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.

[Brian Sproule, As an Individual]

First of all, I'm proud to say I was one of those people picketing outside here against Bill C-51. The working group to oppose Bill C-51 was established shortly after the introduction of that bill into Parliament. At that time, we said to “stop” Bill C-51; after its adoption, we changed it to “appeal” Bill C-51.

It's our view, and it always has been, that there is no place for this kind of legislation in Canada. It is police state legislation. It has nothing to do with security or opposing terrorism.

This kind of legislation, which was introduced by the Conservatives and supported by the Liberals, has also been brought in by various allies of the United States in Europe and other parts of the world.

The United States is the biggest source of terrorism internationally and inside the United States. Right from the early days of the labour movement in the United States, terrorist methods have been used to suppress worker strikes, to kill, assassinate, or lay trumped-up charges against union leaders. The black people of the United States have been subject to lynchings, mass murder, and what we see today going on with police murders with impunity.

This is the kind of government, the United States...and then, of course, internationally with the destabilization of various governments, and the organization of coups throughout Latin America over the last several dozen years. The United States is the only country that ever dropped nuclear weapons in time of war, and so on. The false accusation of weapons of mass destruction was used in Iraq to attempt to justify the invasion there. The accusations against Gadhafi, and now Assad, and on and on, all these are pretexts to launch invasions and to bring about regime change.

If we want to put an end to terrorism, Canada can make a contribution by immediately withdrawing from NATO and breaking with the U.S. military industrial complex.

Thank you.

[Joey Bowser, As an Individual]

Hello. My name is Joe Bowser. I'm speaking here today as a private citizen and as someone who recently dealt with the full prior surveillance powers of most of the agencies of Public Safety Canada, and probably the CSE as well, although I'll never get confirmation of that.

First of all, I want to have it on record that I'm against the measures introduced in Bill C-51, of course. I'm also against the new proposed measures mentioned in the green paper. That would include compelling passwords at the border as well as data retention as well as back doors to encryption.

I'm actually here today to talk about accountability when our rights are actually violated; how just random Canadians, anyone with a cellphone, can actually have their rights violated; and about how law enforcement deals with actual technology to keep up with the digital world.

One recent thing that keeps popping up in the news, over and over again, is the technology. This box is called the StingRay. In case you're not aware, a StingRay is a device that law enforcement and intelligence communities can use to actually get your IMSI number, which is unique to your phone and your SIM card. It can identify you. Of course, once you have the IMSI, then you can go the telephone provider and say, “I want to know whose IMSI this is”. They can provide you all the basic metadata information, as well as probably all their Internet data, and you can actually pinpoint, using this device, when and where people are.

In once instance, Corrections Canada had one on a prison. They cracked down on illegal cellphones that had been smuggled in. They wanted to make sure no one had cellphones. But a farmer next door also got caught in it. The big problem with these cell towers is that they're fake. If the farmer had to call 911, he'd be in big trouble. It wouldn't work. The call wouldn't actually go through. It would probably reset, he'd have to dial again, and then it would go through. That's two seconds more that the person would have to deal with, where 911 doesn't work. Think about that.

Now, let's say you see something at the art gallery while you're in Vancouver. You see one of the many protests here—like the one outside, where you can hear them chant “Stop Bill C-51”—and let's say you want to check it out. You have, of course, the RCMP with their StingRay out trying to just collect data, to see who's there, as well as to surveil the crowd. You know, they gather some data. They see some people they're interested in. They know the people who are there, so they grab all that IMSI data and then they try to weed out whose IMSIs are what, based on their intelligence. Then they go and surveil them, steal their trash, and do all the other regular normal stuff that police do.

The thing is that if you're under surveillance, even if you're not doing anything illegal or wrong, and even if you don't get arrested, it still affects your life. You're definitely way more paranoid than you were before, especially since you don't have any recourse to know if you ever were under surveillance. There's no way of finding out. There's also no way for the public to actually talk about these technologies or confirm that they were ever being used.

The way the laws are written in Canada is that the onus, the power, is entirely in law enforcement. Even though the criminals already know how to get past the StingRay—it's old technology from 2008—the public doesn't know. Criminals can just get another SIM card or whatever and just bypass this technology. But the public, they don't know. They just don't. They'll keep on getting picked up by the IMSI and they'll keep on getting their data surveilled.

The IMSI is unique to everybody's cellphone. If you have a cellphone, you have an IMSI. It can be picked up by a device that's in the back of a van with some antennas. This device isn't actually registered with Industry Canada, so that's technically illegal as well, although I'm sure there's a warrant to get around that.

[Judy Hanazawa, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for allowing me to speak. My name is Judy Hanazawa, and I'm the chair of the human rights committee of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association. We're members of the National Association of Japanese Canadians.

I'm going to read a little bit from the national association's press release regarding Bill C-51:

In 1942 the Canadian government used the War Measures Act to forcibly displace 22,000 Canadians of Japanese ancestry to internment and labour camps and deported over 4,000 to Japan after the War—many who were born in Canada. Public safety and “perceived insurrection” were the reasons given for this extraordinary violation of human rights and citizenship at that time. Bill C-51 allows the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to arrest those who “may” carry out an act of terrorism. Currently law enforcement agencies can carry out an arrest if they believe that an act of terrorism “will” be carried out. In addition, those who are seen in the eyes of the Government as threatening the “economic or financial stability of Canada”—such as those who engage in non-violent, environmental civil disobedience—fall under the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill.

I know that it's become an act since this was written.

Further to this at the time of the redress for Japanese Canadians in 1988 the Prime Minister of the day said that no further violations of this kind will be visited upon any other Canadian of any kind.

I'm speaking today after hearing the various concerns about Bill C-51 to focus mainly on the issue of race, and how the issue of racism does play into this.

As an organization and as a community that has gone through internment we've made a decision as a national community to reach out to other communities that may be facing injustice, or displacement, or other violations of human rights. We've reached out to welcome Canadians, and we've certainly heard the day-to-day realities of the kinds of rights infringements that happen to persons of Muslim ancestry and Muslim beliefs. In the same way that race has affected our history it is very much there, as has been said before. I'd like to point this out when looking at the groundwork needed to address security issues in Canada. We are looking at the radicalization of youth. There will not be any kind of reaching in to look at the social issues that affect young people today who may be of Muslim or Islamic-based background who may be considered security risks.

In this environment, where Bill C-51 can pick up people and detain them without their right of defence, and without the use of the regular law enforcement system, I believe that rather than allowing for some way of healing terrorism it will drive it underground. I think that—as with other youths of other communities of colour, our first nations youth—the sense of alienation from Canada is very much present among Muslim youth. That needs to be addressed not because of radicalization, but because this is a matter of race as much as anything else. I ask you to look at this matter as a very major factor in why the bill was developed. As much as colour represents a violation of general rights for Canadians it's very much a matter of concern to us as a community that has gone through a violation. Can I ask you to please consider that?

Thank you.

[Joshua Paterson, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

I wasn't expecting to speak tonight. You'll notice that I did write my submission on the back of an envelope, and I hope that won't be held against the BC Civil Liberties Association because generally that's a negative thing.

My name is Josh Paterson, and I am a member of the public. I'm also, in my day job, the executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association.

I have a very few quick remarks that I want to add this evening.

First of all, thank you so much for coming. As Ms. Tribe pointed out, we did ask the Parliament to consult on this, and we're happy that Parliament is consulting on this.

I fear that you may see fewer people in the room than are concerned about the issue. That could be a function of having only received notice the Friday before Thanksgiving, and people really had only four working days to even consider this. Groups like ours had four working days to try to let people know what's happening, in addition to Parliament's efforts. I don't make any comment on it other than to invite you to reflect that there may not be as many people in the room or across the country as have concerns about these issues.

The other thing, too, is that these are very complex issues, whether it's the government online consultation or this. When you say to a Canadian, “What do you think about the national security framework?”, people have feelings about it and people have concerns. It's quite a daunting thing for a parent, or a retiree, or someone who is working, or someone who is not working to put together a submission for a parliamentary committee.

I want to say quickly that our organization did call for the non-passsage of, and it now calls for the repeal of, Bill C-51. I'm going to focus my remarks very quickly on one thing that isn't, by the way, covered in the green paper—and I know that's not your process—and it is the mass warrantless online surveillance by the Communications Security Establishment.

Our organization is the one that has brought the constitutional challenge against the federal government for mass warrantless online surveillance. While it was in the ministerial mandate letter to do something about it, it's something we've heard very little about. The fact that it's not covered at all in the green paper, and that there is no mention of whether we should put warrants in place for mass online surveillance, is of great concern to us.

Ministerial authorizations right now, as many of you on the committee will know, give the CSE the ability to intercept private communications without any judicial oversight and without getting any authorization beyond the elected politicians. It was confirmed this summer as part of the evidence coming out in our case that, contrary to CSE's denials, or saying that they weren't doing it, they were and have been collecting a broad swath of information from Canadians on the Internet. They've been sharing that with foreign agencies, and they have had screw-ups sharing it with foreign agencies.

It's something that's of deep concern to us. We think it's really important for this committee to be thoughtful about that and to look, for example, to the example of the private member's bill from the last Parliament as to the need for a warrant.

At BCCLA, we don't say that there shouldn't be spying, and we don't say that there shouldn't be national security agencies doing this kind of work. What we're concerned about is how they do their work, and we're concerned about the legal requirements around that. Here it is legal requirement-free, and once the minister authorizes it, then it's a green light, and they can carry on doing that in perpetuity or for quite a long time.

Thank you for obliging me an extra 40 seconds. I appreciate that you've come, and I wish you luck in your deliberations.

[Maria Pazmino, As an Individual]

Hi, I'm Maria, and I'm also here on behalf of OpenMedia. I manage OpenMedia's social media accounts, and in that position I am exposed to a lot of our community feedback and comments on a lot of our campaigning, including Bill C-51.

In my role every day I hear Canadians ask me, “Why hasn't the government repealed Bill C-51 yet?” I have a simple question for you. Why hasn't the government done so already?

Thank you.

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

Chair, with all due respect to my colleague, could we refrain from getting into what borders on starting to justify things when we're talking about legislation?

I could just say to everyone who says they want to repeal Bill C-51 that I agree with them. That's not helpful at all to the process, given that we all represent different political points of view on this. It will be my pleasure to do that every time, but I think we should avoid that.

[Laura Tribe]

Yes, oversight is a great first step and it's great to see that some progress is being made on that, but the big concern we have is that Bill C-51 introduced so many additional problems that all that oversight is required. It's great to see that we're making progress, but all the while, Bill C-51 is still on the books. That's really the number one concern we're hearing from our community.

It's almost a year to the date since election day. We were told changes would happen. It's great to see that these consultations are taking place, and we asked for them a year ago. We wanted these consultations to happen. We want to be able to take the voices of the public and bring them to the people who make the decisions.

At the end of the day, we can say these things and that legislation is one part and a tiny piece of the puzzle, but it's really hard for us to go back to our community and assure them that it's still worth taking part in these consultations.

They are listening. What we're really looking for is a way to make sure that people know that this isn't just going on the record, but that these public proceedings will be disclosed to the public. How do they know what you have heard? How do they know that the decisions you make reflect the actual input you're getting from Canadians? A real concern we're hearing from our community is that this is an exercise in futility, and that it's already decided.

[Laura Tribe, As an Individual]

Good evening.

My name is Laura Tribe. I am the executive director of OpenMedia. As some of you know—I've heard that some of you have already heard from us—we are a digital rights organization that works to keep the Internet open, affordable, and surveillance-free.

Since Bill C-51 was first announced, we've been campaigning alongside many other groups, initially to stop Bill C-51, and now to get it fully repealed. Over the past 20 months, we have seen over 300,000 Canadians speak up against this reckless, dangerous, and ineffective legislation. OpenMedia has set out our detailed concerns about Bill C-51 and many other threats to Canada's digital privacy, including encryption—thank you, Jesse—at saveoursecurity.ca. It's a tool that we've built to encourage as many Canadians as possible to take part in the government's security consultations and ensure that our charter rights are protected.

Our calls for how the government must respect privacy and free expression online are fully outlined in our platform, and we will submit them via written comments to make sure that you get them in full detail, but we do invite you and everyone here to visit saveoursecurity.ca to see our written comments in full.

Tonight, we have three main asks for you, our elected representatives on the committee. The first is to make sure that Bill C-51 gets completely repealed—now. I cannot stress enough how urgent this is. Every single day this legislation remains on the books, innocent Canadians continue to be treated as criminals. Our privacy and security are compromised, and our charter rights are violated. 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 a thorough consultation with legal experts and citizens to ensure Canadian rights and freedoms are preserved.

Second, we ask you to implement strong privacy rules to keep us safe from surveillance. I have here with me, and will leave with you, a copy of “Canada's Privacy Plan”, a positive vision for privacy that we crowdsourced with the help of over 125,000 Canadians. This plan calls for an end to warrantless access to our personal information, a stop to mass surveillance of innocent people—a practice that, just earlier today, the U.K.'s top surveillance court ruled as a breach of our human rights—and accountability, transparency, and oversight for security agencies.

Third, we are asking for a commitment to a transparent process for setting out the results of these consultations. You say you want the public to engage in these consultations, but we are not sure how we are being heard. To be frank, our community is very skeptical. This is particularly critical, given the alarm expressed by experts, including the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, about the skewed, one-sided way in which the government—not the committee—has framed many of these national security issues.

OpenMedia is built on crowdsourcing the voices of our community to find the best positive path forward. I believe in the power of community engagement, but we need a commitment that our voices will not be ignored. What assurances do we, the public, have that our voices are being heard and that this is not an exercise in futility? We will not accept “Trust us” as an answer. From Five Eyes information sharing to invasive StingRay cellphone surveillance, accidental privacy breaches, and backdoor encryption, we have consistently been shown that our digital information is too vulnerable to be left to just trust. More important, we shouldn't have to trust you. We should have laws to protect us and safeguards to prevent abuse. We need real transparency, accountability, and oversight.

On behalf of the OpenMedia community, I challenge you to truly listen to Canadians and save our security. Do not perpetuate a culture of fear. Protect our charter rights and values, and reimagine a world where all Canadians can use the Internet without fear of being watched.

As always, OpenMedia remains committed to delivering the voices of Canadians to our decision-makers. We have done so here today, and we look forward to discussing more with you in the future.

Thank you.

[Barbara Taylor, As an Individual]

I would like to talk personally about why I feel less safe and less secure since Bill C-51 was passed. I can remember the 1970 War Measures Act in Montreal, and Bill C-51 strikes me as being like the War Measures Act full-time forever.

My first reaction was to ask for a definition of terrorism. Harper seemed to imply that it was anyone who disagreed with him. Reg Whitaker spoke earlier today about criminalizing a certain range of opinion, so that's a real concern.

Up to a year ago, I might have felt hesitant to even come out to a public consultation like this, but that's academic, because clearly there were no public consultations before C-51 was passed.

I wondered why new prisons were being constructed at a time when the crime rate was going down. Who would be filling them? Would environmentalists who opposed diluted bitumen pipelines be labelled terrorists and arrested and incarcerated? Would it be peace activists who did not welcome foreign misadventures or even the loss of the long-gun registry be arrested, or even those committed to non-violence, subject to infiltration by agents provocateursto justify arrest and detention? I'm thinking in particular about the G8 summit in Toronto. I heard some horror stories from those who were there. There were audits of NGOs that read like a who's who of the organizations that I support, the charities I support, including my own church.

I've been wondering just in the past week why the Trudeau government is reluctant to give up the inheritances of the Harper government. I've heard that, with regard to climate change, it has the same inadequate goals. I heard on CBC radio today about the same low levels of health care dollars going to the provinces. And now, why does it want to keep what was given to it with Bill C-51?

I have one last piece of personal disclosure, which is that I'm a Raging Granny. If we had had more notice, I wouldn't be the only one here today. We have a song that we were singing. I'll give you just two lines. It goes, “Don't spy on me, RCMP. This isn't Argentina.”

I have another song that I will leave with you along with a cartoon from the Vancouver Sun from 1998, which will show you that this has been going on since before 9/11 and before Bill C-51. When APEC was held here in Vancouver, the Raging Grannies were listed as a low-level threat. Now at the time, our response to that was “what do you mean 'low level'?” But since then, we're a little more nervous. I am. I'll only speak for myself.

I want to leave you with a song and a cartoon and an accompanying article. To whom should I give them, please?

[Micheal Vonn]

I certainly would be very happy to turn my mind to it. The problem with Bill C-51 is that the two acts are chasing each other's tails. The Privacy Commissioner says that what happens in the information sharing act falls within the purview of the Privacy Act, but the information sharing act says that if you have lawful authority for the culling of that information, you have an exemption to the Privacy Act.

The government and the OPC currently do not agree on the operation of how these two acts match. That's part of the inherent complexity of addressing this issue and why I think we need to go back to the drawing board on how to put this together. There currently is not even consensus in the government as to how it works.

[Prof. Reg Whitaker]

Yes, it's a pretty big issue.

I think you have to look at the bigger picture. On Bill C-51, I want to re-emphasize that my objections—and I think the objections of a lot of the critics of Bill C-51—are not just on the civil liberties, personal privacy, and all of those kinds of perfectly valid issues, but on the concern that it may actually render counterterrorism less effective. That's an important part of it.

A more holistic approach to these issues is certainly very much called for. I think it is one of the problems in the green paper that there is a bit of the continuation of the silo kind of thinking. That was what the Arar commission tried to really break out of in saying that co-operation across agencies and across boundaries and in the war on terrorism is an increasingly important aspect of how the counterterrorism is carried out and that, therefore, accountability has to be without borders as well. Also, it said that having accountability focused on the silos while the actual operations were happening on a much more integrated basis was a really bad plan. I think your committee really should be emphasizing that broader holistic approach to the problem.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

But we're looking at more than just Bill C-51—

[Micheal Vonn]

That it is daunting, I certainly do. I very much appreciate that this is a very complex field, and part of what has happened is that the field has become more complex in part because of Bill C-51, which was a radical revisioning of our national security landscape.

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

Do you in some ways view the potential problems also have to do with some of the broad definitions that Bill C-51 had that became part of the law?

When we look at activities that undermine the security of Canada, it has that very broad definition, where it could be first nations protesting a pipeline or even the idea of promoting terrorist activities, which, again, is something that's been called far too broad. Do you consider that those two things are intrinsically linked, because not only are we making that profile, but we're also doing it with very broad definitions?

[Micheal Vonn]

The question is, what is the exact problems and what are the appropriate tools to address them? What I had hoped to do, in concentrating in such a focused manner on the information sharing act, was to point out what CSIS had identified as the problem, what they thought was the correct catchment for addressing it, and how Bill C-51 is none of those things. Again, to be very specific—and it must be grounded in specificity—it's to say, what exactly was the information that was unable to be appropriately shared or acquired, and what would be the mechanism of achieving it, as opposed to allowing an act that simply allows for wholesale importing of whole bulk datasets of personal information that are not to any benefit in the national security realm? That's the distinction I'm looking at.