Bill C-51 (Historical)

Anti-terrorism Act, 2015

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

Part 1 enacts the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, which authorizes Government of Canada institutions to disclose information to Government of Canada institutions that have jurisdiction or responsibilities in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada. It also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Part 2 enacts the Secure Air Travel Act in order to provide a new legislative framework for identifying and responding to persons who may engage in an act that poses a threat to transportation security or who may travel by air for the purpose of committing a terrorism offence. That Act authorizes the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to establish a list of such persons and to direct air carriers to take a specific action to prevent the commission of such acts. In addition, that Act establishes powers and prohibitions governing the collection, use and disclosure of information in support of its administration and enforcement. That Act includes an administrative recourse process for listed persons who have been denied transportation in accordance with a direction from the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and provides appeal procedures for persons affected by any decision or action taken under that Act. That Act also specifies punishment for contraventions of listed provisions and authorizes the Minister of Transport to conduct inspections and issue compliance orders. Finally, this Part makes consequential amendments to the Aeronautics Act and the Canada Evidence Act.
Part 3 amends the Criminal Code to, with respect to recognizances to keep the peace relating to a terrorist activity or a terrorism offence, extend their duration, provide for new thresholds, authorize a judge to impose sureties and require a judge to consider whether it is desirable to include in a recognizance conditions regarding passports and specified geographic areas. With respect to all recognizances to keep the peace, the amendments also allow hearings to be conducted by video conference and orders to be transferred to a judge in a territorial division other than the one in which the order was made and increase the maximum sentences for breach of those recognizances.
It further amends the Criminal Code to provide for an offence of knowingly advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general. It also provides a judge with the power to order the seizure of terrorist propaganda or, if the propaganda is in electronic form, to order the deletion of the propaganda from a computer system.
Finally, it amends the Criminal Code to provide for the increased protection of witnesses, in particular of persons who play a role in respect of proceedings involving security information or criminal intelligence information, and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to permit the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to take, within and outside Canada, measures to reduce threats to the security of Canada, including measures that are authorized by the Federal Court. It authorizes the Federal Court to make an assistance order to give effect to a warrant issued under that Act. It also creates new reporting requirements for the Service and requires the Security Intelligence Review Committee to review the Service’s performance in taking measures to reduce threats to the security of Canada.
Part 5 amends Divisions 8 and 9 of Part 1 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) define obligations related to the provision of information in proceedings under that Division 9;
(b) authorize the judge, on the request of the Minister, to exempt the Minister from providing the special advocate with certain relevant information that has not been filed with the Federal Court, if the judge is satisfied that the information does not enable the person named in a certificate to be reasonably informed of the case made by the Minister, and authorize the judge to ask the special advocate to make submissions with respect to the exemption; and
(c) allow the Minister to appeal, or to apply for judicial review of, any decision requiring the disclosure of information or other evidence if, in the Minister’s opinion, the disclosure would be injurious to national security or endanger the safety of any person.

Anti-terrorism Act, 2015

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to indicate at the outset that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Victoria.

Bill C-51 is now before us so that we can debate something that is of great importance to the people of Canada. I think its short title is the “anti-terrorism act, 2015”. There is a real question as to what it is really about.

In fact, The Globe and Mail, one of the oldest and most prominent newspapers in Canada, says:

On close inspection, Bill C-51 is not an anti-terrorism bill. Fighting terrorism is its pretext; its language reveals a broader goal of allowing government departments, as well as CSIS, to act whenever they believe limply defined security threats “may”—not “will”—occur.

That is a pretty fierce condemnation of a piece of legislation by what purports to be a serious government interested in dealing with terrorism.

Let us make no mistake. Terrorism is a real threat and everyone agrees that public safety is a top priority for any government. However, Canadians do not have to choose between their security and their rights. This is in fact a false choice presented to the people of Canada by the current government and by the Prime Minister.

When the member for Ottawa West—Nepean was announcing his retirement as foreign minister, he quoted John Diefenbaker that "Parliament is more than procedure—it is the custodian of the nation's freedom.”

I believe that is right. What we are doing here today on this side of the House is what we can and must do as parliamentarians to protect the freedoms of Canadians, because that is the issue here. The issue is that we need to have concrete measures that would keep Canadians safe without eroding our freedoms and our way of life. Unfortunately, time and time again, the current Prime Minister and the current government is putting politics ahead of principle.

Once again, The Globe and Mail stated, on February 1:

Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he [the Prime Minister] now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force.

Canadians should not be willing to accept such an obvious threat to their basic liberties.

Where does that come from? It comes from the provisions in the bill itself, which would give additional powers to CSIS that it does not already have and, arguably, does not need; and which would allow for information-sharing broadly between 16 government departments. The bill does not specify this would be limited in nature. It would cause problems that have been described and outlined by many prominent citizens—former prime ministers, former leaders of political parties, academics, legal expects, former justices of the Supreme Court of Canada—all of whom have condemned the legislation as going too far and giving unnecessary and dangerous powers to government agencies with a profound lack of parliamentary oversight.

The government's position on oversight is that we already have enough, that we have a robust system. We do not. We do not have any system of oversight for the Canada Border Services Agency. We have an appointed body, SIRC, that deals with CSIS, but it is not an oversight agency. It says so itself in its most recent report and it makes the distinction between oversight and review. It says it is a review agency that looks at things some time after the fact. It does not have oversight on a continuous basis over what is going on in the moment on the day. Therefore, it is not an oversight agency. It says so itself and recognizes that oversight is a different value and is required.

Its provisions have been put before the House to provide the kind of oversight that we could use, oversight that some of our Five Eyes friends have over intelligence. Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America have robust parliamentary or congressional oversight with the power to know what is going on and to keep an eye on things.

This has been rejected outright by the government. There was private member's bill, Bill C-622, that would have modernized a piece of legislation that was before the House in 2006, a piece of legislation that arose out of the committee that you, Mr. Speaker, sat on, along with the current Minister of Justice, who said at that time that this would be a desirable, necessary, and important measure to be undertaken. That bill died on the order paper, but Bill C-622, which proposed modernizing that legislation to some extent—which I am not saying we agreed with entirely—was before the House and was defeated by the government at second reading.

Also before the House is Motion No. 461, a motion that I presented to the House on October 24, 2013, calling for a special select committee of the House, like the one the Speaker and the Minister of Justice sat on, to devise the best and appropriate form of oversight by Parliament that might be required given the change in circumstances since 2004 and the experiences of other jurisdictions, for us to devise the best system for our Parliament.

Although it was offered up for debate, the government House leader refused to allow it to be debated, saying there was no necessity for any more oversight than already in place. That flies in the face of all the experts, the academic experts and people who have studied this time and time again, such as lawyers, judges, former leaders, and former prime ministers, who have all said that parliamentary oversight must be present in a system that protects the rights and freedoms of individuals in this country when we are dealing with this kind of legislation.

The bill is extremely intrusive. It gives significant police powers, including the power to disrupt activities. I heard the Minister of National Defence—who all of a sudden is the spokesperson for Public Safety, as I do not know what happened to the Minister of Public Safety, who seems to have disappeared off the map since the new Minister of Defence was appointed—say several times over the weekend in various interviews that “No, no, no, we're giving powers to the judiciary, not to CSIS”. That is wrong. The power to disrupt in section 42 of the bill would be given to CSIS directly. It would only be when CSIS decided that whatever it wanted to do would actually violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that it would have to go a judge, and the judge supposedly would be allowed to tell CSIS that it could break the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I do not think that is constitutional. I do not think a judge can have a licence by legislation to violate the Constitution of Canada, which is what the bill would allow. That is how bad this legislation is. that in itself is enough to say that the bill is bad, wrong, unconstitutional, and cannot be supported. I will leave it at that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member just finished saying that the legislation is bad, unconstitutional, and cannot be supported. The New Democrats were saying last week that they would vote against this bill at second and third reading, and that in principle it is a bad bill. Over the weekend we heard the leader of the New Democratic Party saying that if in fact the New Democrats were elected as government, they would not revoke the legislation, that they would leave it in place. There seems to be some inconsistency in the NDP position on the issue.

In principle, if the New Democrats support the legislation if it ultimately passes—and that is what the leader of the New Democratic Party is saying they would do if they formed government—then why would they be voting against it in principle here? In the Liberal Party, we have indicated that we support the bill in principle, but that it has to be amended. We are pushing hard for those amendments.

Why will the New Democrats not join the Liberal Party and be more transparent in their position and just say what needs to be said, that in principle the legislation has some steps worthy of support but that it must be amended, and then push for those amendments?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the member gets his information. I am sure he must have misunderstood whatever might have been said by the Leader of the Opposition, because we are clearly not going to support it, nor would we keep in place if it were passed, as it is unconstitutional legislation. I cannot imagine how the son of the father of the charter of rights can ask his caucus to vote in favour of legislation that clearly would give a judge the power to override in secret, on an individual case, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I say to the hon. member that if they are pushing hard against it, they are pushing with a straw.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his address on this bill, which I am sure he could speak to for several hours with his concerns about it, but which he put very succinctly in the brief time he had.

What the hon. member from Newfoundland and Labrador has raised is one of the most significant aspects of the bill, the misleading, uninformative statements by the Minister of National Defence on it. In fact, as the member pointed out, the bill would add very strong additional powers to the intelligence body. As the member said, the minister has said that the new powers would be only for the judges.

Could he elaborate on my understanding? It would only be in the discretion of CSIS to choose to think that if it were maybe acting beyond the bounds of the law, then it could go to a judge.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the discretion to decide whether there is a violation of the charter of rights is quite astonishing. In fact, clause 42 says, “The Service shall not take measures to reduce a threat to the security of Canada if those measures will contravene a right or freedom guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”, unless they go to a judge.

The determination would have to be made by CSIS officials that they would violate the charter. Who is CSIS to make these determinations in the first place? Only if the people at CSIS were sure that it would, would they then go to a judge.

When we look at the experience of CSIS in dealing with the judiciary already, it has been found to have misinformed—in other words not told the truth—to Mr. Justice Mosley in an application in relation to getting secret powers. There is a real question here as to whether this would be abused, would likely be abused, or would be possible to abuse, particularly if there is no oversight.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise with great sadness today to debate Bill C-51. I am sad because the Conservatives appear to be using national security as a wedge issue, using fear to divide us at the very time Canadians rightly demand non-partisan collaboration to keep us safe from very real threats and to protect the very rights and freedoms that define our precious democracy. I am sad because it did not need to be this way.

Canadians will remember the touching speeches given by our Prime Minister and all leaders in the House in the aftermath of the shooting incident in Parliament in October.

On October 23, the Prime Minister said, “In our system, in our country, we are opponents but we are never enemies. We are Canadians, one and all”. Then he introduced this bill in a campaign-style rally away from Parliament. He used rhetoric of war and spoke in front of the largest Canadian flag I have ever seen.

I am also sad the Liberals did not stand up. I guess they fear that they will have to support a bill like this because the polls say that. It is very difficult to explain on the doorstep their position on such critical legislation.

On a personal note, I do understand the very real threats to security in our country. For many years, I was legal counsel to the Security Intelligence Review Committee. I received a top secret clearance and conducted terrorism hearings. A couple years ago, the present Minister of Foreign Affairs, then justice minister, appointed me as a so-called special advocate to do national security work under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act where national security issues arise. I do understand the need to take action on national security. Would that we can do it while holding hands across the aisle, as we did on October 23.

The government has simply failed to make the case for the new powers it seeks. This is another omnibus bill by the Conservatives, containing 62 pages, and amending a great number of statutes. It would expand the powers of CSIS dramatically but would fail utterly to strengthen oversight and review powers. Noted anti-terrorism expert and University of Toronto Law Professor Kent Roach told me a few days ago that we already had a dozen anti-terrorism sections in the Criminal Code.

The government has failed over and over again to give a single example of how the amendments it seeks in Bill C-51 would be used. It has added offences such as “communicating statements, knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general”. Most lawyers who I have consulted with have no idea how words as vague as “terrorism in general” appear in a legal text.

Terrorism, let us break that down. When the Attorney General of our country, the Minister of Justice, was asked what that meant, he said, “Look it up in the dictionary.” What do the words “in general” have to do in a legal text. Under section 7 of the charter, unconstitutionally vague language is bound to be thrown out by the courts as soon as they get a chance to see it.

The Minister of National Defence, who appears to be the new spokesperson on this bill, argued that it was wrong to describe Bill C-51 as a bill that would give new powers to police and intelligence agencies. In his view, it would award new authority to judges and courts to approve the use of the extra discretion afforded in the bill.

How is that working so far? In its annual report last year, the Security Intelligence Review Committee said, “In one investigation, SIRC...had been seriously misled by CSIS”.

As well, my colleague from Newfoundland has reminded us that in 2013 Mr. Justice Mosley said that CSIS “withheld information in a deliberate decision to keep the Court in the dark”. That is, in and of itself, very disturbing.

The government has refused calls for more oversight of our national security apparatus, notwithstanding that information sharing among many departments would now be permitted, despite the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's serious concerns about what that would mean as information of a personal nature goes across the bureaucracy unimpeded.

We are already limiting debate on this bill. We will have had three days to debate this important bill. Notwithstanding the fact that former prime ministers, former justices of the Supreme Court of Canada and all sorts of experts have looked at it and said that it is unconstitutional and should not be adopted, the government appears to be willing to bull ahead and will probably not accept amendments that will be offered, which is disturbing.

When I was at SIRC, I was very proud, after consultation with all three of the parties in the House at the time, to work under Rosemary Brown, former B.C. cabinet minister, wartime expert in security, Saul Cherniack, who had been cabinet minister in Manitoba, Frances Lankin, Liberals, NDP, Conservatives, all working in the national interest. That is now how the Conservatives have let it unravel at this point.

What does “consultation” mean? Apparently, the Leader of the Opposition gets a phone call from someone saying, “We're going to appoint this person. How do you feel about that?” There is no one in whom the official opposition would have any confidence in this work. The proof in the pudding is that the person who was appointed to chair, this, by his own admission, with little or no vetting, is now serving time in a Panamanian jail. That is how this proud agency has been deformed.

Let us talk about lack of money and lack of new powers to deal with the kinds of new powers that have been given to CSIS, such as disrupting. This was supposed to be an intelligence agency. Does nobody remember what happened when barns were burned in Quebec and we said, after the McDonald Commission of Inquiry, we should have an intelligence-gathering agency. CSIS will not be that anymore. Apparently, now it will be given the powers to disrupt, whatever that means, and to do so not only in Canada but anywhere else it wants. The Conservatives are turning that agency into another law enforcement agency. That is not what was intended in CSIS. They have utterly deformed the bill.

As my friend from Newfoundland so ably pointed out, one really has to ask what the Conservatives understand by the rule of law. They would amend section 42 to apparently allow the agency to decide what is contrary to the charter or unlawful. It is shocking what this section would appear to do. Do not take my word for it. Read clause 12.1 as it would be amended by this statute. Apparently, the service would be able to take measures that would contravene the charter and other laws if it were authorized to take them by a warrant that a court would give, as if that is supposed to make us happy.

Notwithstanding the lack of oversight that I have tried to describe, it would provide new powers that are frightening to many people in my community. The job of the official opposition is to inform and engage with its communities. All opposition members do that. This Friday night there will be a town hall meeting in Victoria, which I know will be packed with national security experts, my colleague, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, the NDP public safety critic and me, all speaking to this.

I was on people's doorsteps this weekend, and they are very concerned. We hope they will rise up and fight, like they did against the unfair elections act, to try to get the government to actually see why all of these former prime ministers and supreme court justices just might be onto something.

The government will tell us not to worry, that lawful advocacy protest and dissent does not matter, that the act will not affect dissent. If people are blockading a road, if Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King were engaging in civil disobedience, that is, by definition, unlawful. People may be blockading a road on a mountain. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip was arrested in the Burnaby protest against Kinder Morgan. He has reason to fear once these powers are used against him, which, of course, will spread across 16 government agencies and possibly go abroad as we share information with other intelligence agencies around the world.

People are concerned, especially when the Conservatives call us who opposed, for example, the Enbridge pipeline eco-terrorists or foreign-funded radicals. Does anyone think there is a reason why people in my community may be a tad worried about what the government is doing? We are worried. Canadians should be worried. This is overkill and it is unnecessary.

I was proud to be in a party that stood up against another government when 465 people were thrown in jail, not one of whom was ultimately convicted, when the War Measures Act was passed. We stand up against this bill proudly because our constituents demand us to do so, and we will.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, could the member provide some clarification on actual position of the New Democratic Party?

I will quote a Global news story from yesterday. The headline is that the NDP leader “won't commit to scrapping anti-terror bill, if ever in power”. It states:

Though vehemently against the bill, NDP Leader...if in power, would not necessarily scrap the Conservative’s “anti-terror” bill—but he would definitely change it, he said in an interview Sunday.

When I posed the question to his colleague, the member for St. John's East, he was very clear that the NDP would revoke the legislation. Who does the member believe is correct, the leader of the New Democratic Party who says that the party would revoke it or his colleague from St. John's East who says that it would not revoke it?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let me be perfectly clear. As others have said, we are voting against the bill.

I understand my colleague from the third party believes it is coherent to say that the bill is bad, that we need new powers and that we need to change oversight, but they will support it anyway. In my view, that is not coherent.

If there is any doubt about it, let me just say it as loudly and clearly as I can for my colleague that we will vote against this unconstitutional, unnecessary, inefficient legislation.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my colleague from Victoria mentioned the matter of unlawful. The Minister of National Defence mentioned many times over the weekend that we should not worry, that lawful protests and dissent were okay.

However, so many times, whether it be a strike that is not exactly in keeping with the existing labour laws, protest movements like Idle No More, or some of the matters that the member mentioned, they are clearly not authorized by law, which is the proper definition of “unlawful”. It seems to me that it is a very serious problem. It is fooling people into thinking that it is harmless, because if they are not breaking the law, they have nothing to worry about. However, the issue of lawfulness is a real problem for the application of this legislation.

Would the member care to comment on that?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard the government defend that somehow, the magic incantation of lawful advocacy, protests and dissent is the Holy Grail, and that we need not worry about it. However, as the member properly points out, the word “lawful”, as with so many of the key terms in the bill, is completely undefined. The member is right that it is not authorized by law.

What I have tried to say in my remarks is that sometimes civil and or criminal injunctions are transgressed by people. That, by definition, is unlawful, I presume. They are engaged in civil disobedience because they understand that there is a consequence of civil disobedience. That is what the sense often involves in the labour context and in the environmental context.

I have had indigenous leaders come to me, frightened by what this might mean as they engage in the kind of dissent that is obviously taking place up and down our coast against the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline. They have asked for legal advice and what this would mean. Would CSIS be going after them, disrupting their activities, infiltrating them?

Do we need our intelligence gathering agency to do that? We have a perfectly competent RCMP that does that, and has done it well, and that understands the need to gather evidence carefully, and so forth. To turn an intelligence agency into some kind of law enforcement agency like this is really reprehensible.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and for Western Economic Diversification]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to debate Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism act, 2015, and I want to mention at the outset that I will be sharing my time with the member for Yukon.

This is a very important bill. Over the last few years, I have noticed a real change in what is happening across the world and in Canada. Hardly a week goes by that I, like many Parliamentarians, do not wake up to news of extreme incidents or threats somewhere in the world. A couple of days ago we heard that al Shabaab was threatening Canadians in malls, malls where our children go, malls where grandmothers go. The West Edmonton Mall was named specifically.

Clearly, times have changed. Times are a lot different from what they were in the sixties and the seventies, before communication changed and before the Internet. If I mention places like Copenhagen, Brussels, Sydney, Paris, and Ottawa, one would think I was listing some of the freest cities in western democracies. Sadly, however, this is a list of the locations of the most recent jihadi terrorist attacks.

Let us make no mistake: the international jihadi movement has declared war on Canada and war on our allies. That is important. We are seeking to degrade and destroy the so-called Islamic State through the committed and professional work of our Canadian Armed Forces, and I think everyone in this House should be very proud that when Canada calls, they do the job we ask of them and they do an amazing job. We are taking important measures to strengthen the protection of Canada.

I have been listening carefully and I think the NDP has been sowing some confusion about what is contained in the bill. I will reflect on some of the comments made by the leader of the NDP and share some of the inaccuracies in his comments last week.

The leader of the NDP has accused Bill C-51 of being both overly broad and not doing anything. That is a bit of a square circle. How can a bill be overly broad on one hand and not really do anything on the other?

That in itself reflects an issue in terms of the approach of New Democrats to the bill, whose leader said that the provisions to criminalize the promotion of terrorism generally have no business in the criminal law.

It is currently not a criminal offence to advocate or promote terrorism generally. The ability to arrest someone who is, in general terms, advocating or promoting the activity of terrorism does not exist. The threshold for arrest in the Criminal Code is specific to someone who knowingly instructs, directly or indirectly, any person to carry out a terrorist activity.

As an example, the jihadists are saying, “Go hurt Canada.” In the case of the threat to the West Edmonton Mall, are the jihadists instructing specifically or more generally? We need to make sure we capture those sorts of threats to Canadians.

The anti-terrorism act of 2015 would make it an offence to advocate or promote terrorism in broader terms. It states:

Every person who, by communicating statements, knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general

—which could mean malls or hurting Canadians—

—other than an offence under this section—while knowing that any of those offences will be committed or being reckless as to whether any of those offences may be committed, as a result of such communication, is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.

By way of example, if someone posts a video on YouTube calling for death to infidels wherever they may be, as was done by a recent Canadian-linked jihadist, it is not currently a criminal offence. I am sorry if the opposition does not believe that should be a criminal offence, but frankly, I believe that if someone makes that kind of threat, it clearly should be defined as a criminal offence. This legislation will change that.

The leader of the NDP has also said that the legislation before us today would allow the targeting of legitimate protesters, and that too is inaccurate. Again, it is an attempt to fearmonger about this particular bill.

Under the legislation, the threshold for CSIS to engage in disruption is met if there are reasonable grounds to believe that a particular activity constitutes a threat to the security of Canada. Previously, CSIS did not have disruption powers, allowing it only to collect and retain information. We previously heard that this was an issue. To be quite frank, if CSIS knows of an imminent threat, I want it to be able to act, not turn the information over to another agency so that maybe some action will be taken after whatever has been planned has been completed.

“Threats to the security of Canada” are qualified by the following points, but “threats” do not include lawful advocacy, protests, or dissent unless carried on in conjunction with any of these listed activities, which would not be amended by Bill C-51: first, espionage or sabotage that is against Canada or is detrimental to the interests of Canada, or activities directed toward or in support of such espionage or sabotage; second, foreign-influenced activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person; third, activities within or relating to Canada directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious, or ideological objective within Canada or a foreign state; and four, activities directed toward undermining by covert unlawful acts or directed toward or intended ultimately to lead to the destruction or overthrow by violence of the constitutionally established system of government in Canada.

What the leader of the NDP may be getting confused about is the power of the sharing of information between government institutions. The bill states:

...a Government of Canada institution may, on its own initiative or on request, disclose information to the head of a recipient Government of Canada institution whose title is listed in Schedule 3, or their delegate, if the information is relevant to the recipient institution’s jurisdiction or responsibilities under an Act of Parliament or another lawful authority in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada, including in respect of their detection, identification, analysis, prevention, investigation or disruption.

The NDP leader's claims are simply false. Absolutely no change would be made to what constitutes a threat to the security of Canada. The measures he is pointing to deal with information sharing between government departments.

Further, the CSIS Act specifically states that threats to the security of Canada do not include lawful advocacy, protest, or dissent. The new legislation states that activity that would undermine the security of Canada does not include lawful advocacy, protest, dissent, and artistic expression. It is very clear, and again I think some fearmongering has gone on.

We reject the arguments that every time we talk about our security, our freedoms are threatened. Canadians understand that freedoms and security go hand in hand. Canadians expect us to protect both, and there are protections in this legislation that would do exactly that. The fundamental fact is that our police and our national security agencies are working to protect our rights and our freedoms, and it is jihadi terrorists who would endanger our security and who would take away our freedoms.

We have covered what the bill would not do, but we should look at what it would do. I have a lot of things to say about what it would do, but it looks as if I will not have time to discuss them all. I will quickly try to fit in a few.

Bill C-51 is a comprehensive package that would criminalize the advocacy or promotion of terrorism. It would counter terrorist recruitment by giving our courts the authority to remove things that are online. It would enhance CSIS' power to address threats, in that we are not going to sit and wait for threats but are going to address them. The bill would provide law enforcement agencies with enhanced stability to disrupt terrorist offences and activities.

Another issue is the passenger protect program related to people who are travelling by air for the purpose of engaging in terrorism. The bill would make it easier for our law enforcement agencies to do the job that we ask them to do and share relevant national security information.

Many of my colleagues will speak to other components of the bill. This is important legislation, and we are doing the right thing for Canadians. We have hit the important balance between security and the protection of freedoms.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives eliminated the position of inspector general of CSIS and left two agency positions open for months and months.

Why are the Conservatives insisting on reducing civilian oversight rather than enhancing it?

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, oversight is important. SIRC has done an annual report indicating the measures it takes and the watching it is doing.

It is also important to note that this particular legislation would give powers to CSIS to stop threats. We need to look at it currently. If CSIS knew something was going to happen imminently, it would have some warrant provisions, but oversight over these powers is there, and it is important.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party and the leader of the Liberal Party will argue, and I support it wholeheartedly, that there is no real oversight. In fact, the government could be doing a whole lot more.

Canada is a member of the Five Eyes nations. We are talking about the United States, England, Australia, and a fifth one. Only Canada does not have parliamentary oversight. All the others have parliamentary oversight.

Why does the member believe that Canada should stand alone and not have parliamentary oversight, given the importance of individual rights and freedoms?

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, our government believes that independent, expert, third party oversight is absolutely critical. There is no question.

However, even though every country does something one way, does the member actually think that we should not have the sovereignty to determine what a good way would be for Canada?

I believe his party, back in the day, actually did not support changes to the system because at the time it believed that third party independent oversight was important. Obviously, the third party oversight does report through the normal parliamentary channels.