Public Safety Committee on Nov. 26th, 2012

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

That would be the normal procedure, and that's what would happen now, and in a way that's what happened in this case we're not talking about.

[Insp Stephen Irwin]

Yes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

So I'm at a loss as to why we need the additional offence.

[A/Commr James Malizia]

If I may, sir, are you referring specifically to the offences or the recognizance and the investigative provisions?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I'm referring to the offences here in this case—trying to stick to those. Whether or not it's an offence of going abroad to participate in terrorist activities or any kind of illegal activity—any of those things that already fall under the Criminal Code—you can seek an arrest warrant and prevent the person from going to engage in those illegal activities. That's whether it's organized crime, whether it's a threat to assassinate someone....

[A/Commr James Malizia]

I guess what I could say to that is that each case is very specific, and to use one case to determine whether the preventative application of it would be wide enough for the majority of cases has yet to be determined.

The second piece to that.... If you're looking at the actual imprisonment period, someone who's liable to imprisonment, I believe under the attempt it would be 50% of the actual sentence. So let's say they were being charged with an indictable offence that would usually carry 14 years—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

So different penalties?

[A/Commr James Malizia]

—the penalty would be seven years for an attempt to participate, as compared to the new legislation being proposed, which would be 14 years.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

In our discussions today I've heard the word “young” and the word “Muslim” used a lot of times. One of the concerns about this legislation does come from both youth and Muslim communities, that whatever the values for preventative action and terrorism, there's a danger of falling into racial profiling and drawing too many people into the net.

The example I'm aware of is Israeli security profiling, which is behaviour-based rather than characteristic-based, so they would look for certain behaviours. Their argument is always that if you use words like “youth” and “Muslim”, you have way too much work to do. You have to weed out way too many people who have nothing to do with this and would never fall into this lens. You need a lens that is much more precise and much more behaviour-based.

I guess my question about these provisions is, how do we not fall into that broader profiling? How do we develop a behaviour-based lens that would work with this?

[A/Commr James Malizia]

That's a great question, because certainly it's always in the forefront of our investigations with respect to our community outreach work and our policing. Simply said, we take an approach based on threat right now.

As we look at the threat environment, the threat is al-Qaeda; A-Q affiliated, that's what we focus on. It transcends many communities. We also work very closely with our communities to ensure that we can also learn from each other in that respect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

I'll just remind each one of you that we're on a five-minute round, so it's a little shorter than the first round.

Mr. Hawn, please.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to both of you for being here.

Before I go on, I want to thank both of your forces for doing such a great job in Toronto this weekend. Things stayed under control, and you were lenient enough to allow people to have fun. I was not one of the ones who needed leniency; I just want to make that clear.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Obviously, in policing and anti-terrorism and so on, awareness and early intervention is critical. Suffice it to say that you both support these two new measures, because events are ongoing and time marches on and so on. What's your assessment of the urgency or the timeliness required to pass these and get them in place?

I'll start with Assistant Commissioner Malizia.

[A/Commr James Malizia]

Sir, I really can't speak to the timeline for this. This will be a decision, of course, for the committee and for Parliament, but maybe I can speak a bit about the threat environment and what we're seeing out there.

As I mentioned earlier, the threat environment is evolving, based on international events, incidents, technology, and the ability for people to exchange or receive information and learn from each other through the Internet.

Again, the number of people travelling abroad is still very real and a very serious concern for us, as is the number of people who could potentially fall off the radar once they've left. Then again, there's the work required to be able to work with security intelligence agencies, to have tripwires to determine whether they've come back in, and if so, what their intention is.

As you said, the advantage of having preventive measures allows us to be able to interdict and disrupt potential threats at an earlier period, and for public safety that's a big advantage, not only for our own public safety, but for that of our allies as well.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay.

Inspector Irwin, if I heard you correctly, you mentioned that some people head overseas thinking they're going for education, but really it's indoctrination and so on. Do they unwittingly go, in your experience?

[Insp Stephen Irwin]

In my experience, what we're seeing, or have seen to some degree, is some elders in the communities who come and look for youth to go and support the cause in the name of nationality—in some instances. Certainly, we have seen some youth who have gone, and the information coming back is that they didn't know what they were getting themselves into. It's almost a naïveté, that they were taken advantage of or led down the path by elders who have manipulated them.

Currently we talk about the Muslim community and that threat, but I think back to the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis and the Hitler Youth who have been present in Toronto since 1993; the same methods were used with the same influence on young, disenfranchised people. I see it with street gangs and why some of our youth get involved in street gangs: they belong to something.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Of course, it's true that you don't know what you don't know.

Assistant Commissioner Malizia, how much confidence do you have in interagency arrangements, national or international, with respect to sharing information? Will the passage of these two measures have any impact on that, or is that a separate issue?

[A/Commr James Malizia]

I think that's a separate issue. I think the sharing of information has never been better. I can speak with CSIS. The relationship is excellent. I think of the integrated units we have, which we call INSETs, Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams, with which Inspector Irwin is an operations officer, where we have integrated police forces of various jurisdictions and CBSA. It works extremely well.

I think we've made huge strides, and we're at a place now where we've had several convictions before the courts, and in that regard, I think things are going fairly well.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Inspector Irwin, you talked about some of your outreach programs in Toronto. I know you can't speak for other police agencies, but do you coordinate with other police agencies across the country on that, and are you going into schools?

[Insp Stephen Irwin]

Yes, we are going into schools, certainly within the greater Toronto area and across the province. The INSETs unit is for all of Ontario—it's in transition, I think—excluding the national capital region. But absolutely, we are. We've been to Hamilton. We've been to Windsor and Niagara. The RCMP also has a similar successful outreach in British Columbia. So yes, it's growing.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hawn and Mr. Irwin.

Mr. Garrison, I will give you another two minutes, and then I remind everyone that we'll go to committee business.

You won't get your full five, but go ahead.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I just have one question.

Based on comments that Mr. Norlock made earlier, and in the follow-up by Assistant Commissioner Malizia.... Both of you used the term “preventative”.

In my experience, as a police board member and as a city councillor, preventative measures were more of what Mr. Irwin was talking about. What both of you were talking about, when you used the term, was attempts to disrupt terrorist activities rather than remove causes. Preventative usually looks at the causes, in my experience in policing. There is that intermediate category that often becomes problematic for policing in terms of disruption of activities. You see it in the controversies about organized crime—do you participate, do you not participate?

I wonder if you see a distinction between the preventative and the disruptive, whether there's a useful distinction we can make there.

[A/Commr James Malizia]

You're right in saying that there's a duality there, where provisions can be utilized. Inspector Irwin touched on it before, in a case where youth might be involved. Maybe the recognizance would be useful in helping the youth obtain proper counselling. But then that same recognizance could be very useful for someone who's about to conduct a terrorist attack. So I think there's a duality there. It's a matter of recognizing that and seeing where that could be useful.