaree said he would rewrite portions of the bill. However, Bill C-22 contains concerning language, largely taken from Bill C-2, regarding Canadians’ online privacy.

Strauss was a doctor critical of COVID lockdowns and mandates and took a lot of heat for his views. He handily won a seat as a Conservative MP in the 2025 federal election.

The Democracy Fund (TDF), as reported by LifeSiteNews, recently warned that Bill C-22 will “erode privacy and civil rights” of citizens and is calling for the bill to be stopped.

Liberals looking to build a ‘backdoor’ to spy on Canadians’ privacy, says MP

While speaking to the House of Commons about Bill C-22, Strauss spelled out clearly that, in his view, the Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney are trying to make the “telesceen” a reality.

“The Liberal government is attempting to make possible the 1984 telescreen out of every cell phone, AirPod, Apple Watch, smart TV, and automobile, anything that is connected to the internet,” he said.

“This bill takes the huge first step of building the surveillance architecture in the first place. Once it is built, it will be ripe for abuse either by the government or by hackers. Once it is built, it will not be unbuilt. We are at the stage where the government builds all the telescreens and puts them in your home, but promises to only use them if you’ve been bad.”

Strauss said that even at a “young age,” he knew that it was “basically wrong for my sister to go through the things in my room or for me to read her diary.”

“Not because any authority figure ever told me it was wrong. I knew it in my soul. One can’t develop one’s thoughts, one’s feelings, one’s self under prying eyes. And that was just respect to my friends and family. What if a power as great as the government or the police violated your privacy?” he noted.

Along with the TDF, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) has also warned about Bill C-22, saying it will “significantly expand government surveillance powers.”

The JCCF recently launched a petition to try to stop the bill from becoming law.