Government requests for Canadians’ Google data have increased about ten times over the past five years.

Government institutions submitted 2,427 requests for user data in 2021, up from 249 in 2016, according to data obtained by the Investigative Journalism Foundation. Newly released figures from Google for the first six months of 2022 show that requests received are on track to match the previous year’s numbers, with 1,164 requests announced so far.