Public Safety committee  As I said in response to an earlier question, that's a fairly common practice in western democracies. Personally, I see some benefits in it in terms of developing a better level of knowledge and understanding by members of Parliament of what organizations like ours do and how the

Public Safety committee  I can give you a personal view on that. First, leaving aside the moral issues, I would be suspicious of any information that may have been elicited under torture. People subjected to torture might say anything. Secondly, as I tried to point out earlier, no matter what the provid

Public Safety committee  It's obviously a concern for us, an issue for us. We have to take account of that in determining what, if anything, we do with such an agency in terms of either giving or accepting information. But as I tried to point out earlier, because a country may have a human rights record

Public Safety committee  As I said in response to an earlier question, the investigation CSIS had, as is reported in Mr. O'Connor's report, involving a number of individuals was transferred to the RCMP. The RCMP subsequently conducted its own investigation, leading up to certain conclusions that the RCMP

Public Safety committee  I think it was at the time of publication of the report of Mr. O'Connor, which I read at some length. I would remind you that a whole variety of individuals from throughout the federal government, not just CSIS or the RCMP, appeared before Mr. O'Connor in his inquiry. In fact, o

Public Safety committee  Very quickly, I gather that Mr. O'Connor came to those conclusions on the basis of both in camera and public testimony by officials of our organization. I personally did not testify before Mr. Justice O'Connor. With respect to the question related to resources, we always have t

Public Safety committee  I have two quick responses to you, sir. One is that a number of Canadian officials, elected and unelected, made requests to the United States as to what it was they based their decision on. To the best of my knowledge, I do not know of any Canadian official, elected or unelected,

Public Safety committee  My natural predisposition would be to be more forthcoming. Unfortunately, we do have a set of policies and principles relating to national security confidence that we have followed historically, as do other services of our sort, in terms of what we will or will not convey publicl

Public Safety committee  We occupy some of the same territory. CSIS has a mandate in respect of national security. Our job, among others, is to provide intelligence and information to the government on national security issues. The RCMP has a mandate, obviously, as a police organization for criminal pros

Public Safety committee  I think Mr. Justice O'Connor addressed that issue in his report and came to the conclusion that he could establish no basis on which he could determine why the Syrian authorities would have come to that conclusion on the basis of information from anybody in CSIS or anybody in the

Public Safety committee  Can I clarify again? The information that the RCMP had at its disposal in respect of this investigation, if you read Justice O'Connor's report, was to a large extent the result of an RCMP investigation. It had nothing to do with us. The case in point, the investigation at CSIS at

Public Safety committee  I think that's a set of determinations that are applied every day in our organization, the balance between the benefit of sharing information versus potential risk of the information being misused. I don't know that I can say we have a handy-dandy formula that applies across the

Public Safety committee  I'll make two quick points on that, sir, if I may. I don't believe that we are hampered by anything in the realm of political interference that affects our operations. In respect to the second-guessing, I think you're defining the second-guessing community much too narrowly. It

Public Safety committee  If I could, sir, let me just say generally that our practices and policies on information sharing, in terms of the caveats that are attached to them, apply generally to any foreign partner.

Public Safety committee  No. I'd just say that, as I tried to state before, our organization has become substantially more conscious about information sharing generally with foreign partners. It remains a pre-eminent consideration for us in our operations. In many instances, we neither accept nor give in