Bill C-22 (Historical)

An Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts

This enactment establishes the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and sets out its composition and mandate. In addition, it establishes the Committee’s Secretariat, the role of which is to assist the Committee in fulfilling its mandate. It also makes consequential amendments to certain Acts.

National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock is a relatively new colleague in the House and one for whom I have gained a lot of respect. He asked a great question.

I am not going to pretend I have figured out how a Liberal mind works, but at the same time, I am not going to be naive enough to tell him that it will get better. It will not get better. The Prime Minister, the PMO, is going to have final say on whatever comes out of this committee's work. It should be a good committee, and it has the ability to be, but because of the restrictions, at the end of the day, I think Canadians and parliamentarians are going to be very disappointed.

If the Liberals would take the time, swallow the pill, and make the same kinds of changes that the Brits just did in 2013, they could make this the bill that it should be.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Louis-Hébert.

I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-22, a piece of legislation that would bring overdue changes to our country's approach to national security and put the lie to, once and for all, the idea that we need to make a choice between the desire to keep Canadians safe and the desire to safeguard the rights and freedoms that all Canadians cherish.

Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, as western governments and western societies have struggled to respond to this new terrorist threat, this false argument has been presented. We must ensure that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the tools and resources they need to counter these new and often rapidly emerging threats. However, no, public safety need not come as a detriment to our fundamental freedoms and rights. I reject this false argument and so does our government. To quote Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

It has often been said of the terrorists that they hate us for our freedom. While I find that a trite and simplistic statement, the fact is that if we do trade our freedom for greater security then, in essence, those who use terror as a weapon have achieved their goals, for their mission is not merely death or destruction; it is terror. It is to fundamentally change our society for the worse and we must not allow that to happen.

We cannot close our society to the world, but rather, we must remain an example to the world, a model of openness, of tolerance, of diversity. Let our diversity truly be our strength and let Canada show that people of different religions, different languages, and different cultures can live together in happiness and in security. The world needs more Canada, and at a time when countries are looking increasingly inward, at a time when countries are closing their doors to trade, to refugees, and to the rest of the world, it needs the Canadian example more than ever.

Let me turn to the specific measures in Bill C-22. The centrepiece of this legislation is the establishment of a national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians that would play a crucial role of oversight and accountability over our national security system. The members of this committee would have access to classified information and a robust mandate to review all the national security framework and ensure it is working to keep Canadians safe while safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms.

Sunshine is always the best disinfectant, and while it is only understandable that classified information cannot be shared with all Canadians, it is important that the people's representatives, elected by and accountable to the people, have this access to ensure the people's interests are safeguarded. This is a fundamental responsibility of a member of Parliament, and this is an oversight model that has proven successful for Canada's closest allies. I fully support this initiative.

As we design and debate a new national security framework for Canada, something that has been missing during previous debates is consultation. I am a Canadian Muslim of Pakistani descent. There are more than one million Muslims in Canada. I am a member of a community that has often felt unfairly targeted by security agencies and stigmatized as part of these security debates. From the attacks of September 11th forward, we have felt marginalized, profiled, and seen as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution.

I can assure the House that there are few Canadians more patriotic than my fellow Muslim Canadians, and I am honoured to be one of eleven Muslims whom the people of Canada have elected to represent all citizens in this hallowed chamber.

Those of us who have chosen to come to Canada and make this our home did so for both the security that all Canadians value and the rights and freedoms that all Canadians cherish. Many of us have fled countries where personal liberties are severely limited or even non-existent, and come seeking safety from countries where violence and conflict are a daily fact of life. Yet too often, as I said, we have been treated with suspicion and mistrust. It is as if the security agencies took a racial profiling approach to national security rather than trying to work with the community, and that needs to change.

We need to bring a community policing approach to national security. We know this approach works in our cities. When my colleague, the hon. member for Scarborough Southwest, took over the Toronto Police Service division in Regent Park, relations between the community and the officers sworn to protect it were at a record low. By taking a community policing approach, and treating the community as partners, the member for Scarborough Southwest was able to establish trust with the community, a trust based on mutual understanding and respect, and crime began to drop. People in the community knew they could turn to the police in times of trouble or when someone was going down the wrong path.

In the same way, national security agencies and the government must see communities like mine not as a problem but as part of the solution. Security agencies must proactively engage with all of the community and make us partners in building a safer and freer society. We are ready to be partners. Many of us have come to Canada to flee extremism and violence. We want nothing more than to root it out in our new home. That is why I was happy to see that budget 2016 included an investment of $35 million over the next five years to establish an office of the community outreach and counter-radicalization coordinator. This commitment is reaffirmed in Bill C-22.

There is already a lot of great work taking place in communities across the country on counter-radicalization initiatives. However, these initiatives are lacking coordination and resources, and best practices are not being shared. This new office would provide national leadership by coordinating federal, provincial, territorial, and international initiatives, share those important best practices that have proven successful on the ground, and support community outreach and research. Canada can, and must, become a world leader in counter-radicalization, and show that it is possible to build an open, pluralistic, and democratic society. That means engaging all Canadians in keeping our nation both safe and free.

Let us commit here and now to building a Canada where our youth never have to feel that they are different, that they do not belong, or that they are worthy of suspicion simply because of their religion, their ethnicity, or the colour of their skin. That is my dream for the next generation and for my two sons.

I am pleased to note that Bill C-22 also includes a number of other initiatives that seek to safeguard personal rights and freedoms that were missing from the previous government's Bill C-51. For example, there are amendments to better protect the right to advocate and protest, and a better definition of the rules regarding terrorist propaganda.

The government is also introducing a statutory review of national security legislation to ensure that the people's elected representatives have not only the opportunity but the responsibility to regularly review national security legislation to ensure that it is still necessary, still effective, and is not unduly restricting the rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens.

These are all amendments that our party tried to make to Bill C-51 in the last Parliament to bring more balance to the legislation. Unfortunately, these amendments were rejected by the previous government.

I will be supporting the bill. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will join with us in supporting this important legislation. I believe that Bill C-22 will strengthen our national security apparatus to help keep Canadians more safe and more free.

I am a Canadian by choice. I am a Canadian of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While growing up in Pakistan, the one thing we all knew about Canada was Pierre Trudeau and the Charter of Rights. It is a document that states that every Canadian and everyone within our borders have certain fundamental freedoms: freedom of conscience and religion; freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression; freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of association.

I would not be here in this chamber, and in this country, were it not for this charter and these freedoms. I am committed to protecting and defending them, and Bill C-22 does just that.

The House resumed from September 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

There are five and a half minutes remaining for questions and comments following the speech of the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

The hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed reading my colleague's speech in yesterday's Hansard, because due to exceptional circumstances, I was not in the House to hear the end of the debate.

My colleague will vividly recall the controversy that erupted during the 41st Parliament surrounding Bill C-51. I wonder if he could share his thoughts on the impact of the bill in the current context.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to recognize that Bill C-22 is as a direct result of Bill C-51. A major fundamental flaw when Bill C-51 was brought in was the fact that there was no parliamentary committee to oversee our security systems.

That is very important because Canadians have expectations that their government will have a balance when it comes to issues such as freedoms, our rights, and security. We believe Bill C-22 will deliver what Canadians want to see. In fact, it would be a fulfillment of a commitment made by the Prime Minister and the government that we would bring in a parliamentary oversight committee. Bill C-22 is all about that.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, last year in the House when the Liberals and Conservatives voted for Bill C-51, only the NDP caucus stood up for Canadians and voted against the impact that would have on the rights and freedoms of Canadians. At the same time, the New Democrats offered very solid suggestions, not taken up by the former Conservative government or by the current Liberal government, to enhance security while maintaining our rights and liberties.

We have a bill in front of us that contradicts how many of our allies proceed. All of our allies have oversight committees with an independent chair, a chair that is selected by the committee not by the government. As we have seen with our major allies as well, these oversight committees need to have full access to classified information. Of course another component that does not exist among our allies is the Prime Minister's Office's having the ability to censor any reports that are issued by the committee.

How does the Liberal government justify these three fundamental weaknesses when they are not in common with the practice of our major allies, and certainly not in common with the oversight committees that exist in other countries.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would have to agree to disagree on some of the points the member has brought forward.

One of them is that he suggests it is wrong for the Prime Minister to make the appointment. The critic for the official opposition, the Conservative Party, is one of the individuals who recommended to the minister that we should have the prime minister appointing the chair of the committee.

Other issues are in regard to just how this committee will be able to perform. If we do a comparison between what we have proposed and the other Five Eyes countries, which Canada is a part of, we will find that this legislation is far more aggressive and has the potential to be some of the best legislation going forward with respect to the other countries because of its very scope. Remember, this deals with more than just one department. We are talking about 17 departments that provide some form of security services, which is quite significant. This legislation is all-encompassing in that respect.

With regard to the Prime Minister, maybe I will get a chance to answer another question to provide—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Order, please. We have time for a short question and brief answer.

The hon. member for Sherbrooke.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a hard time hearing my colleague refer to this committee as a parliamentary committee.

The chair is appointed by the Prime Minister, who will also have a veto over the reports that will be tabled in Parliament. I find it hard to reconcile that with the definition of a true parliamentary committee, where there is no interference from the Prime Minister's office. That might be possible for the government when it comes to the appointments, but certainly not when it comes to drafting the reports or their content.

How can the hon. member call this a parliamentary committee when the Prime Minister's office interferes directly in the work of the committee?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the committee is made up of parliamentarians. It is important to note that the committee will consist of nine members, with seven members of the House and two senators. Up to four members will be from the governing party.

The Prime Minister will be required to consult with opposition party leaders before naming opposition members, and with the Senate before naming the senators.

It is also important that we recognize that the Prime Minister is not authorized to alter the findings or recommendations of the reports tabled. The Prime Minister's role is solely to review the report to ensure that it does not contain classified information.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and join in the debate on Bill C-22, which would establish a national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians.

I will be sharing my time today with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

National security has taken on even greater importance over the last number of years. Abroad, we have seen horrific jihadist attacks just months ago, in fact, month after month in countries like France, Belgium, and even the United States.

Right here in Canada, we saw a jihadi inspired attack in October 2014. Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was killed in Quebec, and Corporal Nathan Cirillo was killed while he was on guard at the National War Memorial, just steps away from where we are standing today. Many of us who served in the last Parliament will recall being locked down, and not knowing what was going on, and we remember that day.

It is important that our national security agencies have the tools they need to do their job, and keep us safe from terrorists. That is why the previous Conservative passed the Anti-terrorism Act in 2015, more commonly known as Bill C-51. Bill C-51 is good legislation that struck an appropriate balance between protecting national security and protecting the privacy of others.

In fact, the director of CSIS recently told the committee in the other place that CSIS agents have used the powers created under that legislation at least two dozen times. That record speaks volumes.

Today, I am not here to talk about that bill, but I am here to talk about Bill C-22, and how to ensure that the rights and liberties of Canadians are appropriately protected through extensive review and oversight of our national security agencies.

While our men and women in these agencies do excellent work each and every day to keep us safe, it is always important to have a third party watchdog. Currently, national security agencies have a substantial review mechanism. CSIS is reviewed by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which is composed of former parliamentarians and other prominent Canadians. The Communications Security Establishment is reviewed by the CSE Commissioner, and the RCMP is reviewed by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission.

However, we note that the Liberals, in their platform, promised that they would “create an all-party committee to monitor and oversee the operations of every government department and agency with national security responsibilities.” Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on how we look at it, that is not the bill that we have before us today.

First, the bill does not provide for any oversight of national security agencies, in fact, the word oversight is not even in the bill. It is nowhere in the description or in the body of the bill. What it provides is a review mechanism for after-the-fact assessment, but it does so with enormous caveats. In fact, there are seven large caveats contained in section 14 of the bill.

These caveats allow the cabinet to deny the committee, a committee of duly-elected parliamentarians sworn to secrecy, the access to any confidence of the Queen's Privy Council, any military operation information, any information on the Investment Canada Act, and any information that may lead in future to criminal charges, among other things.

That pretty well covers off all of the information in the possession of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. That is pretty well all of the information that this so-called committee would need to do the so-called oversight that it is created to do.

Unfortunately, what we have under this legislation is a committee that does not actually have any access to any relevant information. What is more, it is not actually a parliamentary committee. Right here in black and white in subsection 4(3), the bill states that this would not be a committee of Parliament, rather it would be a committee made up of parliamentarians.

What we have right now is a committee made up of parliamentarians with no ability to collect information. We will also learn it has absolutely no teeth to do anything because it cannot report anything outside of the committee, and we have the Prime Minister and ministers able to cleanse the report before it is brought to Parliament.

We kind of have a glorified parliamentary friendship group here, and really nothing more, because the committee cannot review any information. It cannot do anything with the information that it finds because if the Prime Minister deems it is not appropriate for a number of reasons, the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's Office can change it. Really, this is a pretty hollow shell and nothing more.

I want to speak a bit about the fact that in section 12 parliamentary privilege is eroded by making it clear that a whistleblower could be prosecuted for making any of the information public. Let us think about that for a minute.

The Liberals have said they want this committee to fix the situation where they felt it left the public uninformed and unrepresented on critical issues, but they have established, through this legislation, a system where it would be a crime for a whistleblower to disclose anything from the committee. So, how can there be any access to the information by regular Canadians?

The bill before us does not even come close to meeting the Liberal platform commitments. In fact, it is a bill that further serves to centralize power in the Prime Minister's Office.

Typically, like in the United States and Great Britain, committees of this nature would report directly to the legislative branch rather than to the executive. Yet, in this legislation, the Prime Minister gets to play middleman between the committee and Parliament.

Under this legislation, it says in subsection 21(1) the Prime Minister will receive all annual reports, special reports, and other findings of the committee, so the Prime Minister is going to get everything before Parliament does. He will then have the opportunity to edit and change any report to suit his liking, and subsection 21(5) says that the Prime Minister can refuse to release information at his discretion.

The Liberals have said that this is to protect serious national information and security information, but let us read the text of the bill:

If,...the Prime Minister is of the opinion that information in an annual or special report is...injurious to...international relations...the Prime Minister may direct the Committee to submit...a revised version of the annual or special report.

I want to remind my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, that the Prime Minister actually can direct the committee to submit a revised report. In this case, it would be if it contravened or hurt international relations.

What does that mean? That means that the Prime Minister and his office could delete or eliminate information that they thought might hurt international relations. From what we have seen recently, does that mean if this report said something that would show that the Chinese are doing something they should not be doing, that the Prime Minister would say not to say anything about the Chinese because we do not want to offend them? Maybe the Prime Minister would be concerned that his vanity project of getting a seat on the UN Security Council might be offended.

With the Prime Minister having the motivation, and the naïveté that he seems to be displaying, it is very concerning that this power would be in the Prime Minister's Office to vet this information, and eliminate information that he thinks would not be beneficial to international relations. This is not transparency in any way, shape, or form.

It is definitely not transparent that several months before this legislation was even tabled, we found out, through the media, that the member for Ottawa South was given the sweetheart deal as chair of this committee. That in and of itself is very disingenuous.

The government and the Liberals could have at least had respect for Parliament and for its own platform to have withheld that. I do not know why the Liberals felt they had to make that announcement, and do that so quickly unless it had to do with an inside deal that they were concocting.

How can someone become a chair of a committee that has not even been constituted by Parliament in legislation? With a partisan appointment like this, it is clear that the government is not taking the non-partisan goals of this committee seriously.

Let us look at the facts. The Minister of Public Safety and many of the Liberals who have spoken before me have touted that this proposed committee is modelled after the United Kingdom, but the Liberal partisan appointment of the chair is completely different from the U.K. model which allows its committee to elect its own chair.

Second, the committee reports to the Prime Minister, not to Parliament, and the Prime Minister has the ability to omit items and ask for revised reports.

There is more that I could say on this piece of legislation but at the end of the day we are seeing more and more that this is a hollow shell with no substance. This committee will be made up of parliamentarians with no power to do anything, with no power to get information, and with the Prime Minister vetting all of the information. It looks again like the Liberals want to look like they are fulfilling a campaign promise but they are actually not fulfilling it and they are disrespecting and being disingenuous by doing so.

Unless there are major changes to the bill I cannot support it.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member mentioned information access concerns. The minister can refuse to give access relating to matters that are injurious to national security. She mentioned concerns that whistleblowers would not be able to present the information to the public. Does the member have ideas that would improve the process, these two processes in particular?

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, when I was parliamentary secretary for public safety, we felt that the mechanisms in place for overseeing CSIS, for example, were sufficient. We know, as parliamentarians, that even though we are supposed to keep things quiet, sometimes things leak out. This is probably not a good idea on behalf of the Liberal government, but again, it wanted to fulfill its promise and in doing so realized that it may have created a problem it does not want to have, and that is that very sensitive information is going to be in the hands of parliamentarians.

The Liberals created this problem, and now they are creating more problems. There really is no easy solution to this. They cannot create a committee of parliamentarians that is going to have oversight and real teeth and the ability to oversee something without members having information, but the government is concerned about letting this information out and what is going to happen with it. It was not a well-thought-out campaign promise, and it is not a well-thought-out strategy to address that campaign promise.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Portage—Lisgar has taken on new responsibilities as the opposition House leader, and I certainly appreciate working with her. We disagree on some things, there is no doubt. We disagreed on Bill C-51. The Conservatives brought it forward. Liberals all voted in favour of it, despite the impact on civil rights and liberties.

Now we have a piece of legislation. I think all members of the House are surprised to learn that there is an oversight committee that is under double censorship; it censored in terms of information from the oversight committee the Liberal government is proposing and censored in terms of what the Prime Minister's Office will actually permit the committee to put out.

At the same time, as the member for Portage—Lisgar pointed out, we are talking about a partisan chair of the committee, something that none of our major allies have done, for the simple reason that it is inappropriate.

I would like the member to comment on whether she agrees with the NDP analysis that the committee would be handcuffed by the Liberal government.