Evidence of meeting #8 for Public Safety and National Security in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rcmp.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Security Intelligence Review Committee
No, I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment.
I will say, however, that when we did our report on Maher Arar, which as I noted was started before the commission of inquiry was struck, we did provide to the minister, who provided to Justice O'Connor, our report, in which we stated repeatedly, and it's now a public document, that we felt there were places where the RCMP had clearly been involved in the matter in a way that needed to be investigated. That was as far as we could take it.
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
And that's as far as you can take it now as far as Mr. Abdelrazik is concerned. Is that correct?
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Mr. Kennedy, if I could ask you, sir, it's a similar question: if you were given all the powers SIRC has right now, in terms of the right to go further than you have at the present, would that satisfy, in your view, the needs for investigation and report on matters that are complex and, as we pointed out, as Justice O'Connor pointed out, involving as many as 20 agencies? We need to fix the RCMP oversight, but we also need to fix the larger problem.
9:50 a.m.
Chair, Executive Services, Commission for Public Complaints Against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Justice O'Connor specifically addressed that issue. He indicated there has to be an ability for oversight agencies to work with each other, and that's one of the references I made. You have integrated policing, you have integrated intelligence. The integration doesn't just happen at the federal level; it happens at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. The RCMP is involved in over 150 integrated units across this country. So that's how business is done these days and that's the way it should be done.
He also said you have to follow the trail. So in part 2 of his report he said, for instance, the commission would have to look not only at employees of the RCMP, but whoever else they interacted with, whether it was at the federal or provincial level, because you have to have all the facts. Absent that ability, because SIRC and we could not do it or there were differences with powers, the government therefore calls public inquiries and gives the public inquiries the power to do exactly the things these stand-alone agencies cannot do. He talked about gateways between them. You have to be able to follow the trail to find out exactly what that other person gave to the RCMP or CSIS, whatever the case may be, that caused them to do what they did.
He identified that, he spoke to it, and he made his recommendations. Is it important? Yes. I've come up with 150 integrated units, so it gives you a sense of some of the scale we're looking at. And there will be more in the future, not less.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Should you have subpoena powers that go beyond internal RCMP people? Should you be able to go beyond that to third parties and other levels of government?
9:50 a.m.
Chair, Executive Services, Commission for Public Complaints Against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Clearly, that has to be part of it, that you have to have a subpoena power. You'll never be able to address the conundrum O'Connor found himself in vis-à-vis representatives of foreign governments, because they're immune to your process. But everyone in Canada should be subject to subpoena power and be required to attend and to produce documents so you can answer the question. You cannot answer the question with integrity if you don't have access to the full testimony and the full information; it's as simple as that.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
March 5th, 2009 / 9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brant, ON
Thank you.
Thank you as well to the witnesses for coming today and taking your time to witness to us.
Mrs. Pollak, I'm curious. At the start of your remarks, I think one of the first things you said was that your oversight model or your review model is a model for the rest of the world. What is the rest of the world doing?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Security Intelligence Review Committee
Can I just take a moment to talk about “review” versus “oversight”?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Security Intelligence Review Committee
I don't want to give you a university lecture, but I'm pretty religious about sticking to the term “review” because it was the intended role of SIRC vis-à-vis CSIS. “Oversight” would imply we are inside directing the day-to-day decisions of the organization, and therefore we would be implicated in any impact of those decisions down the road. We are a review body that looks backwards at what CSIS has done, and we like to make sure that people understand that that's a very clear distinction in our minds.
As for—sorry, I'm losing the question here—other models—
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Security Intelligence Review Committee
—there is a plethora of other models. In the Westminster system, we tend to see parliamentary committees. In the U.K. that's the case, in Australia that's the case, although in Australia they also have an inspector general, but that inspector general has a remit that allows him to look at all the agencies involved in security and intelligence matters; it's not just one, as we have here. In the U.S., as you know, they have the select committees for Congress and the Senate, which are oversight, in my view.
But parliamentary committees tend to be the more normal model that is used, or a combination of elected officials and judges, which is what we see in Norway. In the Netherlands they are non-elected, so it's quite a mixed bag.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brant, ON
Further, you went on to say that CSIS has, in general, or in many ways, responded to implementing the recommendations of your reviews when they became aware of that. I'm interested to know a bit more about the dynamic between your role and the CSIS role. Listening to your comments, it seems to be one that's working, and working well, from the legislation in terms of its dictates.
Can you share with us any of the reasons why it works so well?
9:55 a.m.
Executive Director, Security Intelligence Review Committee
Let me say to begin with that I think you need to approach the work on the basis that CSIS is, as we are, a professional organization that takes pride in what they do. They take it seriously. The people who work there are recruited with great care. They are trained and they spend most of their working career in that line of work. It's very much a professional segregated body that has its own cultural implications. I'm not going to go into it, but we're the same. We tend to keep people for a number of years at SIRC and develop their expertise in this field of review and in the world of security intelligence.
I think the relationship depends very greatly on constant, careful communication and dialogue with one another. It's necessary in order to ensure that the work we're doing is reasonable, is focused in a way that will be helpful to us and ultimately to them. I think our role is to assist the service in maintaining the highest possible level of professionalism and effectiveness as a security intelligence agency. I sometimes like to say, after all, we're all working for Canadians. I do not see it as an adversarial role. That's not to say that sometimes we don't disagree. We do. Sometimes we end up agreeing to disagree, and we're not going to see eye-to-eye on certain issues or recommendations we've made.
My experience is that often our recommendations tend to end up being published after steps have already begun to address the issues that have been uncovered through the reviews that we have conducted that led to that recommendation. In other words, through the dialogue and through the process of review, issues have become apparent on both sides and the service has already started to implement steps that will address the recommendation. By the time the recommendation is done, they've already partially or completely taken up what we've suggested they do. We don't direct them. We don't manage them. We don't tell them what to do. We leave it to them to look at the recommendations and assess whether they want to take those on board and how they want to implement them.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brant, ON
I appreciate those comments, especially the one comment that your starting point is not adversarial. Let's face it, we're all human beings, and human beings make mistakes. We need to give the public confidence in our bodies, such as CSIS and the RCMP, but we are going to make mistakes.
From the get-go, would it be fair to say, and to characterize and rephrase what you've said, that your starting point is not an adversarial reproach but one that is going to work towards making the organization better for Canadians? Is that what I heard you say?
9:55 a.m.
Executive Director, Security Intelligence Review Committee
I think that's a very good way of summarizing it.
