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.

[Katherine Bullock, Representative, Islamic Society of North America]

Hello. I'm Katherine Bullock. When I start my lectures at my university, I usually explain why my name is Katherine Bullock and I'm dressed like this. I converted to Islam in 1994 and I started wearing the head scarf in the same year. I decided not to change my name when I converted.

What I teach as a professor is that one of the key problems of Bill C-51—indeed, of the Canadian counterterrorism approach in general—has been the move from what's called criminal space to prevention space. This is the move from “will” commit an offence to “may” committee an offence. In the move from “will” to “may”, we enter the realm of interpretation.

In an environment of increasing Islamophobia, the “may” space becomes a space of problematizing and criminalizing Muslim faith communities for their everyday practices. Growing a beard or putting on a head scarf becomes a potential security threat rather than a spiritual expression. We have indeed seen this through the recent travel limitations to the United States that were imposed on visibly Muslim individuals simply for who they are.

As a professor in the university system, I am deeply committed to the importance of freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of conscience. I am especially worried about how Bill C-51 can lead to the curtailment of these core liberal values.

A recent round table with Muslim youth found that while most of them saw political and civic engagement as a key, core aspect of Canadian identity, most of them also felt that there was not enough of it in their community. One reason they gave was the fear amongst the youth of being attacked for voicing their opinions on controversial topics.

A similar finding is in the data collected by the last Environics survey of Canadian Muslim opinion, conducted in 2016, which found that “One in six (17%) says he or she has felt inhibited about doing so because of [race], ethnicity or religion. This impact is...to be expressed [most] by Canadian-born Muslims (32%), those under 35 years of age (24%), and those who have experienced difficulties crossing borders (27%).”

This finding is troubling for three reasons at least. The first, of course, is the signal that a segment of a democratic society feels less than equal to their fellow citizens in expressing their points of view, without which a democracy cannot properly function. The second problem is that the feelings of inhibition, of not feeling free to speak out, are higher amongst Canadian-born and the youth, who are the future of our community, the very segment of the Muslim community who should feel most embraced for their Canadianness. Finally, those who feel inhibited in expressing their political or social opinions also express a weakening sense of belonging to Canada, 13%. I'm sure we don't have to tell you that the best defence Canada has is a population that feels a strong sense of belonging to Canada.

Candice Malcolm, a journalist for TheRebel, in her praise for Bill C-51, argued that “while our rights and freedoms [are sacred and] should never be needlessly sacrificed, freedom means nothing if we are not safe.” In fact, this is not true. Over the centuries, people have sacrificed their lives to bring freedom to their country. Safety without freedom is Pinochet's Chile, Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba.

We do not want to turn Canadian Muslims into the canary in the mine, making them into scapegoats, political prisoners, or prisoners of conscience. The terrain for what constitutes support for terrorism currently represents a slippery slope whereby core Muslim traditions and concepts—noble concepts, like sharia, hijab, and even the much-maligned jihad, which is a concept that means “to struggle for justice”, wrongly slandered as “holy war”—are refracted through an Islamophobic lens into prohibited speech in a liberal democracy.

The youths, the converts, the uninformed among the Muslims as well as the wider community need to be able to hold seminars and lectures and round tables and private conversations about these religious verses and traditions and concepts, the very ones the Muslim extremists call upon when trying to justify their turn to violence: what remains of jihad, what are the proper rules of engagement in war, what about participating in secular democracies, what is extremism from an Islamic point of view, what is the sharia, and what is the caliphate?

Bill C-51, Bill C-23, the preceding Anti-terrorism Act and the narrative swirling around it in the mainstream, especially in the right-wing media, do not give us this space to investigate these questions. A thought that cannot be debated in the open, in the cleansing light of day, will go underground and grow up twisted in the swamps of darkness.

[Safiah Chowdhury, Representative, Islamic Society of North America]

Thank you for your invitation to address the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Muslims have felt under siege since 9/11 and generally excluded from public discourse about us, so we appreciate the opportunity to be part of the process re-examining Canada's national security framework.

The Islamic Society of North America of Canada, or ISNA Canada, was incorporated in 1982 and is an outgrowth of the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada, founded in the early 1960s. We have around 1,000 members across the country, from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island.

My name is Safiah Chowdhury. I hold an M.Phil. in Islamic studies and history from the University of Oxford and I am a member of ISNA Canada's executive committee.

With me is Dr. Katherine Bullock. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto and teaches Islamic politics at the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto. She was elected to the ISNA Canada board in 2015.

ISNA Canada is a grassroots community organization that serves the spiritual, psychological, educational, and social needs of the Muslim community. It operates mosques and Islamic schools; assists the poor through disbursement of charitable donations; operates food banks; provides pastoral care to congregants; organizes religious festivals, conferences and lectures, matrimonial services, and family events; and conducts funerals.

ISNA Canada promotes living in peace and with good relations with neighbours. It is part of the Canadian interfaith community. It is thus grounded in the everyday experiences of Muslims in Canada. Our imams, our religious leaders, face an overwhelmingly constant stream of people turning to them for assistance on all matters to do with life, often in crisis situations.

As Canadians working very closely with communities and families, we understand and share the need to protect against violence. We recognize that we live in an increasingly globalized and digitized world and that threats to our safety can thus come from anywhere and are more complicated than ever to track. This violence and these threats compromise not only our safety but the very quality of life that we cherish so dearly that ultimately allows us to thrive.

We know that you will be hearing or have already heard from a number of organizations, Muslim and non-Muslim, such as the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, and other civil liberty organizations, that the Anti-terrorism Act, the even more frightening Bill C-51, and now Bill C-23 privilege fear of threat over real rights. This bill compromises the very Charter of Rights and Freedoms upon which we purport to exist. The people whose rights it compromises, who now feel targeted and, ironically, unsafe, are the country's almost 1.1 million Muslims.

We are not here to repeat those arguments, most of which we endorse. We are, as you've heard, not legal experts. As representatives from a large community-based organization, we are here to tell you about the very human impact anti-terror legislation has on our communities, our dignity, and our ability to thrive. We will refer to two points in particular. The first is how the narrative around terrorism leads to a rise in fear of Muslims. The second is about the impact on freedom of speech.

On Islamophobia, since 9/11 there has been a sharp rise in hate crimes against Muslims in Canada. As the “war on terror” centralized Muslims as the primary source of terrorism, Muslim communities—everyday average individuals who are at home or going to work, school, the grocery store, or the community centre—came under scrutiny.

Statistics Canada data tells us that crimes against Muslims are increasing despite the overall drop in identity-based attacks on other communities. Despite these accounts, as Canadian Muslims ourselves, we know that these are under-reported numbers. People in our community don't report hate crimes. We typically tend to brush them off as isolated, perpetrated by “lone wolves”, because historically this is what we have always been told.

That is despite the rise of right-wing extremism in Canada, which has been thriving and growing at alarming rates. Internal documents from CSIS, a body from this committee, suggest that extreme right-wing and white supremacist ideology has been the main ideological source for 17% of attacks in Canada. This is more than Islamic extremism. We know so acutely that this extreme right-wing hatred is often directed toward the Muslim community, from street harassment to the firebombing of a mosque in Peterborough, to the most recent example, on January 29, when six Muslims were ruthlessly killed in a Quebec mosque that had previously been targeted by these “lone wolf” white supremacists. These acts of violence by hatred-filled individuals are yet to be tried as terrorism, a term that seems to apply only to Muslims.

From what we know of the perpetrators of anti-Muslim attacks, they are propelled by dangerous rhetoric that positions Muslims as problems, as threats to the security of the state. The discourse around the Anti-terrorism Act and Bill C-51 speaks to this. In fact, in your very own green paper on national security, the only threats identified come from organizations or countries associated with Islam.

It is a strange situation, honestly, to navigate. Rhetoric on national security targets and typecasts Muslims, who then are increasingly becoming the victim of terrorism-related offences due to this very same rhetoric.

It places us in the perilous position of needing to protect ourselves against threats of violence because the world and our country position us as the threat.

[Michael Mostyn]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

B'nai Brith is Canada's oldest membership-based Jewish organization. Through its League for Human Rights, which maintains an anti-hate hotline and prepares an annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents, it is the premier advocate of human rights for Canada's Jewish community.

B'nai Brith testified before this committee in 2015, focusing on our support for one particular aspect of Bill C-51 relating to the creation of an offence for the promotion of terrorism, seizure of terrorist propaganda, and deletion of terrorist propaganda from computer systems. We offered several recommendations for amendments. My colleague David Matas, who serves as the senior legal counsel for B'nai Brith in Canada, will update our position in that regard in his statement.

We know the Jewish community is particularly vulnerable to hate propaganda throughout the world, and many of the most powerful terrorist organizations in existence today, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Daesh, rely upon the promotion of hatred with a particular focus on anti-Semitism to inspire acts of terror.

There are many examples of this internationally, such as the Hyper Cacher supermarket attack aimed at French Jewry, which was tied to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the horrendous attack on a Jewish religious centre in Mumbai that was specifically targeted as part of a larger Islamist-inspired terrorist attack in 2008.

In fact, terror attacks against Jews have taken place right across the globe. The Jewish community is quite cognizant of the threat it faces and knows that based on history, our community will continue to be the subject of terror attacks so long as incitement to hatred and radicalization continue around the world.

There is a tendency to think of terror as a foreign problem, but it is a Canadian problem too. In Canada the Jewish-owned West Edmonton Mall, as well as Jewish businesses worldwide, were the subject of a terror threat by al Shabaab, to the exclusion of non-Jewish-owned malls. We are not immune here in Canada.

The 2016 report on the terrorist threat to Canada cites Hezbollah, a listed terror group supported by the Iranian regime, as using its worldwide and Canadian networks for recruitment, fundraising, and procurement. Hezbollah remains a terror threat not only to the Jewish community but also to all Canadians, and it is believed to have a history of international terror operations, including the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Argentina. This is one of the reasons that B'nai Brith was supportive of the closing of the Iranian embassy in 2012 and believes it should not be reopened until the Iranian regime ends it support for terror and anti-Semitism.

B'nai Brith's annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents shows that anti-Semitism in Canada has remained relatively constant since 2011. With no active conflict occurring in Israel in 2015, 1,277 incidents were reported in that year. Harassment, including online harassment, has shown a general increase over five years. Vandalism declined to a 15-year low that year, while violence decreased slightly to 10 incidents. Our 2016 numbers will be released this spring.

Our Prime Minister is in Washington today, meeting for the first time with President Donald Trump. Canadians wish to maintain a positive relationship with the United States to enable efficient and speedy border crossings and trade. This requires taking our national security very seriously. Canada's counterterrorism and anti-radicalization efforts must acknowledge that specific identifiable groups—including Jewish, LGBTQ, Muslim, women, and others—are often the target for violence, and we must create a balanced framework to protect vulnerable societal groups from terrorism while maintaining important principles of freedom of speech within society.

Many often forget that minority Muslim groups are also targets of radical Islamist terror groups. Our community appreciates and supports the federal security infrastructure program, which supports the security needs of at-risk communities. It's unfortunate that children growing up in Canada today are made to realize that a police presence is required at Jewish synagogues during high holidays because of the ongoing threat of hate and violence.

Hatred is taught, and may prove the inspiration towards a violent pathway to radicalization. In this regard we should not forget that hate speech in Canada might play a role in sensitizing individuals to future radicalization efforts, whether in person or via the Internet, by desensitizing them to the humanity of their fellow human beings. Recently B'nai Brith exposed an Arabic-language local television show in Toronto, AskMirna, that had promoted holocaust denial. Rogers Television was not aware of any problems with the content, since they rely on the honour system and a complaint process. There is much work to be done in removing channels of hate from Canadian society, even from television and newspapers.

Those are my opening remarks, and Mr. Matas will now provide his update.

Opposition Motion—Commitments Regarding Electoral Reform

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was kind of dumbfounded by the minister's speech. I sincerely hope that she never expected to find herself in this position as Minister of Democratic Institutions when she decided to get into politics and offer her services to the Canadian people. Seriously, this is a real shame.

The Liberals campaigned on a promise of new environmental assessments. They did not deliver. They promised to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but they are keeping the previous government's targets. They promised to defend our rights and freedoms by repealing Bill C-51. They did not deliver. They promised to restore home mail delivery. They have not delivered. They promised to change our voting system. They broke that promise.

Is that how they plan to regain the people's trust? Are they really trying to fight cynicism, or are they just doing politics the way it has always been done?

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

With respect to the attack by the Prime Minister's chief of staff, I would simply say that it is sometimes an honour to be a target. I do not have a problem with that because it means that we have done a good job.

I would also like to point out that my colleague is quite right about the government's broken promises piling up, whether it is home mail delivery, or Bill C-51, or the small deficit promised by the Liberals during the election campaign.

However, when it comes to our democratic institutions and how people vote, these are fundamental elements of our identity as a society that expects promises to be kept.

Today, people realize that they can no longer take the Liberals at their word. They are saying that if the Liberals can break this promise, they are capable of breaking the next promises they make.

[Noah Shack]

The online-to-attack phenomenon is something that we all need to take stock of. I think there's a perception, and I don't know how prevalent it is anymore, but you have.... I mean, there are different models. You have highly organized terrorist groups, in which you will have centralized planning of an attack, training of people to carry out that attack, and orders that come through to carry out the attack. It's very systematic. Those attacks are a lot easier to disrupt, because there are a lot of points along the way from A to D.

That's why the measures that were put in place in Bill C-51, as I mentioned previously, are so important. They give some tools to be able to mitigate or disrupt those organic attacks that are inspired by messages but aren't necessarily directed from a headquarters. I think it's important that as we look at counter-radicalization writ large, yes, it's about bringing communities together and focusing on dispelling notions of hate within communities, and for sure a lot of the work has to be done internally within communities. There's certainly utility in bringing different communities together, but ultimately, for communities that are affected by radicalization, that's a problem they have to deal with internally as well.

But it's not just that. It also requires tools for our security apparatus and for law enforcement to be able to put some roadblocks in the way of those attacks that are inspired by the messages rather than directed by an organization.

[Noah Shack]

The German pilot program has been going on for one year, and it's a five-year program. I'm hopeful that, at the end of that, we'll see tremendous results. Teachers, who have a relationship with students who are with them day in and day out, can help to guide them and to nip this type of thing in the bud.

In the previous hearings on Bill C-51, we recommended convening a national counter-radicalization effort that would do essentially one of the things you were talking about before, which is to bring communities together so that there's a humanized face, and it would create a platform for face-to-face dialogue and interaction. Whether it's between the Jewish community and the Muslim community and the Christian community, whether it's faith communities or otherwise, it's important that we don't have people living in silos where the only interaction they have with this other group is hate messaging.

Public Safety

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are right to be worried about the protection of their privacy. The government still has not repealed Bill C-51, which breaches our rights, and now, one of President Trump's orders would hand over Canadian data to the United States without any legal protections.

Groups such as OpenMedia and the BC Civil Liberties Association are asking the government to stand up to Trump and protect Canadians' rights.

When will the minister take seriously the consequences of this order for Canadian citizens?

Opposition Motion—Taxes on Health and Dental Care Plans

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to speak to this motion.

I can say that we will be voting in favour of this motion even though we disagree with the wording, especially in the preamble and the amended preamble. I think we can have a discussion to determine whether this is a high level of taxation or not. We think it is not that high in comparison to what we see in other OECD countries.

As far as the last part of the motion is concerned, we agree that health and dental plans should not be taxed—at least not before the government presents a real context for the comprehensive analysis of the tax system that it is supposedly conducting.

It is very important to look at the tax system as a whole. I will quote from John Ivison of the National Post, who, after learning that the government was contemplating taxing health and dental benefits, wrote on December 2, “Dan Lauzon, a spokesman for [the] Finance Minister...said no decisions have been taken and that any moves would not be made in isolation.” However, what he wrote next was actually more interesting. It states, “The employee-sponsored health care tax exemption is being scrutinized as part of a sweeping review of 150 tax credits worth about $100 billion a year in foregone federal revenue.”

The government has said the tax system does not work. We agree. It has said that the tax system needs to be reviewed. We agree. However, reviewing tax expenditures, tax exemptions, tax deductions, and tax credits is not a review of the tax system. What the government is doing is once again raising the expectations of the population that it will address the real problem, the problem of fairness and equity in the tax system. People do not feel that it is a fair system. They do not feel that everyone is treated equally. By examining the whole range of tax credits and tax deductions, the government is saying that it has done its part and that we have a brand new tax system in this country. This is not the first time a government has taken us in that direction.

The Carter commission conducted the last real review of the existing tax system in the 1960s. I will not get into the details of that commission because many people have already done so. The review was very comprehensive and took a good five years.

The report was one of the most well-received reports in the entire world. Serious work was done to determine how the tax system could be adapted to the reality of the day. It is important to remember that income tax has been around since 1917. In 1960 or 1965, we still had a system that was designed during the Second World War. This was serious work. It was commissioned by John Diefenbaker, the Progressive Conservative prime minister at the time, and continued by Liberal minister Lester B. Pearson.

Prime minister Trudeau was the one who got it across the finish line. He took all of the work that was done and condensed it into a handful of recommendations, which were accepted. The very essence of the report, which was that every dollar of income should be taxed the same, got swept under the rug. In the end, a few changes were made, but we ended up with a system that falls somewhat short of the objectives originally set out for this exhaustive study.

I am reminding members of this little bit of history because we are now witnessing a similar attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadians. The government is telling Canadians that it understands them and that it will do what it takes to make the system fairer.

However, the proposal to tax private health and dental benefits is a trial balloon. It is not meant to make the system fairer. Rather, it is a way for the government to take money out of one pocket while trying to convince taxpayers that it is putting money in the other.

It is a very important question because it is going to be a defining question for the following years not only for this government but for any government in this country.

The last comprehensive review of the tax system took place back in the 1960s. There have not been any significant changes since, except maybe some brought by the finance minister back in the 1980s, Michael Wilson, who made some changes that did not, in our view, bring any more equity or fairness.

In terms of a comprehensive tax review, right now there are 3,000 pages of complex, unintelligible legal text, which even tax experts, who spend their lives studying this, cannot understand. We are facing a situation, a system, that is actually counterproductive for our economy. It is counterproductive for our level of economic growth. It is counterproductive for our productivity.

I am not the only one saying this. Mainstream economists are saying that the complexity of our tax system gives anyone, any tax expert, the ability to actually build an industry based on finding loopholes, which makes the system less and less equitable, less and less fair, and it is actually a drain on our economy. One of the top priorities of any government at this time should be really simplifying the tax system.

Simplifying the tax system does not mean just bringing forth some gimmicks, like a single-tax rate, or a flat tax, as it is called. We should not just be saying that we will be revising those tax credits and will try to find some savings, savings meaning expenditures lost to the pockets of the taxpayer, the citizen. That is not it. That is smoke and mirrors.

In terms of the commitments made during the last election, the Liberals are showing that they are masters of the smoke-and-mirror strategy.

We saw this yesterday, in the much-discussed announcement about electoral reform, a lofty promise. They went after NDP and Liberal voters by promising electoral reform that would make every vote count. Today, a year and a half later, voters know that they were duped by this government.

Let us take a look at the Liberals' promises, especially those concerning first nations. This government said that it would cease the previous government's legal actions appealing rulings in favour of indigenous children and various first nations communities. These rulings force the government to honour its traditional commitments towards first nations.

My colleagues from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, Timmins—James Bay, and my colleague from northern Saskatchewan, whose riding has a very long name, are doing an absolutely incredible job of ensuring that this government honours its promises made to first nations, which they believed.

All the broken promises and unfulfilled commitments are beginning to pile up. Bill C-51 is another example. The government was going to change it, abolish it, or transform it, but nothing is being done.

Nothing is being done. Time and time again, the Liberal government campaigned on real change, but compared to the previous Conservative government, its real change involves keeping the decisions and attitude of the previous government.

The Liberals are saying that they are doing it in a progressive fashion. They are keeping the Conservative target for climate change, but those are progressive targets now. They are keeping the agreement with the European Union, but now it is a progressive agreement. Everything the Conservatives did, they are keeping, and they call it progressive. That is what real change means for the current government.

Now we are facing a situation where the Liberals have promised to simplify the tax system and make it fairer. They were right to make that promise and we are making it also.

Why? It is because the system is actually leaking like a sieve, because the system is actually so complex that, as I said, there is a whole industry built on creating tax loopholes and trying to take advantage of any poor writing in one of the 3,000 pages of the Income Tax Act.

We also know that the system is so complex that the compliance costs for businesses and for citizens are becoming higher and higher. They are increasing. It is becoming more and more costly just to face the obligation as citizens, as people of this country, to actually contribute to the well-being of this country. We have to do it, and it is a good thing that we do it, but we are asking people to actually pay more and more, because the system is more and more difficult to understand.

Even worse is that the complexity of the system is actually increasing. One of the main problems we have for our revenue situation is the problem of tax havens and tax evasion. Because of that industry that actually tries to find loopholes, some of them cross the line, where a loophole is no longer a legal loophole but becomes a mechanism, a strategy, for tax evasion.

It is extremely difficult for the Canada Revenue Agency, which actually I have been very hard on, and I will continue to be very demanding. They do not have the proper resources to actually ensure compliance with the very complex legislation.

Those are all problems that we are now aware of. They are problems that we need to deal with and which require a structured response from the government. It was proposed to the Standing Committee on Finance that it carry out an in-depth study of the tax system. That is what the motion says. It does not provide any details or direction. It does not give the Standing Committee on Finance a mandate. Work will begin next Wednesday. What are we going to do? We will listen to various witnesses, including accountants, as well as representatives, I am sure, of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and other organizations. I already know what they will say. They will say that the system is too complex, that it has to be changed and simplified.

We will spend three, four, five, or six meetings getting all those witnesses, who will be saying the same things. How do I know they will be saying the same things? It is because I have heard them in the past saying those things. We would be wasting our time in the finance committee, which might be the intention of the motion, actually. We know that the finance department, and we know that from the Minister of Finance's spokesperson, is actually working right now on the same study. However, what they are claiming is a comprehensive tax review is nothing but a review of tax expenditures.

How many pages do tax expenditures take in the whole Income Tax Act? It is maybe a few dozen out of 3,000 pages. We have a system right now that is so complex, as I said, that nobody can really claim to master it all.

I think if the government really had guts and really had the intention of making sure that its commitment to simplify the tax system would be right, it would actually go many steps further. It might actually go, maybe not toward a royal commission, like the Carter commission, back in the sixties, but perhaps toward a blue ribbon commission that hired experts from various fields, including labour, business, and academia, and gave them the task of reviewing the system, because I have very limited faith in the finance department doing it.

I have very limited faith, not because I do not like the people who are part of it but because of the complexity of the task ahead of us, that the finance committee can actually do this work, because we do not have time to do it. We do not have the resources to do it, and we do not have the expertise to do it.

If the government was really serious, and it was not smoke and mirrors and was not just an empty promise that the Liberals will do little about, but claim they have respected, or simply break, because that is what we have witnessed since the government took power, they would look at the possibility of creating that blue ribbon commission, with members who are respected.

They might be divergent, in terms of belief or in terms of political leanings, but they will actually have the same objective, the same view, the same vision, which is to actually adapt an antiquated system, a system that was built in the mid-20th century, before computers, before the mobility of capital, and before globalization, and do what Carter did back in the sixties and adapt it for our times.

I dare the government to actually take that step. I dare the government to actually make us believe that it was not, once again, an empty promise to make Canadians feel comfortable about it but that it understands that we know the system is not fair.

Canadians have a decreasing trust toward the Canadian tax system. They do not believe it is fair anymore. They do not believe everyone is paying their fair share. Nobody likes paying taxes. We can all agree on this. It is always something difficult to accept. People will accept it if they know that their tax dollars are actually well spent, that they are spent for the common good, and that they are spent for the common projects we have in this country.

People will also accept it if they know that everybody is paying their fair share. When we talk to Canadians, one of the first things they say is that they feel they are being had, that there are two systems: one for the rich and one for them. The system for the rich, for the most affluent, is for those who can afford to pay some firms to tell them how to invest their money in the Bahamas, in Switzerland, in Luxembourg or in the Isle of Man, as we have seen, while they are required to pay.

Here is another example to illustrate how unfair the system is. Those people who hide their money away on the Isle of Man, in the Bahamas or elsewhere, knowing full well that they are hiding income from the taxman—if they get caught, they are told that it is no big deal, that they can simply return the money to Canada and pay the taxes that are owed and all will be forgiven. However, if a taxpayer who does not have the means to do that gets caught or even makes a technical mistake, it is a sure bet that the Canada Revenue Agency will not stop until that taxpayer has paid what he or she owes, in addition to interest and penalties.

We can therefore forgive taxpayers and Canadian citizens for thinking that there is a system for one class of people and another system for them.

The thing is that we tried to actually bring up this topic in the finance committee. We, the NDP. We did it in the past too with other NDP members of the committee. We are the ones who actually bring, constantly, motions to study the tax system and tax havens. The last was on the scheme involving KPMG and the Isle of Man.

The first meetings went fairly well, and I will say that all members were really into it. By the fourth meeting, basically all questions, except maybe from this side, were mainly softballs. That does not really help to increase the faith of Canadians in the system and the ability of this House to tackle this very important topic.

In brief, we need to remember that the issue currently being debated is one that the government itself brought forward, that is, the prospect of taxing benefits, such as health insurance and dental insurance, provided by employers. The justification for this was the need to conduct a systematic and thorough review of the tax system. When the pressure became too much, the Liberals rejected the idea. It was a trial balloon.

However, a systematic review of the tax system remains extremely important. It was promised by the government. What I am trying to say is that I am very afraid that this is just another promise like the one about electoral reform and all the others meant to persuade Canadians that the Liberal Party listens to their wants and needs. In the end, these promises were only meant to get people to vote for them so they could change sides and then manage expectations.

That is why I am hoping for real action from the government, either on the Standing Committee on Finance or through the department.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

The government of the day was facing serious issues and created Bill C-51 and SCISA. Was it a rush draft in the fog of war? In evaluating the drafting of this legislation, I know we've heard many people say we should just get rid of the whole thing, but could it be worked on, from CBA's perspective?

[David Elder]

From the very beginning, back to Bill C-51, which initially proposed the SCISA framework, the CBA's approach has always been about making the necessary adjustments to that law to carry on. To the best of my knowledge, we've never addressed a question or pursued a position that would have favoured the outright removal of the legislation.

[Laura Tribe]

One of things I want to make clear is that I am speaking on behalf of the media community, not just myself.

One of the things that has been made really clear to the media throughout this entire process since Bill C-51 was first introduced with the information-sharing provisions within it is that it should be scrapped.

Any time we have talked to our community about what they would reform, we get quite a clear message that it is not worth fixing, that it is too big, that it is too broad, and that we are better off scrapping it and introducing smaller, more detailed provisions—

[David Elder, Executive Member, Privacy and Access Law Section, Canadian Bar Association]

Thanks very much, and good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

My name is David Elder. I am an executive committee member of the privacy and access law section of the Canadian Bar Association. I also co-lead the privacy and data protection practice at Stikeman Elliott LLP. I was formerly the chief privacy officer for a major Canadian telecommunications company, and I have been practising privacy law for over 20 years.

Thank you for the invitation to present the CBA's view on the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act.

The CBA is a national association of over 36,000 lawyers, law students, notaries, and academics. An important aspect of the CBA's mandate is seeking improvements in the law and the administration of justice, and it is that perspective that brings us to appear before you today.

Our submission to the committee on SCISA was prepared by a CBA national security working group, with contributions from the privacy and access law section as well as other sections. The section's membership represents lawyers with in-depth knowledge in the areas of privacy law and access to information from every part of the country, drawn from private practice, industry, and government sectors.

Our section also worked on the CBA submission this past fall in response to the government's national security green paper, and the year before that on the CBA submission to the public safety and national security committee respecting Bill C-51, part of which contains SCISA.

I'll now address the substance of our submission.

The CBA supports information sharing for the purpose of national security when that sharing is necessary, proportionate, and accompanied by adequate measures against potential abuse. However, sharing too much information or sharing information for unrestricted purposes can lead to harmful consequences. Moreover, such oversharing is contrary to the principles underlying privacy laws in Canada.

SCISA has significantly expanded intragovernmental information sharing for national security purposes in Canada, including the sharing of potentially sensitive personal information, without precise definitions, basic privacy protections, or clear limitations on the purposes for sharing. While some helpful changes were made to SCISA before its final passage into law in 2015, the statute still causes concern on several fronts.

The CBA has four main concerns with the law as enacted.

The first is independent oversight. SCISA includes a number of useful guiding principles for information sharing, including the principle that originators should retain control over shared information and the principle that information should be disclosed under the act only to institutions carrying out responsibilities in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada.

However, to be meaningful, SCISA must include a robust oversight and accountability mechanism to enforce these principles. In the CBA's view, any oversight body should have independence from the government institutions that will be sharing information under the act in order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.

There may be several oversight models that could work in this regard. The committee of parliamentarians that was proposed in Bill C-22 could be one such option. Existing institutions, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, might also work.

Whatever oversight mechanism is pursued, in order to better facilitate the review of activities carried out under SCISA, the CBA submits that regulations should be introduced requiring disclosing institutions to keep a record of all disclosures made under SCISA and requiring receiving institutions to maintain records of subsequent use and disclosure of information received pursuant to SCISA. If such records do not exist, it will be nearly impossible for any oversight body to determine whether the guiding principles of the act are indeed being respected.

The second concern is balanced information sharing.

The CBA notes that subsection 5(1) of SCISA permits disclosure among the 17 government institutions listed in the schedules of the act if the information is relevant to the recipient institution's jurisdiction or responsibilities under an act of Parliament or another lawful authority respecting national security. In the CBA's view, mere relevance is a very low standard for what should be an exceptional sharing of information between government institutions, and this could allow for unnecessary and overbroad sharing of information, undermining the privacy rights of Canadians. The CBA agrees with the previous submissions of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and others that a test of necessity would better balance the objectives of SCISA with privacy rights and principles. In other words, in order for information to be shared with another institution, such sharing must not only be relevant to the receiving institution's mandate respecting national security, but also have to be necessary in order to allow the receiving institution to fulfill that mandate.

The CBA is also of the view that the existing schedule 3 to SCISA, which lists the institutions with which information may be shared under the act, should be expanded to include references to the specific sections of the statute supervised or implemented by those institutions that might relate to national security concerns. Greater specificity would assist both disclosing and receiving institutions, as well as any oversight body, in assessing whether disclosure to another institution might be appropriate.

Our third concern with SCISA is the lack of restrictions around subsequent use and disclosure of information disclosed to an institution under section 5 of SCISA. More specifically, the current provision seems to allow for the subsequent disclosure by a recipient institution to other non-designated government institutions, to individuals, to foreign governments, or even to the private sector, and for purposes unrelated to national security.

In the CBA's view, the information sharing between government institutions contemplated by SCISA should be seen as an extraordinary measure designed to fulfill an explicit narrow purpose. Accordingly, SCISA must be designed to eliminate what is sometimes called “purpose creep”, including potential disclosure to third parties.

The CBA is particularly concerned about subsequent use and further disclosures by a receiving institution when the information has been obtained by the disclosing institution through the exercise of extraordinary powers, such as powers to compel production of information or enter premises. It would be inappropriate for a receiving institution to be able to leverage, for purposes unrelated to national security, any investigation and enforcement powers not conferred on the receiving institution by Parliament. SCISA should not allow receiving institutions to obtain indirectly that which they cannot obtain directly.

Fourth, the CBA is concerned about reliability of information.

The CBA is concerned that SCISA includes few effective checks and balances on information sharing or safeguards to ensure that shared information is reliable. The Arar commission stressed the importance of precautions to ensure that information is accurate and reliable before it is shared. Omitting safeguards in SCISA ignores lessons learned through the Arar saga and the recommendations of the Arar commission, and risks repeating the same mistakes.

In conclusion, once again the CBA appreciates the opportunity to share our views on SCISA. We support balanced information sharing for the purpose of national security when it is necessary and proportionate, and is accompanied by safeguards that are adequate to protect individual privacy rights and to ensure the reliability of any information shared pursuant to the act.

I'd be pleased to respond to any questions the committee members may have.

[Laura Tribe, Executive Director, OpenMedia]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Laura Tribe, and I am the executive director of OpenMedia. We are a digital rights organization that works to keep the Internet open, affordable, and surveillance-free. Given our work, it seems pretty fitting that I'm joining you by digital link from Vancouver this afternoon.

Since Bill C-51 was first announced, OpenMedia has been actively campaigning alongside many other groups against this reckless, dangerous, and ineffective legislation. We believe Bill C-51 should be repealed in its entirety, and that the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, or SCISA, is one of the most problematic components within Bill C-51.

OpenMedia and our community believe that when the previous federal government passed SCISA, it weakened the privacy rules that keep us all safe. SCISA contributes to an alarming privacy deficit that makes all Canadians less secure. This privacy deficit is dangerous and will have lasting consequences for the health of our democracy, for our liberty, and for our daily lives.

I want to begin by commending this committee's recently published recommendations on reforms to the Privacy Act. As you are all aware, the Privacy Act has not been meaningfully updated since its introduction in the 1980s, and OpenMedia agrees wholeheartedly with this committee and the federal Privacy Commissioner that the Privacy Act must be brought into the digital age with the addition of strong, meaningful, and modern protections.

Specifically, we support your recommendations that the Privacy Act be strengthened to require that government activities related to the collection and sharing of information be necessary and proportionate.

We also strongly support your call to impose overarching limitations on the retention of data and to strengthen transparency reporting requirements for government institutions.

We believe the recommendations set out in your December report will substantively improve privacy protection and have the potential to help mitigate at least some of the serious problems with SCISA.

As you know, the government recently concluded the public phase of its consultation into a range of national security issues, including Bill C-51 and SCISA. Unfortunately, the green paper that was published at the outset of the public consultation focused far more on the desires of police than on the privacy needs of Canadians, with many issues, including those around information sharing, being framed in a highly one-sided way that ignores the reasons the public is so concerned in the first place.

Despite the misleadingly benign portrait of SCISA painted by this green paper, from a privacy perspective there are very serious problems with this legislation. Today I will be speaking to the three main concerns brought forward by the OpenMedia community.

OpenMedia's first concern is that SCISA enables domestic dragnet information sharing that security experts warn is counterproductive. As you know, SCISA authorizes all federal institutions to disclose Canadians' private information to no fewer than 17 separate government agencies.

Anything that relates to the sweepingly broad definition of “activities that undermine the security of Canada” can be disclosed. I echo the concerns of the BCCLA's Micheal Vonn that not only does SCISA have, and I quote, “no requirement for individualized grounds for data collection”, but that it seems “likely it was enacted precisely for the purposes of bulk data acquisition.”

This is deeply problematic. To participate in modern life, citizens must share lots of information with our government. This information should not be repurposed into an open-ended intelligence dragnet.

Previous witnesses have raised specific examples that shed light on just how problematic the type of information sharing facilitated by SCISA can be: CIPPIC's Tamir Israel cited recent examples of government targeting journalists and peaceful indigenous activists and expressed concern that SCISA could be leveraged to share information about their activities in spite of the supposed exception for activities of “advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression”, and the BCCLA's Micheal Vonn pointed to the extraordinary data collection powers of FINTRAC and how its counterbalancing privacy protections have been “decidedly unsettled by SCISA to the point where its constitutionality may be at issue.”

OpenMedia believes the principles of necessity and proportionality are workable mechanisms for sharing or receiving threat data, and there is no need for SCISA's expanded definitions of security in this context.

To safeguard Canadians, information sharing of data entrusted to government agencies should only occur in narrow circumstances, and the Privacy Commissioner must be empowered to assess the overall necessity and proportionality of any and all information-sharing activities.

Additionally, all government institutions should be required to keep thorough records of when they disclose our private information, including to foreign governments, and information sharing in general should only occur subject to formalized agreements.

OpenMedia's second major concern with SCISA is that inappropriate information sharing with foreign governments can have a devastating impact on the lives of individual Canadians. In recent years, over 200 Canadians have publicly come forward to say their personal or professional lives have been ruined due to information disclosures with foreign governments, despite never having broken the law, and we'll never know how many others who have been impacted have chosen to stay silent.

Some have faced career limitations, while others have had to deal with travel restrictions. False charges that were subsequently dropped or dismissed, never resulting in criminal records, or even brief contact with the mental health system can create flags with life-changing consequences. These stories underline a very real threat regarding the government's handling of our sensitive data: that without safeguards in place, government bureaucrats will simply act recklessly and make life-impacting mistakes.

Canada's security agencies, the designated recipients of information under SCISA, routinely and on a large scale share information with their counterparts in the U.S. When mistakes are made, the impact on individual Canadians can be profoundly damaging. We need look no further than the case of Maher Arar to see that. These long-standing problems have been exacerbated by the Trump administration's recent decision to eliminate all U.S. Privacy Act protections for foreigners, including Canadians. As Professor Michael Geist points out,

the order should raise significant concerns about government data shared with U.S. authorities as well as the collection of Canadian personal information by U.S. agencies. Given the close integration between U.S. and Canadian agencies—as well as the fact that Canadian Internet traffic frequently traverses into the U.S.—there are serious implications for Canadian privacy.

These concerns are compounded by the Trump administration's expressed openness to returning to torture policies that were largely discontinued by the previous administration. Sadly, should SCISA remain in place, more examples like that of Maher Arar are not unlikely.

OpenMedia's third concern is the way that reckless information sharing harms our digital economy. Leading Canadian business figures, including the heads of Hootsuite, Slack, Shopify, and OpenText, have warned that the information-sharing provisions of SCISA will harm the Canadian economy by undermining trust in our commerce and trade. In an open letter published shortly after Bill C-51 was first proposed, these business leaders had this warning:

The data disclosures on innocent Canadians and those travelling to Canada for business or recreation could make our clients leave us for European shores, where privacy is valued. Duplicated data flowing between multiple unsecured federal government and foreign government databases leaves Canadians and Canadian businesses even more open to being victimized by data breaches, cyber criminals and identity theft.

A second letter from the business community, published last month in response to the government's national security consultation, reiterated these concerns and called for the legislation to be fully scrapped, saying:

We hope your government will listen to Canadians, the business community and experts by starting over with new legislation that respects our collective desire for security overall. Privacy and data integrity safeguards represent security in its most clear and basic sense. Let’s start with this understanding and work from there.

For all these reasons, OpenMedia believes that the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act should be completely repealed, alongside the rest of Bill C-51. As one of our community members told us recently:

Repeal it completely and do it now. If the Liberal government believes some sort of bill is needed, then write a new bill from scratch only after thorough consultations with legal experts and citizens to ensure Canadian rights and freedom are preserved.

Strong privacy rights need to be at the heart of any healthy democracy because they are the foundation of many other democratic rights we hold dear. We all deserve effective legal measures to protect the privacy of every resident of Canada against intrusion by government entities or malicious actors and abuse by law enforcement. Canadians deserve at least the same high level of privacy safeguards for our digital homes as we do for our brick-and-mortar homes, if not higher, given the highly sensitive data stores and interactions that are increasingly housed online.

For many Canadians, security is privacy, in the most human sense of that word. Repeated revelations of intrusive government surveillance, whether that be spying by CSE, the new powers in SCISA, or other elements of Bill C-51, have left Canadians fearful for their personal security. This committee's work can play a significant role in ensuring that Canada can address those fears and become a global leader in reining in excessive digital surveillance practices. Let's lead by example and help set a new global standard for privacy protection in a digital age.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

I call the meeting to order. For those of you who believe in the motto “better late than never”, I am certainly glad to get this committee meeting number 42 going.

I want to welcome everybody back. I hope everybody had a great Christmas and holiday break, and I wish everyone a healthy and happy new year. It's great to see familiar faces, not only those around this table but of course those of all the folks who sit in the wings and support us as well. It's great to see all of you.

We have a continuation of our study on the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, more affectionately known as SCISA. Today we have with us witnesses who have been waiting very patiently. On behalf of my colleagues, I just want to say that it's very understandable why there's a bit of delay today. A couple of seasoned colleagues in the House of Commons are doing their farewell speeches. I think members were sticking around for that. We can't fault them for that. There are a lot of friendships and good relations across party lines for those kinds of things here.

Without further ado, I will introduce our three witnesses. I'd ask you to give your testimony in the order in which I introduce you. You have up to 10 minutes for your opening remarks. Then we'll immediately proceed to questions and answers.

From OpenMedia, we are joined by video conference by Ms. Laura Tribe, who is the executive director. Welcome.

From the Canadian Bar Association, we have Mr. David Elder, executive member of the privacy and access law section. Also, of course, as an individual, we have Mr. David Fraser, who is a partner at McInnes Cooper.

Ms. Tribe, the floor is yours for up to 10 minutes please.