Bill C-44 (Historical)

Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act

An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other Acts

This enactment amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to give greater protection to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s human sources. Also, so as to enable the Service to more effectively investigate threats to the security of Canada, the enactment clarifies the scope of the Service’s mandate and confirms the jurisdiction of the Federal Court to issue warrants that have effect outside Canada. In addition, it makes a consequential amendment to the Access to Information Act.
The enactment also amends the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act to allow for the coming into force of provisions relating to the revocation of Canadian citizenship on a different day than the day on which certain other provisions of that Act come into force.

[Prof. Garth Davies, Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Good evening.

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak here today. It's truly an honour to be here. Out of respect for the work of the committee, I will try to make my comments brief.

I'm not a lawyer. I will leave the nuances of Bill C-51 to people who are far more qualified than I. What I am is a researcher. I've been studying terrorism for over 20 years now, and it's in my capacity as a researcher that I come before you today to offer my thoughts.

There are just a few points that I would like to make.

The first and the most important is that the danger posed by violent extremism and terrorism is real. The threats to Canada and to Canadian lives are real. I've been following the discussions in the House, and lip service is often paid to these being real, but I'm not certain that we are actually embracing the realities we're facing.

The challenges we face are unprecedented. Those challenges would include, for example, living in a hyperconnected world where borders are meaningless to terrorists. They would include the rapidly expanding use of the Internet for recruitment and for other nefarious purposes. They would include a rise in the kinds of behaviours that have not been experienced at the level we're seeing now, such as, for example, homegrown terrorism, lone actor terrorism, and the potential violence that might be attributed to returning foreign fighters.

These are all examples of the kinds of things that have changed the context of terrorism and our conversations around it. The nature of these threats suggests that we need to modernize our thinking about our approach to counterterrorism. I would argue that Bill C-51 is necessary as part of a larger process that recognizes the new dynamics in this new context, in addition to, for example, Bill C-44 and others that will inevitably follow.

Second, in studying terrorism, one of the things that I think has been most striking and particularly challenging over the years, for as long as I've been studying it, is the speed with which terrorists adapt to detection techniques. They are constantly changing tactics and constantly coming at us with new ways of thinking and doing things.

Many of the methods that we are currently trying to use to deal with these threats have become outmoded. For example, increasingly, there is no group to infiltrate. Increasingly, there is no head of the snake to cut off. There is no one with whom to negotiate. The tools that we've traditionally relied on as standard ways of trying to disrupt terrorism are not as useful to us in these contexts.

At present we are faced with a rather extreme version of Louis Beam's idea of leaderless resistance, where we've gone beyond autonomous cells and simply have individuals who at any particular moment might pop up and commit heinous acts. Also, this will inevitably change, so we are perpetually playing catch-up. It's difficult to determine what will come next. It has been suggested, for example, that the next wave of terrorism may be more technological, so that we're dealing with people and what they can do with technology, and they may not have any kind of ideological purpose other than that. Then we try to embrace and conceptualize what difficulties that might bring.

What we do know is there is learning taking place on the part of these individuals and groups, and that in all likelihood the next attacks will be different. The next attack will likely not involve storming Parliament. The next attack will be something else. We need tools, such as those proposed in Bill C-51, that are adaptable and that allow for some flexibility in responding not just for now, but for the future.

A third point is that the upshot of all this is that we need to get as much information as we can. Accurate, complete, and real-time information is needed to keep up with ongoing potential plots. This means that in certain circumstances we're going to need to use those scary words of “coalition”, of “integration” from different sources, to fill in pictures, to fill in gaps, and to give us the information we need. It also means living up to our obligations as international partners in terms of the sharing of information.

There are of course potential concerns. I'm not blind to them; nobody who has been following them can be. They have been catalogued at length in front of this committee, but I don't believe that they are insurmountable, nor that they should be insurmountable.

It has been argued that we cannot arrest our way out of the problem of terrorism, and that it would be preferable to dissuade people from this path before they've gone too far down the path to violent extremism. This is most certainly true, but we're playing catch-up again.

We don't have good profiles of who is likely to turn violent. We have many theories and many ideas. We are developing many models and we're working on many projects, but right now we simply don't know. In the interim, we need the ability to act quickly, decisively, disruptively when necessary, in part at least in response to changing conditions on the ground.

We're not talking about acting haphazardly. We're not talking about acting randomly. We believe that with any luck our tools will continue to evolve such that we can be more targeted in how we collect information. As an example, colleagues and I are working at SFU to develop a series of algorithms that allow us to parse information on the Internet in a much more effective way so that we're not just targeting out there, but trying to actually use a series of key words and phrases, and trying to be more specific in how we look for information. With any luck, the same technology that terrorists are using to recruit our young people can also be used to minimize ad hoc intrusions into privacy.

We need to be creating a framework for the future, one that's flexible enough to deal with the nature of the threat that we may not even be aware of yet. This bill, I think, reflects the times that we live in and casts an eye towards threats that may not be that far down the road.

Thank you for your time.

[Sukanya Pillay]

I thank my colleagues and OpenMedia for sharing their time. I appear on behalf of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. We are an independent national non-governmental organization which for 50 years has effectively protected civil liberties in this country. You have our detailed submissions, and in the interests of time I will restrict my comments to four minutes and two points.

Let me state at the outset that the CCLA understands that the government requires effective tools to protect Canada and its people from terrorist threats and acts. What we do not understand is why this bill is needed, given the existing robust, and in some cases exceptional, tools at our disposal and the success rate of law enforcement and courts, most recently demonstrated with the VIA Rail terrorist convictions. It has not been shown that Bill C-51 provides any necessary new tools, and we are concerned that it will increase powers without any commensurate increase in accountability mechanisms. My two points are as follows.

First, I am going to turn to the security of Canada information sharing act, which I will refer to as SCISA. SCISA expansively allows for unprecedented sharing of information across at least 17 state agencies with foreign governments and foreign and domestic private actors without enforceable privacy safeguards and without clearly limiting the information to terrorist activities or threats. This is overbroad. The legislative objective of SCISA to keep Canada safe from terrorist threat is beyond dispute, but the drafting of SCISA is not. Without enforceable safeguards, information sharing will result in error. The surnames of Arar, Almalki, Nureddin, Elmaati, Abdelrazik, Benatta, and Almrei are serious, terrible reminders of the devastation wreaked by misuse and mistake in information sharing. Failure to properly share information also resulted in the failure to prevent the Air India tragedy when flight 182 was bombed, killing all 329 people aboard.

SCISA does not heed any of the recommendations of the Arar commission for integrated review of the integrated operation of agencies, nor for statutory gateways to facilitate such review, nor does it benefit from the lessons and in-depth study of the Air India commission. Existing mechanisms for national security agencies are simply inadequate in the context of SCISA. The reference to the caveats in the guidelines is undermined by subsequent provisions which allow for further sharing of information with any person for any purpose, and also by civil immunity for information mistakenly shared in good faith. In the national security context, information sharing requires proper legal safeguards of necessity, proportionality, and minimal impairment, and requires written agreements and caveats with respect to reliability, use, dissemination, storage, retention, and destruction. All of this is wholly absent in SCISA.

Next, I will talk about the CSIS Act amendments, and I have three brief points.

First, the amendments transform CSIS from the recipient, collector, and analyst of intelligence into an agency with powers to act. There is no explanation for this radical transformation at odds with the findings of the McDonald commission, which heralded distinction between intelligence and law enforcement.

Furthermore, there is no limit on what CSIS' disruption powers will be, other than the outer limits of bodily harm, obstruction of justice, and violation of sexual integrity, thereby indicating a very large sphere within which CSIS can operate. These new powers will blur the lines between intelligence and law enforcement and may further increase tension between the mandates and practices of CSIS and the RCMP, which can undermine security. Blurring the lines between intelligence and evidence may in fact undermine terrorist prosecutions.

We are also concerned by the judicial warrant that would enable CSIS to contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is a shocking prospect to the CCLA, given that Canada is a country committed to constitutional paramountcy in rule of law, not to mention independence of the judiciary. Furthermore, the process would be conducted ex parte and in camera.

In conjunction with Bill C-44, Bill C-51 permits CSIS to act at home and abroad without regard to foreign domestic law and international law. In our view, this contravenes Canada's binding legal obligation and is a dangerous signal to send to foreign governments and agencies.

We close in respectfully reminding the committee that, across the board, safeguards and accountability mechanisms are not meant to be impediments to national security; rather, they ensure that we do not, however unintentionally, violate or impair constitutional rights of innocent law-abiding people in Canada, that we do not waste or misdirect precious national security resources, that we do not tarnish, harm, or ruin the lives of innocent individuals, and in turn that our national security actions are efficacious.

As the Supreme Court stated in Suresh, it would be a pyrrhic victory if we defeated terrorism at the cost of sacrificing our commitment to the values that lie at the heart of our constitutional order.

[Prof. Kent Roach]

Well, to go back to the security of Canada information sharing act, we recognize that the threat environment is changing. The UN Security Council has also recognized that. But we don't understand why you wouldn't plug in proposed section 2, in particular the terrorism-related mandate to section 2, with respect to information sharing.

Aspects of part 1 almost seem deliberately provocative, because it has such a broad definition. Concerning the exemption for lawful protest, as Professor Forcese said, we've been here. We had that debate in 2001, and Parliament recognized, after the bill had been introduced, that it was best to take the word “lawful”—the qualifier—out. I look at that and at the lack of regard for the Air India commission's recommendation about mandatory information sharing. When you think about how that is going to interact with Bill C-44, it means that any human source to whom CSIS has promised confidentiality will have an absolute veto about being a crown witness in a terrorism prosecution.

Professor Forcese and I are actually, on some of these matters, quite “law and order”. We think that those offences that Parliament enacted in 2013 are quite valuable offences, and we see the prosecutions that are ongoing in a number of our cities now. But we worry that the combination of Bill C-51 and Bill C-44 and all the new powers and privileges that they give to CSIS could have the unintended effect of making prosecutions more difficult and also affecting CSIS-RCMP cooperation. I say this as a person who for four years was director of research legal studies of the Air India commission.

[Professor Craig Forcese, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thanks very much, and thanks for inviting me here this evening.

I come before you as someone who has regularly appeared before this committee over the last seven or eight years, generally supporting the government's security laws. Most recently, you'll recall, I appeared here in the fall in support of Bill C-44. Each time, however, I have proposed amendments designed to minimize negative repercussions, including repercussions producing unnecessary litigation. The details matter, and it is, of course, the details we are here to discuss.

I'll start with a few words on preventive detention by police, from section 83.3 of the Criminal Code, as modified now by Bill C-51. In the past, I have spent considerable time looking at equivalent laws in other countries. Kent Roach and I draw on these laws and, most notably, those of Australia to recommend a series of specific safeguards on the preventive detention power. Kent mentioned that we have a brief list of our recommended changes, which I have here in front of me. I wish, however, to focus most of my comments on the CSIS Act amendments.

The government says that CSIS needs the new powers so that, for example, CSIS can warn families that a child is radicalizing. No one, in good faith, can object to this, but the bill reaches much further. Indeed, the only outer limit is no bodily harm, no obstruction of justice, and no violation of sexual integrity, along with a more open-ended and subjective admonishment that the service act reasonably and proportionally. There is, in other words, a mismatch between the government's justifications and the actual text of the law.

We underscore both the security and legal consequences of such a proposal. On the security side, we run a considerable risk that new CSIS operations may end up overlapping, affecting, and perhaps even tainting a subsequent RCMP criminal investigation into terrorist activity. A criminal trial may be mired in doubts about whether the CSIS operation contributed to or was otherwise associated with the crime at issue. Will our most successful anti-terror tool—criminal law—in which crown prosecutors have had a stellar record in achieving convictions, be degraded by CSIS operations that muddy waters?

Any veteran of the Air India matter must be preoccupied by this possibility, but even if the government thinks that CSIS-RCMP operational conflicts are worth the risk, we can meet its stated security objective without opening the door so wide to possible mistakes by a covert agency. For instance, amend the bill to remove any reference to the charter being contravened by CSIS. The current proposal is a breathtaking rupture with fundamental precepts of our democratic system. For the first time, judges are being asked to bless in advance a violation of our charter rights in a secret hearing not subject to appeal and with only the government side represented.

There is no analogy to search warrants. Those are designed to ensure compliance with the charter. What the government proposes is a constitutional breach warrant. It is a radical idea, one that may reflect careless drafting more than considered intent. It deserves sober second thought by Parliament.

Moreover, with a simple line or two, this committee could add new and reasonable limits on CSIS powers, including, for instance, an emphatic bar on detention. We cannot risk a parallel system of detention by a covert agency able to act against people who have committed no crime. At present, whatever the government's claims to the contrary, there is no prohibition in the bill on such a system.

In the final analysis, we are dependent on good judgment by the service. I do not doubt CSIS' integrity. I do doubt its infallibility. Good law assists in exercising good judgment, as does robust review. That brings me to SIRC.

We need to reinvest in our national security accountability system. SIRC's constraints and design mean that it is incapable of reviewing all of CSIS' activities or even CSIS' conduct under all its existing warrants. A partial approach to review will be spread even thinner as CSIS' powers expand.

More than this, SIRC and other review bodies are unnecessarily hamstrung by legal limitations that stovepipe their functions to specific agencies and prevent them from following the trail when government agencies collaborate, an increasingly common practice that Bill C-51 will unquestionably increase.

As Professor Roach mentioned, the Arar commission recommended that statutory gateways be created, allowing SIRC to share secret information and conduct joint investigations with Canada's two other existing, independent national security review bodies. The government has not acted on this report. A few paragraphs of legislative language would go a long way to curing this problem. I underscore and double-underline these are concerns that SIRC itself has voiced. That message about limited power should not be lost.

As a supplement, not a replacement, we also support a special security committee of parliamentarians. It can perform a valuable, pinnacle review—a review, not command and control oversight—by examining the entire security and intelligence landscape. Someone needs to see the forest, not just the individual trees. Our allies have made parliamentary review work with expert SIRC-like review. We look in particular to the Australian example. The existence of such a committee would also contribute to a meaningful and informed parliamentary review of the effects of this far-reaching legislation after, as Professor Roach has suggested, a few years of its operation.

Let me end with a final point. In its present guise, Bill C-51 violates a principle that we believe should be embedded in national security law. Any law that grants powers, especially secret, difficult-to-review power, should be designed to limit poor judgment, not be a law whose reasonable application depends on excellent judgment. Whatever the truth as to whether these powers are constitutional or necessary, their introduction is, in our view, irresponsible without a redoubled investment in our outmatched and outdated accountability system. Anyone who has worked on accountability in the security sector knows that there was a core maxim in this area: trust but verify. We do not believe this standard will be met.

It is within your competence to pass a law that protects our security and liberty and does so without the sort of incoherence that risks actually undermining our security. Such amendments to Bill C-51 require good will and a willingness to consider suggestions made in the earnest hope of a good law that protects our country and our rights.

We thank you for your interest and for your important work.

[Professor Kent Roach, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Bonsoir. I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me to appear.

In over 200 pages of legal analysis, Professor Forcese and I have examined the effects, including unintended ones, of Bill C-51 on both security and rights. Security and rights go hand in hand both in our democracy and in legal analysis of the proportionality of the proposed measures. We are doing our best to improve the bill in light of both rights concerns and security rationale offered by the government. A short summary of our proposed amendments will in due course be translated and be available to the committee.

Starting with part 1, like the Arar commission, we recognize the need for information sharing to help prevent terrorism. Part 1, however, goes far, far beyond that legitimate goal. It introduces the novel concept of activities that undermine the security of Canada. That concept is quite simply the broadest definition of national security we have ever seen. We do not understand why it cannot be replaced with section 2 of the CSIS Act as it defines threats to the security of Canada. If implemented, this concept risks drowning 17 designated recipient institutions in not just information about terrorism but information about illegal protests by diaspora groups that could undermine the security of perhaps repressive states and illegal protests by aboriginal and separatist groups who threaten Canada's territorial integrity.

Canada prides itself on being perhaps the only country in the world that democratically debates secession. We should not be a country that shares total and secret information about peaceful protestors. The government's defence of the limited exemption for lawful protest is contrary to the prior experience that led Parliament to delete that very same word “lawful” from the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act. If, in the few months after the disaster and tragedy of 9/11, we could see our way to tolerate peaceful protest, I do not understand why we can't do the same today.

I would also say the over-breadth of part 1 not only threatens rights; it threatens security. If everything is a security matter, effectively, nothing is. Clause 6 of part 1, which authorizes the further sharing of information to any person for any purpose, should be deleted because it forgets the hard lessons we should have learned from the story of Maher Arar and other Canadians tortured in Syria in part because of Canadian information. We support the codification of the no-fly list but we are concerned that special advocates must be able to challenge the secret intelligence that lies behind the listing process.

We share the concerns of a group of special advocates that part 5 of Bill C-51 will reduce the disclosure of secret information to those security-cleared counsel and make it more difficult for them to do their important and indeed constitutionally required job of challenging secret evidence. We note that there is no judicial review of part 1 and we note, as the Privacy Commissioner has noted, that 14 out of the 17 recipient agencies have no review, and the other three have outdated stovepipe review. We recommend the enactment of a super-SIRC or at least the Arar commission's recommendation.

Independent review should not be seen as the enemy of security and it should not be seen as the enemy of those in our security agencies who do the important and difficult work that they do. We should all understand that we will do better work if we are reviewed and, if warranted and necessary, criticized by others. The review bodies also help security agencies because they protect them against unwarranted criticism.

Next, in our view, the new advocacy of terrorism offence is not necessary. Existing offences, including section 83.22 on instruction are, in our view, sufficient. If Parliament proceeds with this offence, there should at least be defences for legitimate expression and higher fault requirements. Again, though, our concern with this offence is not narrowly on rights, it is also on security. We worry that this offence will not only chill expression but make it more difficult to work with extremists who may be radicalized into violent extremism.

We note that the U.K. legislation passed just a few weeks ago provides a statutory basis for anti-radicalization programs, which are very important given the current threat environment, but Bill C-51 does not.

Finally, I want to end on another security issue. Part 1 allows for information sharing about illegal protests, which are irritating to some, but in our view not a pressing security concern. At the same time, it ignores the Air India commission's recommendation 10 that there must be mandatory information sharing by CSIS about terrorism offences. Lest you think the Air India commission was idiosyncratic, Senator Segal's committee made the very same recommendation in the Senate in 2011.

We support Parliament's decision in 2013 to add four new terrorism foreign-fighter offences. Indeed, they place Canada in front of the curve on this new security threat. Now, Bill C-51, combined with Bill C-44, would likely make it more, not less, difficult to apply these offences. Why?

CSIS will unilaterally be able to extend privileges to its human sources, contrary to the Air India commission's recommendation, and CSIS will still unilaterally be able to withhold information about terrorism offences from the police, again contrary to the Air India recommendations.

These concerns and others suggest, in our view, that the omnibus legislation, which adds two new acts and amends 15 others, should be subject to a three-year review by a parliamentary committee. Those parliamentarians should have access to secret information, because having worked on both the Arar commission and the Air India commission, I can tell you that without access to secret information you are flying blind. There should be a four-year sunset of this entire legislation to allow for, hopefully, an informed and meaningful discussion of its necessity and proportionality in light of evolving security threats and rights concerns.

Thank you very much for your attention.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I think, again, what we're dealing with here is a certain intolerance for debate on the part of the government on topics like this, so we see the use of time allocation which is more pleasantly described as scheduling when we have debate, and it says that we should have a full debate here.

The government has decided in its subamendment how many are adequate, and we are saying that given the nature of what we're dealing with here, the very fundamental nature.... This is the most important bill, I would submit, that's been before this Parliament—the only Parliament of which, of course, I have been a member. But it deals with the most fundamental threats to our society, and at the same time, in doing so, I believe the government has endangered some of our most fundamental rights.

The question of the number of witnesses and the number per session is quite important. It's not just a trivial matter. It's quite important to have a full study of this. We have to get this right. We can't end up with a bill that's tied up in endless litigation in the courts. As I said yesterday in the House of Commons, this government does have a record of passing bills that have ended up in wrangling in court, and several of which have been declared unconstitutional.

If we limit the number of witnesses and are unable as a result of that to have the constitutional scholars before us who could prevent us from passing a law that would eventually be counterproductive because of the amount of time we'd have to spend before the courts, and which actually might—and I say this with all seriousness—allow some of those who might be involved in very dangerous activities to go free because of the flaws in the law, that's a problem.

We have heard several commentators saying that, in fact, expansion of the powers of CSIS has a hidden problem in it. That problem is that because of the previous bill we passed, Bill C-44, and the confidentiality of both CSIS informants and operatives, if we expand the activities of CSIS, we may in fact make it more difficult to actually prosecute those who are guilty of terrorism offences.

I would like to have the opportunity also to have those witnesses before this committee who could give us testimony on why that's a real threat that's contained within this bill. Again, I think that's something all members of this committee would wish to avoid. No one here wants to pass a law that would inadvertently make it more difficult to prosecute those who are actually involved in violent threats to the security of this country.

So once again, we have a list of more than 60 people who h ave approached us and the committee who would like to give testimony on this bill. In the debate on the subamendment, or the debate before she introduced the subamendment, the parliamentary secretary implied that this could not be done.

I want to submit once again that members on this side are prepared to sit in this committee in the evenings. We're prepared to sit during the break weeks. We're prepared to sit however many times a day it takes to hear the important witnesses we need to hear on this.

For that reason, I remain opposed to the subamendment. I still believe it's of questionable procedural validity, but I respect the chair, and so of course we will be voting against this subamendment.

Anti-terrorism Act, 2015

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank you very much for your generosity. Although I am known here for being consistently in my seat to vote, I am generally a man of few words, and you are about to prove it for me.

Nonetheless, it is an honour for me to participate in this debate. I recognize that many of the professionals who work at CSIS, CSEC, and VENUS Cybersecurity are residents of the district that I have the honour to represent here.

The protection of Canadians is a duty that the government holds sacred. That is why our efforts to fight terrorism, guided by a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy, have been front and centre in our legislative agenda.

We continue to make real progress in ways that are measured and decisive to improve our country's ability to address the terrorist threat.

We passed the Combating Terrorism Act, which criminalizes travel, and attempts to travel, by those who want to participate in terrorist activities abroad.

More recently, we introduced the protection of Canada from terrorists act to ensure that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, known by the acronym CSIS, has the firm legal footing it needs to investigate threats to the security of Canada from wherever they originate.

Now, I think you are about to tell me that I just had the last word, Mr. Speaker. I am grateful for this opportunity.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say I had a hard time understanding what the parliamentary secretary's point was.

I have not at any time in debate suggested that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada was in any way inferior to foreign laws. My question was very clear. Even after Bill C-44, which allows CSIS to operate in other countries, this bill says that CSIS will operate within or outside Canada, but it will only need a warrant when CSIS agents realize that they are about to break a domestic law.

This does not confine itself to countries like Iran and Somalia. CSIS agents operating anywhere in the world would appear to be, based on this reading of this act, empowered to break laws in other countries without any judicial oversight anywhere, and that strikes me as overreaching.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-44, the bill that went through the House previously, gave CSIS the ability to work outside the country and only obey Canadian laws. That is something that other international spy agencies do, but we have not done so in the past. Now we have a situation where we will do this type of work, which will obviously come back on us should others do the same to us.

I think Canada has changed its whole international perspective of trying to bring countries together and conciliate into an incredible jingoistic approach, a man-with-a-big-hat-and-no-cattle approach.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak to this bill, though many of my colleagues in the House who would also like an opportunity to speak to such an important bill that mixes security and freedom will not have one because we are under time allocation.

Bill C-51 makes it very clear that the Prime Minister meant what he said when he remarked that we would not recognize Canada when he got through with the bill. The party of one will make sure that this country is not the same after his reign is finished. We will not recognize Canada after Bill C-51 is made law and used for many years. We will not recognize what this bill can do to Canada, including today when we stand to speak about a couple of jihadist threats that have potentially occurred in Canada and speak about the bill in that regard. We will not recognize what the bill would do to Canada because it will come in the actions of CSIS over many years, as CSIS uses its new powers to work in Canadian society and, through Bill C-44, in various ways abroad to change the very nature of Canadian society.

The Conservative Prime Minister has demonstrated time and again that disagreement is not something he tolerates or understands. In fact, we heard the former Public Safety minister Vic Toews call environmentalists eco-terrorists in 2012. The current finance minister, in his time as natural resources minister, basically made the same kinds of remarks.

We live in a world where we know that we have to balance the environment and the economy and where those questions require debate, disagreement and, many times, civil confrontation. Now there would be a new set of rules. It is hard to think that that type of interaction could in any way be a threat to national security when we talk about how we are balancing what we do in this country between the environment and the economy, but that is quite clearly laid out in this bill. It underlies this bill.

This bill would likely create even greater divisions and alienation in our society than exist now. That is generally what happens when there is more authoritarian and secretive behaviour in society, with more opportunities for collusion under the law to take out the people who are not liked or the people who are somehow thought to be threats to Canada.

When one views the government's actions and words of concern about environmentalists, it is understandable that many Canadians are starting to speak up about Bill C-51. Yes, the initial poll showed that a lot of Canadians liked the idea of security against terrorism; but did they understand what was in the bill, and are the Conservatives allowing them to understand that by continuing this debate in the House of Commons? No, they are not. They are closing the debate down because they know darn well that as this debate continues and things come out, others will ask for a better bill and a better understanding of the nature of what the Conservatives are proposing.

To be specific, Bill C-51 threatens our way of life by asking Canadians to choose between their security and their freedoms. It asks Canadians to choose, but the Conservatives do not actually ask Canadians; they simply put this bill forward, apply closure, and send it through committee in very little time. That is what will happen.

A bill like this should take time. We should be at it for months, maybe a year, getting the bill right. We do not have any rush. After Air India, we did not change anything for many years. We did not have significant problems. We are not having significant problems today.

Bill C-51 was not developed in consultation with other parties. That is very much the case. This thing was brought up in a very big rush after October 2014, as we heard commentators from the Conservatives Party say here today.

The bill irresponsibly provides CSIS with a sweeping new mandate without equally increasing oversight. Actually, there is no oversight; there is review, and we need to keep those separate. There is the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which is not an oversight committee but a review committee that looks at things the agency has done long after it is finished. Oversight says more immediacy. The Conservatives say that a judge will do that, but only if CSIS takes it to a judge. In many cases, they may not.

I want to talk about threat disruption, which is an interesting subject. When we think of groups that may be formed to do something the government opposes, like environmental action, CSIS might say, “Then if they might do something unlawful in the future, perhaps we should get involved right now to deal with threat disruption. Maybe we should put a CSIS member into that organization. Maybe we should undermine the organization first before it becomes a problem”. That would fit under the law. That is called threat disruption. If we disrupt something before the unlawful action is taken, how can anyone prove there was unlawful action? This works both ways. We can disrupt people now because we think in the future they may do something wrong.

The bill does not provide anything to make our society work better. The bill does not do anything to build communities, to build understanding—absolutely nothing. It is all secretive. It is all behind the scenes. There is nothing here that says we have a job to do in our society to bring people together.

When we look at the promotion of terrorism, how can we judge that? How can we judge the promotion of terrorism? What is incitement to terrorism? Is it someone saying that their son or daughter has been injured, that they are angry about it and that they do not like what the government has done. Is that incitement to terrorism? What is being suggested in this?

Quite obviously the government has made the bill so large that it simply cannot answer those questions today. How will we answer them in the future? It will only be through the actions of what happens here. If we have oversight by parliamentarians, we may have a chance to control some of the bill going forward. If we do not, then we will rely on non-elected individuals to determine what the bill does, and that is simply wrong.

Why do we not deal with this in a better fashion than what the government has proposed to do? Why did we go in this direction? The party of one is responsible for this. The Prime Minister would not come into Parliament and stand to speak to the bill. He chose to do it somewhere where he did not have anyone to criticize him, to ask him questions. Why would someone make such a large effort to promote the bill without that type of commentary in the House? I really find that wrong-headed, but it is more the style of this Prime Minister, the party of one.

Clearly, we oppose the bill. We will continue to oppose the bill because it is not done right. It will not protect Canadians. It will affect their rights in the future. We do not understand exactly how it will affect their rights, but it will do that without the proper oversight of parliamentarians.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-51, the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, introduced by the Conservative government.

I want to start by talking about what has happened since the debate started in the House of Commons. Unfortunately, less than 24 hours after the debate on Bill C-51 started, the Conservative government moved a time allocation motion to restrict the time for debate. This is the 88th time that the Conservative government has done this in the House—an all-time high. There is no pride to be taken in preventing parliamentarians from doing their job.

I had to wonder why the Conservatives moved this time allocation motion, since when they introduced Bill C-51, they promised to all Canadians and parliamentarians that they would take the time to debate the bill. However, less than 24 hours after the debate started, they moved a time allocation motion. What is going on?

Yesterday, over 22,000 people signed a petition against Bill C-51. This morning, former prime ministers, retired Supreme Court justices and other prominent Canadians released a letter expressing major concerns about several aspects of Bill C-51, specifically those relating to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The more we talk about Bill C-51 with the people we represent in our communities, and the more the experts say about this, the more we realize that this is not the right way to combat terrorism and radicalization here in Canada or elsewhere in the world. It is unfortunate that the Conservative government is doing this, but it is not a surprise.

I would like to comment on some remarks that the hon. member for Medicine Hat made in his speech just before question period. First of all, partisanship has no place in a debate on terrorism and radicalization. As parliamentarians, we are capable of debating. Second of all, there is no place for grandstanding and mockery in this debate. I think that, unfortunately, the member for Medicine Hat lacked respect in the context of the debate on Bill C-51.

We are debating an extremely important bill and he is accusing the NDP of wanting to hug terrorists just because we are opposed to Bill C-51. Nothing could be more ridiculous in the House today. I hope my colleague will take the time to apologize in the House for his comments, because they add nothing to a debate that should be respectful and orderly.

A number of members from across the way then said that we had less time for debate because the official opposition took too much time to vote on the Conservatives' time allocation motion. That too is ridiculous. We do not have enough time to debate, not because we took too long to vote, but because they moved another time allocation motion after just 24 hours. They should set the record straight, across the way.

They also accused the official opposition of playing partisan politics with Bill C-51.

I want to talk about the process that led us to study this bill very carefully because Canadians need to understand the work of the official opposition and what the Conservative government is in the process of doing with this bill on terrorism.

We believe that the extremely important Bill C-51 was a response to the attacks in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Instead of presenting this bill in the usual way, in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister presented it during a partisan gathering, hundreds of kilometres away from Parliament Hill. The Conservatives are already in campaign mode and this bill is part of their campaign.

The Conservatives are already trumpeting this everywhere as if it were the best way to counter terrorism. Partisanship had no place in this debate and certainly not like that.

I must say, I am very proud of the work done by the official opposition on this file, especially by the Leader of the Opposition and my hon. colleague, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. As soon as we saw Bill C-51, we noticed how big it is and saw that it affects many different aspects of various laws, including legislation on citizenship and immigration as well as CSIS. We thought it was important to examine it carefully, because with the Conservatives, the devil is often in the details, and that is certainly true in the case of this bill.

The bill is huge. I want to explain why we oppose it, because it is important to do so. When Bill C-44 was introduced to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, we decided to vote with the government. It was a fair tactic, since we wanted to send the bill to committee and try to work together. Work in committee was extremely tedious and difficult because the Conservatives stymied us at every turn. Everything was very restricted: the number of sessions dedicated to witnesses, the number of witnesses we were allowed to invite and the time we were given to examine each clause of the bill. We gave the Conservatives a chance on a bill that we did not wholeheartedly support. We thought we could at least try to improve it.

Bill C-51 is so broad and touches on so many things at the same time. Not only does it cast a wide net, but it is dangerously vague and ineffective. In order to solve such complex and specific problems as terrorism and radicalization here in Canada, we need concrete objectives. The government cannot cast such a wide net as it does with Bill C-51, which does not directly target the problem. Instead, this bill tries to make it look like something is being done, which is not really the case, particularly since it does not propose proven and effective measures. Among other things, it puts partisan politics ahead of the protection of Canadians. I am extremely disappointed by that.

It is important to say that terrorism is a real threat. Everyone here agrees that public safety is one of the top priorities of any government anywhere in the world. Canadians really do not have to choose between public safety and civil liberties. However, with Bill C-51, the government is trying to have us make a false choice. We are told that public safety and civil liberties go hand in hand. I agree completely. However, Bill C-51 contains absolutely nothing that will improve civilian oversight of CSIS, which will be given many new powers with this bill. The government is not striking a balance with civilian oversight.

There is a problem with the civilian oversight mechanism at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. First of all, in 2012, in one of its omnibus bills, the government decided to eliminate the position of inspector general of CSIS. This individual reported on what was going on at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The civilian oversight agency currently responsible for reviewing the activities of CSIS is flawed. These people are appointed by the Conservative government. Members will remember Arthur Porter who, coincidentally, was appointed to this body. What an excellent choice. Furthermore, the oversight mechanism does not work because not all of the positions have been filled. There is not a full complement of competent individuals at this time. Also, the mechanism works on a part-time basis half of the time.

The government often tells us that this is a very effective civilian oversight mechanism, but in reality that is not the case. According to the provisions of Bill C-51 regarding the existing civilian oversight mechanism as it exists today, it is CSIS itself that chooses what might violate the laws governing its own operations and thus decides what it will report to the civilian oversight mechanism.

CSIS itself chooses what must be investigated through its civilian oversight mechanism. That does not make any sense.

I do not want to say that the government is lying to Canadians when it says that Bill C-51 establishes a balance between public safety and civil liberties, but it is coming quite close to it.

Here is another interesting thing about Bill C-51. For weeks, we have been asking questions of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister. They tell us that CSIS will be able to disrupt threats in Canada targeting the Canadian economy and infrastructure. However, no one on the other side of the House was able to give a single example of what is meant by disrupting a threat to the Canadian economy or disrupting a threat to Canadian infrastructure. Those statements can mean many things and are very broad.

The government is saying that it is trying to deal with terrorism. However, the Conservatives have a tendency to use measures in this sort of bill to achieve completely different goals. Today, during question period, we asked whether this would create problems for environmentalists who protest against the oil sands, for example. Will those people be affected by this bill? Will the first nations who sometimes put up roadblocks to protest government decisions be affected by Bill C-51? Given the way the bill is worded, they absolutely will be. The problem is that the members opposite refuse to admit that.

I would have liked to quote the exact words of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, but he said something along the lines of: we do not want to get bogged down in definitions. This is a bill on terrorism. The right definitions are exactly what we should have, especially when it comes to problems as complex as radicalization and terrorism. I sincerely believe this is amateur hour. I do not know whether the Minister of Public Safety even read his own bill and understood it. If he understood it, then he would have realized that it goes a bit too far and he could have considered some of the ramifications. However, there is still no answer from the Conservative government.

I hope, if the hon. members across the way ask me questions, to get some examples that directly concern infrastructure or threats to the Canadian economy, and what impact this might have exactly. I look forward to hearing what the hon. members have to say about this.

I said that the terrorist threat is real. We have to recognize that and make sure we have the right tools to fight it. However, we also have to be careful, and I mentioned the false choice we are being asked to make between public safety and civil liberties. People in Quebec had first-hand experience with that in the past. I am talking about the October crisis in the 1970s when Mr. Trudeau's Liberal government passed the War Measures Act. The NDP was the only party that opposed the War Measures Act at that time, the only party that stood up for the rights and civil liberties of Canadians. I am proud to see that we are doing that again today.

We can take concrete measures to combat the terrorist threat and radicalization in this country. We can start by striking a clear balance between civil liberties and public safety. The least we can do is make sure we have a completely independent civilian oversight mechanism. Our legislative approach to combatting terrorism must be more thorough, and it must be based on facts and evidence, for once.

The bill was introduced on the Friday before the week-long break for our constituency work. As the official opposition, we took the time to meet with experts in the field and with people who will be directly affected by the measures in Bill C-51. We also consulted with people who read criminal law very well and have a good understanding of the impact this bill could have. I could give many examples. Many civil liberties organizations, such as the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, are very concerned about the bill's potential impact, since Bill C-51 is based entirely on ideology and not on fact.

First of all, these could be laws that we might never use. In the past, this place has passed public safety legislation that, for many reasons, cannot even be used by the RCMP or CSIS, for example. Furthermore, certain communities are becoming increasingly marginalized. In his speech introducing Bill C-51, the Prime Minister targeted the Muslim community directly by talking about mosques. That is unacceptable. What we should be doing here is rallying everyone to ensure that, together, we all properly understand the problem of radicalization and work hard to eradicate it.

The key here is to have an approach centred on the fight against terrorism that includes strict control over security intelligence agencies—rather than reducing oversight, which is what is happening right now under the Conservatives. It is important to mention that.

There is something else the members across the way have been rather quiet on, because it is nothing to brag about: so far, no funding has been announced with Bill C-51. I remember their speeches. They said that over the past few years, they increased the budget for CSIS and the RCMP. I would advise my colleagues across the way to consult the Parliamentary Budget Officer's reports. Since 2012, there have been nothing but successive budget cuts in every agency that falls under the Department of Public Safety.

The government is introducing new tools without the necessary funding to go with them. Absolutely nothing. If the members across the way took the time to talk to the people who enforce the law, such as police officers, RCMP officers and Canada Border Services Agency officers, they would see that what is happening on the ground is appalling. Police officers have told us that they were aware that people were becoming radicalized and that strange things were happening, but they did not have enough resources to do anything about it. It is all well and fine to have new tools. They are lovely to have in the toolkit, but they are all for naught without the means to use them.

This is a meaningless bill that is far too broad and complex. It does nothing to address the problem directly. What is more, it does not allocate any funding. Since 2012, all the government has done is cut public safety budgets. Funding for the Department of Public Safety was cut by about 10%. It is pretty bad for the Conservatives to say that they are doing something, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer is saying quite the opposite.

Furthermore, we currently have some very good tools to fight the terrorist threat on the ground. RCMP officers have done an incredible job. A few weeks ago, a plot was thwarted in Ottawa. I believe it was February 13. Another plot was foiled in Halifax. Those are two very fine examples that prove we currently have good tools that work. We simply have to provide the necessary appropriate and adequate resources. I am not saying that nothing should be changed and that everything we have right now is fine. However, we are on the right path. We should give our officers on the ground the resources they need.

Finally, another important approach to combat terrorism is working with communities at risk through programming and developing a national strategy to counter radicalization. There is absolutely nothing in Bill C-51 to address this problem. Discussing a national strategy for countering radicalization is absolutely necessary if we want to tackle the problem.

I have a hard time believing that the Conservative government wants to work in isolation on this. They did not hold proper consultations. I am also sad to see that a number of colleagues on the other side did not take the time to fully understand the measures in the bill. Canadians want to know what is in Bill C-51. They want us to tackle the terrorist threat. Everyone wants to work on this. I do not know a single person in the House who does not want to combat terrorism or radicalization.

What is important is to have the right tools and right resources. We need to work with people on the ground and develop a national strategy against radicalization. The Conservatives cannot work in isolation and think that what they are doing is the best option.

I see that my time is almost up. I still have much more to say. I hope that my colleagues will have many questions for me. I would be happy to respond. However, I just want to tell those watching at home not to be deceived. This bill does not strike a balance between public safety and civil liberties. The official opposition believes in rights and freedoms, and we will not stand for this.

Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015

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

Mr. Speaker, at the conclusion of my remarks, I intend to move a motion.

It is with a genuine sense of disappointment that I rise to speak against Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism act, 2015. I am particularly disappointed to be doing it under time allocation, which will have the effect of not allowing many of my colleagues to actually speak to this important bill. It will also have the effect of making it difficult for Canadians to understand the full extent of what is in this bill.

This is a very important bill. I would remind all of us that all of Canada, and indeed much of the world, was shocked at the deaths of two Canadian soldiers here at home last October. Certainly those deaths, along with the attack on Parliament Hill, were sobering for all of us.

All of us here in the House, and I believe all Canadians, were proud to see their MPs back at work the next morning, standing together in our determination not to be cowed by violence. At that time, all of us made the commitment to work together to meet the terrorist threats Canada now faces in this new world we live in.

What happened to those lofty promises to work together? Just days later, when the new CSIS bill, Bill C-44, was introduced, suddenly the government, by itself, had all the answers. The government argued that the urgency of the threat meant that there was no time for debate at second reading, no time for a full study at the public safety committee, and no time for serious consideration of amendments put forward by the official opposition.

New Democrats supported Bill C-44 at second reading, still hoping the government was serious about co-operation between the government and the opposition on this important topic, still hoping that there would be adequate time for debate and consideration of amendments to improve the bill.

We ended up voting against that bill, a bill of questionable constitutionality in its attempt to have judges authorize illegal activities abroad and a bill without an ounce of improvement in CSIS oversight, despite granting new powers to CSIS. It was also a bill lacking any direct connection to the events of October. The government said to wait for the next bill.

Here we are, four months later, with a new bill in front of us. Unfortunately, this is another bill of questionable constitutionality, this time attempting to get judges to authorize illegal and unconstitutional activities right here at home. As well, it is another bill without an ounce of improvement in oversight of our security agencies.

However, this bill goes even further. This is a bill that will wreak havoc on the privacy rights of all Canadians in the name of threats to national security. Further, it is a bill that contains definitions so broad and so far-reaching that it risks lumping together legitimate dissent with terrorism. It is at one and the same time broad, dangerously vague, and most likely ineffective in confronting the threats we face. This is a bill that still lacks any direct link to the actual events we faced in October or the ongoing threats we face today.

The government has rushed ahead with this bill and with changes to security on the Hill, again without consultation, and without even waiting for full reports on the October incidents. It is my understanding that when the Prime Minister was asked at his campaign-style event in Richmond Hill, where he unveiled this bill, instead of in the House of Commons, where it should have taken place, whether this bill would have prevented either of the October events, he had to say that he was not sure.

New Democrats have given this bill careful consideration before coming to our decision to oppose it in principle. We have consulted broadly with groups potentially most directly affected by this bill, with legal experts, and with our constituents when back in our ridings last week.

We have repeatedly asked the government to explain what some of the broad wording in this bill would cover and what specific new security actions will be authorized by this bill, all to no avail. The response more often that not has consisted of reciting general talking points about the severity of the threats we face, in a transparent attempt to use fear to marshal support for its bill, support that it obviously hopes will carry through to the ballot box.

We have not taken this decision to oppose Bill C-51 lightly. We have done our due diligence before pronouncing on a bill that would make major changes to over two dozen pieces of legislation and that would potentially have major impacts on privacy rights, rights to peaceful dissent, and fundamental freedoms, like freedom from detention without charge.

It will clearly have impacts on Muslim Canadians in particular because of the unfortunate tendency of the government to stray into Islamophobic rhetoric and bizarre claims by the Minister of Justice that terrorism is somehow culturally based.

It will clearly have an impact on those concerned with climate change and other environmental issues, especially when read in concert with the RCMP's 44-page memo on so-called anti-petroleum activists, a memo that, just as this bill does, tends to lump together both dissent and extremist and violent activities.

Neither the Muslim community nor environmental activists or first nations activists will be surprised to find themselves targets of the new measures in this bill. What I hope Canadians will come to understand is that it is not just the Conservative government's tendency to divide Canadians that makes some of us targets of this bill; it is the tendency of the government to overreach that makes all of us potential casualties of this bill.

Let us look at the changes the government is proposing that would have the biggest impact. Here I would start with part 1 of the bill, entitled “Security of Canada Information Sharing Act”. I believe that this part of the bill would have the broadest potential impacts for all Canadians.

This bill would allow all federal departments and agencies to share information that may be relevant to national security with Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The NDP agrees that government departments and agencies should be able to share information about real threats to public safety, but it must be done with appropriate safeguards that do not catch innocent Canadians in the net.

The Privacy Commissioner has expressed concerns that this bill would allow the information of many law-abiding Canadians to be collected and shared with a long list of other government agencies and used for purposes other than those for which it was collected. This would clearly undermine a fundamental principle of our privacy rights when it comes to the government's use of our personal information. Many of the departments and agencies that would now be allowed to share information do not have adequate privacy protections in place, nor do they have any oversight mechanisms governing their information sharing activities.

A second aspect of this bill with very broad implications is the section granting new powers to CSIS. They are powers that would change the nature of CSIS as an organization, moving it from being an intelligence gathering agency to an active arm of the government in opposing threats to security and to the economy, infrastructure, and a wide list of activities, which potentially raises the question of whether the government would be able to use CSIS for political purposes.

This rolls back the clock more than 30 years and ignores the lessons of the McDonald Commission, which resulted in the creation of CSIS. It abandons the important lesson that combining intelligence gathering activities with disruption activities not only is mostly ineffective but almost inevitably leads to the kind of sordid activities the RCMP engaged in the 1970s in Quebec. These kinds of activities undermine public confidence in police and security agencies, and when we undermine public confidence in these agencies, we undermine the very co-operation with the public that is necessary for their success.

Bill C-51 would now give CSIS the ability to conduct threat disruption. These provisions would allow CSIS to take measures at home and abroad to disrupt threats when CSIS decides that it has “reasonable grounds to believe” that there is a threat to the security of Canada. Activities to disrupt threats that would contravene a right or freedom guaranteed under the charter would require CSIS to seek authorization from a judge. However, here is the important point on this question. The government likes to say that this amounts to oversight of CSIS activities. The point I would raise is that CSIS would not require a warrant for any and all disruption activities, only those that CSIS itself judged might involve illegal or unconstitutional activities. Once a judge issued a warrant, the judge would have no further oversight role over what CSIS did with that warrant.

If we look carefully at the Mosley decision, we see that the judge said that not only was CSIS not fully forthright in the material it presented to the court to get a warrant but that once it had the warrant, it did not carry the warrant out in the manner it had prescribed to the judge. In other words, it did not do what it said it would do with the warrant.

For me, the important point is that it would still be left for CSIS to decide if the warrant application was necessary, and it would be left to CSIS to decide on its own and without oversight what activities that warrant authorized and how it would carry them out. As I mentioned, CSIS's record before the courts leaves much to be desired on this point.

When asked in question period, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has been unable or unwilling to provide examples of the kinds of activities that would be allowed under threat disruption. We have asked him repeatedly to give us a single example of what those kinds of thing are.

The presumption always is that disruption activities would always be illegal or unconstitutional, but we know quite well that this bill would authorize CSIS to do things like shut down someone's Internet service, maybe shut off someone's phone service, or conduct surveillance on private conversations carried out in public places.

There are all kinds of things here that will not require a warrant, and there are all kinds of things, as I said, that we would leave to CSIS to decide if a warrant were even required. Remember, the power to disrupt includes giving CSIS the right to enter any place, open or obtain access to anything, as well as obtain or copy any document, install or remove anything, and to do any other thing that is reasonably necessary to take those measures. I submit that this is a pretty broad mandate when it comes to these activities.

In other words, in taking measures to reduce a threat, Bill C-51 would give CSIS a free rein. It would only prohibit CSIS from killing or causing bodily harm, violating the sexual integrity of an individual, or obstructing justice.

I know that those provisions were put in to reassure us, but I do not find it very reassuring that those are the only limitations on CSIS' disruption activities. These are not very robust limits for an organization carrying out secret activities, and not very reassuring for an agency with such weak oversight and review.

The government always likes to say that there is active, robust oversight of CSIS, pointing to the activities of SIRC. However, it is not just a technical point to say that when the government eliminated the position of inspector general in CSIS, it actually eliminated the one independent officer who provided oversight in real time of the activities of CSIS. It was the mandate of the inspector general of CSIS to make sure that CSIS' activities conformed to the law. Those responsibilities have in theory been transferred to SIRC, which has no capacity and no access to the information it would need to provide that kind of active oversight, and to make sure that CSIS were always acting legally.

I will refrain from talking about whether those appointed to SIRC have always been the best appointees, because of the limited amount of time I have. However, I only need to mention Arthur Porter. Also, I would question whether part-time appointees and non-specialists can be expected to successfully carry out the kind of oversight we need for a body like this.

If we look at the last annual report of SIRC, SIRC itself said similar things to Justice Mosley. It said that CSIS did not always provide full and timely information when SIRC was trying to investigate CSIS activities. It said that in some cases, CSIS had not been fully forthright in providing information to its review body. Therefore, we do not have robust oversight and review; we have problematic oversight and review, and now we would expect that same body to take on oversight of this much broader mandate we would give CSIS.

A third aspect of the bill that has broad implications is the provision that criminalizes the promotion of terrorism and the related provision that authorizes the removal of online terror propaganda. Bill C-51 would make it a criminal offence to knowingly advocate and promote “...the commission of terrorist offences in general”. This provision is designed to make the general promotion of terrorism an offence, in addition to the existing legislation that outlaws advocacy of specific terrorist acts. The new offence would be punishable by a prison term of up to five years.

Again, when the leader of the opposition asked the government to give us an example of what would now be illegal but is not already illegal under existing legislation, a question that I think he asked five times, he did not get an answer from the government. However, such a provision would certainly place a chill on free speech by its very enactment. It would also lower the threshold for what is considered promotion of terrorism.

The existing hate propaganda section of the Criminal Code criminalizes communication that advocates violence, where such incitement is likely to lead to breach of the peace. Why is that not adequate? Certainly we have seen RCMP able to lay terrorism charges frequently, and very recently here in Ottawa. Again, we ask, why is this new much broader provision needed?

Under the new provision, a person may be convicted if their statements are simply “being reckless” as to whether or not any of these offences may be committed. Again, this new offence would expand the existing Criminal Code offence, which makes promoting a specific terrorist act a crime, without explaining how this would help reduce threats to our security.

There is always a danger when we have limited resources—and certainly, the current government has severely limited the resources available to both the RCMP and CSIS—and when we spread the net too wide that we will miss the real terrorists, that we will miss the real threats to society, because we will not have enough resources to actually take on the hard work necessary to identify them. As one person said, “Searching for terrorists is like looking for a needle in a haystack and the last thing we need people doing is adding extra hay”. To me, when we spread this broad net, we start adding extra hay that makes it much more difficult to identify the real and urgent threats to our security.

Under the new law, a judge would be able to order Internet service providers, website administrators, and so on to remove any material when he or she has grounds to believe that the material might be terrorist propaganda. The judge could also order the custodian of a computer network to provide the court with information about who posted it. Moreover, the court would be able to order the seizure of physical materials. In both cases the authors or owners of the materials could appeal the decision before the material is destroyed.

This brings back shades of the old government bill that sparked the creation of the “tell Vic everything” campaign, by its expansion of government access to information about the online activity of perhaps any of us.

The inclusion of amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act also raise the question about how the government is proposing to spend the limited resources police and security agencies have. Again, in Richmond Hill, I understand that the Prime Minister was asked whether the bill would apply to teenagers in their parents' basement. He said yes. My question is, do we really want to waste time chasing kids in basements at the possible cost of letting the real terrorists slip through an overfull net?

A fourth element of the bill that should raise general concerns is the changes to preventative arrests and peace bonds, which threaten one of our most fundamental rights, the right to freedom from detention without charge.

I have heard many people comment that this is something that has been in place for something like 800 years in our legal system. Again, there is a serious question of what value this new provision has, especially when weighed against its negative aspects.

We should remember that legislation allowing for preventative arrests was first adopted under the Liberals after the events of September 11, 2001. This allowed police to detain someone for up to three days without laying charges. However, between 2001 and 2007, that clause was never used, before sun-setting in that latter year. Nonetheless, it was reinstated by the Conservatives in 2013.

Now, Bill C-51 proposes to lower the threshold required for a judge to authorize preventative detention from reasonable grounds that a terrorist activity “will” be carried out to “may” be carried out. The RCMP would now need to establish only that a terrorist activity might happen, instead of the previous grounds that there was some certainty that the person would commit a terrorist act. One lawyer described to me that what we had in the previous preventative detention was the lowest possible evidentiary standard, and now we are lowering that.

While keeping in mind that law enforcement agencies never found the preventative arrest provisions useful, we also need to remember the historical record of Canada on detention in times of crisis. Japanese Canadians were interned on the west coast despite the lack of any evidence at the time, or thereafter, of a single Japanese Canadian aiding the enemy in World War II. Ukrainian Canadians were similarly interned. At the time of the FLQ crisis in Quebec, hundreds of Quebeckers were arrested and detained without charge, and no one so detained was ever charged with, let alone convicted of, a criminal offence.

Certainly fears of political injustices resulting from the interaction of this bill with the apparent ongoing practices of racial profiling in Canada will need to be addressed.

Therefore, I am voting against the bill and hope that we can have a full airing of the issues. However, we have not had a very good indication of that today with the introduction of time allocation. I remain disappointed that the Liberals have given the government a blank cheque on Bill C-51, offering their support for the bill even if it is unamended.

Do I have confidence that the government will listen to evidence, experts, or the communities affected by this bill? Frankly, I do not. Therefore, I move:

That, the motion be amended by deleting all the words after “That” and substituting the following:

this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-51, An act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, because it: (a) threatens our way of life by asking Canadians to choose between their security and their freedoms; (b) was not developed in consultation with other parties, all of whom recognize the real threat of terrorism and support effective, concrete measures to keep Canadians safe; (c) irresponsibly provide CSIS with a sweeping new mandate without equally increasing oversight; (d) contains definitions that are broad, vague and threaten to lump together legitimate dissent with terrorism; and (e) does not include the type of concrete, effective measures that have been proven to work, such as working with communities on measures to counter radicalization of youth.

Anti-terrorism Act, 2015

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and take part in what is obviously a very important debate on Bill C-51, the government's comprehensive counterterrorism package. This bill, which is titled the anti-terrorism act, 2015, deals, first and foremost, with public safety and efforts by our government to embrace methods that would improve and enhance safety for all Canadians.

The bill builds upon concrete legislative steps this government has already taken to combat terrorism, including through the Combating Terrorism Act, the Nuclear Terrorism Act of 2013, as well as more recent proposals found in Bill C-44, the protection of Canada from terrorists act. Therefore, members can see there is a litany of legislative action already demonstrated by this government.

We can make no mistake about it, these are real dangers, not theoretical or hypothetical scenarios. As we have seen in places like Paris, Australia, Brussels, and in Canada, these acts have deadly effects. This is why there is simply no denying the existence of the threat and the necessity to take practical steps to improve the way in which our security forces operate, coordinate and respond to acts of terrorism. This is also to increase our capacity to learn from international examples. The ability for CSIS to operate outside of our borders is the security capacity that is found in most of our allies, certainly most of our Five Eyes partners.

The government is involved in broad-based efforts to counter domestic and international terrorism in order to protect our country, our citizens and our interest in our allies. This is consistent with our counterterrorism strategy, which is to build resilience against terrorism. Therefore, clearly working through partnerships, including with all levels of government and community leaders, is key to effectively implementing this strategy.

As the Speaker may know and members may be aware, we have an outreach effort at the Department of Justice that involves a cultural round table where we regularly consult and receive input from various communities around the country. This is an effective way to gain insight and understanding of how Canadians perceive this issue of terrorism.

As well as implementing this strategy, we are including our efforts to counter violent extremism. Engaging with the cross-cultural round tables on security-related issues is of great benefit in getting the balance right. There is also significant collaboration with international partners in addressing the terrorist threat.

As the Minister of Justice, I am responsible for ensuring that Canada's laws remain robust, fair and just. This is particularly important in the area of criminal law. Canada, like its friends and allies, must ensure that our laws remain responsive and effective in combatting the scourge of terrorism, while at the same time ensuring our laws respect our fundamental rights and freedoms.

Bill C-51 contains a suite of criminal law reforms that will do just that by amending the Criminal Code to strengthen terrorism recognizance with conditions and peace bond provisions; create a new criminal offence for abdicating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general; provide courts with the powers to seize, forfeit and remove terrorist propaganda, including from web sites located inside our borders; and to better protect individuals participating in national security proceedings and prosecutions.

These steps, in addition to those discussed earlier by my colleague the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, will go a long way to closing any real or perceived gaps in our ability to respond to terrorist acts.

I would like to take a closer look at each of the four pillars of criminal law reform in this bill. However, I would like to begin by pointing out that these four pillars of reform have common denominators.

The Criminal Code reforms individually and collectively seek to provide law enforcement agencies with appropriate tools to thwart the activities of terrorists who actively engage in terrorism. Within these reforms, and with these in place, police officers will now be able to intervene sooner, more effectively, and achieve better results before the matters get more serious. This aims to provide our protection for all Canadians through enabling the police to pre-empt and prevent acts of terrorism.

I want to emphasize here that judicial oversight is the backbone of these criminal reforms consistent with Canada's values and principles, including, as the Supreme Court of Canada has often repeated and I will emphasize again today, the values of democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law. This is the type of oversight that should provide considerable comfort and relief to those who have criticized the bill at its early stage.

I would suggest that this type of insight that comes from the courts in enabling our security agents to make those types of interventions prior to acts of terrorism is at the very crux of what we are attempting to do. It is not just to be responsive; it is to be pre-emptive in protecting Canadians from acts of terrorism.

The first area of criminal law reform found in Bill C-51 would strengthen the existing provisions on the recognizance with conditions and terrorism peace bonds contained in sections 83.3 and 810.01, respectively, of the Criminal Code. Let me go further. This Criminal Code recognizance with conditions is already a tool that can be used. It is designed to disrupt and prevent terrorist activity from occurring in the first place. For example, this provision allows a peace officer, with the consent of the Attorney General, a prosecutor acting with delegated authority, to bring an individual before the court with evidence to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to require the individual to abide by specific conditions designed to prevent terrorist activity from occurring.

It bears noting that the individual in question would not necessarily be the person who might carry out that activity. In other words, the person could be a party to the offence or enabling the offence. It is important to note here that the provisions currently require that the court be satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a terrorism activity will occur and that there be reasonable grounds to suspect that the recognizance with conditions is necessary to prevent that activity from occurring.

To move to the reforms, those introduced in section 83.3 of the Criminal Code found in Bill C-51 would lower the threshold required to obtain the recognizance from reasonable grounds to believe that terrorist activity will be carried out to the test of may be carried out. This threshold is also lowered from reasonable grounds to suspect that conditions are necessary to prevent the carrying out of the terrorist activity to are likely to prevent the carrying out of the terrorist activity.

These changes have the practical effect of making it easier to disrupt terrorist plans before they are executed. Therefore, going before a judge and making the case, based on evidence collected, that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the terrorist activity may be carried out lowers the threshold, thus allowing police to act more efficiently and, in many cases, quicker.

In the bill, our government would also increase the possible maximum period of preventive detention from a total of three days to seven days, with safeguards, including periodic judicial review of the detention, to ensure that it is still required. Again, if we look at international examples, in the United Kingdom, it is twice that period of detention. As it currently stands in Canada, it is three days. We would extend that to allow the police agencies to ensure that they are doing everything in their power to prevent the terrorist act from occurring on Canadian soil.

The bill, through the Criminal Code, would also provide similar measures with respect to preventing the commission of terrorist offences. Terrorism peace bonds, as we know, are preventive tools used to disrupt and prevent individuals from committing terrorism offences. Peace bonds and recognizance are used in the domestic criminal justice system as well, but here there are specific provisions found in this bill that expand the use of recognizance and peace bonds. An application to impose a peace bond can be brought even where there has been no criminal charge or no prior conviction, but enables a judge to impose any reasonable conditions in order to prevent the commission of an offence.

What we are talking about here is enabling the judiciary, the police and the prosecution, to put in place preventive measures, such as requiring the person to forfeit their passports, requiring them to report to police or authorities, or staying away from certain individuals, staying away from certain public places, for example, like a military base.

All of these might be seen as extraordinary in normal circumstances, but I would suggest that in the context of this entire debate, we are talking about an elevated threat assessment based on what occurred here in October, 2014, based on what is happening around the world and based on the assessment of our security forces. These are practical steps that allow our security forces, with judicial oversight, to take preventative steps.

Currently, the Criminal Code provides that any person who fears on reasonable grounds that the individual will commit a terrorism offence, with the consent of the attorney general or a prosecutor in his or her stead, can apply to the court to have a terrorism peace bond imposed requiring the individual to keep the peace and be of good behaviour, or to comply with any other reasonable condition that the court believes necessary to ensure their good conduct, some of the provisions I mentioned. These conditions can be for a period of up to one year or, in the case of a person who has previously been convicted of a terrorism offence, up to two years.

These amendments would strengthen the terrorism peace bond by lowering the threshold to obtain that peace bond to where a person believed an individual “may” commit a terrorism offence, instead of the current “will” commit a terrorism offence. The bill would extend the duration of a terrorism peace bond from two to five years for those previously convicted of a terrorism offence.

More generally, in respect of both recognizance conditions and terrorism peace bond conditions, the bill would authorize the imposition of sureties, which is someone who agrees to take the responsibility of ensuring that the person subject to the court order complies with the conditions imposed. The bill would also require judges to specifically consider the desirability of imposing geographic limitations. I mentioned earlier surrendering passports or other conditions that the judge deems appropriate.

Moreover, these reforms would increase the penalty for breaches of these court ordered conditions from two to four years of imprisonment, consistent with similar conditions imposed found in Bill C-26, the tougher penalties for child predators act.

Finally, I suggest that these reforms would have the added benefit of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of recognizance with conditions and peace bonds across the country by allowing for the use of video conferencing when necessary and interprovincial transfers of any peace bonds on the consent of the appropriate attorney general.

The proposed reform with respect to recognizance with conditions and recognizance to keep the peace relating to a terrorist offence would also apply to adolescents in accordance with the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

In short, the proposed amendments, which I have just referred to and described, seek to facilitate the use of the provisions to make them easier to obtain and to make them more effective in preventing terrorism, all with the backdrop of judicial oversight.

It is important to emphasize that the improvements we want to make to our terrorism prevention tools are compatible with what like-minded countries have in place.

For example, the United Kingdom uses similar measures to protect the public by subjecting individuals believed to pose a threat to public safety to conditions.

Australia also uses these control orders to prevent terrorist acts from occurring, which is to help enable the imposition of conditions on individuals. It is important because it shows that countries with strong democratic conditions, such as ours, and strong institutions which respect the rule of law, like ours, have also recognized that they can take measures that are firm in their response to terrorism, but fair in their approach to citizens, respecting the rights of those who are subject to these preventative tools.

Let us remind ourselves again of what we are trying to prevent: mass casualties, attacks on our institutions and the planting of bombs. What we see in other countries on the nightly news is no longer something that we are protected from merely because of our geography.

There are individuals who have sworn to cause us harm and who continue to make very pointed and prescribed threats against Canadian citizens. That is the backdrop in which we must remind ourselves this bill is rooted.

I pause here to emphasize that we are mindful of the concerns expressed by many stakeholders about these changes. Some have suggested that these proposals pose an unjustified and unnecessary infringement on fundamental charter rights. In response, I would note that there are many safeguards associated with the tools I have just described. I mentioned judicial oversight, the discretion exercised by our judiciary, and the requirement of the Attorney General's consent in their use. We have prosecutors now specifically trained in the use and application of this type of legislation.

In addition, there are reports to Parliament from our security agencies that refer specifically to recognizance with conditions. In addition, there is the requirement of a mandatory parliamentary review in 2018 and a sunset clause with respect to the recognizance with conditions I mentioned. This would all result in an ability to have eyes on and insight into the way the legislation would be applied.

Let us remember the objective of these tools: namely, the imposition of reasonable conditions on persons by the courts with a view to preventing terrorism activity and the commission of terrorism offences.

Our government takes the position that these measures are necessary to protect public safety. They are not to be used arbitrarily, and they are based on genuine concerns that put the public at risk.

The second area of the Criminal Code reform contained in Bill C-51, which would indicate a new indictable offence for advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general, is again an area of the law we think is necessary.

The House resumed from January 30 consideration of the motion that Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other Acts, be read the third time and passed.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I find it unfortunate that there is a limit.

My colleague from the Liberal Party would probably have had a lot of questions to ask, especially on the budgetary aspect.

May I remind you that, according to Senator Dagenais, all the budgets that fund the operations related to Bill C-44 will be the existing budgets? The interventions of the representative of the police forces took place before Bill C-44 was introduced. There would be many questions to ask about that, including in terms of justice.