Canadian Bitcoin Conference Podcast: Nico Lagan

What we talked about.

In this episode of the Canadian Bitcoin Conference podcast, hosts Sunny Ray and Ben sit down with Nico Lagan, a Montreal based former telecom sales engineer who lost his career after refusing the COVID vaccine. Since Mark Carney became prime minister, Lagan has built a content platform dedicated to breaking down dense Canadian legislation for everyday people, focusing on surveillance, censorship, and AI policy. He walks through how Bills C8, C9, C22, and C34, along with the AI for All program, work together rather than separately, creating a system where speech can be criminalized, metadata can be harvested without a warrant, digital ID is effectively required through social media verification, and internet access can be revoked. Lagan connects this to global trends across the Commonwealth and the US, and reflects on the frozen bank accounts during the Freedom Convoy as proof that financial deplatforming is a real tool of government overreach. The conversation touches on Bitcoin and crypto's relevance to metadata concerns and closes with Lagan's own journey away from and back toward thinking about crypto as a hedge against state overreach.

A fired telecom engineer turned researcher breaks down how four Canadian bills quietly build a surveillance and speech control system.

The questions, and the answers.

Can you give us some background on yourself?

I'm a former telecom sales engineer who got fired and lost my career over COVID because I wouldn't take the vaccine. I've been creating content ever since, especially since Carney became prime minister and started pushing policies going after Canadians' free speech and turning Canada into a surveillance state. I put my technical background to use explaining what these bills actually mean, because most people don't read 100 to 200 page pieces of legislation or understand the technology being implemented to enforce them.

Can you connect the dots between Bills C8, C9, C22, C34, and AI for All?

The Liberal government is passing what looks like separate bills but is really one big agenda split up so people don't catch on. C9 defines what you can and cannot say by criminalizing an emotion, hatred, without clearly defining it. C22 lets the government collect metadata on everyone without a warrant. C34 effectively creates a digital ID by forcing everyone to prove their age for social media. C8 lets a minister remove anyone deemed a threat from the internet. AI for All builds the infrastructure to enforce all of it.

What's the connection between Commonwealth countries and these kinds of bills?

It's not really about the Commonwealth, even the US is talking about this. Australia was the first outside China to push a social media ban for teens, but now Texas and Florida are discussing similar bans too. What should alarm people is that both left leaning and right leaning governments around the world are pushing the same legislation. When both sides of the aisle agree that fast on something, you know there's a problem.

How do you see Bill C22 affecting Bitcoin users in Canada in practical terms?

I haven't heard Bitcoin people talk about this bill yet, but I'd be curious how it applies. Right now metadata just means transmission data, which already exists and isn't a huge deal. The real danger is that metadata isn't defined in the bill, so it could later be expanded to include the payload itself, the actual content of communications. If that happened, it could force encrypted traffic to be exposed, which would be a massive problem for Bitcoin and crypto users.

If VPN and messaging companies actually leave Canada, what breaks first for everyday users?

Most everyday Canadians don't even use VPNs or know what one is. What it really means is that whichever VPN companies stay in Canada would be handing your information to the government. Right now NordVPN is refusing to share metadata or logs, which is great, but if they leave, the companies that remain clearly don't care about your privacy, so there's no point using a VPN if your data is available anyway.

What part of Bill C22 worries you the most?

Metadata is the most important word in that bill because it's never defined, and anything undefined can be twisted to mean whatever the government wants later on. Historically, police needed a warrant to tap one specific person's phone. C22 lets the government request metadata on every single Canadian without a warrant, in the name of safety, even though proper legal channels already exist for targeted requests when there's genuine suspicion.

Is telecom and tech companies leaving Canada over these bills a trend that will continue?

For the people I know still in the industry, it's not a moral question, it's a money question. Capturing and storing all that metadata requires expensive high end equipment, and the bill is vague about compensation. I've heard some executives are literally comparing the cost of the penalty for non compliance against the cost of implementation, and if it's cheaper to break the rule, that's what they'll do.

Where is Bitcoin in your sovereignty toolkit, and where are you on your Bitcoin journey?

I used to be invested in Bitcoin and crypto, but when I lost my career and eventually my house over refusing to stay silent, I sold everything just to survive. After watching the Freedom Convoy bank account freezes, which were later ruled unconstitutional with zero consequences for the government, I believe anyone should explore whatever method shields them from that kind of overreach, whether that's crypto, gold, silver, or anything else outside the system's control.