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.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-22, An Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, as reported (with amendments) from the committee.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

There are seven motions in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-22.

The Chair has received a letter from the government House leader arguing that Motion No. 6 could not have been presented in committee, as the changes it proposes arose out of a decision of the Supreme Court rendered very shortly before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security began clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. A similar argument was made in relation to part (b) of Motion No. 3. The court decision in question was rendered on Friday, November 25, 2016, and clause-by-clause consideration began on Tuesday, November 29, 2016. The government House leader contended in her letter that there was not sufficient time to analyze the consequences of the decision and prepare amendments accordingly. For that reason, she has asked that they be selected at report stage.

The hon. member for Victoria has also sent a letter to the Chair arguing that these amendments should not be selected, as he believes they should have been presented in committee. He also argues that there are cases in the past where the Chair has refused to select motions presented by the government.

As members know, consistent with the note to Standing Order 76.1(5), the Chair would not normally select motions that could have been presented or were defeated in committee.

However, there have been exceptions. On September 22, 2014, the Speaker was faced with a similar case in relation to a motion at the report stage of Bill C-13, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. The hon. member for Charlottetown submitted a motion arising out of a court decision rendered after clause-by-clause and, in that case, the motion was selected.

The circumstances in the present case, although not identical, are sufficiently analogous to satisfy the Chair that the motions in question should be selected for consideration at report stage.

The Chair has examined the remaining motions submitted and is satisfied they meet the criteria spelled out in Standing Order 76.1(5). Motion No. 1 could not have been presented in committee, as it requires a royal recommendation. Part (a) of Motion No. 3 and Motion No. 4 further amend changes made by the committee. Motion No. 5 restores a clause deleted by the committee. Motions Nos. 2 and 7 propose to delete clauses. These motions will all be selected.

Motions numbered 1 to 7 will be grouped for debate and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I shall now propose Motions Nos. 1 to 7 to the House.

Motions in amendment

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-22, in Clause 4, be amended by

(a) replacing line 34 on page 2 with the following:

and up to ten other members, each of whom must be a

(b) replacing lines 3 to 6 on page 3 with the following:

(2) The Committee is to consist of not more than three members who are members of the Senate and not more than eight members who are members of the House of Commons. Not more than five Committee members who

Motion No. 3

That Bill C-22, in Clause 13, be amended by

(a) replacing lines 8 and 9 on page 6 with the following:

to sections 14 and 16, the Committee is entitled to have access to

(b) replacing lines 14 and 15 on page 6 with the following:

ed by litigation privilege or by solicitor-client privilege or the professional

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-22, in Clause 14, be amended by replacing lines 21 to 24 on page 6 with the following:

14 The Committee is not entitled to have access to any of the following information:

(a) a confidence of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, as defined in subsection 39(2) of the Canada Evidence Act;

(b) information the disclosure of which is described in subsection 11(1) of the Witness Protection Program Act;

(c) the identity of a person who was, is or is intended to be, has been approached to be, or has offered or agreed to be, a confidential source of information, intelligence or assistance to the Government of Canada, or the government of a province or of any state allied with Canada, or information from which the person’s identity could be inferred;

(d) information relating directly to an ongoing investigation carried out by a law enforcement agency that may lead to a prosecution.

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-22 be amended by restoring Clause 16 as follows:

16 (1) The appropriate Minister for a department may refuse to provide information to which the Committee would, but for this section, otherwise be entitled to have access and that is under the control of that department, but only if he or she is of the opinion that

(a) the information constitutes special operational information, as defined in subsection 8(1) of the Security of Information Act; and

(b) provision of the information would be injurious to national security.

(2) If the appropriate Minister refuses to provide information under subsection (1), he or she must inform the Committee of his or her decision and the reasons for the decision.

(3) If the appropriate Minister makes the decision in respect of any of the following information, he or she must provide the decision and reasons to,

(a) in the case of information under the control of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police;

(b) in the case of information under the control of the Communications Security Establishment, the Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment; and

(c) in the case of information under the control of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Security Intelligence Review Committee.

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-22, in Clause 21, be amended by replacing lines 27 and 28 on page 8 with the following:

is protected by litigation privilege or by solicitor-client privilege or the

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

, seconded by the member for Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel, moved:

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-22 be amended by deleting Clause 12.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

moved:

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-22 be amended by deleting Clause 31.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-22 as we consider the bill as reported to this House by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

I would like to commend the standing committee for its thorough review of this important bill. The standing committee heard evidence and views from a wide array of stakeholders and experts. I was pleased to testify with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and our officials. Others who appeared at the committee included the heads of Canada's national security and intelligence agencies, our existing national review bodies, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, human rights advocates, and leading professionals and academic experts in the area.

With such a diversity of witnesses, it is not surprising that the committee heard differing views on some of the specific provisions of the bill. However, I believe one overriding theme has emerged from the debate on Bill C-22 so far. The national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians, or NSICOP, is definitely an idea whose time has come.

Our government believes strongly in the importance of a well-functioning and accountable national security system that both protects Canadians while at the same time respects their rights and freedoms. Bill C-22 would fulfill a key commitment made during the last election to create a new national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians.

The proposed bill would establish a rigorous parliamentary oversight mechanism of national security and intelligence activities. The committee of MPs and senators would have a mandate that is distinctly broader than is the case in most other countries. It would be empowered to examine activities across the entire federal government, including operational matters.

Our government believes in the importance of those powers granted to the committee, while also ensuring that safeguards exist, so that certain classified information is not disclosed that could disrupt government operations or be injurious to national security.

Commentators have been virtually unanimous in commending the government for taking this major step in enhancing the accountability and effectiveness of our national security and intelligence apparatus. They have noted that a genuine capacity for parliamentarians to scrutinize government activity in this area has been a long-time coming in Canada.

It has been over 30 years since the McDonald Commission proposed this type of committee. During the intervening years, Canada has been left as the only Five Eyes partner that has not created a permanent structure to provide parliamentarians with access to classified national security and intelligence information.

As one of the witnesses mentioned, this is the first time that there have been hearings before a standing committee with respect to a government bill on this subject. Therefore, this is an important step that has been taken because the government made it a clear priority.

The standing committee heard several witnesses explain how the structure created by Bill C-22 is comparable to those established by other countries. In particular, Bill C-22 was often compared to the intelligence and security committee that was active for a time in the United Kingdom.

The U.K. experience is indeed an informative one, providing a relatively longstanding example of a committee operating in a Westminster system comparable to our own, and one whose mandate and structure has evolved over time. As in the U.K., Bill C-22 would seek to balance the access to highly sensitive classified information that would be afforded to parliamentarians, with protections to ensure that this information and vital ongoing operations would not compromised.

However, it is important to remember that while its development has been informed in important ways by international comparators, Bill C-22 would be very much a made in Canada approach. In particular, Bill C-22 would reflect our government's commitment to ensuring that all national security and intelligence activities of the Government of Canada would be included within the NSICOP's mandate, regardless of which department or agency is responsible for them; that is, the committee's mandate would not be limited to particular agencies, as is the case in other countries.

On this point, I was pleased to see that one of the amendments reported to us by the standing committee would make it clear that NSICOP's mandate and access to information includes crown corporations. I fully support this amendment as it would further the government's objective of ensuring that the committee could review in totality national security intelligence activities across the whole of government. This is a good example of the constructive discussions that were had around the committee table.

I was also pleased to see the inclusion by the committee of a whistleblower provision which would cause the committee to inform the affected minister and Attorney General of any activity carried out by a department related to national security or intelligence which may not be in compliance with the law.

Another unique aspect of Bill C-22 is that it would provide the new committee with a clear mandate to review any national security and intelligence operation, including operations that are ongoing.

The laws of other countries place more restrictions on this type of operational review. For example, some committees cannot examine the operations until they cease or if they obtain the government's approval in advance.

The NSICOP would have the statutory right to access highly classified national security and intelligence information in any department or agency and now any crown corporation as well. Again, this would put Canada at the forefront in terms of international comparators, and certainly no existing review body in Canada has this wide scope of access. Of course, as in other jurisdictions, Bill C-22 would also include some limits to access to information. These are carefully defined to protect the personal information of Canadians, the safety of individuals, the integrity of police investigations, and other important public interests.

The standing committee made some significant changes to the bill in this area, essentially removing all limits. Although I appreciate the spirit in which these amendments were made, I believe we need to consider the potential consequences very carefully. In doing so, we need to keep in mind the unprecedented scope of the NSICOP's mandate and access to information compared to other review bodies in Canada and elsewhere.

I have moved in the House further amendments to these sections, specifically for clauses 13, 14, and 16 of the bill. The proposed amendment to clause 13 is intended to ensure that the work of the NSICOP would proceed in the reasonable manner that is consistent with its mandate and would not be bogged down in judicial procedures.

My proposal to reintroduce some of the mandatory sections to the NSICOP's access as originally set out in clause 14, would ensure the necessary protections would be in place for the safety and security of individuals, and that active national security-related police investigations would not adversely affected.

Finally, my proposed reinstatement of clause 16, as it appeared when the bill was tabled, is meant, based on a minister's discretion, to protect against the risk of inadvertent disclosure which may cause harm to Canada or Canada's partners' national security interests. These proposed amendments would seek a balanced approach between the original version of the bill and the changes made by the standing committee. We are being responsive to the standing committee's concerns while trying to maintain necessary protections.

Enhanced accountability is not a one-off initiative, but rather an ongoing effort that requires continued commitment and periodic reassessment. The NSICOP would be a major step forward in improving the accountability of the government's intelligence and national security activities. We are starting ahead of where other countries began. The committee would have a broad mandate, and would have access to extensive information. That is the best possible starting point for the launch of this new committee of parliamentarians.

As the committee gains experience and expertise in its years of operation, we would have the opportunity to reassess whether this balance can be further improved. I urge hon. members to join me in supporting Bill C-22 and the accompanying amendments.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as far as populating the committee, as it stands today, is the bill consistent with the practices of other Westminster parliaments in their appointments to this particular committee?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the committee did extensive work bringing in witnesses. There was a diversity of opinions that were shared.

The amendments that we have proposed really find the balance. When it comes to the appointments, the Prime Minister will be making those appointments, and working with leaders of opposition parties to ensure that they have the ability to share who they would like to see on the committee.

This government will always work in the best interests of Canadians.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in respect of Motion No. 4, which would remove the committee's power to subpoena witnesses and documents, why was this change removed? Why do we no longer have, as we would have had with the public safety committee's report, the opportunity to compel information? This is something that every parliamentary committee has but this one would not.

I understand that this was proposed, the idea of a subpoena power, by a Liberal member on that committee. It was also a feature of a Liberal private member's bill, Bill C-622, which was supported by the current Prime Minister, the current Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and the future chair of this committee, among other current cabinet ministers.

Why, therefore, did the Liberals feel it necessary to remove such a fundamental power from this committee?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his good work, and I hope we can continue to work together in the best interests of all Canadians.

The hon. member knows very well that when it came to experts, they said that this was great the way it was. If anything, these amendments take into consideration the work that the committee did, and make this legislation even better.

When it comes to subpoena powers, the committee's amendment to clause 13 of the bill has created several inconsistencies that will create conflict. For instance, clause 15 clearly states that when the committee is entitled to be provided oral testimony on an issue, the appropriate minister or officials of the department may appear before the committee to provide the information orally.

The committee is amending clause 13 to give the committee the power to send a specific individual of their choosing. Essentially, under section 13 and 15, both the government and the committee would have the power to determine who should appear to provide testimony, and yet there is no recourse mechanism to solve the deadlock.

We are working in the best interests of this committee. We have to remember that it is the first of its kind in this country, and it is important that we take this necessary step. As I said earlier, it is time that we get it done.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. House leader for explaining why the government feels it needs to pull back on the good work done in committee. I do not believe, with all due respect, the government has the balance right.

Why is it that restrictions on access to information for parliamentarians serving on this committee are more extreme and restrictive than those for the people who are appointed to the security intelligence review committee or the CSE commissioner, who do not have the restrictions on information?

Do the Liberals trust SIRC more than parliamentarians?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her important work that she does every day. I look forward to continuing these conversations.

I can assure the member, and I can assure Canadians, that we have struck the right balance. It is important that we be able to actually provide this additional oversight body that has a scope that is unlike any other body that exists today.

This is a committee of parliamentarians, the first of its kind, providing access for parliamentarians to classified information in a way that has not been seen before. This is a good beginning, and it is further ahead than most other countries have ever started. We were able to see great expert witnesses in the committee's work. It was important that it did. We have taken it into consideration, and there is a three-year review mechanism that has also been provided so that we can continue to improve this legislation, if there be a need.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-22. I had not thought that we would see government amendments at report stage that undo a lot of the good work that has been done by the committee.

I approach this issue by first saying I support the creation of a national security committee of parliamentarians. I learned a great deal about the intelligence business, the security business, and where Canada stands within our Five Eyes partners, in the efforts to fight Bill C-51 in the last Parliament. I still hope that the review that is being undertaken right now by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Minister of Justice will lead to massive changes in the five different bills, and others, that were amended through that omnibus bill known as Bill C-51, which set up CSIS, for the first time since its creation, as a body that can “disrupt” thoughts, act as having a kinetic function, as the experts call it.

There is nothing right now within our security agencies that ensures that there is any oversight, unlike our other Five Eyes partners, as the hon. government House leader mentioned. We do not have any oversight for a number of the bodies at all. We have no oversight for CSIS. There had been oversight of CSIS up until the moment of omnibus Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012, which eliminated an adviser to the Minister of Public Safety to warn him or her if CSIS was going amok. That position was eliminated, so there is no oversight of CSIS; rather, there is review of CSIS. There is no oversight of the RCMP; rather, there is review of the RCMP. There is neither oversight nor review of the Canada Border Services Agency. For the Communications Security Establishment Canada, which is a very strange body that collects and downloads massive amounts of metadata, there is neither oversight nor review.

We have all of these different intelligence agencies, therefore, it is of critical importance that we do two things. We must rein in and undo the damage and the potential chaos created for security agencies by Bill C-51. I say this parenthetically. I want to get to Bill C-22. However, I need to say that my opposition to what was done in the 41st Parliament in what was known as Bill C-51 was not exclusively with respect to concerns about civil liberties. Those are concerns, but I have heard from security experts in the course of a review of that bill. It is clear to me that, failing to ensure coordination between and among all of these agencies, while giving CSIS the right to be active in kinetic operations, to be able to have CSIS offer people they are surveilling basically a get-out-of-jail-free card, a prospective guarantee that they will never be arrested or put into the judicial system, without any alert to the RCMP that this has happened, the one hand will not know what the other is doing. The creation of the national security committee of parliamentarians will not address that threat, although we will have to address this concern. It has been one that has been well known since the inquiry into the Air India disaster where if there had been coordination enforced between the different security agencies, that disaster, the single largest terrorist act on Canadian soil ever, could have been avoided. That was certainly the opinion of the Air India inquiry.

Coming back to Bill C-22, I support the creation of a committee of parliamentarians. However, I am baffled by the changes that have just taken place. I turn to the leading Canadian experts in this, Kent Roach and Craig Forcese, professors of law, both of whom played a role in the Air India inquiry. They are the authoritative experts to whom I turn. Certainly, Professor Craig Forcese is baffled by the limitation on what parliamentarians will be allowed to know. I mentioned in my question earlier to the government House leader that these restrictions do not apply to the people who serve on the Security Intelligence Review Committee, SIRC, to which civilian non-elected people are appointed. For the purpose of pointing out that the appointment process can have gaps with respect to security, let us not forget that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed the now late committed fraudster Arthur Porter as the chair of SIRC. Arthur Porter did not have the restrictions that Bill C-22 would now put on parliamentarians, who are elected, who take an oath, and who have an understanding of their responsibilities.

My amendment to the bill is to delete section 12, which is the section that limits the MPs' access to parliamentary privilege. It is what Craig Forcese has called the triple lock on what MPs and senators are allowed to know.

Parliamentarians sitting on this committee have already sworn allegiance to Canada. They will go through security checks. The way the bill is currently written, it is not as though there is no check on their access to information or risk of their revealing information. The Canada Evidence Act would apply, section 38. Even as these government amendments are rolling forward, Professor Forcese has noted that it would be probably better to rely on court and the Canada Evidence Act than on these very restrictive moves in terms of what parliamentarians can know, an overly generous discretion on the point of what ministers can withhold, as well as getting rid of what was a very good amendment achieved in committee of giving the committee subpoena powers.

I have to say that it is just simply baffling that the government has taken such a restrictive view on what parliamentarians can be allowed to know. I will just note that this is from an article by Professor Forcese titled, “Stronger Bill C-22 Goes Back to the House”. This was before the government amendments came forward. He noted that, “C-22 committee members will be surrendering parliamentary privileges and will be permanently bound by secrecy under the Security of Information Act (and therefore subject to criminal sanction for violating secrecy rules).”

I think the government, with all due respect, has overreacted to very good amendments that were passed by the committee, and this is a larger point as well. We are often told in this place that we should rush legislation through second reading so that it can go to committee where the committee will do the good work. We now have a fair litany of times where the Liberal government, with its majority, has decided to ignore the good work of committees.

The first was, of course, the committee that dealt with medically assisted death. That advice was completely overlooked in the drafting of Bill C-14. We have the committee work, on the committee on which I served, the Special Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform, and that is a very sad story because we need to get back to that, but very good work was done.

For the first time since 1867, when the British North America Act said Canada will use the voting system from Westminster until such time as its Parliament chooses its own voting system, we had Parliament recommend a voting system and a way forward, and that was rejected. Now this committee's work has been rejected and, I think, hastily.

There is a way forward here. There is an appropriate balance. I do believe that the parliamentary committee struck that balance, and it is really important to remember that what the committee is looking at is already protected in many ways.

The U.K. parliamentary committee has never had a problem with breaching secrecy. One of the experts who testified in Bill C-51, Joe Fogarty from U.K. MI5, testified that there just simply were not problems. Parliamentarians instructed with the duty to maintain confidentiality have done so.

I also point out the precedent that the New Zealand Parliament has a very similar committee, and the New Zealand members of Parliament who serve on that committee do not have to surrender parliamentary privilege. It is explicitly preserved under the New Zealand model.

It leaves one wondering why the government has chosen to undo the good work of committee, further undermining the proper role of legislated deliberation in committee coming back to this place at report stage, doing serious damage to the work that was done by the committee, leaving, I fear, greater uncertainty as to how the committee will function and still wondering why is it that in taking measures to restrict the information that parliamentarians have, the independent expert national security review bodies, SIRC and the CSE commissioner, are not given the same set of handcuffs.

I do not think it makes sense. I urge the government to reconsider and accept my amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words the leader of the Green Party has put on the record, and understand her concerns, but I would like to emphasize that this is important. As the government House leader has put on the record, Canada is now going to have this parliamentary oversight committee. The other countries associated with the Five Eyes, U.S.A., England, Australia, and New Zealand, already have a parliamentary oversight committee, so this is a very strong, positive step forward.

Within the legislation there is accommodation for us to review it. Would she not agree it is absolutely critical that as we move forward we get it right? There is always going to be room for improvement in the future. Even though there might be a sense of disappointment from some members of the House, there will be opportunities for us to review it. Would she not agree that the legislation being proposed through amendment is good legislation in its own right?

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

Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset of my speech, I believe the creation of a national security committee of parliamentarians is a good step forward. I lament that what has been done today with government amendments at report stage undoing good work at the committee is both regrettable and unnecessary.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

With regard to the work that was done in committee, it is not unprecedented, but it is still rather rare for such changes to be made when a bill comes back to the House after being examined in committee.

We are talking about a committee with a majority of government members. I assume that they examined the bill in good faith. The committee proposed amendments to the bill to improve it. We expect the committees to improve bills when they examine them. I thought that that was what the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security did. However, when the bill came back to the House, the government undid most of the work that was done in committee.

Does the member think that government will show so little consideration for the work of committees going forward? What message does this send to all of the committees that examine government bills and that will be sending bills on other subjects back to the House?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid it is a very bad signal.

I thank my colleague from Sherbrooke. I completely agree. Genetic discrimination is another example, and we are going to be voting on that soon.

It is very lamentable this pattern of changes to bills that have been reviewed by committee. As the member noted quite rightly, with the exception of the parliamentary committee on electoral reform, all of the committees I have already referenced had a majority of Liberals present. The Liberal members on the committee that studied Bill C-22 must be feeling as cut off at the knees as I was when the mandate letter for the minister of electoral reform was changed.

This is a place of deliberation, and preferably non-partisan, collegial deliberation. I am afraid the amendments to Bill C-22 put forward today at report stage at the larger level of abstraction on how we function as a parliament will be damaged.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, let me give a specific example. Part of the exemption which the member across the way makes an example of is the information described in the Witness Protection Program Act. We want to be able to keep that as a part of the exemption. We believe it is in Canada's best interest and for the safety of Canadians that witnesses under that program are exempt. Why would she oppose allowing them to be exempt? This is absolutely critical for national purpose.

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

Mr. Speaker, it depends entirely on how one views the committee. The committee of parliamentarians in other countries, Westminster parliamentary democracies like ours and the United States as has been referenced, have access to more information than this committee would have access to. If its function is to ensure that we have oversight and coordination, that an independent body of experts sworn under the National Secrecy Act has access to information, that is as good as secret and confidential a body as we will find. Why would we trust people who are citizen nominees, like Arthur Porter, more than we trust parliamentarians sworn to secrecy?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I supported Bill C-22 at second reading because the NDP is firmly committed to finally bringing effective and transparent oversight to our security and intelligence services. I recognized the flaws in the government's first draft, but I had faith that the parties could smooth its rough edges with the help of expert advice at the public safety committee. That faith was rewarded. All parties came together around evidence-based amendments. The bill that emerged from that committee is stronger, now has the endorsement of most experts, and could earn the support of all parties and the trust of Canadians.

That is why it is so very disappointing to see these last-minute proposals. They would roll back the progress made by all parties at committee and, in the words of four leading academic experts, “undermin[e] a new and historic Parliamentary ability”. I am firmly opposed to these proposals. We simply cannot reverse the progress made at committee and reject the evidence that guided it. With each passing day, the government's intransigence looks less like prudence and more like the reflexive rejection of contrary evidence that, sadly, became a hallmark of our last government.

Let me say a word first to the women and men of our security intelligence community, who no doubt are following this debate and wondering how it will affect the critically important work they do for us every day. As a former legal counsel to the Security Intelligence Review Committee, I know that to be effective, we need the trust of Canadians. To support the work, we need an authoritative, security-cleared committee of parliamentarians to bridge the gap between Canadians and their security services. Only when such a committee exists and speaks with authority can we give Canadians not just assurances but proof that their security and their civil liberties are protected.

The first thing we need to set straight about Bill C-22 is the idea that experts support the government's new design. This week, the public safety minister answered my criticism of these regressive amendments with a single brief quotation from a piece that Professor Craig Forcese wrote a year ago entitled “Knee Jerk First Reaction”. What has he said since? In November, Professor Forcese testified at the public safety committee as follows: “I would strongly urge...full access to information”. He warned that anything less would “give the appearance of accountability without the substance”. Calling for three key parts of the bill to be radically amended, he said, “These are all means to deny access to the committee.” He also said, “It is this triple lock on parliamentary reviews that I feel could well make the committee of parliamentarians stumble.”

What did the other experts say at the committee? The Information Commissioner of Canada rejected cabinet's ability to shut down investigations, saying it turned the committee's mandate into “a mirage”. Craig Forcese, Professor Kent Roach, and Ron Atkey, the founding chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the Information Commissioner of Canada, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Bar Association, and Parliament's own Interim Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security all recommended lifting restrictions on access to information and giving this committee full access. After all, people get 14 years in jail if they break a secret and leak information. After all, being cleared top secret is not good enough, apparently, for the government. The public safety committee implemented this expert recommendation, but now the government seeks to reverse it.

With that expert testimony in mind, let us consider the government's new proposals. First, the government wants to remove the oversight committee's power to subpoena witnesses and documents. I would remind Canadians that this is a power that is enjoyed by every single statutory standing committee of Parliament, every one of them. It would be truly bizarre if our public safety committee could compel a witness to give testimony on the theory of subpoena powers, but this new top secret cleared committee could not wield the same power to fulfill the national security mandate.

The government's second proposal is to allow cabinet ministers to withhold information from the oversight committee. It is interesting that these two features, full access to information and the power to call witnesses, were proposed in a Liberal bill in 2014, Bill C-622. At that time, the current Prime Minister, the current public safety minister, and nine other members of today's Liberal cabinet voted for exactly what they now oppose.

Third, the government wants to add a senator and another government MP to the committee so that the votes of the government MPs will always outnumber those of non-government MPs.

The government's fourth proposal is to stop the committee from receiving information about all active law enforcement investigations all of the time. As Professor Forcese testified, the 1985 Air India bombing remains an active investigation some 30 years later. A more recent example might be the October 2014 attack on Parliament. In the aftermath of such an attack, would the proposal prevent the intelligence oversight committee from receiving necessary information about investigations?

As with many of the government's proposals on this bill, I do understand the intent. Oversight functions should not inadvertently impede operations, but the solution is a judgment and discussion, not clumsy statutory roadblocks. Remember that the Security Intelligence Review Committee has full access to any information held by CSIS, and yet the heads of both organizations testified that they have no concerns about this arrangement. They resolve issues through negotiation, not legislation. As the founding chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee testified, “Sometimes, as in Bill C-22, there is a tendency to over-legislate”.

However, there is still hope. It is vital for Canadians to understand that Parliament now has a choice between two paths. The first path is to impose these last-minute changes, reverse the work of the all-party committee on public safety, and reject the expert evidence it listened to. The second path is to withdraw these rollbacks, accept the evidence, respect the work of all parties on that committee, and pass the bill we already have. The current bill could still earn the unanimous support of this place and would give Canada a world-class oversight body worthy of the respect of our allies and the trust of Canadians. That is what the government throws away if it insists on undoing the progress made so far.

Let me address one of the government's favourite arguments, and we heard it here today, which is that we must scale back our ambitions and accept minimal progress on the theory that something is better than nothing. In response, I would cite one last piece of expert testimony, and that is the recommendation of the last parliamentary committee to study this issue. In 2004, the Interim Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security recommended the creation of an oversight body with complete access to information. It explained as follows:

Though this arguably goes further than the legislation enacted by some of our allies, it is in line with developing practice.... We strongly believe that a structure which must rely on the gradual evolution and expansion of access, powers, and remit would be inappropriate for Canada.

The British had a committee like this one and in 2013, after public criticism, they completely overhauled that committee, strengthening its powers and its independence. Why do we have to reinvent the wheel?

Since the government seems to insist on such a course, I have one last solution to offer and that is my Motion No. 7 on the Notice Paper, which calls for removing clause 31 from the bill. That is the clause that would block judicial review of a cabinet minister's decision to withhold information or shut down an investigation. If the government insists on hobbling this committee from the start, then the least we can do is remove our restriction whose sole purpose is to prevent the committee's powers from maturing over time. I would ask all members of this place to support that amendment as a counterbalance to the government's proposals here.

In closing, I regret that the government has chosen this course, but I cannot endorse the rejection of good all-party committee work and the rejection of expert evidence. I hope that some members on the government side will join us in opposing these sadly regressive amendments.

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

Mr. Speaker, more expert witnesses have given a great deal of credit to the government for Bill C-22.

Let me quote another witness, Ronald Atkey, a former SIRC chair and former parliamentarian. He stated that the proposed review body “represents a major and welcome change” in Canada. He explained that he meant welcomed in the sense that, in his view, in the last three decades, Canada had fallen behind our parliamentary cousins in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to accountability to Parliament.

Also, he told the standing committee that Bill C-22 “will help to ensure Canadians that their elected representatives will play a key overview role in accountability” regarding the serious “powers granted to some 17 departments and agencies” that contributed to Canadian national security measures.

Will the member not recognize that this is a significant step forward? It was a commitment given by this government in the last election, and it is being maintained by having the legislation go through the House at this time.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the government's first and only response to date to Bill C-51, which it supported.

Ron Atkey was referenced just a moment ago by the member. However, on January 27, he, along with three other experts, wrote the following in The Globe and Mail:

Should the government choose to force a return to the restrictive original bill, it risks potentially undermining a new and historic Parliamentary ability that it has enthusiastically championed. Failure to reach agreement with Parliament on this issue also imperils non-partisan support for future national-security reforms and changes to other elements of the review system for national security.

It is a shame that for something so central as this, we cannot find common ground, that the government wants to revert to a time before the expert evidence was heard and before the committee did its good work to a time when we had an inadequate bill. The experts supported that. The NDP, for what it is worth, supported the bill as amended by committee. Now the government wants to roll it back and say that we should be happy with a half a loaf. This is not even 20% of a loaf, I am afraid.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Victoria for his excellent work on this.

I want to go back to a moment in time when I was one of the new class of 2015. I remember having a new lunch for all the parliamentarians, 187 of us, which was a historic number. The new Prime Minister bounded into the room, took to the stage and gave us a wonderful, heartfelt speech about how he promised he would respect the autonomy of committees. He promised that he would respect parliamentarians and the hard work they did in committees and that he would ensure that work was reflected in the House of Commons.

Here we find ourselves today, 16 months away from that very optimistic promise of the Prime Minister. That promise is being broken, yet again, by the government, by the Liberals. Therefore, we have a deep slide backward on the work of committees, and the government is ignoring the hard work and recommendations of the committee members from all sides of the House.

Could the member for Victoria speak to the impact on the committee of not having adequate access to information for the important work this committee will be tasked to do?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that same Prime Minister was in favour of broader access before but now it has changed.

I want to remind Canadians that this committee is unlike any other. All committees of Parliament have the ability to compel information and get the witnesses they need to do their job, but this one does not. We have to rely on the Prime Minister's Office. It is essentially an advisory committee of parliamentarians, senators and MPs to the Prime Minister . It is very different. The Prime Minister chooses the chair, which he already has. One might wonder why that is a problem. I would point out that England went through same process. Now it is the members of the committee who choose the chair. Germany alternates between an opposition and a government member.

The Liberals did not need to do this. They have hobbled the committee. The member asked what the consequences are. It is the lack of trust that Canadians must have in our security and intelligence services and the excellent work they do to protect us each and every day. We need to have that trust. This committee will not do the job.

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

Mr. Speaker, we promised Canadians that we would establish an all-party national oversight committee. Bill C-22 shows Canadians that important commitment has been kept.

As a reminder to the House, a committee of parliamentarians able to review classified security and intelligence documents has been a long time in coming. A special joint House/Senate committee was struck in mid-2004 to provide recommendations on how such a committee would function in a Canadian context. That report was followed by the tabling of Bill C-81 in 2005. That bill died on the Order Paper during the dissolution of the 38th Parliament.

Over the course of the next decade, two private members' bills were tabled that sought to create a committee of parliamentarians to review national security and intelligence matters, the second of which was defeated by the previous government at second reading shortly before it introduced Bill C-51.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, I heard witnesses tell us that the formation of an all-party national oversight committee had been anticipated for a long time. Let me read some of their testimony.

Wesley Wark said:

I fully support Bill C-22. I think it represents a necessary and timely experiment in parliamentary democracy and activism. I give full credit to the Liberal government for seeing the importance of parliamentary scrutiny of security and intelligence and for making this a centrepiece of its response to the previous government's anti-terrorism legislation, Bill C-51, and for making it a promise in their election platform.

Suzanne Legault, the Information Commissioner of Canada, said:

First, I wish to commend the government on tabling legislation to create a parliamentary oversight body of our national security agencies. The recommendation to create such an oversight committee dates back many years. The Committee could, with a properly designed legal framework, do much to increase public trust in our national security agencies

The Hon. Ron Atkey said, “I believe this represents a major and welcome change within our Canadian parliamentary system.”

Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada said that finally after the Arar inquiry and Justice O'Connor recommendations, we had Bill C-22, which was very welcomed.

Special advocate Anil Kapoor said of Bill C-22, “This piece of legislation is crucial to public trust in our security intelligence apparatus.”

One of the most important obligations of a government is the responsibility to protect the safety and security of its citizens both at home and abroad. Equally important, in a country such as Canada, is the obligation to uphold the Constitution and to ensure that all laws respect the rights and freedoms we enjoy as people living in a free and democratic society.

These two obligations do not necessarily have to compete with each other. It does not have to be a question of security or rights and freedoms.

Bill C-22, and the future national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians, will help to ensure that we achieve that balance. The committee will have a mandate to both confirm that our security and intelligence agencies have the resources and powers they need, as well as to ensure that those agencies do not exceed their authorities and respect the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

While supportive of the creation of an all-party national oversight committee, witnesses did share with our committee ways that we could make the legislation better. I am glad that we were able to reflect a number of these suggestions in our amendments.

Also, while the Conservatives were adamantly opposed to the creation of such a committee during their time in government, I am glad to see that during their time in opposition, they are much more supportive of the concept.

In fact, during clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-22 at the standing committee, many amendments received multi-party support. For instance, Liberals amended the bill to broaden the committee's mandate in clause 8. This was further subamended by the NDP and agreed to by all sides. The chair's double vote was removed from clause 19, ensuring that the chair would only cast a deciding vote in the event of a tie.

Clause 21 was also amended so that if something was redacted from one of the committee's reports, the revised version must be clearly identified as a revised version and it must indicate the extent of and the revision.

The NDP proposed a whistleblower clause that would require the committee to inform the appropriate minister of any activity it discovered that may not have been conducted in compliance with the law.

All of these are now a part of Bill C-22.

I will now turn to some of the report stage amendments, which are the focus of the debate before us today. The government has moved a motion to reintroduce some of the automatic exemptions that were originally in clause 14.

The original bill contained seven such exemptions, including: one, confidence of the Queen's Privy Council; two, information respecting ongoing defence intelligence activities supporting military operations; three, information, the disclosure of which is described in section 11(1) of the Witness Protection Program Act; four, the identity of individuals who are human intelligence sources for the government; five, information relating directly to an ongoing investigation carried out by a law enforcement agency; six, information that is considered privileged under the Investment Canada Act; and seven, certain information that was collected by FINTRAC and not reported to another department. This usually occurs when FINTRAC determines that the transaction has no flags.

One of today's report stage amendments put forward proposed to put three of those back into the bill.

Information relating to specific individuals protected under the witness protection program and the identities of confidential sources are not required for the committee to perform its mandate. The mandatory exceptions relating to this information are designed to avoid risks to the safety of individuals that may result from inadvertent disclosure.

The mandatory exception relating to active police investigations is also being reinserted. This exemption is designed to ensure that criminal investigations and prosecutions are not tainted by even the perceived influence of political actors.

This is a very important division of powers that has a very long tradition in Canada. The exemption is time limited to the period when the investigation is active, thus allowing the committee to review the information once the investigation is concluded.

The other three exemptions would not be reinserted by the amendment. This represents a responsible compromise that takes into account the spirit and intent of the standing committee's changes. It would allow the committee to be provided with access to as much information relevant to its mandate as possible, with restrictions applied only where necessary to prevent harm to individuals or police investigations. The amendment should be supported.

A second report stage amendment would see the reintroduction of clause 16, which provides a minister the discretionary authority to prevent the release of information that constitutes special operating information, as defined by the security of information act, when it could be injurious to national security. When a minister declines to provide such information, he must notify the committee as well as the relevant review body and provide reasons for not disclosing the information. The committee of parliamentarians annual report would also inform Parliament of all the times this discretionary power was used.

This is very comparable to how countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, operate in terms of providing information to their respective committees of parliamentarians. For instance, Australia's parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security cannot compel the government to provide operationally sensitive information, including intelligence sources and operational methods of information about particular operations. The government can also withhold anything it deems injurious to national security or foreign relations.

In New Zealand, the prime minister actually sits on the security and intelligence committee, which has existed since 1996. The New Zealand act allows the heads of agencies to determine sensitive information that cannot be disclosed to the committee.

In the United Kingdom, the intelligence and security committee may consider any particular operational matter, but only so far as it and the prime minister are satisfied that the matter is not part of an ongoing intelligence or security operation and is of significant national interest.

In many respects, the future Canadian version of the committee would have far greater access to information than the equivalent committees of our Five Eyes allies from Commonwealth countries.

It is important to note that after five years of working experience, the House of Commons would have the opportunity to review the legislation and amend it at that time if we believed it were then necessary.

It will be a tremendous step forward for Canada, one that will help to ensure that while our security and intelligence agencies are working to protect the safety and security of Canadians, they are fully respecting the rights and freedoms of the Canadians they serve.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

I would like to ask her a question regarding the message this government is sending with these amendments at report stage, not only to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, but also to other parliamentary committees that are tasked with studying government bills.

Acting in good faith, committees study bills and propose amendments. When amendments are passed in committee, one would have to assume it is because they improve the bill. The committee then sends the bill back to the House with amendments. Now, suddenly, the government is back pedalling. In fact, it is reneging on several amendments at report stage and removing them from the bill.

What message does this send to the other committees that will be called upon to examine other government bills and that might face the same tactic when the bills are returned to the House?

What message does this send about the important work that committees do, and not just the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security?

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

Mr. Speaker, as a member of the committee who listened to testimony, I heard what witnesses had to say, and I listened to opposition members when they proposed amendments to the bill.

I think the government has done a very good job of representing what we recommended, applying it against the witness testimony, and presenting a reasonable compromise with what the committee recommended at the end of its clause-by-clause consideration. I think the government did a very good job of reviewing what we proposed and taking that into consideration when it brought back these amendments.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned in her speech being consistent with our Five Eyes partners with this bill. I wonder if the member would also agree with giving our security agencies threat-diminishing powers, as our Five Eyes partners have?

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

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to remember that we are new to this game. We have not had a committee of parliamentarians, as our partners have had. This committee is being informed by our Five Eyes partners. As I mentioned in my speech, in five years it will be or can be reviewed if there are changes that need to be addressed.

Certainly, it has been informed by what our partners are doing, but we have made a Canadian version, and in some ways, it is stronger. I am very proud of what our government has done by creating this committee.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting challenge, because this is a bill that has to balance public interests, privacy, and security. I understand that our allies, the Five Eyes, have similar committees. Can the member speak to how the balance has been reached between public security and privacy?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is important that our security agencies have the resources and support to perform their jobs well, but the privacy of Canadians is also important.

We had the Privacy Commissioner appear before the committee, and he said the following:

Let me say up front that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is supportive of parliamentary oversight for security and intelligence activities, which has been proposed many times in the past. While we applaud this as a long-overdue development, some amendments could be considered to ensure this new committee will be as effective as possible

After hearing that testimony, we looked at what amendments needed to be made to ensure that we were having that effective balance between security and privacy.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join in the debate on this very important bill as the public safety critic for the Conservative Party of Canada, the official opposition. Let me state at the outset what should be obvious, but in this place, sometimes one has to state the obvious. As Conservatives, we support the review and accountability of our national security bodies. That is a position that took a few twists and turns over the years, because obviously, prior to the last election, the previous prime minister was not enthusiastic about a parliamentary oversight committee, perhaps. There were other means by which he wanted to ensure that there was accountability.

The election is over, of course. There is a new government. The Liberals are purporting to follow through on their promise to create a parliamentary oversight committee, but here is where we get to, as Shakespeare would put it, all sound and fury signifying nothing.

We have gone through this whole process of creating a new parliamentary oversight committee. Heck, they even hired the chairman, via the PMO, before the bill was even passed. We have gone through this whole process. We had all the committee hearings. We listened to the experts, and the government is not listening to the experts. This is a government that says the experts are always right, except when the experts disagree with the government. Then we do not listen to them. That is exactly what has happened in this case.

I want to make it clear that the devil is not only in the details; the devil is in the fundamental misappropriation of the bill to promise something to the electorate and then not deliver. That is my problem with the bill. It is the same problem the member for Victoria has with the bill. The legislation before us has some key flaws, and it makes it impossible for us on this side of the House to support it.

What is more, and this was alluded to by the member for Victoria as well, my NDP friend, some of the amendments introduced by the government House leader weaken this legislation even further. The committee proposed by this legislation, evidently chaired by the member for Ottawa South, through an announcement by the PMO, places far too much control in the Prime Minister's Office and far too little control with Parliament and parliamentarians.

First of all, the Prime Minister picks all the members of the proposed committee. Yes, there is some consultation with the leaders of the opposition parties, but ultimately, the membership is dictated by the PMO. What is more, not only is the membership dictated by the Prime Minister, but the information the proposed committee will receive is also dictated by the party in power. The Prime Minister, the relevant minister, can decide that information is too sensitive to be shared with the proposed committee, despite the fact that the members of this committee are all hon. members and are sworn to secrecy. How can the committee review the actions of our security services if the information they receive is heavily redacted and is vetted and approved by the political masters, the political actors?

The second problem is in the nature of the committee. This is not the usual parliamentary committee. By virtue of the way the legislation is structured, it does not have the authorities and the privileges of a parliamentary committee. In fact, the Minister of Public Safety or the Prime Minister can edit the reports of the committee, or indeed block them entirely. This is very disturbing, to say the least. If problematic information were to come to light during an investigation by the proposed committee, the minister or the Prime Minister could bury that information, and the committee would have no recourse.

This seems to me obviously to defeat the purpose of enacting this legislation in the first place. If there is any sort of serious problem, Canadians ought to know about it. Even if some details need to be kept classified, and I acknowledge that fact, Canadians need to know what their government is doing in their name. This is a major concern. This is not a minor quibble.

If we are going to implement parliamentary oversight, we need to do it right. It needs to be real and substantial oversight. It needs to be parliamentary. Otherwise, this is simply a Liberal Party communications exercise, and this is not something the Conservative Party can support.

This brings me to the consideration of the report stage motions before us today. Some of these motions are innocuous. One might question why they were brought forward, but quite frankly, the result is benign. I am thinking of Motions Nos. 1 and 2, in particular.

However, there are other motions that are far more disturbing. For example, Motion No. 4 adds to the classes of information that are inaccessible to the proposed committee. This particularly relates to subclauses 14(c) and 14(d). Removing information directly relating to law enforcement investigations that may lead to a prosecution essentially removes all RCMP participation in this committee. Quite literally, any action taken by RCMP National Division may lead to a prosecution. That is the reason it exists, yet this could be removed from the committee's purview.

My hon. friend from Victoria mentioned the concerns raised at the committee in the testimony of the Information Commissioner, Professor Kent Roach, and Ron Atkey, from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, about how the flow of information would be subject to what they call the triple lock. They coined the phrase. There would be not one lock on the information, not two locks on the information, but three locks on the information by virtue of successive clauses that would make it impossible for this committee to do its job. This is, indeed, a very problematic piece of legislation.

Of course, there have been discussions at committee, and I believe that the threats are still very real. CSIS recently released a report that concluded that radical Islamic terrorism remains a serious threat to Canada. It said that ISIS and al Qaeda are still recruiting Canadians and are still threats. Therefore, engaging in political posturing on an issue as important as national security is simply not appropriate. We need to make sure that CSIS, the CSE, and the RCMP have the tools they need to keep Canadians safe, and one of these tools is ensuring that there is public confidence that these brave women and men are doing their jobs appropriately.

If we are going to be debating national security issues, then let us debate the issues. Let us not have this debate, where this bill is being gutted by the government that proposed the bill in the first place. I would rather be talking about issues such as border crossings and all the other issues that face this country.

It is for this reason that I must say, more in sorrow than in anger, that Conservatives will be opposing the amendments that further weaken this bill. Therefore, if the will of the House is that those amendments pass, we must oppose the bill in general.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat disappointed. The member across the way was in the House during the great debate on Bill C-51, which went beyond the House of Commons. It was debated in virtually every region of our country. What became very clear was that there was a fundamental need for what Bill C-51, Stephen Harper's bill, did not have, and that was a parliamentary oversight committee. If the Conservative government had been proposing that, there probably would have been a lot more buy-in by Canadians. The Liberals made a commitment to Canadians that if we formed government, we would bring in parliamentary oversight.

I listened to the member's comments. I was of the opinion, when I was in opposition, that it was more a personal thing with the former prime minister. I am somewhat disappointed, because it would seem that it is now, in fact, the position of the Conservative Party. That is what I would like a direct response to. Putting all the explanations to the side, I would ask the member to be very clear on this issue. Does the Conservative Party support a parliamentary oversight committee? Does it fundamentally support it?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat again. If we are going to go through the trouble of creating a parliamentary oversight committee, which was, one could argue, the will of the people as a result of October 2015, then make it work. We want it to work.

We accept the will of the people. We are democrats on this side of the House. We accept the democratic will. We are saying to the hon. member and his party, “Fulfill your promise.” Do not get into this Potemkin village parliamentary oversight committee, which does not have the powers it needs to do its job. What is the point?

That is the point I am trying to make as the Conservative Party critic. I am saying this not only for myself and not only for our caucus but that was the testimony we heard at committee from the experts that the hon. member and his colleagues seem always to agree with and want to be subservient to, unless they disagree with the government's proposal, in which case they ignore the experts.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his intervention in the debate. In light of what we heard from the government side, I was wondering whether the hon. member thinks this is nothing more than a smokescreen or a charade. The government claims it is keeping an election promise, but it is creating a committee that could not be weaker or less independent from the government.

Although the government promised a committee of parliamentarians, this is just a half measure. This is just an attempt to keep an election promise to the extent possible. However, it seems like the government is not really interested in moving in this direction and truly creating an independent committee that can do its work properly, given the amendments the government proposed today in order to revert to the first version of Bill C-22, which was too weak in the opposition's view.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member. During the election campaign, the government promised a national security oversight process. However, under this bill, the committee will not have all the necessary powers to ensure the security of our country and protect the interests of our citizens.

My hon. colleague, the NDP critic, and I face a very difficult situation together where we want to support the legislation, but the amendments that are being proposed here further weaken the legislation. We cannot abide by that and we do not support that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Before resuming debate, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, Status of Women; the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, Poverty; the hon. member for Sherbrooke, Canada Revenue Agency.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-22, the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians act.

I want to thank my colleagues in this place who have already taken the opportunity to contribute to this important conversation. I have appreciated hearing all of the different perspectives they have raised.

The Conservative Party has always made the safety and security of Canadians a top priority. Our previous Conservative government understood that our ultimate responsibility was to protect Canadians from those who would do us and our families harm.

Providing law enforcement and national security agencies the necessary tools to prevent and detect national security threats ensures Canadians would be protected from the threats that are, unfortunately, today's reality. At the same time, it was paramount that we stood up for the Canadian values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. This was and is the right thing to do as parliamentarians, to consider this delicate balance between freedom and security, and this is still our view in opposition today.

We cannot be so naive as to pretend that there are no credible threats against Canada today. There are real concerns that we must pay attention to, and to do that we have to create effective national security policies. It is critical that we treat public safety and the security threats that our country faces with clear, sober minds.

While I hate to say it, we live in a world that necessitates our constant watchfulness and vigilance. Unfortunately, Canada has been targeted by those who hate us, and who hate our most cherished values, values like freedom and democracy. They want us to feel unsafe in our own homes.

Indeed, we have seen in recent history examples of threats posed by these individuals on Canadian soil in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, here on Parliament Hill, and also in Strathroy, Ontario. Canada is clearly not immune to security threats, and it is critical that we take steps to counter threats at home and abroad. Horrendous attacks in Europe and the United States have shown that no country is immune to security risks.

Government has a large role to play when it comes to protecting Canadians, and the safety of our citizens is too important to be politicized. I know the member for Durham wrote the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in advance of the introduction of this bill to indicate that the Conservative Party was willing to work with the government to make this truly an effective and functional committee. The goal on this side of the House was to work collaboratively with all parties in the House to ensure that Bill C-22 is a sound piece of legislation. That is why I am extremely disappointed to learn that none of the meaningful amendments proposed by the Conservatives were adopted.

While this legislation provides a necessary framework for parliamentary oversight of our national security apparatus, it is far from perfect. Bill C-22 ignores some of the key areas where success has been so clearly pronounced in the U.K.'s experience. There are some serious holes in the legislation that have been pointed out in debate and at committee. Unfortunately, these were not addressed in the form of meaningful amendments during the committee process.

One of the issues with this bill is that it positions the Prime Minister to have ultimate control over the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians. Subsections 5(1) and 6(1) of the bill would effectively give the Prime Minister full control over the direction of the committee. The Prime Minister would choose the committee members and the committee chair. It is designed to be an arm of the Liberal government rather than a non-partisan committee that can function based on the facts. This legislation would go forward to create a committee that acts according to the wishes of its political masters. The Prime Minister should not have full control over this committee. This committee was intended to be independent and non-partisan, and to provide oversight, as the committee should. The Prime Minister already has control over all of our security agencies through his ministers. The way this bill is designed, he would also have control over this committee as well.

It was unfortunate that months before this bill was even introduced, the Prime Minister had already selected and appointed a chair for the committee. In addition, to the Prime Minister already designating a chair, he would be paying him an additional $42,000-a-year for the privilege. The bill has not even received royal assent yet. Who does that? Who pays someone for a job that does not even exist? The Liberal government does.

A more congenial approach would have been to let a candidate or candidates stand before this House, or even just before the members of the committee to seek their consent on who should lead the committee. Again, this shows that there was no intention to collaborate with the opposition parties in any meaningful way.

The Liberal platform talked a good game about increasing accountability, strengthening the role of committee chairs, which included a commitment to their election by secret ballot, but when the rubber meets the road, we see that the Liberals' words are hollow. The best structure for this committee would be one in which it is appointed by and reports to Parliament.

It is clear, after the study of the bill, that the Liberals wish to continue the facade of collaboration and co-operation while they continue to pull the strings behind the scenes. This cuts at the heart of what I believe is the intent behind the bill, creating an oversight mechanism that would be independent of partisanship. We should expect nothing less from a committee which would, in effect, ensure the security and safety of the security and intelligence community. I believe as it stands, the safety of our security intelligence personnel is jeopardized by the partisan nature of this committee.

I also must raise concerns regarding the effectiveness of this committee going forward. Bill C-22 would provide for numerous exceptions and permits government agencies and ministries to opt-out of providing information for the NSICOP review. The committee cannot access information about ongoing defence intelligence activities supporting military operations, information related to ongoing law enforcement investigations that may lead to prosecutions, and other notable exceptions that would really limit this committee's ability to do its job.

Section 16 would allow ministers to simply refuse to share information with the committee. The Prime Minister would control who is on the committee, who chairs the committee, and as if that was not enough, his ministers would decide what the committee is able to see. Control by the Prime Minister's Office is woven throughout this entire bill. This is unfortunate because this legislation could have truly been an effective tool for Parliament and be supreme in the equation rather than the Prime Minister.

An effective committee, like that of our U.K. allies, is supposed to have a cabinet-like level of secrecy where there is a reasonable, free flow of information to all of its members. Unfortunately, this committee has been left with no teeth, weakening oversight, and preventing the committee's mandate from being fulfilled.

For these reasons, I will not be voting for Bill C-22 in its present form.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the comments from across the way, and I cannot help but think to what degree members are really familiar with the amendments and what the government has put forward.

For example, the member talked about the power that the Prime Minister would have. Yes, the Prime Minister would have power, there is no doubt about that, and the Prime Minister would work with opposition parties.

One of the most important things is the membership of the committee itself. The government members would be a minority on the committee. When we get opposition parties having all this concern about the Prime Minister and the authority, let us not forget that the number of government members of Parliament on the committee would be a minority.

How does that equate to the government having all the power, when in fact it has a minority membership on the committee itself?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the power in this particular piece of legislation we are studying and discussing still lies in the PMO. It starts with the Prime Minister appointing the chairperson, and the Prime Minister directly appointing all committee members.

The Liberals say they will consult opposition parties, but it is the Prime Minister who would ultimately make those appointments. The Prime Minister, through his ministers, would be able to control the access of information to this committee throughout the bill. The Prime Minister's influence, authority, and power is just interwoven throughout the whole bill.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and member of the justice committee for his thoughtful speech.

I wonder if he could comment on the government's assertion we have heard over and over today that it is a good first step, it will be reviewed in three years, and we should be satisfied with the bill, notwithstanding that five of the eight MPs now, contrary to what I think I heard, are government members of Parliament, and the Liberals have another senator they have agreed they want to put on there. The chair would be appointed by the Prime Minister, not as it happens in England, or elsewhere where the committee chooses who its chair will be.

It is, of course, an advisory group to the Prime Minister's Office rather than a committee of Parliament as in other countries. With all of those changes that the Liberals want to bring in today, does the member believe that this is an approach we should accept, that this is good enough for Canada right now?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Victoria, my friend, for that question. It was a great honour and privilege to work with him the last year and a half on the public safety committee. I have a great deal of respect for his opinion and his insight into security matters and issues, although we did not always agree. One good example would have been Bill C-51. My NDP friend from Victoria did not agree Bill C-51 was a good balance between security and freedom. Of course, I think Bill C-51 struck a very good balance.

The government has the opportunity today to build on the good work that we did as Conservatives through Bill C-51, which provides assurance to Canadians that we will keep them safe and gives our law and security agencies the right tools to keep them safe. The government had the opportunity to build on that through Bill C-22 and through the committee establishing oversight of our security agencies. Contrary to what the Liberal member said before, the proposed committee is actually disproportionately represented by Liberal members. It is appointed by the Prime Minister. The prime minister would have full oversight of the committee, even through the access to information the committee has by the prime minister having control over the ministers. No, I do not think this is a good balance.

The Liberals keep comparing the bill to what our Five Eyes partner nations have struck, and many of them have experience with this. Instead of gaining from that valuable experience our partners have in establishing their oversight review committees, the Liberals have decided to go it alone and say it is their first opportunity, their first kick at the can, that they will come up with this and review it. That is absolutely not acceptable. When we have methods that are proven with our partner nations, we should be looking at those structures and taking seriously what they have done and what works.

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

Mr. Speaker, before I get under way, I will comment on the last statement from my colleague across the way. Regarding New Zealand where the prime minister sits on the committee, is that something the Conservatives would want to see happen here on our parliamentary oversight committee?

It is important that we recognize that there has been a great deal of work on this. Let me start off my speech, though, by recognizing International Women's Day today, to applaud everyone who is participating in it, and to give a special call-out to my daughter, who is the youngest member of the Manitoba legislature. Her dad is very proud of all the wonderful work that she does.

I wanted to be able to put this thing into perspective. Let us put it into perspective in regard to a couple of points. One is that the Conservatives were out of touch with Canadians prior to the last election and today they demonstrated that they are still out of touch with Canadians. I say that because we know within the Liberal caucus that when the Conservatives introduced Bill C-51 there was a fundamental piece that was missing. We knew that. We understood that. We knew that because we were working and connecting with Canadians, listening to what Canadians actually had to say.

I understand that the prime minister at the time, Stephen Harper, had a bias. His bias was possibly that he did not trust; I do not know. All we know is that at the end of the day he did not want to have a parliamentary oversight committee and have parliamentarians take responsibility in terms of being able to ensure things such as rights and freedoms of Canadians were in fact being protected. We disagreed back then and I stood up across the way on many occasions and talked about how important it was that the government actually bring in parliamentary oversight. I believe the record will show that we pushed that consistently. The Prime Minister, during the last federal election, in addressing the issue of Bill C-51, made a commitment to Canadians, because we were listening, that if we were to form government we would bring in parliamentary oversight.

The concept is not new. As has been pointed out, there are other countries. Canada is part of a group of nations called the Five Eyes dealing with security and national security issues. We were the only country that did not have a parliamentary oversight committee. This Prime Minister recognized that, and even though our first priority was to deliver on that middle class tax cut and for those who are aspiring to be a part of Canada's middle class and the many other nice things that came out of the budget, I can say we did not lose sight of the parliamentary oversight committee. We recognized that this too was important to Canadians. We are a party that brought in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and we stand by that on all occasions.

I started by saying that the Conservatives were out of touch with Canadians, and we saw that in terms of not incorporating it into Bill C-51. I was amazed when the critic for the Conservatives said they accepted the results of the last federal election. If the Conservatives really did accept the results of the last federal election, they would be supporting this bill. However, we heard today that the Conservatives will not be supporting the bill. What did they base their arguments on? They said that we could have improved it here, we should have improved it there.

Let me read some of the things that were said at the committee stage, and this is Bill C-22 as it was in the committee room.

Noted academic Professor Wesley Wark credited the “government for seeing the importance of parliamentary scrutiny of security and intelligence and for making [the committee of parliamentarians] a centrepiece of its response to the previous government's anti-terrorism legislation”. He also told the standing committee that the new committee of parliamentarians “represents a necessary and timely experiment in parliamentary democracy and activism”. He is not alone. There are others. I made reference to Ronald Atkey, a former SIRC chair and former parliamentarian. He stated that the proposed review body “represents a major and welcome change” in Canada. He explained that he meant “welcome” in the sense that, in his view, “Canada in the last three decades [has fallen] behind our parliamentary cousins in the United Kingdom and Australia in terms of accountability to Parliament”.

He also noted, in the standing committee, that Bill C-22 will help to reassure Canadians that their elected representatives will play a key overview role in accountability regarding the serious powers granted to some of the 17 federal departments and agencies that contribute to Canadian national security measures.

The good news is that this is a commitment that was given by the Liberals when we were going through that last election, and that commitment is being materialized in a very tangible way.

Members, who are New Democrats, Conservatives, or even the Green Party, are saying that they did not listen to the committee and that the Prime Minister said we would be changing attitudes in the standing committee.

I was here for a good number of those years when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, and I participated in some of those committees. The opposition never gained anything.

If we look at this particular piece of legislation, amendments were brought forward, and even with these amendments that we have brought forward today, that are still in place. Let us take a look at it in terms of some of those things.

We have had a lot of discussion this afternoon about the exemptions. When the legislation was here, before it went to committee, that is during the same time in which we had professional experts saying how good the legislation was, the committee wanted some more exemptions. There were four exemptions that the government wants to keep, and we are doing that through the amendments.

At the committee stage, the exemptions were reduced down to one. We are putting three of them back in. In my books that means it is better legislation, because we actually accepted some of those exemptions that came from the standing committee. That means the government was listening to what the standing committee was saying. That is another promise that has been kept by this Prime Minister. When the committees and standing committees do good work and put in the effort, we recognize that.

What are the things that we are actually putting in? One of the things that we are putting back in that the committee took out, for example, was information described in the Witness Protection Program Act. I am not a security expert. I am not going to try to convince members that I am security expert. However, I do know that the witness protection program is an essential program here in Canada. We need to go all out in terms of protecting those individuals in that program.

I do not believe it is irresponsible of the government to bring that clause back in, because we need to protect the names of those individuals. Those individuals' lives are at risk. I believe that is a positive measure. This legislation is better today than when it was in second reading in part because of some of the work that was done in the standing committee.

The NDP members in particular are saying that we have too many exemptions. Let me talk about something that has come out in the New Zealand act, and maybe New Democrat members could respond to it. New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes. Its act allows the government to inform the committee that those documents or that information cannot be disclosed because, in the opinion of the chief executive or the relevant intelligence and security agents, those documents or that information is sensitive.

I would argue our legislation is far more effective at getting the badly needed information to our committee members. New Zealand is not alone. What about the U.K.? What is their exemption clause? Let us look at it. It says: inform the intelligence and security committee that the information cannot be disclosed because the secretary of state has decided it should not be disclosed.

I would argue that this is Canada's first, and this is somewhat historic. We have a great piece of legislation here. This is good news for Canadians. It is protecting rights and freedoms. We have gone further, in many ways, than other jurisdictions.

As opposed to trying to come up with excuses as to why members might not want to support it, I would suggest that members should get on board, listen to what Canadians are saying, and vote in favour of Bill C-22.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate listening to the member. I do not need to use my earpiece as everything is nice and clear. I am always intrigued by the hon. member for Winnipeg North because he knows something about everything, and I actually appreciate that. However, I do want to help him a bit with his facts on this bill.

I am going to read from subclause 4(2), about the committee makeup. It states:

The Committee is to consist of not more than two members who are members of the Senate and not more than seven members who are members of the House of Commons. Not more than four Committee members who are members of the House of Commons may be members of the government party.

He said that the government party would have a minority of members on this committee. That is absolutely false. The assumption is, and that is if the Prime Minister would actually appoint a full committee, and it does not say he has to; it just says “not more than”. He could appoint four Liberal members from the House of Commons to that committee. He could appoint two Liberal senators to sit on that committee. Of course, we know they are not really Liberal senators, there are just senators who are Liberals, but he could appoint both of those. He has also indicated that he is going to appoint a Liberal chair, as he has already done. He has appointed a chair to a job that does not exist.

That means that on a committee of 10, there are actually seven members who could conceivably be Liberals, which in all likelihood will be Liberals, providing he actually appoints another three members who might be from the Conservative Party or other opposition parties.

I am going to give the member an opportunity to clarify his comments.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, clarity can be found in Hansard. I made it very clear that the government members of Parliament are a minority on the committee and everything that the member across the way has read off reinforces exactly what I said.

The other place, whether the Conservatives want to believe it or not, is moving more toward an independent Senate, and within the Liberal caucus we think that is a positive thing. I know many of my colleagues within the caucus, and I suspect those who will be participating on this, recognize the importance of it.

On another note, members will recall that, generally speaking, chairs get involved when there is a tie vote.

I think that the member across the way and possibly the Conservative Party underestimate the good work that will be done by this committee. I believe that because of the calibre of the members of Parliament and the senators who will be representatives on this committee it will in fact do a fantastic job in protecting Canadians' rights and freedoms.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member referred to Professor Wesley Wark who, along with three other experts, on January 27 of this year, wrote as follows in The Globe and Mail:

What united us was a concern that the government, in pursuing a laudable objective, had simply gone too far in restricting access by the Committee to secret information and in attempting to control the kind of reporting it could do.

He goes on to support the committee recommendations that, of course, we supported, as well.

A Liberal bill a few years back, Bill C-622, allowed the committee, in its oversight capacity, to subpoena witnesses and documents and get the information it thought it would require. That was supported by the current Prime Minister, the current public safety minister, the future chair of this committee, and many other current cabinet ministers. Does the member think they were wrong?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there are issues on which some have much more knowledge than I, and we have these experts who come forward. I cited a quote directly from Mr. Wark. Having said that, what I do know is that if we do a comparison between Canada and the other four eyes, Canada being the fifth eye, we will find that in certain areas there might be an argument that we might be able to improve and do better. In other areas, I would argue that we are doing better than other members of the Five Eyes.

What is nice about the legislation, and even the government House leader, if members listened to what the government House leader had to say, said this is something which we are starting. It is historic here in Canada. It is the first time we are having a parliamentary oversight committee to be able to protect our freedoms and our rights. We are not saying there is no way in which it cannot be improved in the future, but I can tell members that I believe that Canadians as a whole will support not only the bill but the amendments that are being brought forward. This government demonstrated that it is very sensitive and it listened to what was being said at committee and what other experts had to say about the legislation.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Perth--Wellington.

I just want to inform the member that time might be a bit short. He will have time to make his full 10-minute presentation and only have about two minutes for questions, but that will come up again when this item comes back to the House.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to debate this important issue.

Listening to the debate thus far today in the House and hearing the parliamentary secretary talk about the amendments that his government is bringing in at report stage and the amendments that it rejected at committee made me think of one of the great orators that the House has ever heard, the Right Hon. Arthur Meighen, one of this country's prime ministers, a relatively short-lived prime minister but a prime minister nonetheless, who was actually from my home area of Perth County.

Arthur Meighen once gave a speech and his words are valuable to the debate we have at hand. He was speaking of Edmund Burke, one of the great British thinkers, when he said:

...a ministry must yield to Parliament and not contrive that Parliament be new-modelled until it is fitted to their purposes. If the authority of Parliament...is to be upheld as long as it coincides in opinion with His Majesty's advisers, but to be set at nought the moment it differs from them, then the House of Commons will shrink into a mere appendage of administration and entirely lose its independent and effective character.

I get the impression from the structure and the makeup of this committee that is exactly what the government is trying to do.

Throughout the history of our great parliamentary democracies, the supremacy of Parliament has been well established. As a nation-state, there is no question our country owes a duty of care to the security and safety of our citizens.

Parliament has a duty to ensure that our laws are properly in place and that they protect our citizens. We must also be sure that we do not overstep the boundaries that are set out for us, which is why we are not entirely opposed as such to the creation of a parliamentary oversight committee, one that may be similar to that of the United Kingdom. The challenge though is that the government of this day has refused to listen to the important input of not only the committee but of members from this side of the House and from members down the way in the NDP as well. The government has refused to take the advice of our former public safety critic, the member for Durham, and the member for Victoria, both of whom have brought important contributions to this debate, but nonetheless, the government has refused to go about amending this bill and creating this bill in a way that would truly protect the rights of our citizens.

One specific element of the bill that I find troubling is subclause 4(3), which reads:

The committee is not a committee of either House of Parliament or of both Houses.

As such, the committee is called the security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians. It would be a misnomer to call it a parliamentary committee because it is not and the government has structured it as such, very deliberately, I would say.

I would suggest it has been done so to exempt the committee from some of the normal practices that parliamentary committees of the House operate under. The government in effect, I would argue, is creating the committee to be a branch of the executive branch rather than the legislative branch of Parliament, and the government has failed to truly justify this approach.

Upon further examining the details of Bill C-22 it becomes clear the Liberal cabinet is not looking to enhance parliamentary oversight but rather to expand its own power. In fact, clause 21 of the bill gives the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister alone, in consultation with the Prime Minister's appointed chair, the ability to revise sections of these reports. In other words, it would give the Prime Minister the opportunity to force a redaction of the reports before they are tabled in Parliament. This allows the Prime Minister to decide what Parliament can and cannot see. So much for a parliamentary committee.

I would remind the Liberal government of the words of one of our former Speakers who, on April 27, 2010, said, and I quote from the Speaker's ruling on that date:

The insinuation that Members of Parliament cannot be trusted with the very information that they may well require to act on behalf of Canadians runs contrary to the inherent trust that Canadians have placed in their elected officials and which Members require to act in their various parliamentary capacities.

In fact, it was members on that side, members of the now Liberal government, who argued vehemently at that time for the release of sensitive information. Now they have constructed a committee which would, in effect, give the Prime Minister, in consultation with his own appointed chair, the ability to redact and keep information from this chamber.

A committee of parliamentarians, or what should be a parliamentary committee, should be the master of its own domain. It should, in effect, be able to decide how to act within its own jurisdiction.

I am also concerned that Bill C-22 authorizes cabinet to not disclose certain information to the committee. According to the rules established by clause 15 of the bill, the committee does not receive information directly from the departments. The committee must instead submit a request to a minister.

Clause 15(3) states:

After the appropriate minister receives the request, he or she must provide or cause to be provided to the Committee, in a timely manner, the requested information to which it is entitled to have access.

The expression “in a timely manner” is difficult to interpret. The ministers can put off complying with the request. My experience with how ministers can delay responding to committees' requests indicates that this clause is highly problematic. The bill should establish strict deadlines for the departments' response.

What concerns me the most is the fact that after stating that it wants to strengthen the role of Parliament by enhancing the independence of committees, cabinet chose the chair of the committee. We learned from the media that the member for Ottawa South will chair the committee.

I have no particular opinion on the performance of the member for Ottawa South as a parliamentarian. I am certain he is an exceptionally adequate parliamentarian and representative of his riding, but the fact is that this chair was appointed by the Prime Minister. He was not elected by fellow committee members, who, in fact, have not even been appointed yet and may not be appointed for several months to come, but the Prime Minister has already appointed his preferred choice as chair of the committee, likely a year and a half before the committee is fully established.

I would remind the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness that they ran on a platform of being open, accountable, and transparent, but they appointed a member with really no particular experience in the field of public safety or national security organizations to provide oversight of Canada's covert security and intelligence activities. The Prime Minister chose such a member to serve as chair. Why? Could it perhaps be that the member for Ottawa South has a particular skill set, particular experience, in one very precise area, and that is being a long-time Liberal? He comes from one of the most famous Liberal families in Ontario.

[John Barlow]

Infamous.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would not say “infamous” as that would be unparliamentary, but it is a very famous Liberal family. Could it just be that he is being rewarded for his long-time dedication to the Liberal Party, or could it perhaps be that it is simply a reward for having been left out of cabinet when the cabinet was formed?

Finally, the bill states that the committee chair will receive an annual allowance of $42,200. This amount is over three times the usual allowance of $11,900 given to chairs of standing committees.

In my riding of Perth—Wellington, $42,000 is a good annual salary. The chair of this committee will receive the equivalent of a Canadian worker's salary, in addition to the $170,400 parliamentary salary he already receives.

There is no question in my mind that Parliament and we as parliamentarians are open to a degree of parliamentary oversight of our national security agencies. This is something that our party is not opposed to. The challenge the Conservative opposition has, as members of this august chamber, is the way in which the Liberals have structured this committee. The way in which they have imposed their self-appointed chair on this committee and the way in which they have introduced amendments at report stage and rejected some of the amendments of the all-party committee simply go to show that this is more window dressing than actually an effective oversight committee of the House.

For these reasons and so much more, this bill simply does not reflect the international examples that have been provided in the past of effective parliamentary oversight activities.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

We will have to stop. The next time Bill C-22 comes up the hon. member will have five minutes of questions coming his way. I am sure he will do a wonderful job with it.

The House resumed from March 8 consideration of Bill C-22, an Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this debate on Bill C-22, an act to establish the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians. It is a bill that would at long last enable Canadian parliamentarians to scrutinize our national security framework and our national security agencies, as our Five Eyes partners have been doing for years.

The creation of this committee would be part of achieving the dual objectives of keeping Canadians safe while safeguarding our rights and freedoms. It would also stand us in great stead among our international partners. In fact, the new Canadian committee would raise the bar for national security accountability worldwide.

I will touch on a bit of the history behind Bill C-22.

For many years, a great many Canadians, including me as an MP, have called for the creation of such a committee. The government of Paul Martin put forward a proposal that, unfortunately, died on the order paper.

Issues pertaining to the need for better oversight of national security organizations were discussed in 2008 in Justice Frank Iacobucci's Internal Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, and in 2006 in Justice Dennis O'Connor's Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar.

While the Conservatives were in power, both the private member's bill, Bill C-551, from the member for Malpeque, and my own private member's bill, Bill C-622, were tabled, as was a bill with bipartisan support in the Senate, all of which would have seen this committee created years ago.

My bill, Bill C-622, which called for the creation of a parliamentary committee of oversight, built on the two previous bills and also included an additional set of measures to increase the transparency and accountability of the Communications Security Establishment. It would have put metadata under the law and created a framework of accountability for acquiring, storing, or sharing information inadvertently or advertently collected. However, the timing of my bill was very interesting, because the final discussion and vote took place one week after the attack on Parliament, which had been preceded by two deadly attacks on Canadian soldiers. At that time, there was a great deal of concern about the security of Canadians, due to radicalization and potential terrorism.

In the remarks following the attack on Parliament, it was remarkable that all party leaders confirmed their commitment to protect the rights, freedoms, and civil liberties of Canadians, even as security measures were to be analyzed and strengthened. Indeed, Canadians expect these fundamental aspects of their very democracy being guarded to be respected. That kind of attention to security measures and privacy is the underlying intention of Bill C-22.

At the time, in 2014, I invited members of all parties to support sending my bill to committee for further examination and to signal the authenticity of their commitment to protecting privacy at the same time as strengthening security in Canada. Unfortunately, instead, the previous prime minister instructed his Conservative members to vote against Bill C-622, even though all members of the Liberal Party and all other parties in the House, including one brave Conservative member, voted for it. The bill failed. It was not passed.

However, I am now happy to see the government following through on the spirit of my bill, Bill C-622. I was proud to campaign on the promise of delivering stronger national security oversight by parliamentarians, and Bill C-22 delivers on that promise.

It is regrettable that it has taken so long, but we can be proud as the members of Parliament who will, I am confident, finally bring this essential parliamentary body into being. After all, as the federal and provincial privacy commissioners stated in the fall 2014 communiqué, “Canadians both expect and are entitled to equal protection for their privacy and access rights and for their security. We must uphold these fundamental rights that lie at the heart of Canada’s democracy.”

I followed with interest as the members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security studied this piece of legislation, proposed and debated amendments, and amended the bill, frequently with the support of several parties.

I want to emphasize what a pleasant change this is from working under the previous government, whose members viewed government bills as sacrosanct.

That was especially the case with laws concerning security measures. As we know, Bill C-51 followed shortly after the tragedies of the attacks on soldiers and on Parliament and was pushed through, essentially with no amendments, despite the deep concerns of Canadians.

I feel that many of the committee's amendments improve the bill and the new committee it will establish.

For example, the committee amended clause 8 to expand the scope of the committee's mandate. When it comes to examining activities carried out by national security or intelligence agencies, the power of a minister to determine that the examination would be injurious to national security would now be time limited to the period during which the activity was actually happening. Once it was no longer ongoing, the minister would be required to inform the committee and the committee could then undertake its examination. I support this change.

I also support the amendment that gives the committee chair a vote only in the case of a tie as well as the NDP's addition of a clause requiring the committee to inform the appropriate minister of the discovery of any activity that may not be in compliance with the law.

I also support some of the changes to the exemptions that were in clause 14 initially, the information to which committee members were not entitled.

I agree with the public safety committee that the new committee of parliamentarians should be able to receive information about ongoing defence intelligence activities supporting military operations. I support that it should have access to information considered privileged under the Investment Canada Act and that it should have access to information collected by FINTRAC, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

There were certain changes made by the committee that were not accepted by the government, for a variety of reasons. For example, there is the amendment currently before the House to reintroduce clause 16, which would allow a minister to prevent the release of information that constitutes special operating information under the Security of Information Act, when disclosing it could be injurious to national security. This kind of authority exists in the case of other equivalent committees in similar parliamentary systems around the world. Moreover, Bill C-22 would still require the minister to give written reasons for preventing the release of information, and Parliament would be informed of each occasion on which this authority was used.

This legislation is a major leap forward for Canadian national security accountability. The new committee of parliamentarians would not only provide Canadians with the assurance that their elected representatives, the MPs in Parliament, were on watch to strengthen the protection of their essential civil rights but would also help identify opportunities to improve on current mechanisms for defending their security. In fact, effective protection of individual privacy and effective delivery of national security measures are not a balance, a dichotomy, or a trade-off. They are complementary, and both are necessary.

The United States Department of Homeland Security, for example, considers safeguarding civil rights and liberties to be critical to its work to protect its nation from the many threats it faces. This third-largest department of the U.S. government now explicitly embeds and enforces privacy protections and transparency in all the department's systems, programs, and activities.

In 2014, deputy secretary Mayorkas confirmed in a Department of Homeland Security speech that not only is this an integral part of the DHS mission and crucial to maintaining the public's trust but it has resulted in Homeland Security becoming a stronger and more effective department.

The original version of Bill C-22, as presented by the government at first reading, was already lauded by experts, and it has only become stronger with the amendments accepted from the public safety committee. Crucially, the bill requires that the act be reviewed by Parliament five years after coming into force, so all of the discussions we are having here in Parliament can be reviewed and the bill can be changed as appropriate.

I am proud to have contributed to the conversation leading to Bill C-22. I am pleased that our government has taken this essential step forward in protecting fundamental Canadian security and freedoms. Ultimately, the bill before us today would make Canadians safer and help ensure that our rights and freedoms are better protected. It has been a long time coming. I invite all hon. members to join me in making it happen.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her speech.

In 2014, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and nine other ministers voted for Bill C-622, a bill that would have established an oversight committee with unfettered access and subpoena powers.

Is the member disappointed? Why is the government trying to take tools away from the committee that Bill C-22 would establish?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the NDP member for her question.

I want to point out that today is a historic day. A bill like this one to create a committee of parliamentarians to oversee, improve, scrutinize, and analyze the activities and operations of over a dozen security intelligence agencies is unprecedented in Canada.

These kinds of activities were carried out in the dark. We had to have faith, without any oversight as parliamentarians, and that must stop. I think this is worth celebrating, and I hope the member will join me.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, despite my colleague's speech, I think that Canadians expect Parliament to have a truly effective watchdog that has some real teeth.

If we want to strengthen the confidence of Canadians in our public security and intelligence agencies, we need to ensure real oversight. We need to give this oversight committee the tools and autonomy needed to be effective.

In 2004, an all-party committee looked at the issue of an oversight committee. After visiting some allied countries, members of that committee concluded that, without full access to classified information, the oversight committee would not be able to complete its task.

However, the bill before us today places a number of limitations on the rights of MPs, even though MPs would have security clearance and would be bound to secrecy.

Does the parliamentary secretary not have sufficient confidence in the members to grant them full access to as much information as possible, rather than trying to restrict that information?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the first part of the NDP member's question. We want an oversight committee that is as effective as possible. That is what Bill C-22 promises and I am proud of that.

I am also very pleased that we have a government that accepts amendments proposed by opposition party members. We are making history because for 10 years, hon. members were unable to contribute to improving government bills. Now, committees operate in such a way that members of all parties can contribute to creating a more effective framework. That is what the committee did and the government accepted several proposed amendments.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the most important duties of any national government is the safety and security of its citizens. That is what people look to the government for, that is what they trust their government will do, and that is indeed one of our most important obligations here in this House, but more importantly for any government in Canada.

I come to this debate as a former public safety minister. While aware of the national security threats that we face as a country and how we work to deal with those threats, it also means that I understand full well that there are very good reasons that one might not want to have a committee such as this. Those arguments have been articulated in the past.

On the one hand, for example, one could argue that our national security agencies conduct themselves with the utmost professionalism and that the existing oversight mechanisms we have are adequate and do a fine job in providing oversight of those mechanisms to protect the public interest. I think all of us would agree that is indeed largely the case here in Canada today, and I think it is clear that the Liberal government has concluded the same, based on the approach it is taking to the bill.

The second argument that we hear from time to time is that we cannot really trust politicians, especially those with a partisan interest, with this kind of sensitive security information. If they see a partisan gain to be had, they will find some way to use that information to their advantage, even if it would hurt national security.

The Liberals have clearly concluded that they believe both of these two perspectives. However, they are stuck with a problem. The problem is that notwithstanding their conclusions on this front, they have this promise from the last election to establish an all-party national oversight committee. They feel they must somehow fulfill that promise. They noted when they were out campaigning that Canada is “the sole nation among our Five Eyes allies whose elected officials cannot scrutinize security operations”. Therefore, they come to us with a bill today that ensures that parliamentarians will not be able to scrutinize national security operations, i.e., their solution does not address what they say was their problem.

The Liberals' solution indicates that they do not believe we can trust politicians, which is one of those arguments for not having such a body in the first place. What we are dealing with here is a fascinating shell game. We are establishing something that has the name, national security committee of parliamentarians, but it is not a parliamentary committee; it is a committee of parliamentarians. It seems to belong to the Prime Minister as his personal group, but it is not a parliamentary committee. It has none of those privileges. It is simply an empty shell, with none of the powers we would think such a committee would have.

While we are going through a tremendous charade to pretend we are carrying through on a commitment to do something from the election, we are creating it in name but not in substance.

That is the problem we have in the Conservative Party. I believe it is legitimate to have a perspective where we make those arguments and say we will not have a parliamentary oversight committee because of those reasons, because our existing system works well: “We think our bodies do well. We are concerned about trusting politicians.” We could say that, or we could say that those statements are not true: “We really do need to have parliamentary oversight.” Then, we can actually create it. The bill does not create it. It is consistent. In fact, one of the ironies is that the underlying premise of the argument that we cannot trust politicians is proven by this bill. The Liberals went out there and told Canadians they would do something, and they are not. They are doing something very different. They are proving that very argument by their actions in this case.

This committee, as I said, is not a parliamentary committee. It has none of the associated powers and privileges of a parliamentary committee, and, by its structure, is isolated and cut off entirely from this parliamentary process. Members will see that it does not have the ability to appeal to the rights that one has as parliamentarians by virtue of our long-standing traditions in this House of Commons, and which for centuries of the Westminster system has worked.

The body is not a parliamentary committee; it is a committee merely of parliamentarians. The bill before us ensures that the body cannot scrutinize ongoing operations, and it says that when the operations are complete then of course it can reflect upon them. However, in this day and age, there is no such thing.

As a former public safety minister, I can say that no investigation is ever complete. The principal threat that we face, as the public safety department and the government assess in their national security priorities documents on the terrorism front, is the threat of Islamic extremist terrorism. Every time we have had such an incident, though, even when the incident is over and the perpetrator may be killed, the fact is that investigations continue with the people they have dealt with, in the context they have had, and the networks they have, and these investigations continue on and on. By their very nature, they do not come to a conclusion.

By the definitions of the exclusions that have been created for this committee, they are effectively, de facto, excluded from ever dealing with anything of substance that is actually happening on the national security front. Then, ironically, most of all, the authority that it would be given to seek information, to ask for documents, the mandate it would be given and the realms in which it can investigate, are more limited than the existing oversight bodies that are doing their work. They are duplicative, but more narrow. They are not even in other areas. They are in the exact same areas, but they are more narrow.

Therefore, it is a paper shell that is being proposed by the government. It is a meaningless shell. It certainly underlines those two principal arguments that I made in the first case about why the government probably has come to the conclusion that it would not, if it had its preferences and had not made such a rash promise in the last election, be proceeding with this committee.

Let us deal with the first of those arguments, whether our existing national security organizations do their jobs well and have adequate oversight. I can say, I think without compromising any oaths or laws, that our Canadian Security Intelligence Service is highly professional. We are very fortunate to have it working for us. I believe the men and women in that organization are second to none. They provide a service to Canadians that has kept us safe countless times.

They resist any temptation to put themselves in the spotlight, to tell success stories of their work, but there is a myriad of success stories of their work. The threats that they have shut down, which we have never ever heard about, that they have neutralized, prevented from happening, have identified, and appropriately tracked to protect us are numerous. We can be very proud of the work of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It is indeed highly professional.

I have heard occasional criticisms of individuals on the Security Intelligence Review Committee. After all, a lot of them are politicians and people like to criticize politicians. However, I have never heard any substantive criticisms of the work they have done being inadequate. We can conclude that both the organization and the oversight have worked very well.

Another one of the three organizations that we are dealing with, the Communications Security Establishment, is outstanding. It is a second-to-none, world-class operation, and we can commend its work. Fortunately, most of us do not know the work that it does, which is the way it is supposed to be, but I can assure everyone that it does outstanding work. I have never ever heard a single credible criticism of the quality of work done by the commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment. Again, it is high quality.

The RCMP is a bit of a different body. One of the difficulties is that we ask our police to spread themselves across an incredibly large mandate, everything from local and municipal policing to counterterrorism investigations, to dealing with money laundering, to dealing with very sophisticated financial transactions. It is a mandate that is truly broad, so their work is not always perfect. However, that being said, the work of Ian McPhail and the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission has been excellent. I have not heard any credible complaints. They are providing very high-quality reviews.

When I look at these, I can see that the government has concluded there is not a problem. However, Liberals have talked about it in opposition, whipping up a frenzy of concerns. They do not really share that. They do not really believe that. At the end of day, they honestly do not believe politicians should have oversight. That is why they have created this limited scope, this inability. In fact, as I said, this body would become a pale duplication. It is a duplication of the existing oversight, but it is a pale duplication. The committee of parliamentarians will have less power than those existing oversight bodies that we talked about that are doing their work.

Not only will it have less scope, but the government almost implicitly in this bill acknowledges embarrassment that it is creating a body that is merely a duplication with fewer powers. It does that with an entire clause, clause 9 of the bill, that requires the review bodies and this new committee to “avoid any unnecessary duplication of work.” The government has actually acknowledged it is asking this committee to do the exact same thing. Just a little slice of it is all the government is going to let the committee do and please, no duplication.

At one point in time when this was proposed, I thought that as a former public safety minister, it would be great for me to be on this committee. Now I look at this committee as it is being proposed by the government, and it is such a meaningless shell. I can assure every member in this House who is interested in serving on it that they are going to find it a very frustrating and empty experience, because they are not going to see too much and they are not going to have much power to actually do anything. Certainly, it is a far cry from a substantive committee such as we see, for example, south of the border.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that will be addressed with this committee is if there are issues that arise in the RCMP or CSIS, that particular committee will be able to follow the evidence from the RCMP to CSIS, or from CSIS to the RCMP. Right now the review bodies cannot do that.

Would the member not agree that this is a big improvement with regard to that particular committee? It can follow the evidence from the RCMP to CSIS. Right now that cannot be done.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is an optimistic hope. The committee might be able to do that on something that happened 25 years ago. However, the exclusions in this mean that the committee cannot deal with anything that is an existing operation. I have already laid out why anything that has happened in the past five to 10 years on the counterterrorism front still have threads out there as parts of active investigations. The committee is not going to be able to get the information.

The powers here, by definition, if there is an intelligence failure, the committee cannot go there and investigate that. If there is an abuse, the committee cannot go there because it is going to be part of such an ongoing evaluation, or it is going to be a threat or “injurious to national security”. Those are the magic words they are using.

If the committee thinks the priorities that the government is pursuing or that our intelligence agencies are pursuing are wrong, the committee cannot investigate that because that would be injurious to national security. If the committee thought that some of the techniques it wanted to look at were inappropriate, it cannot do that either because that would also fall under the exclusion that talking about that would be injurious to national security.

The fact is this committee would simply be a powerless paper tiger that exists for one purpose, like a window or hood ornament on a vehicle, to decorate the fact and suggest that the government has kept a promise that it has not really kept at all.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

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

It is incumbent on the committee to verify, in the most independent and effective way possible, whether the government is fulfilling its role of ensuring the safety of Canadians.

Is the hon. member not the least bit concerned about the government 's insistence that the chair of this oversight committee be appointed by the Prime Minister and not elected by the members of the committee, as is the case with most of our allies?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my concerns are much deeper than that. By nature, any chair who comes out of Parliament is going to be a partisan person. That is life. That is part of why the government wants a committee of parliamentarians. It is putting value in that democratic oversight, if that is what it is doing. My concerns are much deeper than that.

I think people have a sense that somehow a committee like this could have some substantive oversight. Let us take, for example, a serious intelligence failure, where we had questions about whether our national security agencies had done the right things. Could the committee actually go there with this, if it cannot ask for information and cannot investigate things that are part of an ongoing operation?

Let us take the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an example. The year 2001 was a decade and a half ago. Guess what? Investigations into that in the United States continue. There are people in Guantanamo Bay still today related to that in one way or another. There are folks around the world where they are trying to come up with cases for prosecution to pursue them. These things are all still very active a decade and a half later. By definition, an intelligence failure that would have led to an event like that here in Canada would be foreclosed from investigation by this committee because it would be dealing with an ongoing operation.

The fact is this is a committee that exists in name and decoration only with absolutely no powers. That is what the Liberal Party is proposing. It is very different from what anybody believed the Liberals were proposing when they were asking for the support of Canadians to form government.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak to Bill C-22, the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians act.

We have now had the benefits of a healthy debate as we have witnessed today and prior to this, of course, at second reading and at committee stage. I would like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for their helpful analysis and of course for their hard work.

As many have said today and prior to today, this legislation is long overdue. We have heard stakeholders call it “crucial” and affirm that it would establish a Canadian committee stronger than its international counterparts. It would fill a significant gap that has existed in Canada for far too long, and would enable us to achieve our twin objectives of making sure that our national security agencies are working effectively to keep Canadians safe and that Canadians' rights and freedoms are protected. As members know, Bill C-22 would create a committee of parliamentarians with extraordinary access to classified information so they can closely examine intelligence and security operations.

This new Canadian committee would have a broader mandate and greater access to information than many of its international counterparts. The bill before us would allow the committee to review legislation, policy, regulation, administration, and financing related to national security and intelligence along with any related activity a department undertakes. By comparison, in Australia the equivalent committee can only conduct statutory reviews of legislation and review the expenditure and administration of their agencies requiring ministerial referral to look at any of the additional issues. In the United Kingdom, the committee requires a memorandum of understanding with the prime minister to look at anything beyond the work of three specific British agencies.

Therefore, from the start, Bill C-22 would provide the committee with a wider-ranging scope than those of some of our major international allies with similar Westminster-style systems. That was the case when the bill was first introduced, and the public safety committee has made amendments intended to move the Canadian version even further beyond the authorities and access that exist among our allies. I certainly applaud that objective and I agree with some of the amendments brought forward. Others, however, are problematic and I will explain which of the committee's amendments I would like to preserve and why.

As is the case with other similar national security committees in parliaments around the world, one of the key concerns is how to ensure that the committee has access to the information it needs to do its job, while ensuring that security is not compromised by the release of especially sensitive information. That is why the original bill listed certain types of information that would be exempt from the committee's purview and give ministers the authority to determine that certain information could not be divulged to the committee for national security reasons.

I support changes made by committee members that would expand the mandates of the new national security committee, notably by requiring ministers to give reasons for withholding information on national security grounds and to notify the committee when those grounds no longer apply. I also support the change that would only allow the chair of the committee a vote in the case of a tie. I support the requirement that public versions of committee reports must clearly indicate the extent and reasons for any redactions. I support the new whistle-blower clause added by the NDP. I also support changes to clause 14, which would give the committee access to information about ongoing defence intelligence activities in support of military operations, privileged information under the Investment Canada Act, and information collected by FINTRAC, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

There are, however, certain exemptions to the information the committee would have access to that I would like to see added back into the bill. These concern information about people in the witness protection program, the identities of confidential sources, as well as information directly related to ongoing police investigations.

In the first two cases, there is the potential for individuals to be placed in serious danger if their identities become known, and there is no reason that the committee would need to know who exactly these people are in order to properly scrutinize any intelligence activities. As concerns ongoing police investigations, it is important to guard against even the perception of political interference in active investigations and prosecutions. Once an investigation is no longer active, the committee would certainly review it retrospectively.

I would also like to see clause 16 reintroduced. This part authorizes a minister to prevent a disclosure of special operating information as defined by the Security of Information Act when it could be injurious to national security. In such cases, the minister would have to give reasons in writing, and the fact that this discretion was used would be public. This is comparable to the way equivalent committees operate in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.

Indeed, our proposed approach to access the information follows the best practices established in other allied countries. In both Australia and the U.K., for example, a minister may prevent the disclosure of operationally sensitive information to the committee if it is deemed that disclosure would not be in the interests of national security. Nevertheless, the Canadian committee would have expansive access to information and the powers necessary to ensure that our security framework is strong and effective, and that Canadians' rights and freedoms are well protected.

The committee would be well resourced and supported to do its job as a fully independent body setting its own agenda. This would strengthen democratic accountability. It would ensure that national security and intelligence activities are being carried out in an effective way that respects the values we cherish as Canadians.

It would indeed set a higher bar for accountability to Parliament than many of our international allies. It would fulfill an important promise that we made to Canadians during the campaign.

I urge all members to support this legislation, Bill C-22, and some of the amendments.

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

Mr. Speaker, in an era when the Five Eyes have been accused of doing things like the Stuxnet worm and creating the Equation Group, which created hacks for hard drives, and otherwise doing things which are varying levels of creative, I am wondering what my colleague from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame thinks of the importance of having a committee of this type to oversee and make sure that whenever these kinds of actions are taken by any member of the Five Eyes, those actions are legal and ethical and are kept within the bounds of what we should and can be doing.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I remember that we debated and discussed this some time ago, even in the last Parliament under the guise of private members' bills, several of those pieces of legislation, and how to keep track with the Five Eyes, in particular, the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. We talked about how we wanted to create this committee of parliamentarians, not a parliamentary committee which has been pointed out several times today. It is a natural extension of oversight from civilian bodies such as our own that was necessary. There are parliamentarians who are far more eloquent in their explanation of this than I am, but nevertheless, I certainly believe in their enthusiasm. I certainly believe this is long overdue, as was pointed out by many in the House, and not just from this party.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the pleasure of working with our hon. colleague on the fisheries and oceans committee. I think our fisheries and oceans committee has been doing some great work. It consists of members of Parliament who bring a variety of skill sets, experience, and knowledge of the issues at hand, which has allowed us to do some incredible work, in terms of the Fisheries Act review, the northern cod study, our Atlantic salmon study, because we bring real-world experience to the committee. We have met with the minister, who has advised us they are going to take our recommendations forward.

However, with the national security and intelligence committee, the government, again, is essentially just fulfilling a campaign promise. It is ticking off that check box saying it is doing it. but then the revisions it has made in the most recent iteration of the bill are really not giving any form of authority or power to any of the committee members. As a matter of fact, it is weakening it. The government members are standing before the House, and before Canadians who are in the gallery and who are tuning in, and saying that this is going to be better than any other of our four ally nations and partners. The reality is that this is a shell game.

My hon. colleague has mentioned some things that he would like to see, but I guess the question I would ask him is, does he not recognize that the government has weakened the original intent of this committee with these recommendations?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the answer to his question is probably within his question. I appreciate his comments about the fisheries committee, incidentally. He mentioned that the powers contained within this legislation are more broad and more powerful than other allies', upon which they were modelled. Therein, I think, lies the answer to his question. It is not a shell game. Take some of the amendments that we have taken from committee that were pointed out to us, some of the automatic stuff, like subpoenas or the witness protection program, which is a fine example. The information, the narrative is laid out, it is just that some of the information is not disclosed, for reasons that are quite obvious. We talked about this before the last Parliament, and even before the campaign. We talked about the essential nature of this. This is why I brought some of this forward. I want to re-establish some of the things that were taken out in committee because I think they are absolutely necessary. We have listened to some of them and we have left them out. However, in particular cases, like the witness protection program I talked about earlier, they are an essential part. I think in the spirit of this, as was pointed out before, this is long overdue, and we have done it, and we are far more thorough than other nations.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to report stage of Bill C-22 today. The NDP was supportive of this bill at second reading because we are supportive of the idea that we need stronger oversight when it comes to our national security and intelligence agencies. We were optimistic that if the bill were to proceed to committee, we could work out details at committee that would make that oversight body of parliamentarians an effective means of oversight.

Our optimism was rewarded at committee. There was some good work done there. There was collaboration across party lines, which is really important to underline because part of the point of this committee of parliamentarians is to have that kind of co-operation across party lines. When it comes to issues of national security it is important not to make them partisan issues. Therefore, up to this point, the committee model for the legislation was working well as a model for the committee of parliamentarians. The kind of inter-party co-operation we would hope to see on that committee, once established, was actually taking place at the committee level.

It was not just committee members pulling ideas out of a hat and all agreeing on it; there were experts who testified at the committee and made suggestions as to how to make it better in the sense of ensuring that it would be effective. We can establish a committee of parliamentarians who can meet in secret, but if the government is controlling all of the information the committee gets, and if it does not have the power to subpoena witnesses and get that information that it deems is necessary for adequate oversight, and if government is able to control the release of its findings, rather than leaving it to its good judgment, then it is a horse and pony show. It is not really about providing meaningful oversight for our national security agencies, it is more about government placating Canadians, and having something it can point to that says, “We did something that really makes no difference operationally speaking for those security and intelligence agencies.” The committee was doing that. It was not just New Democrats and the Conservatives calling for those changes at committee; the Liberals on the committee were calling for those changes also. In fact, they made those changes.

The committee heard from experts. The experts gave good advice on how to make this a meaningful oversight committee. Amendments were passed in order to effect those changes. Then, when it came back to the House, the government presented a number of amendments, which we are debating now, to vitiate the substance of a lot of those amendments. That was disappointing because it means that if these amendments pass, structurally the committee would not be the kind of effective oversight body that Canadians and the committee members were looking forward to, including the Liberals on the committee. It is a disappointment in that sense, but it is also a disappointment, and I think foreshadows a legitimate concern for us and for Canadians, that the government is not taking a sincere and authentic approach to having this committee provide independent oversight. Here we had inter-party co-operation and it did not produce what the government wanted. We have seen this before. We saw it at the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, where again we had a lot of fanfare from the government about how it was going to do something totally different. This was precedent-setting. It was agreeing to the NDP's idea for a committee. It was even going to see it have a majority on that committee. Then, when the committee came up with something it did not like or did not already agree with, it said, “Forget it. We're not really serious about that.”

The substance of the government's amendments to the all-party work that was done at committee in order to make this a better bill foreshadows that same attitude on the part of the government. If it has that attitude toward the committee that did the work to create an effective oversight body, then I think it is reasonable for Canadians to expect that this is the attitude it will have toward the work of the committee itself. I think it is fair for Canadians to say, “Why bother with an independent oversight committee”, when the government is essentially giving itself a clear path to control the information that the committee would see, in other words, to make sure that, if there are things that would impugn the government, that independent oversight committee would not see that information, because the committee itself would not have the power to compel testimony and to get information for itself.

If the government is going to control it at that level, and it already have a history of ignoring the advice of committees that it initially said were going to be a great thing and were going to come up with something and were going to be an example of inter-party collaboration, then I do not think Canadians have cause to be optimistic that this committee would produce the results that everyone was so hopeful for. That is too bad. It is shameful in fact, and frustrating, particularly from a government that said it was going to respect the role of committees.

In the context of Wednesday night's vote on the genetic discrimination bill, the government had better start getting wise. It talks a good game about respecting the role of committees and the independence of parliamentarians, but it has actually been very heavy-handed in the way it treats committees and in the way it treats its backbenchers, at least in name. Instead of listening to its backbenchers up front to develop better policy, and instead of listening to its Liberals on committee who vote for good changes, it says it is not going to do it that way.

If it had listened to it backbench on the genetic discrimination bill it would have avoided an embarrassment. Essentially, Liberal backbenchers said they did not trust the Prime Minister's judgment when it comes to constitutional issues, because the Prime Minister came out and said he did not think the changes to the law were constitutional. The Liberal backbench disagreed. That is fine. That is their right.

All I am saying is it would be a better government and more consistent with what the Prime Minister has said if it had just listened to its members up front and listened to committees up front. If it had listened to the committee, and instead of taking out the committee amendments had gone ahead with them, we would have the gold standard in independent parliamentary review of security and intelligence agencies. It is because of the Liberal backbench, with no thanks to the government, that we are going to have a decent law on genetic discrimination in Canada. That is a good thing. Why the government feels it cannot do that as a matter of course, I do not understand. Perhaps some Liberals will want to shed light on that later.

There is a problem with the substance of these amendments in terms of what they do to the committee and its capacity for independent oversight. There are clearly problems with the process in terms of the government's attitude toward the work of its own members on committee, as well as the opposition. There is no better reason to oppose something when it is wrong on the substance of the matter and it is wrong with respect to the process. If it did not get the process right and it did not get the substance right, it is beyond me why members of the House would see fit to support these amendments.

The committee, if it were established, would simply be the first step, because there are other questions that play out in a number of different ways about how we provide effective ongoing oversight of our security agencies. Presumably, we want a committee that is going to have the information it needs in order to provide advice to government on whether we should have a super agency, for instance, that would supervise all of our security and intelligence agencies, or the current model, where we have a number of review bodies that specialize in the specific tasks and roles of particular security agencies, whether CSIS, CSE, or the RCMP. However, we need to give the committee a better mandate to collaborate more effectively, to make sure there are not any pockets where security and intelligence work is being done where there is no oversight.

We need a committee of parliamentarians who can provide good advice on that. However, we are not going to get it if that committee does not have the independence it needs. Also, if it does not have independence with respect to the information it receives, it does not have real independence as an oversight committee. That is why this change to the committee's ability to subpoena witnesses, and with respect to the minister's right to make judgments about what information the committee would receive, is so important.

It is for all those reasons, reasons of substance and process, that I am not prepared to support these amendments. It is for those reasons that if the amendments pass I will not be prepared to support the bill going forward.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona will have five minutes for questions and comments when the House next returns to debate on the question. Now we will go to statements by members.

The hon. member for Mississauga—Lakeshore.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-22, An Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to rise in support of Bill C-22. This bill would create a national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians. First, I would like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for its hard work on this file, and for what I understand was a great discussion at committee level.

Our government is committed to protecting both the national security of Canadians as well as Canadians' rights and freedoms. By establishing the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians, this government is fulfilling the promise that we made to Canadians in 2015. The role of the committee will be to ensure that the national security framework is working effectively to keep Canadians safe, and that the rights and freedoms of Canadians are also safeguarded.

It was 17 months ago that Canadians elected this government to produce real change in Canadian society. Bill C-22 is part of our plan to address the deficit of public trust between Canadians and the intelligence agencies that protect them. Restoring public trust will be no easy task. What it requires is a return to the basics of public service. We do not need to look hard to find these foundational principles. They are enshrined in our Constitution, now 150 years old. The phrase, “peace, order, and good government” has come to symbolize Canadian constitutional principles. These words hold truth today and are in fact fundamental to the mandate of this new committee.

Peace is a universally recognized Canadian value. This committee would have a hand in overseeing our military and intelligence agencies. Canadians have empowered their security agencies with the tools they need to keep Canada safe and to maintain public peace and security, yet there must be measures in place to ensure that these tools are not abused. This is why the committee will have a broad government-wide mandate, in fact, broader than other partners in the Five Eyes. This will allow the committee members to review any national security matter in all government departments and agencies, and, if security allows, present their findings to the House. Assuring citizens that their privacy is respected is a challenge that persists for democracies around the world. This next step would help to provide the transparency that Canadians overwhelmingly voted for in 2015.

“Order”, the second foundational virtue of our Constitution, is a crucial element to the bill. Every democracy struggles to strike the appropriate balance between collective security and individual liberty. MPs and senators on the committee will have access to classified information and a robust mandate to review and to complete the scope of our national security framework throughout the federal government. All of our Five Eyes allies have similar committees, and the broad scope of this committee's mandate will make it a stronger body, as I mentioned earlier.

Here too, the government has struck a reasonable balance between peace and order. MPs and senators on the committee will have access to classified information, as well as the mandate to review the complete scope of Canada's national security framework.

However, there are provisions in the bill that limit access to certain information, such as ongoing military operations, cabinet confidences, and information related to ongoing law enforcement investigations. This balance ensures the security of classified information and the operational effectiveness of the DND, CSIS, and the RCMP, while also providing MPs and senators with adequate oversight to properly protect our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“Good government” is the final value reflected in this phrase. It is best embodied when we here and those in the upper house collaborate for the good of our country. With government amendments, the committee will be comprised of up to 11 members, eight from the House of Commons and three from the Senate. Up to five members of Parliament will be from the governing party.

This bill is an essential part of our national security strategy, which includes specific measures outlined in our platform, as well as consultations, so that Canadians can have their say about what other measures are needed.

Restoring public trust in Canada's security institutions is of critical importance. This is by no means the only measure the government will take to rebuild the public's confidence. The hon. Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is currently reviewing Bill C-51, to make much-needed reforms.

There are many lessons that history has to teach. Perhaps the most important is the government's role in society. Government is an instrument for good, where people can come together and work toward common goals. As MPs, we cannot forget this simple truth. We are tasked with protecting the rights of the people we serve, as well as future generations. We must not become complacent and rely upon false comfort and assumptions. Constant vigilance by Canada's leaders to maintain these freedoms is included in the review recommendations of this bill.

This past summer, the former president of the United States, Mr. Obama, addressed this House and emphasized the truth of this. He quoted the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau when he said, “A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day”.

If we are to keep building Canada as a monument to the world, we must take these words to heart.

To conclude, I urge my fellow MPs to support Bill C-22. The bill is a thorough and comprehensive piece of legislation. It would equip MPs with the resources they need to responsibly exercise their due diligence. I urge my colleagues to support the bill as a common-sense move to promote government accountability.

I welcome any questions from my colleagues.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. However, I have to admit that I do not know what is happening here, because the people elected us to represent them in the House of Commons and to talk about federal issues.

The very principle of having committees that deal with specific subjects is based on the fact that this allows us to take a closer look at the details of certain bills. The Liberals made a commitment to create this oversight committee. The parliamentary committee that studied the issue made a series of recommendations and heard a great deal of testimony, which the government is completely ignoring. Why?

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yes, we do have a system of government that involves input from committees. Committees, such as the public safety committee, are able to have experts and hear testimony so the members can debate among themselves and come up with some recommendations that come forward to the government. Not all recommendations are adopted, but they are all taken into consideration. I know that some of the hon. committee members from the NDP had some of their suggestions come forward, which was unusual when compared with what the previous government was doing. Bill C-51 came through with no amendments, no amendments required, no amendments taken. In this case, we did have a very good discussion at committee. The discussion came forward to the government. The government makes its recommendations, which then go to the upper House and then come back for debate in Parliament, which is what we are doing right now.

I think the process is working. Not all committee members will get their amendments through, but it adds value to our conversation and in fact to our parliamentary democracy.

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

Mr. Speaker, whether we think he was a traitor or we think he was a hero, Edward Snowden exposed a lot of what was happening in the United States in the process.

I do not know if my colleague believes that is a good way of keeping accountability, or if it is a lot better to have a multipartisan committee of parliamentarians overseeing our intelligence agencies to make sure that what is going on is the right thing.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have a system of oversight. Having a committee that is able to look at the day-to-day operations, the day-to-day bills that we are considering in Parliament is one thing, but having another style of committee, which is a committee of parliamentarians that also includes members from the other place, really adds some value to having another third party looking at matters of security that often are not allowed to be made public because of the true nature of being items of security but are overviewed by elected officials.

Right now, we do not have that ability. Elected officials are not included in the process of security oversight. That is precisely what this committee is being set up to do.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, if openness and transparency were a currency, the government would be squandering it as fast as it is our taxpayers' hard-earned dollars.

By structuring the committee the way it has, the government has undermined the independence of it. I am wondering if the hon. member could speak to why the government has undermined the independence of this committee.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I am watching the discussion today, as well as the discussion that happened previously, it is fascinating to hear members of the Conservative Party talking about openness and transparency.

It is fascinating in terms of what we saw in the previous government. Actually, the former prime minister was found in contempt of Parliament for not respecting parliamentary discussions and for not respecting the oversight of committees.

In this case, we have a committee that is recommending a parliamentary committee to undo some of the lack of transparency that we had in the previous government.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-22, an act to establish the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain acts, or, as I call it, another piece of bad legislation to cover for a campaign promise the Liberals made without really thinking it through.

There are some points I want to address in discussing this bill, as I mentioned: using bad legislation to cover for bad campaign promises, the problem with creating legislation that relies on putting blind trust in the government, a redundancy of some of the legislation, and what stakeholders are saying about the bill.

We start with a campaign talking point that turned out to be a poorly phrased policy platform: how to reconcile the Prime Minister's support of Bill C-51 when he was a third party leader and his current compulsion to oppose everything the previous government did. My colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka said it perfectly when he said, “the devil is not only in the details; the devil is in the fundamental misappropriation of the bill to promise something to the electorate and then not deliver.”

Today's legislation is just another in a string of poor attempts to cover up politically popular, but operationally difficult, campaign promises. This bill gives broad discretion over intelligence and national security discussions to the government, with “strong” oversight from the PMO, but not from Parliament. MPs are told to just trust the Liberals and they will figure it all out later. We know from their actions, though, they cannot be so easily trusted. They find ways to bend, break, and skirt the rules.

Therefore, we use the mechanisms within the House to hold the government to account and make sure that Canadians are aware of what the Liberal government is up to. Bill C-22 creates a committee with broad oversight, heavy Liberal influence, and public disclosure solely at the discretion of the PMO. It is a system designed to operate on blind trust in the government of the day, but we know that a strong and secure democratic system of government will ensure our security and liberty no matter who is in charge. Bill C-22, demanding that Canadians blindly trust the Liberals, does not accomplish this.

With their already lengthy track record of abuse of privileges, ethical lapses, and skirting responsibility for their mistakes, as well as their general contempt for the opposition when it opposes flawed legislation, I just cannot trust the government to act in the best interests of Canadians. Bill C-22 simply does not provide reasonable, meaningful mechanisms for parliamentary oversight.

Let us look at the track record of this bill. The special committee is appointed by, and reports to, the PMO. It should, instead, be appointed by, and report to, Parliament. The Prime Minister campaigned on a reduced role for the PMO, but his actions do not follow his words. Similarly, the Prime Minister, independent of any discussion with the other parties, appointed the committee chair in January before the legislation was even created. He refused to consult with the opposition parties, despite the public willingness of my party and the NDP to discuss this important committee. We were at the table, willing and ready to talk, but they stood us up.

The purpose of this committee is not to encourage and ensure transparency for the security agencies that are already as transparent as they can be while still protecting Canada and Canada's interests, rather it is a knee-jerk policy decision to shore up public support the Liberals lost when they voted in favour of Bill C-51 previously. Bill C-22 is a roundabout way for the Prime Minister's Office to direct the way our national security agencies function, effectively politicizing institutions that should always operate at arm's length from political sources. If the bill achieved some balance between oversight for parliamentarians and effective oversight for the committee while enhancing our national security, perhaps Conservatives could support it, but the bill, as it is, is purposeless.

Oversight agencies, including the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, the RCMP External Review Committee, National Defence and Canadian Forces ombudsman, and the Security Intelligence Review Committee are already mandated to provide oversight for each department or agency. This includes providing annual reports to Parliament.

Let us look at the membership process of the committee. Subclause 4(2) of the bill states:

The Committee is to consist of not more than two members who are members of the Senate and not more than seven members who are members of the House of Commons. Not more than four Committee members who are members of the House of Commons may be members of the government party.

There are two members of the Senate, seven members of this House, and not more than four government members, so we could easily be looking at four parliamentary secretaries from the government, notably members who are accountable first to their cabinet ministers, two so-called independent senators, and three members of the opposition.

I have heard government members state that they only get up to, but not necessarily, four members. Let us be honest here. No one expects the government to appoint a majority made up of opposition members and Conservative senators.

We have seen all too often that the Prime Minister and his office truly believe that their unilateral decisions are the best courses of action for Canadians. They dictate the issues of the day and the alleged solutions to those issues.

The government House leader has offered amendments so that subclause 4(2) would instead read: “The Committee is to consist of not more than three members who are members of the Senate and not more than eight members who are members of the House of Commons. Not more than five committee members who are members of the House of Commons may be members of the government party”.

Even with this, we could have five government members, three so-called independent senators, and three opposition members. We would still be faced with a Liberal majority on the committee that could unilaterally direct our intelligence and security agencies.

We always talk about how important it is to consult with the relevant stakeholders on legislation, so I will read what a couple of stakeholders are saying about Bill C-22. Here is a spoiler alert. It is not praise.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said:

we are concerned by the government’s power to halt a Committee investigation, or refuse to provide information, when it is deemed “injurious to national security.” While we recognize that the utmost secrecy is sometimes required, this is particularly worrisome because these decisions are final, and are not subject to judicial review or any other dispute resolution process. Also concerning is the prime minister’s power to redact Committee reports (without any evidence that redactions were made), as well as the numerous categories of information the committee cannot access. Furthermore, it should be the Committee members themselves—not the prime minister—that chooses the Committee chair.

The Civil Liberties Association seems to broadly agree with our concerns, that Bill C-22 would leave most of the discretionary decisions and oversight resolution mechanisms to the Prime Minister.

I am really not sure how the government can genuinely argue that it is increasing oversight by increasing the discretionary power of the PMO to censor information that claims to be injurious to national security but may actually just be injurious to the Liberal government.

The government seems to hide things it does not like. Just two weeks ago, members of the House debated a motion calling on the government to release the finance department's redacted data on a federal carbon tax. The information was unfavourable to the government, so it refused to disclose the information and voted it down.

The government has muzzled more than 100 public servants for life on the purchase of the politically motivated, sole-sourced Super Hornet purchase. We have heard testimony in committee that the government did not even bother to make these muzzled public servants aware of their rights under the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, but it sure went out of its way to muzzle them for life.

The Canadian Bar Association, which I understand might be versed on the impacts of laws, waded in on Bill C-22 by saying:

While we have made suggestions and expressed concerns about various aspects of the Bill, our concerns about section 16 of the Bill are greater by several orders of magnitude. That section would provide broad discretion for Ministers and departments to refuse to provide information on vague national security grounds and on the basis of the expansive definition of ‘special operational information’ in the Security of Information Act.

Just recently, in the government operations and estimates committee, we heard how the government is making extensive use of national security exemptions to skirt rules on the procurement of such items as jackets for Syrian refugees, under the guise of national security, yet we are supposed to trust that government ministers are not going to opt out of the disclosure regime under Bill C-22 when they see fit.

However, it is okay, just trust that the Liberal government will always act in everyone's best interest, and shame on us for again questioning its so-called commitment to act openly and honestly.

I do not like legislation that relies solely on trusting the government to act properly. We have seen too many examples of the government hiding from responsibility for political gain, and this legislation will only make that easier, without tangibly increasing Canada's national security oversight.

As such, I cannot in good conscience support the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I find it a little rich hearing about muzzling, coming from the Conservatives, who muzzled every federal scientist in the country for an extended period of time. It is an odd comment to make.

I have been hearing the Conservatives talk today about not being able to oversee operations going on in the community, which is clearly not the case, if they read the bill. The bill says that the committee will have the power to oversee anything operational unless there is a rejection by the minister, with an explanation for that particular operation. Generally, the committee will have the power to do the job it needs to do at all times. If it is blocked at any point, it would have to be clearly and expressly explained by the minister.

I wonder if the member has any comments on that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the bill is very clear that ministers can interfere and suppress information. We saw in our operations committee, just a couple of weeks ago, that the government uses national security exceptions to skirt rules on purchases of paperclips and photocopy paper, yet somehow he wants us to believe that ministers will not interfere in major issues that may embarrass the government.

I do not have faith in a government that would suppress information on paperclips to have full access to suppress other information.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely sensitive topic. Bill C-51 came up a lot during the election campaign. People talked about a great darkness, as my colleague opposite said. However, the Liberals supported Bill C-51, saying they would figure it all out later on, and that member was part of the team in charge in another capacity then.

Canadians have not forgotten. They remember. They remember that Bill C-51 was outrageous, regardless of what my colleagues over here think, and that the Liberals said they would figure it all out. The PMO has some nerve thinking it can appoint the committee chair.

Would my colleague care to comment on that? It makes no sense.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague from the NDP. We often hear that committees in Parliament are their own masters, yet here we have a committee where the master was appointed by the PMO many months before this legislation even appeared. Basically it seemed to be a bone thrown to the committee chair as payment for past services, or perhaps as an apology for not getting a PS role or a cabinet role.

The Canadian Bar Association and many experts say that if we are to have this committee, the committee chair should be appointed by the actual committee members and not by the Prime Minister's Office.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to remind everyone that the bill says that any request to withhold information would have to be explained to the committee, and if the committee was not happy with the minister's decision, it would have the opportunity to report back to Parliament.

It would be a legitimate platform in public, in Parliament, before all Canadians. I would be interested in the hon. member's comments on how that is not transparent and accountable.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to read further from the Canadian Bar Association regarding clause 16, which would allow ministers to hide or muzzle:

Put simply, section 16 would gut the proposed law.... It would create a broad and largely standardless ‘out clause’ for Ministers to exempt themselves from the Committee’s disclosure regime. The rationale for such an exemption is difficult to discern. The exemption seems unnecessary and illogical

I think that answers the question very clearly.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the House with respect to the second reading of Bill C-22 establishing the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians.

Bill C-22 is about rebuilding trust with Canadians. It is about providing assurance that our national security and intelligence communities' activities are being conducted responsibly. Parliamentarians can and should play a major role in reviewing these activities. To that effect, our government made a commitment to an approach that protects our rights and freedoms and provides for the security of Canadians.

For many, Bill C-51 was cause for grave concern. Today, as our consultation analysis and improved legislation comes forward, it is a pleasure to demonstrate that we are being proactive and fair in our commitment to protecting Canada's national security and Canadians' rights and freedoms.

Democracy and freedom should never be taken for granted. Upholding democracy and freedom requires constant vigilance. Bill C-22 is a significant step forward. It stands against excessive powers of the state, something that I and many in the House believe in strongly.

Bill C-22 would provide a well-designed and sensible framework for the government to share highly classified information with selected members of Parliament from various parties, as well as senators, so that national security and intelligence activities in Canada would be subject to their scrutiny.

It is my pleasure to continue debate on this important bill that would help to protect both Canada's national security and Canadians' rights and freedoms. The amendments proposed by the government would strengthen the bill. The bill and an amendment brought forward by the committee would enable the national security and intelligence committee to review any federal department or agency, and now, because of a recent amendment, any crown corporation that performs national security or intelligence activities. This could be the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, the Communications Security Establishment, the Canada Border Services Agency, or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for example.

The national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians would have a government-wide mandate that would set it apart from other oversight bodies established to review a specific agency, such as the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment, or the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP.

To ensure transparency, the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians would provide an annual report of its findings and recommendations to Parliament. It would also issue special reports at any time it considered it necessary. Because these reports would be available to the public, they would need to be submitted to the prime minister before tabling to ensure that they did not contain any classified information. However, I wish to emphasize the fact that the prime minister would not have any power to change the committee's findings and recommendations.

Bill C-22 would also enable the committee to provide classified reports to ministers at its own discretion. To ensure transparency about its reviews, the committee would be required to include a summary of these special reports in its annual report.

While it is vital to involve more parliamentarians in examining how federal agencies carry out their national security responsibilities, there must be some boundaries to ensure that ministers remain fully responsible and accountable for the activity of their departments.

Every department and agency of the security and intelligence community reports to a minister. That minister is ultimately responsible for the conduct of these departments and agencies. The minister is accountable to Parliament, and Canadians, for ensuring that the organization under her or his charge carries out its duties to keep Canadians safe while respecting our fundamental rights and freedoms. A minister may need to stop a review of a security or intelligence operation or may have to withhold sensitive operational information if the minister believes the review or the disclosure of the information could be harmful to national security.

I believe that such checks and balances are appropriate when we consider, for example, that the integrity of an active operation could be at stake. This is the reason our government has put forward amendments relating to access to information. Under the amendments proposed, ministers would not be able to use their power arbitrarily when it came to disclosing or not disclosing the information. Any request to withhold information would have to be explained to the committee, and if the committee was not happy with a minister's decision, it could report back to Parliament. The committee would have a legitimate platform to challenge a minister in public, in Parliament, before all Canadians.

Thanks to Bill C-22, the committee of parliamentarians would be able to hold the government to account. It would play a key role in ensuring that ministers took the necessary actions to address problems and fix deficiencies. It is clear that the bill would give the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians significant powers. It would also back it up with the necessary support through the creation of a secretariat.

It is also very important to stress the fact that the proposed national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians' mandate and powers could only be changed through amendments to the legislation, that is to say, only through the will of Parliament. Nevertheless, the proposed legislation includes an obligation for a review of all of its provisions and operations after five years to make sure it is meeting its objective.

Bill C-22 demonstrates how the government is setting the bar higher when it comes to transparency and accountability concerning national security. Canadians can be confident that Parliament can and will hold the government to account.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's speech. I want to say that the committee did a lot of really good work. I wonder if the member could expand a bit more on the importance of having accepted some of the amendments that came forward from the opposition, ensuring that their committee work at the security committee here in Parliament will improve the overall process here.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, this whole process is much more than a campaign commitment. This process is about engaging parliamentarians and the country in order to address what was broadly perceived as excessive use of power under Bill C-51. Bill C-22 takes a significant step forward by providing that kind of oversight. Our country was in the minority really, one of the only countries in the G20 not to provide this kind of oversight. I believe we will see a much more robust, engaged assessment as we move forward, because it is intended to say that we are open and transparent about providing and balancing our freedoms with our security and safety.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was wondering if the parliamentary secretary could comment on the fact that the government is insisting that the chair of this committee not be elected by the members of the committee itself, as is done in other committees like this in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. Why are we doing something different here in Canada?

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my remarks, the Prime Minister will be reviewing decisions by this committee, but has no power to change or alter recommendations. In that spirit, the Prime Minister will be acting in the best interests of Canadians to balance our freedoms, and our security and safety.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a very simple question for my colleague, who seemed to be quite worried about Bill C-51 that passed in the previous Parliament.

She talked about some serious concerns regarding the excessive powers given to this country's security agencies; at the time, however, her party did not share those concerns. Instead, it voted in favour of Bill C-51—enthusiastically, I might add.

How can she reconcile her comments today to the effect that serious concerns remain about excessive powers with the fact that her party voted in favour of Bill C-51 at the time?

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, I was elected in October 2015. I was not part of the former deliberations or government. I can assure the member opposite and all members of the House that Bill C-51 caused a grave amount of concern with respect to excessive use of powers that really belong to members of Parliament and Canadians. I am very pleased to support Bill C-22 today.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this debate on Bill C-22 , the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians act.

I had the opportunity to comment on this legislation at second reading, and unfortunately, my concerns have not been addressed. As I noted earlier, this legislation prescribes a committee that would be a PMO working group rather than a parliamentary oversight committee.

Above all else, Parliament's role is to oversee the government and the executive. Unfortunately, Bill C-22 would make the reverse true. The government and the executive would oversee parliamentarians. The committee would report to the Prime Minister and not Parliament. The Prime Minister would have the power to censor the committee's reports. Parliamentarians on this committee would not be protected by parliamentary privilege as they undertake their work. This committee would not be able to provide parliamentary oversight of Canada's national security agencies, because it is not a committee of Parliament. It is not even close. Without support from more than the governing party, this committee would not have multi-partisan legitimacy and, therefore, have no discernible impact.

During the bill's review at committee, Conservative and NDP members presented amendments that would have made this committee of parliamentarians something that somewhat resembles a parliamentary committee by, amongst other things, giving the leader of each opposition party input into which opposition members sit on the committee. The response from the government side by voting against this amendment speaks volumes as to why this bill is meaningless.

I will quote the member for Eglinton—Lawrence:

...if this amendment were to be passed, the Prime Minister would no longer have full responsibility or accountability for recommending appointments to the committee. As this committee is an extension of the executive, which would report to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office, it would be contrary to the purpose of this bill.

The contention of the member for Eglinton—Lawrence is clear. The members of this committee would be chosen by the Prime Minister without consultation or input from the other party leaders. According to the member, giving someone other than the Prime Minister the right to nominate members to this committee would reduce the power of the executive, thus making it unacceptable to the government.

The purpose of this legislation is not to empower Parliament, but rather to empower the Prime Minister. The committee's membership is critical as the members would determine the committee's agenda, determine what witnesses they want to hear from and what questions should be asked. They would be reviewing the documents they request, and they would be writing the committee's reports. Additionally, and most importantly, the members would serve as a liaison between the committee and each caucus.

Nothing is more important to the success of a committee than its members and their ability to meaningfully participate in the committee's proceedings. The sum of their experiences and contributions to the committee's process would determine whether the committee is effective.

If the Prime Minister is unwilling to relinquish the responsibility of determining which members of Parliament sit on this committee, it is hard to consider this entire exercise of creating this committee as more than going through the motions to check off a box on his Liberal electoral platform.

Ms. Heather Sheehy from the Privy Council described what the committee would actually be:

This committee is a committee of parliamentarians, as distinct from a committee of Parliament. The subclause that limits parliamentary privilege is consistent with a committee of parliamentarians, as distinct from a committee of Parliament.

Quite frankly, a committee of parliamentarians can be just about anything. The Conservative Party caucus hockey team can be considered a committee of parliamentarians. It does not mean it is an oversight body for the agencies and departments that oversee the security of Canadians.

The committee being made up of parliamentarians is simply not enough. The parliamentarians sitting on that committee must be given more power than what is being provided for in this legislation in order to be effective. As has been stated, Canada does not need to further enshrine executive oversight over its national security agencies. The executive in Canada, cabinet, already has oversight responsibilities of Canada's security agencies. In Canada, the executive branch is the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office that supports it.

The Prime Minister does not need to have a new advisory group of parliamentarians to provide him with input on Canada's national security. The supposed problem as outlined by the Liberals that this legislation was intended to solve was that Parliament, and not the executive, did not have the tools required to properly oversee our security agencies. Alternatively, the executive already has the ability to summon any member of Canada's security agencies to ask questions and order changes to operations, if necessary. Parliament does not. Therefore, it makes no sense to create another committee that reports to the executive.

The Liberal platform was clear on what it intended to do, which is to “create an all-party committee to monitor and oversee the operations of every government department and agency with national security responsibilities”.

In order to fulfill this commitment, the leaders of the opposition parties should have the responsibility of naming their members to the committee, and Parliament must have the autonomy to oversee every government department and agency with national security responsibilities. If a committee is to be part of the decision-making process, then it should be allowed to impact policy. It should also be noted that when in opposition, the Liberals called for this very kind of parliamentary oversight. If, however, the PMO chooses to set up this committee purely for advisory purposes, then it will lose the true advantage of presenting a diversity of views to Canada's security agencies and the quality of advice that they receive will be compromised.

Furthermore, when it comes to changing Parliament's Standing Orders or the appointment of an officer of Parliament, the governing party typically goes to great lengths to ensure that it has the support of all parties. This is done to ensure that any change to the Standing Orders does not benefit the governing party or the opposition. It also ensures that each officer of Parliament begins work with the support of all parliamentarians behind them, thus giving them a real mandate for that work.

Unfortunately, the creation of this committee breaks all the rules that typically govern this place. This committee would not even have a mandatory quorum that is set by Parliament. It is almost laughable that the chair of the committee could be the only one present and be able to receive evidence.

As members of all parties would be serving on this committee, it only makes sense that a majority of members from all parties support its creation, its mandate, how it conducts its business, and how it would eventually report back to Parliament. Throughout the legislative process, all opposition parties have tried to make this committee more of an agent of Parliament, while the government has insisted that it must be an agent of the executive. Unfortunately, the government has voted down these practical amendments from the opposition.

In conclusion, I am disappointed by this legislation. I cannot shake the impression that this entire piece of legislation is simply a facade for the Prime Minister to say that he fulfilled a campaign commitment. If that is the case, he has failed to fulfill both the spirit and the letter of that very commitment. As long as this committee remains a working group of the Prime Minister, it will have no legitimacy or practical use.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek for acknowledging that this is a Liberal platform commitment that we are indeed fulfilling.

As the member knows, coming out of committee, Bill C-22 firmly enshrines in the legislation that government MPs cannot form a majority on this committee. Also, this committee would have powers to report to Parliament, including on obstruction by a minister, which the majority of the committee, which does not need to include the support of a single government member, have decided is undue. The member describes this as somehow giving the power of the committee to the Prime Minister, and speaks of it as “laughable”.

The government caucus contains no senators. If a future Conservative government wants to continue to appoint partisan senators, that is something the Conservatives can take up with the electorate.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I heard a question. I do not think there was one there.

However, what is important and what we are highlighting during this debate is the difference in what the Liberals called for when they were in opposition, what they committed to during the campaign, and what they have introduced in this place. I think that if Canadians are watching this debate, they will begin to understand the hypocrisy in this piece of legislation.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, could the member comment on the fact that although every member of this committee will have to have top secret clearance, will have to swear a permanent oath of secrecy, and will have to waive their immunity to prosecution based on any breach, but despite this, these members will not have the same access to the sensitive information that existing committees in Canada such as SIRC already have? Does this show some lack of trust that the government has in our elected representatives?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer to that is “yes”. I believe that the committee will not be able to do real work. The lack of independence as described by the bill is really the problem and the lack of trust that it purports in the members who will be appointed to the committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the member is aware that when the Speaker says “questions or comments”, one can ask a question or make a comment?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate that and I meant no offence in recognizing that there perhaps was no question in that comment.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be able to speak to this extraordinarily important piece of legislation. Before I reference parts of the bill, I would like to provide a bit of background as to where my perspective emanates from. I was a member of Toronto City Council on the Police Services Board, and in particular on the Police Services Board during the G20 summit when elected officials were presented with information that they could not share with their constituents, despite the fact that they were on the board precisely because they represented constituents. It was a very trying period to provide oversight to an important police body and an important security operation. They had no capacity to talk to those in charge of the operation because it was nestled in the Ontario Provincial Police at the time, not at the City of Toronto as many think it was. At the same time they could not relate back to their constituents the steps they were taking to protect their civil rights and make sure that their rights to political protest as well as access even to their homes were going to be guaranteed.

Therefore, civilian oversight is at the heart of any democracy and is at the heart of any responsible approach to public safety, let alone intelligence and security measures that we are now embarking upon, which when Parliament was conceived were not really perceived as being part of the responsibility of Parliament but rather the executive branch and others in society. As Parliament has evolved over the last few centuries, we have been evolving the practice of stronger and stronger civilian oversight, in particular around public accountability for the way in which our police and security agencies operate. We have also developed, expanded, and layered our security and our police bodies as we have taken on more and more complex matters. Society has changed and we have become more cognizant of the realities that we have to encounter. As a result, there is not a single police operation that Parliament oversees but rather close to 17, 18, or 19. We could even include border security now in that, which we need to explore as dynamics change in an ever-evolving world.

Into this mix, we have had over the last decade, even the last 20 years I would argue, significant powers invested into our security agencies. What has not kept pace is an oversight body that is as complex and as far reaching as those agencies now are. When the RCMP was originally looked at as a security force way back when, 100-plus years ago, there was no need to think of it as a spy agency dealing with foreign interventions coming into this country. It was a completely different colonial period of time when it was conceived.

CSIS flew straight out of the inadequacies both in the regulation and the oversight of the RCMP, when that was discovered in the 1970s. When CSIS was established, a whole new chapter of security agencies was brought to bear in terms of the way in which this country and this Parliament prosecuted public safety. However, the rules and regulations that were brought in for CSIS were not applied to other elements of the government. We get into electronic surveillance, intelligence sharing with our allies, and the complexities that technology has brought to this issue. It is clear that it is time for a revisit as to how we provide civilian oversight, as I said the corner of democracy, to make sure that we are protecting both people's public safety and their private safety as well as their civil liberties and society's civil liberties. That is the challenge that we are trying to address with the bill in front of us.

Over the last decade in particular, the powers invested in our security agencies have been strengthened, but the powers of oversight have not. What this Bill C-22 seeks to do is strengthen those oversights. One of the most important components of this bill is that the committee would be struck in a way that it would report directly to Parliament. I know the opposition has talked about it going through the executive branch because the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office, in particular, have the ability to screen it to make sure that the reports that have been tabled in public do not compromise public safety. That is a prudent measure, it is not a political measure. It is a measure that has been put in place in particular to keep sensitive information away from public eyes, not to stop the work of the committee or the advice that the committee would give Parliament as it relates to public safety. That is a critical distinction to make. All redactions and all screenings would have to be justified in writing both to the committee and to Parliament and would have to be understood as such, as being filters that do not preclude activity or preclude areas of examination but rather make sure that the reporting of those activities is done in the safest way possible to protect our public safety environment.

The other thing that is critically important here is there has been criticism that it would not be a parliamentary committee but rather a committee of parliamentarians. The language there might sound very familiar, just a set of words reordered, but a committee of parliamentarians means that it would include the Senate.

Again, I think this is a critical piece of evolution. It would allow us to sit down with both chambers, both of which have carriage of public safety in this country, to make sure that real information and sensitive information are delivered in real time to both bodies, so that both bodies can make quick decisions when quick decisions are needed. What we know from the ever-evolving situation globally and internally in this country is that quick decisions are part of what of what we have to accommodate as we move through accountability practices in this country.

The other issue which I think is critically important is that the government would not have a majority on this committee. Let that be said again. It would be a committee of parliamentarians where government would not have a majority. This means that the activities, the advice, the description, and the publication of what is being done is constituted by a majority of parliamentarians who are outside of government, let alone outside of the executive branch. In other words, if the belief of some members of Parliaments is that civil liberties or public safety in the areas of inquiry are being frustrated by the government, they would have the ability, as a majority committee, to make a committee report to that effect and bring public pressure. That is the best form of accountability to bring to bear on the activities of this committee.

The other thing which I think is critically important to understand, as well, is that currently there are silos in which the different security agencies operate, and with the accountability officers for those different security agencies, all 17 to 19, depending on one's view of the configuration of the list, that is not shared in real time. The information among those organizations is shared in real time, but the accountability is not conducted in a coordinated, overreaching, and overarching method. What this committee would achieve is to bring that together under one accountability model. It would measure the relationships between these two organizations, or several different organizations, and make sure that the information that is being shared, the practices that are being pursued, the behaviour of these agencies, are consistent across all of government as we move to protect both civil liberties and the public's right to public safety.

These issues allow us to broaden the access of parliamentarians to security, and sensitive information and sensitive operations. Instead of just being housed inside the executive branch now, it is housed inside the Parliament of Canada. That, again, is a critically important development. It is one that fulfills our mandate and our promise to the electorate that sent us here to make sure that we strengthen, broaden, and engage all of Parliament as we try to make sure that public safety in this country is done with the most accurate, up-to-date, and effective civilian oversight possible. That is a principle that this party will not step back on.

I would like to also reference a couple of other components of the bill which I think are critically important. The notion that this is somehow not fulfilling our mandate, I think is just wrong. In fact, if we listen to the experts who were critical of the previous government's approaches to public safety, what we hear is that they are in accordance with us.

Craig Forcese said, “this will be a stronger body than the UK and Australian equivalents. [It will be] a dramatic change for Canadian national security accountability. [It's] a good bill.” He gives it a high pass.

The criticism of Bill C-51 largely emanated from this individual, and now the support is coming from this individual. Clearly, we have moved the yardsticks.

I am going to leave members with one last thought. I think this is a critical thought, as well.

There is a notion somehow, and I certainly saw it in Bill C-51 when I was here in the previous term, that governments can land on public safety issues or civil rights issues perfectly, every time that they present legislation. That is a fallacy. In fact, I would say that is an arrogance.

Public safety and civil rights in particular are iterative processes. We move forward carefully. We move forward prudently. We expand rights. We protect rights simultaneously as best we can. However, we never get it right. Circumstances change. The behaviour of institutions changes. Individual officers within these organizations behave in particular ways.

It is a constant moving target that we are trying to deal with here, both the need to protect Canada's public safety and the need to protect charter rights. This process, as we establish this committee, I can guarantee members will evolve over time. It must evolve over time, because the circumstances we are dealing with are evolving over time. To do it in a way that is responsible is to do it in a way that is open and parliamentary and accountable to this body, and not to the executive branch.

That is exactly what this legislation would achieve. It would allow us to make significant steps forward at this time. I assure members that as long as I am sitting in this House, the conversation around good legislation, strong ideas, and intelligent criticism that emerges around how we balance the complexities of the security environment which we live in, how we make sure that civil liberties are protected as we protect public safety, needs to be sustained.

I take the ideas that frame that endeavour and that work of this Parliament very seriously. I think members have seen over the last couple of days that when strong ideas and intelligent criticism are presented on the floor of this Parliament, all parliamentarians have the ability to say, “That's a good idea. Let's support that, and let's move that into law and move that forward to protect Canadians or develop Canadians rights.”

That is what this bill would do. It is in the spirit of that kind of thinking, that kind of discipline around public safety and civil rights. That is the hallmark of the Liberal Party and this government. I am proud to support this bill because it continues that reputation.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think what we saw in the last speech was a campaign to be on the committee. The member across the way was campaigning hard, on the record, that he has a great command of what this committee should and should not be. The hon. colleague perhaps wants to be on the committee, or maybe he already has a spot on it that has already been planned and he already knows about.

In the spirit of our hon. colleague's speech, which talked about the open and transparent ways of his government, I have one simple question. Why was not one recommendation from the Conservative opposition taken, heeded, and considered in the amendments of this bill?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for not being able to answer that question more directly. I was not party to the committee debates or how the specific amendments that the member is speaking to were handled, as I have not seen them.

Let me stress that this is an ongoing process. This Parliament has carriage of many of these issues, and the Senate does as well. Therefore, good ideas, perhaps reframed, rethought, and reworded, may prevail when presented in a different light or with a different focus in terms of the specifics of the words.

I will quickly address the notion that I want to be on this committee. Having served for two years on the Toronto Police Services Board, let me assure the member that I have done my duty as someone providing civilian oversight. I am confident that there are members with better minds than mine in this House who could sit on this committee. If it requires being said in public, I will say now that I do not want to be on this committee. However, I thank him for the—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Sherbrooke.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his contribution to the debate.

Bill C-22 is meant to be a direct response to Bill C-51. In fact, when we were debating Bill C-51, my Liberal colleagues often brought up this issue. They said that we needed to ensure some kind of parliamentary oversight of Canada's intelligence organizations. However, they went ahead and supported Bill C-51 anyway, even though the Conservative bill included no such measures.

Why did the Liberals support that bill in the first place, and why did they trust the Conservatives or the next government to fix the part of the legislation that deals with parliamentary oversight?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is not the first time that I have faced this line of questioning from the New Democrats, so I have a prepared answer for this.

First of all, Bill C-51 did a few things right. The modification to the no-fly list to prevent people from getting on airplanes, as opposed to simply stopping hijacking situations, was a very important transition that needed to be understood. We no longer had a no-fly list that dealt with what might happen on an airplane, but what might happen when the airplane landed and people deployed into other countries. We should not be exporting fighters into foreign wars where national interests and national security are quite clearly at stake. We need to manage that differently, and that is what some of the changes in Bill C-51 did.

There were a number of small changes like that. Expanding preventative detention by a number of days was prudent in light of the complexity of the way that attacks were materializing. It required a different thinking and approach to how we use preventative detention. That is not unlike the way in which some Criminal Code provisions in this country already operate. It simply was extended to areas of terrorism and national security. Those were some of the fine points that we found needed to be strengthened as we started to embark upon changes to Bill C-51. We thought they were quite clearly important.

This is the third time that this Parliament has tried to deal with civilian oversight of our security agencies. The NDP has never once supported civilian oversight when it has been on the floor for a vote.

My question to the NDP is this. How do you protect democracy without civilian oversight? Why has that party historically voted against every single proposition put forward by this party in this House when the opportunity has arisen? Why will the New Democrats not strengthen it incrementally? Why do they leave it in the hands of experts instead of the public, where it should be if we are to have true civilian oversight?

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-22 as reported to the House of Commons by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

We have been discussing the need for such a committee of parliamentarians for more than a decade, so this is an idea whose time has come. We lost 10 years. In fact, Canada has some catching up to do with our closest allies.

We, along with Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have an intelligence-sharing arrangement that dates back to the early days of the Cold War. Our alliance is known as the “Five Eyes”.

Every other member of the “Five Eyes” alliance has a body of legislators with special access to classified information relating to national security and intelligence matters. Further, I submit that the broad scope of the Canadian committee’s mandate will make it an even stronger body than many equivalents elsewhere.

I would like to explain to the House how the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, as proposed in Bill C-22, will compare to frameworks that our allies have established to provide parliamentary oversight of security and intelligence activities.

I will limit my comparison to models in the other Westminster parliamentary tradition in the Five Eyes, namely Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, or PJCIS, and the U.K. and New Zealand, which have each established an Intelligence and Security Committee, known respectively as ISC-UK and ISC-NZ.

There are several similarities between the proposed Canadian committee, called NSICOP, and the parliamentary review committees of those three countries.

The membership of these three committees ranges from 5 to 11 members, appointed by the Prime Minister in consultation with opposition parties. We currently have before us a motion from the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to increase the size of the NSICOP under Bill C-22 from 9 to 11, which will allow for one additional member from each House of Parliament.

I support this amendment, as it provides the additional flexibility to ensure that the NSICOP’s membership reflects a diversity of views within Parliament. Canada’s NSICOP will be similar to our allies' committees in that committee members will be bound to secrecy.

The mandates of our allies’ committees include the authority to examine matters related to the administration, policy, legislation, and expenditures of national security departments and agencies, but they differ markedly in the examination of operations. I will come back to that shortly.

Each country imposes similar restrictions on the public reports of their committees to ensure that no classified information is disclosed.

In the other Westminster systems, as in Canada, the work of the committee is supported by staff that is required to have the appropriate security clearances.

When it comes to access to classified information, the other Westminster democracies also define the scope of that power by legislation. Generally, there are limits on the power to access certain information.

For example, details about sources, methods, and operations, or whether the information was provided by a foreign government may not be disclosed to the committees.

Each of the Westminster countries authorizes the executive branch, namely the minister responsible for the department or agency under review, with powers to withhold sensitive information to ensure that the national interest and security are not harmed.

The standing committee has made some significant changes to this area of Bill C-22. In particular, it deleted almost all of the provisions in clauses 14 and 16 of the bill. This includes provisions that protect important types of information such as the identities of sources and persons in the witness protection program.

I am pleased to see that the government has carefully considered the spirit and intent of the standing committee's changes, and is suggesting a compromise approach. We have before us a motion by the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to restore clause 16 and partially restore clause 14.

Under this approach, the national security intelligence committee of parliamentarians would be provided with access to as much information relevant to its mandate as possible, with restrictions applied only where necessary to prevent harm to individuals, ongoing police investigations, or national security.

I believe this is a responsible, balanced approach, and I urge all members to join me in supporting these amendments.

I have, until now, described similarities between what is proposed in Bill C-22 and what is already in place among our Five Eyes allies, but the proposed national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians will be different from parliamentary review elsewhere in some significant ways.

The differences among the Five Eyes allies relate to the scope of the committees’ mandates, that is to say, the extent to which each committee can examine various institutions involved in national security. The other three Westminster models limit the jurisdiction of their committee to the main national security agencies. The UK and New Zealand allow for additional agencies or programs to be added, but only if the government agrees.

Bill C-22 will give Canada’s committee of parliamentarians a broader mandate. Committee members will be able to examine any national security and intelligence activity conducted by the Government of Canada, regardless of which department or agency is conducting this activity. This will include the main security and intelligence agencies, that is to say, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Communications Security Establishment, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as the other 17 or so other federal organizations that have national security responsibilities, such as the Canadian Border Services Agency.

One of the amendments reported to us by the Standing Committee will make it clear that the committee of parliamentarians' mandate and access to information includes crown corporations. I support this amendment, which is entirely consistent with the committee’s government-wide mandate.

As mentioned earlier, when it comes to the mandate that the committees have over operations, the Five Eyes countries differ considerably in their approaches. The committees in Australia and New Zealand have no mandate to consider operational matters. In the U.K., the committee may review operations, but only if it meets certain conditions, namely, that the Prime Minister has agreed that it is not part of an ongoing operation and that the matter is of significant national interest.

The U.K. committee may only review an ongoing operation if the matter is referred by the British government. Under the bill before us, the Canadian committee would have a broader mandate to review national security and intelligence activities. It would, for example, be able to examine ongoing operations on its own initiative, with the proviso that the minister could stop a review for reasons of national security.

I am pleased to see that the standing committee has strengthened this aspect of the bill by clarifying that operational reviews may only be stopped for national security reasons during the period that the operation in question is ongoing, and that once the operation is complete the parliamentary committee may resume its review. Furthermore, the instances in which this authority is used will be part of the committee’s annual reporting to Parliament, ensuring government accountability in this area.

Another unique feature of this bill is the ability of the committee to engage with the three existing Canadian review bodies that are dedicated to reviewing particular agencies, that is to say, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, the Security Intelligence Review Committee for CSIS, and the Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment. This ensures that the committee’s work can be informed by the work of these highly focused and expert review bodies.

I have outlined the similarities and differences between what is included in Bill C-22 and how our allies among the Five Eyes implement similar oversight and review of security and intelligence matters. We have taken some of the best practices from our allies and gone further to establish a strong, accountable, and transparent review of Canada’s security and intelligence community’s activities.

This is truly a made-in-Canada approach to parliamentary review of security and intelligence. Our country may be late in creating a parliamentary review committee, but Canadians will now have a bold and forward-looking framework for this committee of parliamentarians. Establishing the committee underscores our commitment to be more open and transparent and keep our country safe.

I commend the government for engaging with the standing committee in a constructive and thoughtful manner to improve Bill C-22. I urge honourable members to join me in supporting the amendments proposed by the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the passage of this important bill.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I asked this question earlier of a Conservative member but I would like to see what the response is from the other side of the aisle.

Members of the committee would have to take an oath of secrecy. They would have to be cleared for top secret information. They would have to be aware that they could be charged under the law if there is any breach, and yet they would not be given the same access to information that members of other security committees in Canada, such as SIRC, are given. I am wondering why the government does not trust elected members of this body.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is virtually no information the committee cannot have access to. If access is not granted, that has to be justified in writing by the affected minister, and I cannot see that being used particularly often.

More importantly, the members should be covered by secrecy laws, because it does not make sense for a member to have access to state secrets at this level and then be able to come into the House and spew them and be protected by parliamentary privilege.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

We are just about out of time for questions and comments.

I see the hon. member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame rising perhaps on a point of order.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-22, An Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to once again rise in the House to discuss Bill C-22, an act to establish the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain acts.

We on this side of the House pride ourselves in avoiding easy absolutes and rejecting simple binaries and false dichotomies. The question before us today is not, as some would have us believe, whether we need to prioritize our security on the one hand, or our cherished values on the other hand. Rather, the question before us is quite simple: Is our national security regime working effectively and in a manner that is consistent with Canadian law and values?

Simultaneously balancing these twin objectives, keeping Canadians safe while also respecting and safeguarding our rights and freedoms, are among the most fundamental duties that a government can perform. However, currently that duty does not contain an element of committee oversight, a glaring weakness which puts Canada at odds with accepted international best practices. To that end, in this legislation, we are confident that we have developed a model for robust and comprehensive parliamentary reviews, one that will help build the trust of Canadians in our national security and intelligence activities.

The establishment of the national security and intelligence committee represents the realization of a key 2015 campaign promise. However, I want to stress that it is by no means the only action we are taking to strengthen Canada's national security framework.

First and foremost, we recognize that when it comes to an issue that is fundamental to who we are as a country, it is important that the will of Canadians is reflected as much as possible. As a result, our government has engaged in an unprecedented series of consultations with experts, stakeholders, parliamentarians of all parties, and individual Canadians on issues of national security and civil liberties. These consultations remain ongoing, and as such ensure that our approach to national security remains rooted in meaningful conversation and dialogue.

Second, our government remains committed to addressing the more problematic elements of Bill C-51, as introduced by the former government. Specifically, and largely as a result of the aforementioned public consultations, we remain committed to amending Bill C-51 so as to better protect the right to advocate and protest, and to better define rules regarding terrorist propaganda.

Third, the ever-evolving nature of security threats, as well as the clear need to remain vigilant in defending civil liberties, require that any national security framework not be set in stone. As such, our government has committed to mandating statutory review of national security legislation.

Fourth, our government remains committed to fighting violent extremism in all forms. The recent rise in domestic hate speech and hate crimes, for example, has served as a poignant reminder of the need for vigilance and community outreach to combat domestic violence. The goal here is to coordinate the efforts being undertaken at multiple levels to further enhance our capacity to prevent radicalization and violence, and ultimately make Canada a global leader in this field.

Bill C-22 fits within this pattern of strengthening and modernizing our national security laws and policies. As members have already heard, this bill would establish the national security and intelligence committee, a body comprised of parliamentarians from across parties, to scrutinize all of the national security and intelligence operations of the Government of Canada. Given that there are more than 20 departments and agencies within the Government of Canada that carry out national security-related functions, it cannot be overstated how important this initiative actually is.

The current system of security oversight, such as it currently exists, remains highly fragmented, with non-partisan review bodies, judicial oversight, and ministerial discretion all playing vital oversight roles. While these existing mechanisms will remain independent, untouched, and in place, the creation of a permanent committee will allow for a more comprehensive and reactive security oversight framework. As such, the committee's mandate will be necessarily wide ranging. It will look at not only the legislative, regulatory, administrative, and financial aspects of national security and intelligence, but also the operations and activities that departments and agencies of the federal government undertake in the name of national security.

To carry out this vital role, committee members would be given broad access to classified information with appropriate safeguards and exceptions, as well as leeway to examine matters they deem worthy of examination. Importantly, Bill C-22 would allow the committee to analyze and study laws, policies, and operations in real time, increasing the discipline, responsiveness, and accountability of our security framework. With the establishment of this committee, we would close what has amounted to an important accountability gap, one that has existed in Canada for far too long. It would also allow Canada to at long last count itself among its Five Eyes partners and other western countries that have long had parliamentary review of national security and intelligence activities. Clearly, this represents an extraordinary responsibility, and as a result would require checks and balances. I believe that the safeguards embedded in Bill C-22 strike this balance.

Furthermore, I believe that an already strong piece of legislation has been generally strengthened by the exemplary work done at the committee stage. It is important to reiterate that the government has accepted the vast majority of amendments put forward by the public safety committee. In particular, members will recall that the second reading version of the bill said that the new committee could not have access to information about ongoing defence intelligence activities, privileged information under the Investment Canada Act, and certain information collected by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. The public safety committee, wisely in my opinion, recommended amendments giving the new committee access to this information. The bill is stronger as a result, and I would like to thank the committee members and expert witnesses for all their hard work.

I also believe that this legislation has been strengthened by the additional report stage amendments introduced by the government House leader. In particular, by further amending clause 14 of the bill, the government has reinstalled important safeguards designed to protect vulnerable intelligence sources and reduce the risk of political interference in security operations. Finally, the restoration of clause 16 of Bill C-22 would realign Canada's security framework with similar provisions in place among our Five Eyes allies.

Let me end my remarks by getting back to where I started. It is vital that this esteemed institution has a clearer view into the national security and intelligence functions of the federal government. By establishing the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians, we would finally open that window, and we would do it responsibly. This initiative would serve Canadians and our democracy well. I therefore call on all members for their support tonight.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked a lot about democracy in his speech.

Sadly, however, the government invoked closure today, this time on Bill C-22, in order to prevent parliamentarians from expressing themselves and prevent each person here from saying what they want to say about this important bill concerning the safety of all Canadians.

What does my colleague think about this decision to muzzle hon. members with regard to Bill C-22, when he had so much to say about democracy in his speech?

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, of course this is an incredibly important issue. Because of that, as members know full well, as it was part of our platform, we have consulted with numerous Canadians along the way and we have consulted with experts. This is an ongoing consultation, and the reason for that is simple. It is important not only that we promote our security, but also that civil liberties are not infringed.

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

Mr. Speaker, if it is an ongoing consultation, then why were so many recommendations set aside? Why was the original bill completely gutted? They talk about the recommendations that were accepted, but there are very few compared to what was proposed.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there were many consultations that went on. On top of that, we have parliamentary groups that looked into this issue. As I highlighted during my portion of the speech, there were many recommendations that were adopted and are very much reflected in the legislation that stands before the House. Many things were considered and many changes were made to the legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, with the passage of this legislation, we know that Canada would be the fifth country of the Five Eyes that will finally have a parliamentary oversight committee, something that has already been put in place in New Zealand, Australia, England, and the United States. It is something that will help and assist in protecting Canadians' rights and freedoms, which is very important. I am wondering if the member could provide his thoughts in regard to the historic significance of passing this legislation.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I noted in my speech, there was a gaping hole, and it was incumbent upon our government to act on its platform and also to scrutinize regimes that were in place among our five allies. In doing so, we have come up with legislation which very wisely enhances our national security, provides a role for Parliament, and ensures that we are not unduly infringing civil liberties.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for his presentation.

I also thank my colleague, the hon. member for Parry Sound—Muskoka, the official opposition critic for public safety, for his outstanding work on this very important issue.

I was prepared to speak to Bill C-22 in a perfectly normal debate in keeping with the standard procedures of the House. Unfortunately, today, we have all once again witnessed, as we have on a number of occasions, the government's willingness to shorten debate so that all those who have things to say on Bill C-22 cannot do so.

This is surprising in the case of a bill sponsored by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. The minister has previously had a very different view of the contribution of parliamentarians here in the House, if we go by a short article from 2013 on the website of the minister, who was then a member of Parliament. I will quote two short excerpts in English; it will be easier.

The piece is entitled Ideas For Making Our Democracy Stronger, and the paragraph that caught my attention reads as follows:

Ministers wanting to advance policy initiatives should be required to convince not only cabinet colleagues, but also backbenchers. They should not simply rely on the Whip to enforce support–they should earn it by merit.

However, what we are seeing today is quite the opposite. Not only is the whip being used, but so is the Leader of the Government in the House to move Bill C-22 quickly through all stages in the House.

In the same piece, when the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was a member of Parliament, he says:

Restrictions are needed on the use of ancient but recently-abused Parliamentary tools such as Omnibus Bills, Closure Motions to terminate debates, and Prorogation. They have their place, but should be confined to their original purpose and intent.

Once again, what we are seeing today is completely the opposite. Those are the very words of the minister who is sponsoring Bill C-22.

Bill C-22 was introduced in the House of Commons last June 16, in order to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. Let us recall that the establishment of a parliamentary oversight committee was a promise made by the Liberals. Clearly, it is important to make sure that our national security bodies are properly examined. We must absolutely ensure that this committee has the tools it needs to do its work.

However, we know that the Prime Minister has already appointed a member of his caucus, the member for Ottawa South, as chair of that committee, even though the legislation has not yet passed. A gag was used today. A committee chair was appointed. There is no legislation in place, but we already know the name of the chair of a committee that does not exist.

The government is breaking a well-established tradition of our parliamentary system by imposing a chair the way it did. Committee chairs have always been elected by the committees themselves, not imposed by the Prime Minister's Office. The Liberals promised Canadians during the election campaign that they would form a committee of parliamentarians on national security. They said, promised and repeated that this committee would be non-partisan. Bill C-22 does not create a committee of parliamentarians. It is not neutral nor is it non-partisan. It is controlled by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

We have to realize that the Liberal government is much better at making speeches and symbolic gestures than it is at taking real action. However, in finest federal Liberal tradition, they promise one thing in a campaign and do the opposite once ensconced on the government benches. This is called being partisan. It reeks of partisanship.

Bill C-22 imposes many barriers on the committee's ability to access information or call witnesses. This, also, is unlike similar committees that operate effectively in allied countries, such as the United Kingdom. The official opposition presented motions to amend Bill C-22 to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in December.

On the issue of a non-partisan committee, we would expect some of the opposition's recommendations to be accepted, but all of the official opposition's proposed amendments were rejected. We only wanted to ensure that the composition of the committee is not partisan and that its chair and its members are not appointed by the Prime Minister.

Clearly, as we now know, that recommendation was not accepted. The committee should be established by Parliament and be accountable to Parliament, not just to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety. However, the Liberal government is not listening.

We also wanted to remove the many blocking mechanisms in Bill C-22 that limit the committee's access to information and power to call witnesses. Once again, the Liberal government has said no. We wanted to ensure the committee's annual reporting process to Parliament will be more transparent. The Liberal government has decided otherwise. This is what sunny ways look like. This government is becoming a master in the art breaking promises.

The Liberals promised a modest deficit. If we were to give them a report card today, they would get a failing grade. The same goes for electoral reform. The Minister of Public Safety even talks about this in the fascinating piece I just read from. I quoted a few passages, but I will refrain from quoting it any further. I will have other opportunities to do so. The issue of electoral reform was a monumental failure, even though the Liberals spent hundreds of thousands of dollars consulting Canadians. They ignored the results of those consultations. They simply went ahead and did what they wanted anyway.

There is no denying that the Prime Minister's sunny ways have also failed when it comes to transparency and accountability. If I were a teacher, I would be forced to write “fail” in big red letters on this government's report card.

On September 30, 2016, which was not so long ago, the Liberal member for Willowdale stated the following in this House:

In keeping with our government's commitment to evidence-based decision-making, Bill C-22 notably aligns Canada's security regime with accepted international best practices. As colleagues before me have highlighted, Canada is currently the only member of the Five Eyes alliance lacking a security oversight committee that grants sitting legislators access to confidential national security information.

Many of my colleagues have demonstrated in the House that the government has failed to do this. It has not kept its promise to align this committee with the best practices of our allies, including Great Britain. Will the member for Willowdale vote against the wishes of the Prime Minister's Office and honour the promise he solemnly made to his own constituents?

On September 28, 2016, the member for Montarville, who is now on the back benches but was then parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, said the following in the House:

The bill before us would establish a committee with nine members. Seven of the committee members would be drawn from the House of Commons, and of these seven, only four can be government members. Two members would be drawn from the other place. This committee will be different from other committees and offices established to review security and intelligence matters.

A little further on in his speech, which was probably prepared by officials from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and edited by the Prime Minister's Office, he added:

Robust powers are given to this committee, its members, and its secretariat. The committee will be able to access any information it needs to conduct its reviews, subject to some specific and reasonable limits.

The powers conferred upon the executive, meaning the ministers of the Liberal government, are huge. For instance, subclause 8(2) of the bill states:

If the appropriate Minister determines that a review would be injurious to national security, he or she must inform the Committee of his or her determination and the reasons for it.

In language that everyone can understand, that means that a minister can decide what the committee will study. I am not sure that is what voters voted for on October 19, 2015.

In conclusion, I invite my Liberal colleagues and all members to assert their independence with respect to the Prime Minister's cabinet and his staff. They already did so in the not too distant past when voting on Bill S-201. I believe that the members opposite are capable of doing it again if they can muster the courage.

I invite them to vote against Bill C-22 and not to renege on the promise they made to their respective constituents in the last election campaign.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is one piece of legislation where the Conservative Party has clearly demonstrated that once again it is out of touch with reality or, more important, it is out of touch with Canadians.

I have listened to the debate. We have had ministers, parliamentary secretaries to those ministers, the critics of both the NDP and the official opposition, and the leader of the Green Party engage in this debate. There has been opportunity for well over 100 people to get engaged in this debate to date. In fact, 40-plus members have had speeches of 10 minutes or more on the issue.

The Conservatives have made it very clear. Contrary to what Canadians want, they do not support parliamentary oversight. They are voting against the legislation, which is no surprise. When they brought in Bill C-51, they refused to bring in parliamentary oversight. Now, in opposition, they are asking why the Prime Minister has this kind of control.

I would ask the member this. First, could he explain for Canadians why the Conservatives do not support a parliamentary oversight committee? Second, why do they not recognize that this is one of the most robust pieces of legislation of the Five Eyes countries to ensure a strong independence for a parliamentary oversight committee? For example, when we compare New Zealand, the prime minister is the chair of the committee, and there are many other examples I could give.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the only good thing about time allocation is that the parliamentary secretary's speeches will be shorter.

Honestly, we are not against parliamentary oversight. However, that is not what Bill C-22 provides. In fact, the bill provides for oversight by the Prime Minister's Office, and we find that deplorable. That is not what the Liberals promised during the election campaign.

The Liberals promised that a committee accountable to Parliament would provide oversight, and not a committee supervised by the person appointed by the Prime Minister and the PMO.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has pointed out many of the concerns that we on the NDP side have, and I thank him for that. However clause 8 of the bill states that a cabinet minister can halt an investigation into his or her own department for security reasons. However, it offers no way to test whether this fact is merely covering up a sloppy management or even a scandal. In the member's view, is this adequate to ensure Canadians get all the facts with respect to the government's handling of security?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

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

That is in fact one of our concerns. If a minister can decide what will or will not be reviewed at a committee responsible for oversight of the minister's actions, then we have a real problem. That was not what Canadians expected when they were promised that a committee made up of parliamentarians would oversee operations.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe it was the Prime Minister's father who said that MPs were nobodies 50 yards from the House of Commons. This is an opportunity for us to perhaps reflect on what we will be in the House of Commons if we only take our instructions from the Prime Minister's Office.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we might draw a parallel with the Liberal Party nomination process during the election. When the Prime Minister goes against his own riding associations, if he does that kind of thing within his own family, imagine what he could do in the House of Commons, which is made up of opposition parties that do not think the way he does.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise to speak to this bill.

There are few responsibilities more important to government than ensuring the safety of the Canadian population while at the same time ensuring the protection of its rights as enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This became a dominant theme in the last campaign, and we said that these two issues are not mutually exclusive. They are not things that are traded off against each other. They are things that must be considered equally and simultaneously, and both must be done with full force and effect.

What we see in Bill C-22 is the beginning of an effort to finally address some major problems we have within our security and intelligence framework, the biggest one being oversight.

I go back to my time on the other side of the aisle as critic for public safety and national security, and harken back to the reports of Justice Iacobucci and Justice O'Connor and the imperative nature of oversight in ensuring that our security and intelligence agencies are operating effectively and within the proper bounds of Canadian law. Unfortunately, over the last decade, despite many recommendations from parliamentary committees, these recommendations languished and were not acted upon, which meant that these key provisions were not put into effect.

Why is that required? Let us look at the fact that right now the oversight for our security and intelligence, if it exists, exists in silos. For example, the RCMP public complaints commission looks at the RCMP but is not able to follow evidence as it pertains to or deals with other agencies. CSIS has SIRC. To take the other extreme, the Canada Border Services Agency has no form of oversight.

Right now, the parliamentary committee, in an all-party way, is very effectively looking at our national security framework. A piece of the answer that we have seen in other jurisdictions and that has been talked about in many of the recommendations I spoke to earlier is the need to have a parliamentary committee made up of members of the House that would be able to follow information no matter where it goes. There may be a single incident involving intelligence that moves from the RCMP to the Canada Border Services Agency and that is also involved with immigration and many other agencies.

This new committee would have the power to look into all corners of security and intelligence. From the government's perspective, it was incredibly important to bring it in early and set it up. I am very encouraged that the bill is before the House, and I am anxious for this new committee to get to work.

Even before the committee saw this, experts rang in on the efficacy of what was proposed. Of course, we improved it, but it is a good idea to take a look at what some experts were saying about the state of the bill in its improvement, the leap forward that we made even prior to the amendments made at committee stage.

Craig Forcese, a professor of law at the University of Ottawa and a renowned expert in this area, said this will be “a stronger body than the UK and Australian equivalents” and “a dramatic change for Canadian national-security accountability”. He went on to call it “a good bill” and gave it “a high pass.”

His colleague Wesley Wark said, “I fully support Bill C-22.” He noted some improvements, but he basically issued a warning not to let perfect be the enemy of the good.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association supported the bill, saying, “This new accountability mechanism is crucial”.

In the media, there were many positive comments. The Toronto Star said that this is “an important first step toward accountability” and that it “would provide an essential check” on the security establishment. That was before the committee made its recommendations.

In the Commonwealth, we have gone much further. This is particularly noteworthy given the fact that the testimony the committee heard from the United Kingdom, for example, was to go slowly at the beginning because the committee, as it establishes itself and its work, needs to earn the trust of both the Canadian public and the institutions it is reviewing.

Notwithstanding that, we thought we would start aggressively, start ahead of everyone else in the Commonwealth, because we recognize, particularly with the dearth of action over the last decade, that there is an imperative nature to get these oversight mechanisms that had been ignored in place.

In the course of testimony, the committee did what it should do. It reviewed the material, heard from expert witnesses, and made a number of recommendations. The government was happy to get behind and support a number of those recommendations which are reflected in the bill that is before the House today. I will run through some of those quickly.

There is a whistle-blower clause requiring the committee to alert the appropriate minister and Attorney General if it uncovers something that may be illegal. There is a requirement that the annual report indicate where redactions have been made and why. The chair only votes to break ties; in other words, the chair does not have a double vote. It limits a minister's authority to determine that an examination would be injurious to national security and therefore outside the committee's mandate to ongoing operations, and requires the minister to alert the committee when the operation is no longer ongoing or when examining it would no longer pose a national security problem. Finally, it allows the committee access to information about ongoing defence intelligence activities in support of military operations, privileged information under the Investment Canada Act, and information collected by FINTRAC. That is all in the amendment to clause 14.

It can be seen that a great number of recommendations that were made by the committee were accepted by the government and are reflected in the bill. I think they are important improvements. They certainly go well beyond the standard that we see in any other Commonwealth country. I will come to an examination of those in a minute, but let us take a look quickly at some of the clauses that were rejected.

Reinserting in clause 14 giving information about human intelligence sources and witness protection was rejected, and I think for very sensible grounds. If somebody is in a witness protection program, as an example, we do not want to be sharing that name any more than is absolutely necessary. Even for the agencies that are sharing that information, not everybody in those agencies has access to it. We want to limit how much those names go out. That just makes prudent and good sense.

There is also restriction around information on ongoing law enforcement investigations. This is to avoid perceptions of political interference in an ongoing criminal investigation. This does not mean after the investigation that they cannot look into what has transpired to ensure that everything was as it should be, but when that matter is ongoing and current, certainly there is cause for concern around whether or not that would constitute interference and whether or not police would have to divert resources, to pull it off a case in order to work with the committee, so retrospectively instead of while it is ongoing.

Briefly I want to talk about some of the differences, because they are important, about Canada and some of our Commonwealth comparators. If we look at Britain, for example, in order to look beyond MI6, MI5, or GCHC, a memorandum of understanding is actually required between the committee and the Prime Minister. In Australia there is a limit strictly to statutory reviews of legislation and administration and expenses of particular agencies. It would actually be a parliamentary resolution or a ministerial referral to look at any other issue. It would require that level of depth, but that is not the case here. There are no such restrictions. There is the ability for the committee to look in every corner.

With respect to access to information, every single one of the Commonwealth partners, and I will not list them all but I can say the U.K., New Zealand, Australia and so forth, all put in restrictions around information sharing that deal with operational sensitivity and things that pose a threat to national security.

Much has been made of this, but the fact remains, obviously, that there needs to be the ability for the minister to protect national security when it is appropriate, and if there is a disagreement between the committee and the minister, then there is the ability for the committee to file a report of all the accumulated instances where they feel the government has not provided that information, and that could be aired publicly. Of course, that committee would have a very strong pulpit from which to speak.

The bottom line is that the bill is the beginning, an incredibly important first step on a journey ensuring we have appropriate oversight for our security intelligence framework. I look forward to this bill passing and for the work to come that we committed to in the platform.

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

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my friend and hon. colleague, who is now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety. I certainly hope that his experience as parliamentary secretary for public safety will not be as frustrating as it was to be parliamentary secretary for democratic institutions. I highly doubt that the government plans to pull the plug on this legislation in the next 24 hours, so it is bound to be a bit more rewarding.

All levity aside, I support this bill. It is an important piece of legislation. It is absolutely the case that when Mr. Justice O'Connor and others testified in hearings on Bill C-51 in the 41st Parliament, the failure of Canadian governments over time to have parliamentary oversight of security operations and security entities was drawn to our attention numerous times. He quoted Craig Forcese, who is one of Canada's leading experts, as is Kent Roach. They would prefer to see additional improvements to this bill, as would I, but I appreciate that important amendments were accepted at committee.

Would the parliamentary secretary be able to give us an update on what is being done to remedy the egregious multiple affronts to security and safety in Canada that came forward in Bill C-51? I opposed Bill C-51, not primarily because it offended Canadian civil liberties, although it does, but because it created silos in the views of people like Mr. Justice O'Connor, where CSIS would have information and have no obligation to share it with the RCMP and no obligation to share it with CSEC. Really, Bill C-51 makes us less safe, and the faster we can get rid of all of its various elements, potentially other than part 2, the better off we will all be.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I share my hon. colleague's concerns. Before I address the concerns as they relate to Bill C-51, I will speak to the bill that is in front of us, Bill C-22. It is important to note that there would be a five-year mandatory review. While we are ahead of the Commonwealth and while we think, after the committee's recommendations and the listening that we did across the country, that we have a very good bill, there is a mandatory review process to make sure we could look at how effective this committee is being and how we could improve it. We do not hold this out as perfection, but we do feel that this is the right place to start.

On the issue of changes and when we can expect them, the committee at this very moment is considering a report on the security and intelligence framework. We want to hear from that committee. It has done incredibly important work. It has heard from witnesses across the country. That committee report is going to be a very important input into the minister's overall process on responding. We have very clear platform commitments on what we feel needs to be changed and improved to get right that simultaneous work that needs to be done to protect Canadians and also to ensure that their rights are also protected.

The committee report is coming out. I would expect action by the government very shortly thereafter, informed by that process.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech. He spoke several times about the importance of the committee. Canadians want a watchdog with sharp teeth. It is important to have a properly formed committee.

The new committee must also have full access to classified information, have adequate resources, enjoy some autonomy, and be able, within reason, to share with Canadians its actions in an instructive and transparent manner.

I would like to know my colleague's thoughts on this and especially on the importance of restoring Canadians' trust in our security and intelligence community. I want to know what my colleague thinks, but personally I believe that there needs to be true parliamentary oversight.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary oversight is essential. I certainly pushed for it as a critic. We ran on it in the last election. We are delivering it here in Bill C-22. It is a massive step forward.

As I said, we have not held this out as the sole component of the solution. There are other pieces that are coming. I referenced the committee's work and impending legislation that the government will table as well. However, the spirit of what the member asked is dead on: the importance of oversight, the importance of rigorously maintaining that protection of Canadian rights as guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We are also ensuring at the same time that our security and intelligence apparatus has the tools it needs effectively to keep Canadians safe.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today in support of Bill C-22, an act to establish a national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians.

After second reading consideration and committee scrutiny, we now have the opportunity to review the bill at report stage. The robust parliamentarian process has served us well. The bill has been carefully studied by members on all sides of the House. Advice has been heard from expert witnesses and the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security has proposed amendments.

As the legislation stands today, it will move our country toward a more accountable and effective national security system. As many have said today and prior to today, the legislation is long overdue. We have heard stakeholders call it “crucial” and affirm that it will establish a committee in Canada that is stronger than its international counterparts. It will fill a significant gap that has existed in Canada for far too long. It will enable us to achieve our twin objectives of ensuring that our national security agencies are working effectively to keep Canadians safe and that the rights and freedoms of Canadians are protected.

Creating a new national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians honours a major commitment of the government to Canadians. The committee will be an enormously important addition to our parliamentary landscape. It will have: extraordinary access to classified information in order to closely examine intelligence and security operations; enhanced scrutiny of national security and intelligence activities; a broader mandate than counterparts in other modern democracies; the ability to set its own agenda fully independent of government; the responsibility to report annually to Canadians through Parliament; and the power to examine activities government-wide, including ongoing operations.

As the legislation stands now, the committee will meet the dual objectives we set long ago, which is to ensure our national security apparatus is working to keep Canadians safe and secure, while protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

When the bill was first introduced, it proposed a stronger committee than those that existed with many of our international allies. With amendments, the scope, authorities, and access we are proposing for the committee will be broadened even further. The government has indicated that it will accept most of these amendments.

With respect to scope, for example, we agreed with the committee that the committee must be empowered to review national security and intelligence operations. As amended, that will include the operation of crown corporations. Further, as amended, if the minister determines that the examination will be against national security, his or her power to delay it will be limited to the period of time during which the operation is under way. Afterward, the committee can review the operation.

Another important amendment is whistle-blower protection that will require the committee to inform a minister and the Attorney General about any national security or intelligence activity undertaken by a department that may not comply with the law. Like my colleagues, I was pleased that this amendment was widely endorsed. I also agree that the chair of the committee should be given a vote only in the case of a tie. I also agree with many of the changes regarding access to information exemptions for the bill initially proposed.

With the recent amendments, for example, the committee will now be able to receive information about ongoing defence intelligence activities that support military operations. It will also have access to relevant information collected by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada and to privileged information under the Investment Canada Act.

The government has also agreed to amend the legislation so that reasons must be given for any redaction. Indeed, the government has been open to reasonable amendments throughout the parliamentary process.

We have not only conducted a careful examination of this crucial legislation, but we have also benefited from many years of consideration in creating this committee and from long collaboration with our international partners. Every other member of the Five Eyes alliance, including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, has a legislative body with access to classified information to oversee security and intelligence matters.

Canada has tried to create a committee for over a decade now. It is time we give Canadians and parliamentarians the mandate to review these activities that we all want and need. Today, we are all taking one step closer to bringing this important new body into existence. We are closer to a system in which parliamentarians are better able to hold the government to account. We are closer to ensuring that concrete actions are taken when deficiencies and problems with our security framework and operations are identified.

Having learned from some of the best practices of our allies, we are closer to a truly developing a Canadian approach to national security accountability. This is a significant step forward for Canada. The legislation before us is as bold and progressive as it is thoughtful and balanced.

I am very proud to be part of the legislature that will, hopefully, at long last, put this critical accountability mechanism in place. I thank all members and parties for their support, advice, scrutiny, and debate in creating a better bill. I encourage all colleagues to support the passage of this important legislation.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that this bill has more holes in it than a jar of olives. If we look at the provisions, there are so many things that are distant from the spirit about which the member talked. He talked about this providing genuine oversight, but he should know that all the power remains in the hands of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister appoints all the members of the committee and the Prime Minister has complete control over the information that goes forward.

The bill is very clear that it is not a parliamentary committee. It is, as it happens, a committee of parliamentarians, but it is not a parliamentary committee in any of the senses in which we understand that.

I wonder if the member could comment on some of those holes and whether he is really satisfied that this satisfies the Liberals' election commitment. I do not think it does at all.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for making the analogy to a jar of olives. As I know, he is an afficionado of olives. On our recent trip to Israel, we learned a lot about them.

However, getting to the member's question, I want to reiterate that our government is making an historic commitment to Canadians to fulfill an election promise. However, it is not just our commitment. Other governments have tried to set up this committee, which we have needed for quite some time now, to ensure there is independent oversight over our security and intelligence. Just like our allies in the Five Eyes, every other country already has this committee. We are setting one up to ensure we protect Canadians. At the same time, we are ensuring that our rights and freedoms, which as Canadians we cherish so much, are protected.

I truly believe in Bill C-22, and I encourage the member opposite to support it.

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

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues we will vote on with Bill C-22 is an amendment I have made. As members know, and the Speaker has accepted it for a vote, it is a deletion to retain the powers of parliamentary privilege for members of Parliament on the committee. It is an attempt, even at this late stage, to have the bill respect parliamentarians and their ability, having taken the oath of confidentiality, to be responsible for the secrecy that is required of them in this very important committee for senators and members of Parliament.

I note that the New Zealand legislation does not require its members of parliament to give up their parliamentary privileges in order to serve on their committee for security operations. Would my hon. colleague please consider voting for my amendment to delete that provision?

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22 and the government's commitment to setting up this committee, which is independent of government, is extremely important, especially if we look at the current security landscape in the world we live in today.

Canadians expect their government to ensure they are protected. The first job of any government is to protect its citizens. The committee will be able to do that. It will ensure that Canadians are safe and secure, while at the same time protecting their rights and freedoms.

I look forward to the committee being set up. I look forward to parliamentarians of all political parties serving on it and ensuring they carry out their mandate to protect Canadians.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, let me cut to the chase.

Why are there no ways to settle certain disputes confidentially? For example, a Federal Court judge could be called upon to conduct regular assessments of the warrants for secret information. A minister can actually decide whether to retain the information or not.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the bill clearly states that the minister will have the prerogative to ensure that national security is still maintained, which is an important piece of the bill. It also states that after the national security risk has passed, the committee has the opportunity to revisit the minister's decision.

Again, Bill C-22 and this new committee will have the balance that we are trying to achieve, which is ensuring we are keeping Canadians safe while at the same time protecting the rights and freedoms we cherish so much.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to join this very important debate about the structures we have in place for oversight of our intelligence and law enforcement activities. Unfortunately, we are doing so again under the gun of closure. This is at a time when the government is contemplating changes to our parliamentary rules that it would like to move forward without even working with other parties. It would in effect make closure automatic on bills that it brings forward. This is some of the context in which we see a limiting of discussion here today. At the same time, this is an important discussion that I am very glad to be able to participate in.

In general, when we think about the oversight mechanisms that exist for our intelligence agencies, we can have expert oversight, oversight by externally appointed experts who have specific knowledge in this area, and parliamentary oversight, which is oversight by elected officials. There are pros and cons to both of these options, and certainly they can exist in tandem with one another.

For a long time in Canada, we have had a strong system of expert oversight. What the government is doing with the legislation is bringing in something that Liberals are calling parliamentary oversight. However, in effect, and I will get into the details, this is not meaningful parliamentary oversight. It does not achieve many of the advantages of expert oversight, but it also does not achieve the advantages that might be associated with a more genuine parliamentary oversight model. This is the objection that I have to the legislation.

If we were going to bring in a more genuine parliamentary oversight structure similar to some of the private members' bills that Liberal MPs, such as the member for Malpeque, have at different times proposed, we would find our caucus more sympathetic to those kinds of arguments. However, we are seeing something that does not at all capitalize on those advantages, because it leaves control in the hands of the Prime Minister. At the same time, it does not entail some of the advantages that exist in the structure of an executive oversight system.

Would it not be perverse if in a bill that was supposed to be about strengthening Parliament, we actually saw a bill that created all the tools for strengthening and deepening the grasp of the Prime Minister over the direction of Parliament? That is exactly what we see here. It is legislation that tightens the control and the power of the Prime Minister's Office, nominally about parliamentary oversight, but that actually has many of the opposite effects.

Let us review what was committed to by the party in government. The Liberals' election commitment was, “We will create an all-party committee to monitor and oversee the operations of every government department and agency with national security responsibilities.” What we had in this election commitment was the implication of all-party inclusion, meaningful review of past operations, and oversight of present operations. It would be ongoing oversight as well as a review of past operations.

What we have, though, is nothing in the legislation to guarantee that all parties would be represented, because we do not have a committee that takes on the traditional form of a parliamentary committee. The way our committees normally function is that the leaders of parties nominate members of their parties to be members of those committees, and the committee is laid out in proportion to representation in the House. Since we are talking about a joint committee, it is probably in proportion to representation in this and the other place.

In fact what we have is the government creating a committee where the Prime Minister gets to choose all of the members. Yes, it says that only a certain number can be members of the government, but it does not prescribe the distribution of opposition members. It does not say that the distribution should be reflective of the House.

It is conceivable that the government could appoint independents who have recently departed from the Liberal caucus to this committee. I do not know how likely that is, but there are no protections in the legislation to ensure there is meaningful representation of all party perspectives. Even when members of opposition parties are appointed, again, those appointments are fundamentally at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, who designates the chair. In fact, long before this legislation has been passed, the Prime Minister had already publicly designated the person he is going to select as chair, which I think shows a great lack of respect for this institution.

In terms of the appointment process, in terms of the distribution process, in terms of the lack of formal consultation requirement for the Senate or any clear definition of what consultation with other parties would look like in the process of those appointments, we see legislation that is about strengthening the power of the Prime Minister over the process of intelligence review. That is not at all in keeping with what many would have thought was the spirit of that Liberal election commitment. It is, in many ways, moving in the opposite direction of what it purports to be doing.

There are not only limitations that ensure the control of the Prime Minister in the process of appointing members of the committee, but there are also significant problems with the way in which the information is handled. Ministers, as per one of the amendments that is going to be reintroduced, as well as the Prime Minister, can choose to exclude certain information on a variety of different bases.

What jumped out at me when I read the legislation initially, and members can look at it, is subclause 21(5), which states:

If, after consulting the Chair of the Committee, the Prime Minister is of the opinion that information in an annual or special report is information the disclosure of which would be injurious to national security, national defence or international relations or is information that is protected by litigation privilege or solicitor-client privilege or, in civil law, by immunity from disclosure or the professional secrecy of advocates and notaries, the Prime Minister may direct the Committee to submit to the Prime Minister a revised version of the annual or special report that does not contain that information.

In principle, I think members would be supportive of the idea that information which would be injurious for national security should be excluded from public release. However, when the section is so general as to include the possible exclusion for information that would be injurious to international relations, I would submit that almost anything that would come out of this committee could potentially be injurious to international relations. However, the adjudication of that process is not independent. It is not subject to the knowledge and expertise of the committee. It is simply up to the Prime Minister . If he says he does not want that section included because it could be injurious to international relations, perhaps this might be more an issue of “injurious to the reputation of the government”, and that would be a motivating basis for excluding that information.

I posed this question to the House leader when we initially debated the bill at second reading. The House leader asserted at the time that the committee report would be provided to the Prime Minister for the sole purpose of ensuring that it does not contain classified information. In reality, though, the subclause is very clear, in black and white, that it allows exclusions on the basis of international relations as well as a range of other criteria, and that the determination of what would be included and excluded is solely at the discretion of the government.

We had a concern raised today about disclosing certain information to the committee. It was raised by the Minister of Public Safety, who effectively said that there is more risk of this information leaking out if more people have access to this information, and that is why certain information should be excluded from being shown to the committee. At the same time as saying that, there is nothing in this legislation that requires the individuals appointed to the committee, or even the individual who is appointed chair, to have experience handling and dealing with classified information.

This comes back to the central point, which is that we have a choice between expert oversight or parliamentary oversight, or some combination thereof. However, effectively this bill would not provide the advantages of either. It would not require that those appointed to the committee have some experience with the handling of classified information, which would build some expertise and experience into the question of the handling of that classified information. It would not give the committee the level of independence that it should have by leaving aspects of the appointments as well as the management of information to the Prime Minister. Effectively, it would tighten the control of the Prime Minister's Office over what really should be a parliamentary function.

It is for these reasons that I will be disagreeing with the government on amendments coming forward, and likely, unless we see what we want in the amendments, voting against the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have found that the Conservatives are trying to find a reason to justify their vote on this particular piece of legislation. It really does not make much sense when we listen to one member versus another member. At the core, the Conservatives appear to be in opposition of having a parliamentary oversight committee. I think the Canadian public would be best served if the Conservatives would be straightforward as to whether they support a parliamentary oversight committee today, because we know that yesterday they did not.

The second issue that I take some exception with is that the member makes reference to the fact that we could be doing more. He used the example of the Prime Minister making appointments. In New Zealand, which is one of the Five Eyes countries, the prime minister is actually on the committee. If we look at the committee that we are talking about today in this legislation, the number of Liberal MPs that would sit on the committee would be a minority of the overall membership of the committee.

Therefore, I ask the member this. Do the Conservatives support parliamentary oversight today? Also, what other amendments would they like to see that would make it more robust?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to go through the points that the member made. He said that it was about the overall principle of parliamentary oversight. We are at report stage. We are not just talking about the principle of the bill, we have to get into the details. I think it is important for members to analyze, think about, and understand some of the problems with the details. It is not good enough that in principle the government has said that it wants to move in a certain direction, because, as I have argued, the details point in a very different direction.

With respect to parliamentary oversight, as I said clearly during my speech, I see advantages to the expert oversight model and advantages to the parliamentary oversight model. However, the legislation we have in front of us does not create a genuine system of parliamentary oversight because the Prime Minister still holds all the cards. We are not talking about a parliamentary committee, we are talking about a committee of parliamentarians.

On the member's point about Liberal MPs forming a minority, I think that is clear sleight of hand, because the government appoints all the members and it gets to appoint some senators. Therefore, if it appoints quasi-independent senators, who we all know are perhaps not as independent as the claim might be, we are obviously still in a position of the Prime Minister holding the cards. If there were advice sought from the Senate about how to appoint if Senate caucuses had input, if Senate appointments were reflective of the distribution of the Senate, then we would not have that problem. However, this is not a typically structured joint committee of the two Houses. It is a committee of parliamentarians chosen entirely by the Prime Minister and serving at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. I think we need to dig into those details and discuss those details.

In terms of amendments, we have amendments coming forward tonight. I think some of the amendments that we are proposing are very good, and some of the government House leader's amendments are not so good. Therefore, if the member wants to know what we are proposing, I would encourage him to vote with us this evening.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was previously a member of an oversight committee for a labour organization, looking over the union finances. We had access to every document, namely cheques, invoices and expense claims. We got whatever we wanted.

The subject here is national security. The oversight committee therefore will have an important role to play. Clearly, we are not talking about the exact same level of security. In this case, oaths must be taken and secrets must be kept for life. We are also talking about the highest level of security clearance. There are differences, I admit.

However, it is still an oversight committee. The committee will need to have all the information in hand so that it can do its work properly. If the committee does not have access to all the information, how can it be assured that Canadians are really safe?

Does my colleague feel that the country's security will be in good hands despite the shortcomings of the bill? Is he absolutely sure?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as I have outlined, we have concerns about the legislative framework that has been set up here. It does not provide the committee with the effective tools to do its job, and that comes in many different forms. I have spoken principally about this issue of the independence of the committee and the control the Prime Minister would have over the flow of information in and out, as well as who sits on the committee. It may well be sensible and there may well be an argument for excluding certain information from the purview of the committee, but for all of the power in terms of the control of that flow of information to be in the hands of the government does not create the kind of independence one would expect to see in oversight.

Again, if there are concerns about information leaking out, we have made the suggestion that we have an expectation that those on the committee would have experience in handling classified information, but that was not a suggestion that was accepted by the government. We have a number of these problems because the government is unwilling to accept the constructive feedback we have provided. It speaks to the underlying reality that the government does not want to hand over control. It just wants to make it look like it is.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to Bill C-22, which is legislation that would establish a committee of parliamentarians to review our national security and intelligence activities.

This bill engages two areas of extraordinary importance to all Canadians: freedom and security. My constituents in Mississauga East—Cooksville, like all Canadians, are vitally concerned about their liberties and freedoms. They are also very conscious of the need for their security and the security of their fellow Canadians.

The debate in these areas is often set out in terms of a zero-sum game. Supposedly, increasing security means less freedom, or that as security decreases, freedom increases. Simply put, this is not true. While on some few occasions a trade-off or balance may be necessary, in reality, most of the time, freedom and security are entirely complementary ideals. There is no real long-term freedom without security. There is no real stable security without freedom. Freedom without security is a charade. Such freedom in a security vacuum is an empty concept. It is life inside a compound or a gated community living in constant fear. Likewise, security without freedom is life in a real or virtual prison cell. This is one of the reasons that I support this bill. It advances the mutually reinforcing goals of liberty and safety.

The need for review in the areas of national security and intelligence is now broadly recognized. Sadly, one can see many examples of failures to provide security and failure to protect liberties both abroad and in Canada. Such reviews involving classified information are particularly challenging. The U.S. 9/11 Commission found, “Secrecy stifles oversight, accountability, and information sharing.” Challenging or not, effective reviews must be done. Literally, it is a matter of life and death.

Accepting the need for such reviews, the real and productive debate is about the appropriate mechanisms for review. When we consider the appropriate mechanisms, we must recognize that this is a marked departure from our parliamentary system of government. National security and intelligence have traditionally been the exclusive preserve of the executive branch. A review system that works within our parliamentary form of government is required.

The first matter in this regard that one must consider is the very real problem of who is best placed to oversee these intelligence and security matters. It is the classic dilemma of who watches the watchers. Should the reviewers be experts? They have the experience and knowledge in such matters. Should the reviewers be independent outsiders, like parliamentarians? There are arguments supporting both positions.

Certainly, experts are used in Canada's other review bodies, being the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, the Communications Security Establishment commissioner, and the Security Intelligence Review Committee. Parliamentarians are obviously independent. They do not necessarily start with the required expertise. However, if one uses experts, particularly in this somewhat closed subject area, one tends to get those who, through long association, might be considered too close to the agencies under review. This closeness can develop in complete good faith and despite genuine efforts to resist it.

I believe it is right to use parliamentarians in this regard. As to their lack of expertise, members of Parliament are expected to act in many areas outside their common knowledge base. They deal with economics in their consideration of budgets and other financial legislation. They deal with health policy in legislation. They deal with moral issues in matters like the assisted dying law. They deal with scientific policy.

Parliamentary oversight of security and intelligence matters is based upon the very foundations of representational democracy. Our whole democratic system assumes a faith in the people's representatives' abilities. However, many parliamentarians will start their duties in this regard without any background knowledge. This makes the support of the secretariat set out in clauses 24 and 25 essential. It is critical that non-expert parliamentarians be supported by staff with the necessary long-term expertise and corporate memory.

I further note with approval that the secretariat could contract for independent legal advice. This is not restricted to the Department of Justice for legal advice. While that advice is admirably professional, the Department of Justice advises virtually all other actors in these areas simultaneously. Independent legal advice can enhance the independence and thus the effectiveness of the secretariat. Effectively, parliamentary review and oversight simply will not work without secretariat assistance. Therefore, I urge the government to give the secretariat the necessary priority and resources.

I note the review committee's mandate is not limited to simply protecting rights and ensuring legal compliance. The committee would be free to consider all matters, including those of effectiveness of subject organizations and even value for money, i.e., are we getting the security that we need commensurate with the resources we are expending.

I strongly support the composition of the committee as set out in clause 5. It nicely balances the interests of all major parties within this House and within the Senate. The inclusion of senators would provide for the possibility of some beneficial continuity for the committee.

This legislation in clause 8 would restrict the committee from reviewing ongoing matters if the relevant minister determines the review would be injurious to national security. This is an appropriate restriction recognizing the established responsibilities of the executive branch in our parliamentary form of democratic government. It is not hard to imagine the impracticalities and problems associated with such a review in the midst of an ongoing sensitive matter. The interference, distraction, and diversion of limited resources are only some of those potential problems.

Some members might note that the provisions make clear that committee members must honour their commitment to confidentiality. These matters are dealt with in clauses 10 through 12. Sadly, parliamentarians have not been above the breach of these rules. In this regard, I remind the House that one of our colleagues, Fred Rose, a former member for Montreal—Cartier, was convicted in 1946 for conspiracy to pass on official secrets to a foreign power, i.e., the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

This legislation in clause 9 recognizes that there are other review bodies, albeit non-parliamentary, engaged in potentially related matters. Co-operation and de-conflicting are mandated and only sensible.

This bill would provide the committee the broadest powers. Clause 13 says that the committee is “entitled to send for persons, papers and records, and to have access to any information”. Please note the words “any information”. The only information excluded is cabinet documents being confidences of the Queen's Privy Council. This slight restriction is entirely consistent with our parliamentary system of government.

We must recognize that this legislation is a novel approach for Canada. National security and intelligence have traditionally been matters strictly of the purview of the executive, of the cabinet. The proposed review committee would be the legislative branch's first foray into these two sensitive areas. This lack of precedent is not a reason not to proceed, but a reason to recognize the limits of what we can sensibly do, predict, and provide for. This is another reason to tread carefully. Most important, to provide a mechanism to make sure that we have acted appropriately, that mechanism is the five-year review mandated by clause 34.

In conclusion, I am proud to support this bill because it introduces necessary outside review in matters of vital concern to Canadians. These matters heavily implicate both our freedom and our security. I also support it because this review is to be in the hands of the most appropriate persons, those persons being Canadian parliamentarians. The review committee would be appropriately composed and represented with a broad mandate and strong powers. This vital committee would be supported by a secretariat and executive director, whose support, I repeat, is absolutely essential. This would allow us to ensure that we are balancing our liberties and freedoms with our security.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is loud and clear that my hon. colleague is very confident in how this committee is going to proceed. However, Canadians watching are very disappointed in how the government supported Bill C-51. They were promised during the election campaign that the amendments were going to be addressed. However, the bill that has come forward to address this has such shortcomings.

It was mentioned that some experts validated this committee. I want to point out that the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Security and Intelligence Review Committee, and the Canadian Bar Association all testified that the oversight committee must not be restricted in its ability to access necessary information. It is really confounding that this committee will move forward and that has been rejected up until now.

Could the hon. member shed some light on why the government rejects expert evidence that access to information is absolutely necessary for this committee to function the way that is envisioned by the government?

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the opportunity to speak about the good work done in committee, the many witnesses who were heard, and the amendments that came forward, which, in many cases, like adding senators, we will move forward with.

The hon. member also talked about some of the experts from whom the committee heard. Following the introduction of Bill C-22, the expert from the University of Ottawa, Craig Forcese, said, “this will be a stronger body than the UK and Australia equivalents. And a dramatic change for Canadian national security and accountability. This is a good bill. I would give it a high pass”. Also, University of Toronto expert Wesley Wark has called Bill C-22 a very good bill.

The committee heard from over 40-some-odd witnesses. There have been over 40 members in the chamber speak to the legislation. It strikes the right balance. We are moving in the right direction.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it was nice to hear the largely motherhood section on the intersection of freedom and security, and the desirability of freedom. However, this is at the same time the government has again invoked closure on a bill to which many parliamentarians wish to speak. When one says that 40 members have spoken on this bill fast enough, it sounds like a lot of people, but that is just barely 10% of the people who were elected to the House and who wish to address issues in the House on behalf of their constituents.

Would the member care to comment on why the government needs to ram this through? Even the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics is in the midst of concluding its study of SCISA, where there were many similar issues. This would be another report that could have perhaps been taken into account when contemplating similar issues in this bill.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the member, but it was his party that forced closure on legislation over 100 times. It was the way the Conservatives operated.

That is not the case with Liberals. We made a commitment to the people of Canada to address poor legislation that the previous Conservative government put forward, Bill C-51. We made a commitment to Canadians to bring a balance of freedom and liberty with security. Bill C-22 addresses that. It is imperative on the government to move forward with that agenda, because Canadians have asked for that.

The member should look at his party's record on closure.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak in favour of Bill C-22.

The national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians being created is incredibly important. We just have to look at what is happening right now south of the border, where congressional committees are overseeing and questioning what is happening in the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence services, to recognize that without oversight, we might well have a very unfortunate situation with power concentrated only in the executive branch.

Up until today, the Canadian Parliament has been the only parliament among our Five Eyes partners that does not have a committee comprised of parliamentarians and legislators to oversee our intelligence department and agencies and to ensure that fairness, justice and rule of law values are imposed.

As such, I strongly agree, as I said when I campaigned in the last election, that such a committee is needed and would be much appreciated by Canadians.

I also want to congratulate the committee that studied the bill. The public safety and national security committee had extensive debates on the bill, which I had the pleasure of reading over the last couple of days. The debate that went on in committee was very interesting and it shed a lot of light on the amendments brought forward and the improvements that were made to the bill. The committee heard from over 40 witnesses. Members of the committee did not necessarily agree with other members of those parties. I congratulate the committee on a thoughtful review of the bill. It stands as an excellent example of how colleagues in the House can work together to make a bill better.

Let me outline a few of the amendments at committee.

In clause 2 and again in clause 15, the amendments made at committee will clarify that the mandate of the committee of parliamentarians includes crown corporations. This broadens the mandate of the NSICOP, and is in keeping with the intent to give that committee a government-wide review capacity.

In clause 5, a time frame of 60 days following the general election has been recommended for the appointment of NSICOP members, and the Prime Minister will be required to consult with the leaders of caucuses and recognized groups in order to name members to the committee.

Amendments to clause 8 to deal with the NSICOP's authority to investigate ongoing activities were made. The minister has authority to determine that an examination of ongoing activities could be injurious to national security. However, with the amendments before us, the time during which the minister can invoke this authority will be limited to the period during which the ongoing operation is injurious security. Once the review is no longer injurious to national security and once it is no longer an ongoing operation, the minister will be required to inform the committee of parliamentarians. That is an improvement to the original bill.

The amendments to clause 14 involve exemptions to the authority to review in certain instances. The amendments would cancel those exemptions. I agree with the standing committee that the exemptions concerning ongoing defence intelligence activities in support of military operations, privileged information under the Investment Canada Act and information collected by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada should be withdrawn.

There are, however, certain exemptions that I believe should remain in the bill.

On the one hand, there are exemptions to individuals who are protected through the witness protection program and to individuals who are confidential sources. I do not think the committee of parliamentarians needs to know the identities of these individual in order to oversee security and intelligence. There is potentially the risk of harm to them if their identities become more widely known. Also, the committee of parliamentarians risks the perception of political interference in police matters should the exemption for ongoing police investigations be removed.

In addition, the committee recommended that clause 16 be deleted. I do not generally support that recommendation. Clause 16 would authorize a minister to prevent disclosure of special operating information as defined by the Security of Information Act when it could be injurious to national security.

There will be situations in which a minister will need to avail him or herself of this prerogative in the interests of national security, but the bill also places checks and balances on this authority. The proposed amendment will require the minister to explain in writing their reasons why the authority is being invoked. This will effectively make public the minister's decision and the minister will have to contemplate the public's reaction before making use of this provision.

The equivalent committees in the other Westminster Five Eyes partners face similar and indeed generally more extensive restrictions on their access to information. In fact, the access provided to the NSICOP will broadly exceed the access afforded to the committees of our international partners.

To repeat a point made earlier, under Bill C-22, operational reviews may only be stopped for national security reasons during the period that the operation in question is ongoing, and only if the conduct of the review will be disruptive to that ongoing operation. Once the operation is complete, the committee of parliamentarians may begin or resume its review.

When the committee of parliamentarians tables its annual report to Parliament, it will be able to cite any instances where this authority has been used. In this way, we assure a degree of transparency that will enable Parliament and the Canadian public to hold the minister and the government to account.

One important aspect of the proposed committee of parliamentarians would be that the government would not have a majority of members on the committee. Indeed, as now agreed and amended, the chair would have a vote only in the case of a tie. By limiting the voting powers of the chair, we further ensure that the committee's work and findings will not be controlled by the government.

The amendments to clause 21 provide a further example of how the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security has ensured greater accountability in the legislation. Should the prime minister redact information contained in NSICOP's report, the new version of the report must be clearly identified as a revised version. On top of that, the extent of the revisions must be indicated, as well as the reasons for them.

A new clause 31 requires NSICOP to inform the appropriate minister or the Attorney General if, in its opinion, it finds any activity related to national security or intelligence carried out by a department that may not be in compliance with the law. This whistle-blower provision is a significant addition to the bill before us. I congratulate the standing committee for championing this provision.

During committee stage, a wide range of witnesses shared the benefit of their experience and advice. The amendments before us today demonstrate that the committee listened to them and that the government also listened to the committee. Committee witnesses included leading professionals and academic experts, human rights advocates, and the heads of our existing national security and intelligence agencies. I thank them for their input.

There has been a consensus, I believe, that the bill would improve the accountability and effectiveness of Canada's national security and intelligence system. I urge all members to join me in supporting the bill. I am pleased that the government is supporting a majority of amendments that have come back from the standing committee.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend's reasoning in trying to justify the bill to convince us to vote for it. However, we have some problems, and I think Canadians want some answers.

When it was Bill C-51, the Liberals at the time said that they would make amendments. Canadians expected an oversight committee that had teeth. This bill handcuffs the committee to do its job properly.

The Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Safety, and nine other cabinet members voted for Bill C-622 in 2014. That bill would have created an oversight committee with full access and subpoena power. Therefore, why is the government now trying to pry these tools out of the hands of this committee when they thought it was better to have it for the committee then?

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member knows this, and just misstated it. When Bill C-51 was adopted, the Liberal Party was not in government. We were in opposition. It was a Conservative bill.

With respect to why subpoena powers are not being granted to the committee today, I can see pros and cons in both directions. It is always a balance between achieving national security and fundamental transparency and balancing fundamental freedoms.

This is the first time in Canadian experience that we will have such a parliamentary committee, and we should all support it. It is a step forward. There will be a review within five years and we will can learn from the committee's experience during those five years. Perhaps subpoena power will be something that in the future, in that five-year review, may indeed be introduced. I do not believe it is critical at this juncture.

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

Mr. Speaker, this legislation has gone through second reading. A number of people have made reference to presentations by individuals at committee, and there were some incredible presentations. Amendments were moved, and a number of those amendments were actually accepted by the government, which gave the bill more strength. Prior to those amendments, there were professionals saying that this is wonderful legislation, it is very robust, and it is a great starting point for Canada in providing parliamentary oversight.

Today we have a healthier piece of legislation than we had at second reading because of the good efforts of those who made presentations and because of the committee membership. I wonder if my colleague could provide his thoughts and comments.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the principle of this legislation is incredibly important. It is important for us to have parliamentary oversight of the security apparatus in this country. I do not think any member of the House would think any differently. We may disagree about the framework for the proposed committee, but we should agree that such a committee should exist.

I believe that the committee worked exactly as a committee should work. It worked across party lines to adopt a number of amendments. The government accepted a good number of the amendments made by committee members. The government listened to the committee, the committee listened to the witnesses, and the bill was improved. That is how committees should work. It is not that all government members vote one way and all opposition members vote another way. At the public safety committee, government and opposition members joined together, back and forth, to support amendments. That was a highlight of and a compliment to the parliamentary process.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak to Bill C-22, an act to establish parliamentary oversight of our security and intelligence services. Bill C-22 aims to plug a gap by giving a unique committee of nine security-cleared and secrecy-sworn MPs and senators substantial but not complete access to classified information and a whole-of-government mandate to review security and intelligence operations, policy, legislation, and administration.

Canada has not seen any progress toward security accountability in decades. In 1977, the government created the McDonald Commission to investigate the security services activities of the RCMP. The commission resulted in two key recommendations in its final report in 1981. The first was to separate security services from the RCMP, a recommendation that was fully implemented in 1984 with the establishment of CSIS. The other key recommendation, to create a special oversight committee of parliamentarians, was ignored and has gone ignored for decades.

Time after time, governments have resisted the call to create a body for parliamentary oversight of security and intelligence services. They have ignored experts in this country and around the world who have insisted that parliamentary oversight is crucial to bridging the gap between ordinary Canadians and the women and men of our intelligence services.

In 2005, a Liberal government bill was introduced that was almost a carbon copy of Bill C-22 in its original form. An interim committee of parliamentarians on national security, when studying that bill, actually toured allied nations and met with their oversight bodies. It too came to the conclusion that an oversight committee must be provided with complete access to classified information. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals rejected that provision.

Without oversight, Canada has been left behind. All of our closest allies, including those with parliamentary governments similar to ours, have adopted legislative oversight to ensure that national security efforts are being executed in the best interests of all citizens. In fact, Canada is the only member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance with the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand that does not have any parliamentary oversight of its security and intelligence services.

It is not good enough to simply look at past mistakes and attempt to evaluate where we went wrong. We need proactive, ongoing parliamentary oversight to ensure not only that everything is operating properly but to stop activities that we believe are not in the best interests of Canadians.

Canadians expect a watchdog with teeth. This committee must have full access to classified information, adequate resources, independence, and, subject only to justifiable limits, the power to share its findings with Canadians in an informative and transparent manner.

Without adequate access to information, the committee would not be able to do its job. This work is far too important to do half-heartedly or ineffectively. We will not support creating a committee that simply wastes time and erodes Canadians' trust.

While the Liberals insisted on watering down Bill C-22 to strip parliamentarians' access to crucial information, we believe that committee members must have full access in order to provide full and thorough oversight. When law professor Craig Forcese, from the University of Ottawa, testified at committee, he remarked that "Unless the committee can access information allowing it to follow trails, it will give the appearance of accountability without the substance''.

This is exactly what the Liberal government has become known for: all talk and very little action, no real commitment, just smoke and mirrors, just as we have seen with Bill C-51.

If the government truly believes that there should be a committee of parliamentary oversight of security and intelligence issues, it must stop trying to strip the committee of the ability to do its job effectively.

Since Bill C-51 was introduced in 2015, there has been a true awakening about the balance we expect the government to uphold between our privacy rights and national security objectives. This awakening did not happen overnight. In February 2015, 82% of Canadians supported Bill C-51, but by April, the level of support was down to 33%. The more Canadians learned about the bill, the less they liked it, and for good reason.

It is the New Democrats who fought against a very strong current to make sure that Canadians knew the rights we were all signing off and losing forever. It was politically risky, but we knew it was the right thing to do.

Still, to this day, Bill C-51's broad interpretation allows the government to cast a wide net, with the potential to scoop up union members, environmentalists, and aboriginal rights activists. The language in this bill is so broad that the definition of terrorist was watered down to individuals who practise their legal right to dissent. Under this legislation, police forces have the power to detain people they suspect of planning to break the law. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service will have new powers to arrest. These are only some of the examples of what the NDP stood against, whereas the Liberals in opposition were decidedly unreliable. They flip-flopped, ultimately deciding to amend the bill when they got into power. The problem is that they have not. The government is still playing lip service to its campaign promise. It is disappointing and frustrating that the Liberals are not living up to their commitments on Bill C-51.

To rebuild trust, the committee must be strong, independent, and effective. The current government must fulfill its promise to repeal the problematic elements of Bill C-51. Even the Canadian Civil Liberties Association agrees that legislation is needed to undo the damage done by Bill C-51.

While we agree that oversight of our national security and intelligence apparatus is badly needed, we cannot use such a bill as this one to cover up the inaction on Bill C-51.

The former auditor general has stated that review powers must be proportionate to the intrusiveness of powers wielded by security agencies and that anything less falls short of true oversight. In light of Bill C-51's expansion of security powers, should this committee's oversight powers not also be greater than what was envisioned a decade ago in a previous government's bill?

The original version of Bill C-22 gave committee members substantial access to classified information, but not complete access. Based on expert testimony and study, the public safety committee presented evidence-based amendments to the bill. These amendments aimed to give the committee the powers and access to information it would need to do its job effectively.

Furthermore, the bill aimed to limit the power of the Prime Minister to censor committee reports. Other efforts to amend the bill, like including a provision to elect the chair of the committee, were rejected by the government, even though it had the support of all opposition parties. Despite this, we were happy with Bill C-22 when it was amended. The amended bill fulfilled a crucial campaign promise by both the NDP and the Liberals and ensured that the committee would be both independent and well informed. However, it is clear that the government intends to neglect the evidence-based decisions of the committee and to bring Bill C-22 back to its original, watered-down form.

In The Globe and Mail op-ed on January 27, four national security and legal experts stated this point clearly:

Should the government choose to force a return to the restrictive original bill, it risks potentially undermining a new and historic Parliamentary ability that it has enthusiastically championed.

I strongly urge the government to keep the amendments as made by the committee. These amendments were made after hearing from 25 expert witnesses and with the united support of all opposition parties.

This country needs strong parliamentary oversight of our security and intelligence services that is transparent and accountable and serves the best interests of Canadians. I hope this government will live up to its election promises, respect the work of the committee, and pass this legislation as amended.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was here during the debate on Bill C-51. The Liberal Party, in opposition to Bill C-51, raised a number of concerns. Ultimately, we saw fit to support Bill C-51. The NDP opposed it straight through. However, we understood the importance of rights and freedoms. We also understood the importance of security.

We made a commitment to Canadians to bring back parliamentary oversight. We have had professionals and scholars indicate that this was good, sound legislation, even before it was amended. I would suggest that the NDP critique of the legislation could be applied to other pieces of legislation that other Five Eyes countries have. Canada does not have a parliamentary oversight committee. Other countries do. We will find that in many ways, our legislation is more robust than those other countries', and this is our first time with it.

Will the NDP be voting yes for parliamentary oversight?

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to mention again about the great integrity I felt as a candidate in my riding when people would come to talk to me about the real concerns they had about Bill C-51. It opened up the doors for people to have their ability to protest, their ability to speak out, vastly limited. A lot of indigenous leaders came to me and talked about their very serious concerns around what their rights would mean and how they were going to fight for their indigenous rights in their province and in their country. I think it is important that we remember that sometimes we have to stand up and speak up against these things, because they really silence people. We could do better. That is what we stood on.

As for this issue, I think it is important to remember that if this committee does not have the tools it needs to get the job done, it will be a waste of time and money for the taxpayer. Canadians in this country want to see something that works well. When we have a committee that works together, that comes together and has good discussions, and comes with amendments, and then suddenly it is changed again by the governing party, we have to ask these questions. That is why we are here. We are here to ask those questions and make sure that when a parliamentary committee is put together around a very important issue, that it is done well, that it is done meaningfully, and that it is done in a way that there are actual teeth to it. I think Canadians want to know that they are being protected and that the oversight is there. It is very unfortunate that the government has seen fit to water down this important bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will quote Suzanne Legault, the Information Commissioner of Canada. Because of Bill C-22, there will be a “ministerial override of the committee's review function”.

Does my colleague feel that the committee's loss of autonomy could put Canadians at greater risk?

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think this is what we are talking about today. If the Prime Minister or the ministers have the ability to put things aside so this committee does not have access to the information, how is it supposed to do its job?

Again, I think Canadians are looking for a process and a committee that will work hard, that will have the information it needs, and that will provide the accountability that it needs to move forward. If it does not have the information it requires, how is it supposed to show the Canadian people that it is doing the work it is legislated to do?

I appreciate this question. I think it is very important that this is part of the debate. Are the folks on this committee going to be allowed to do their work in a meaningful way? Or is this going to be a symbolic thing that does not fulfill its commitments but is there to look good for the government?

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise during this report stage to continue our review of Bill C-22, which would create a committee of parliamentarians on national security matters.

I am pleased to see that today this bill has not only been through committee scrutiny, but thanks to all of that work, the advice of experts, many stakeholders, and the voices of Canadians, we have landed on a version that balances all those concerns. We have agreed to an expanded mandate. We have agreed to remove certain exclusions to the unprecedented level of classified information that this committee will be able to access, and we have balanced concerns about ministerial powers of redaction and national security limitations with reasonable compromises.

As we have moved this significant legislation forward, much has been made about how Canada's committee will compare with counterparts in other Five Eyes countries. Indeed, Bill C-22 would have favourably compared to them as initially introduced. However, this amended version will make it even stronger. If we look closely at another country with a Westminster system comparable to Canada's, for example, the United Kingdom, we see very interesting comparisons with parliamentary review of national security and intelligence. There, in particular, the balance between access to highly sensitive information and protection of national security is reflected in the U.K. Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.

In the U.K. model, ministers may choose to withhold certain types of sensitive information, as long as the disclosure would be counter to the interests of national security. Specifically in the U.K., its Justice and Security Act states that if asked to disclose information, the government can withhold the information because it is “sensitive information” and that “in the interests of national security, should not be disclosed..”

If we look to the Australian model, similarly, the government cannot be compelled to provide operationally sensitive information, including intelligence sources, operational methods, or foreign intelligence, if that information is deemed injurious to either national security or foreign relations. All international partners agree that access to information must be balanced with the need for safety of sources and the integrity of the national security framework, and that ongoing investigations should be free of political interference.

Under Bill C-22, Canada's committee would have a statutory right to access highly classified information in any department, any agency, and now, thanks to an amendment adopted by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, any crown corporation, making our committee an international leader in terms of information access.

To continue with comparisons, Canada's committee would also be in line administratively with other Westminster systems, for example, on security clearances. However, Canada's committee would go further still in the scope of its mandate, as its jurisdiction would not be limited to the main national security agencies.

Also, unique to Canada, the committee would be able to engage and collaborate with existing expert review bodies, including the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, the Security Intelligence Review Committee for CSIS, and the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner.

What is more, Canada's committee would have a unique membership. We are now proposing a body with up to eleven members, including up to three senators, and with a limit of five MPs from the governing party. Certainly this will be reflective of Canada's diversity in advice and expertise, in experience, and in opinion. It will ensure that the government does not control the committee.

I also want to emphasize that this is a made-in-Canada approach. We have taken the best of what we have learned from our allies and applied it to our own system and reality, establishing a body that is unprecedented in Canadian history. It has been lacking for a long time. This goes further than what the government under Prime Minister Paul Martin envisioned in 2005, and it goes further than what many of our allies actually have. What is more, I want to remind hon. members about the checks and balances we have in place to ensure that the committee can evolve and become stronger in the future.

As with any new institution, there will be early experiences that can lead to subsequent improvements. There will also need to be a confidence-building process with the security and intelligence community, as well as with the Canadian public, and with us as parliamentarians. In fact, when Dominic Grieve, the chair of the British committee, visited Ottawa last year, his advice was to start small, build trust, and enhance the committee over time. With Bill C-22, we will actually be starting rather large, with a committee that would have more access and more teeth than many of its international counterparts, including the United Kingdom. A mandatory five-year review included as part of this bill would ensure that the committee's effectiveness and experiences could be studied and lessons applied, so that this new institution in the Canadian national security landscape could become as effective as possible.

I see no reason at this stage of this bill's journey to hold back this truly collaborative and long-overdue legislation. It reflects values that we have long agreed upon, and the final version will incorporate, with the government's agreement, a significant number of amendments proposed by the public safety committee. I commend all members for their valued input, and I applaud the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for its review. We are at an important juncture in the history of our country's security framework, and this bill gets to the root of the dual objectives that Canadians have told us they want achieved: keeping our country safe while protecting our values, rights, and freedoms. I urge all members to support this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to express some thoughts in regard to the importance of this legislation, in the sense that for many years Canada did not have parliamentary oversight. In fact, this will be the first time that we will have parliamentary oversight. With other countries, specifically the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, we are all a part of the Five Eyes organization, and we are the only country that does not have a parliamentary oversight committee. Therefore, passing this legislation is somewhat historic, in the sense that we will have parliamentary oversight for the very first time.

There would be parliamentary oversight of the many different agencies of government such as the member made mention of, including corporations and departments and so forth. Parliamentarians would be chosen to be on this committee, and the number of government members appointed would actually be a minority of the committee. This would be a first, and it is important for us to recognize that it would be a great balance in holding accountability and ensuring more transparency, and at the same time protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians by their knowing that the committee exists.

Could my colleague share her thoughts in terms of the importance of what we are passing today as being something that is somewhat historic?

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have missed having a committee that could do this kind of parliamentary oversight in terms of national security. What we have proposed is a committee that would be effective in being able to review and oversee national security. It is balanced. It is responsive to the security situation. It would be much less partisan, by virtue of what is at stake. It is a made-in-Canada solution, and I believe that is absolutely essential. Also, when we look at what we want to do with this committee, which is to keep Canada safe and at the same time protect our values, our rights, and our freedoms, we have hit the right balance.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in her speech, my colleague talked about the work of the parliamentary committee that studied this matter. I feel that, in a parliamentary committee, each member's work must be recognized. A non-partisan parliamentary committee can be said to do excellent work and to deliver positive results when the government accepts recommendations from all political parties. Unfortunately, few of the recommendations from the official opposition have been adopted by the government, specifically those pertaining to the appointment of the chair and to the fact that we really do want a non-partisan committee.

My colleague was full of praise for the quality of the committee's work; what does she have to say about the fact that the recommendations have unfortunately come from one side only?

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

It is always a balancing act, Mr. Speaker. It is about finding that best compromise, about trying to build that consensus.

The member is right that people do not get everything they want, but what we came up with is a compromise that would best suit Canada, that would best balance the need for national security oversight with rights and values and freedoms. We must remember that this legislation will be reviewed again in five years and that we will have learned lessons in those five years. There will be opportunities to improve if such improvements are needed.

This is just step one. There are many more steps ahead of us.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be here this afternoon.

I am not sure I have seen a bill more emblematic of the Liberals than this bill. As I sit here and listen today, I see there is all kinds of enthusiasm over there, but no assurance of any kind of effectiveness. There is all kinds of work being planned here, but it is likely to have no results. There are all kinds of appointments in the mix, but it does not look as though there would be any balance either.

The Liberals made a promise in the campaign. Their promise was that they were going to set up a non-partisan parliamentary national security oversight committee. Bill C-22 is another broken promise from a government that is becoming famous for breaking them. I will talk about how it has broken that promise, but certainly there is no opportunity for this to be non-partisan or to be a real parliamentary committee, and it certainly is not going to have the oversight it should have.

There are several ways to set committees up around here. The one we thought the Liberals were promising was a non-partisan parliamentary committee. I assume that if we put that in place, we would be talking about equal numbers such that the opposition would be able to contribute on an equal basis and the power on that committee would be shared, perhaps through dual chairs or sharing the chairmanship. It would have the powers of a parliamentary committee. If it was a security committee, it would probably have to deal with some sort of secrecy issues around the content of what it is looking at.

There is a second opportunity, which is to set up a regular parliamentary committee that has parliamentary powers. All of us in the House sit on those types of committees. They always pretty much favour the government, because the numbers on the committee are set by the numbers we have in the House. Those committees are under the control of the government, and we recognize that.

There are also advisory committees of parliamentarians that can be set up, and then there is an advisory committee to the prime minister. We know the specialization that the Liberals across the way have on consultation, but typically those committees are appointed by the prime minister himself.

It is interesting that we saw the Liberals promise number one, a non-partisan parliamentary committee. What they are actually trying to deliver today is number four, which is that advisory committee to the prime minister, a committee that can consult with him and that he can talk to about these issues, but one which has very little power.

I want to take a bit of a look at some of the other countries involved in these committees. One of my colleagues across the way in the government a while ago talked about the United States intelligence committee structure and was actually trying to compare this structure to that. He talked about how there needs to be fairness and justice and that the rule of law must be guaranteed and protected by the bill. Bill C-22 does not do that. It does not compare in any way to the structure that is set up in the United States.

The previous speaker talked about the United Kingdom model being similar too. I am going to go through that a bit as well. I think we will find out that this committee does not have much similarity to the authority and power that the United Kingdom committees have either.

There are a number of other Commonwealth countries that do have oversight committees. New Zealand, for example, has a committee, but it basically is to examine issues of efficacy and efficiencies for budgetary matters, policy settings, and those kinds of things. It really does not have much to do directly with intelligence oversight. The members of that committee are the prime minister, two members of parliament nominated by him, the leader of the opposition, and one member nominated by the leader of the opposition. We can see in that situation that the Government of New Zealand would control that committee at all times. It is basically focused on budget oversight, not intelligence gathering.

The Australian model is a little bit different. It has a committee that is administrative. Its main functions are to do expenditure review and oversight there as well. It can also review matters that relate to some of the agencies that are referred to it, but it does not review intelligence gathering or operational procedures or priorities, and it does not conduct inquiries. Again, we see it is an oversight committee, but it is not what the Liberal government has promised to set up as a committee for Canadians.

The United Kingdom has a little stronger committee. It has a committee of parliament with greater powers. It was actually set up in 1994 as more of a monitoring committee, and in 2013 it was restructured or reformed to give it more powers and increase its strength. It now includes oversight of operational activity and the wider intelligence and security activities of government.

When people were thinking about this committee that the Liberals were promising during the campaign, they really thought that is what was going to be brought in, and it certainly is not, as we see when we look at the legislation, what the Liberals are doing to the legislation, and the work the committee did.

Bill C-22 is called the “national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians act”. Usually a committee is named for what it really is, and if that is the case here, it probably should be called “the Prime Minister's advisory committee”, because while the bill may establish a committee, it clearly fails to meet either the election promise or to establish a real and true intelligence oversight committee.

It is a bit of an embarrassment, I think, for the government to find itself having to completely change its direction from what it promised. It is unfortunate that it is using time allocation this afternoon to cover what I would call its incompetence on this issue. It is unfortunate that we find ourselves once more in the situation of the government wanting to limit debate on a bill that is clearly not going to meet the priorities and needs of Canadians.

We have a Prime Minister who seems to love running around and appearing on stages more than he likes to do this kind of hard work, so it is not surprising to see legislation, time after time, that is written in ways that the government itself is unable to support. It has to reject the work of the committees, reject the amendments made by members from all parties in this Parliament, and basically turn its back on the promises it made.

The bill to set up this committee was introduced in June of 2016. The interesting thing is that the Prime Minister actually appointed a chair to this committee months before the legislation was even presented and long before it was even debated. I understand the member has been travelling around the world. I guess he thinks he is doing some work on this in his committee, but it is probably a pretty good gig to be appointed before the parliamentary committee is even set up and have the government pay to travel around to examine some of these issues. At least there is one person getting something out of this, if the rest of Canadians are not.

As I said, forming an effective non-partisan committee was a Liberal campaign promise. Every one of us in the House would like to ensure that there is an appropriate review of our national security agencies. Conservatives believe that is important and would like the committee, when it is set up, to have the capacity and the tools to be able to do what is required. I think we would all be glad to support a committee that would properly supervise and provide oversight to our national security and intelligence organizations, but the way it is being done in the House this afternoon is a clear demonstration that this whole project is far more about optics than it is about effectiveness.

If this committee is put in place, we need to make sure that it has the tools to do what is required, and that clearly has not happened. I just mentioned that the Prime Minister appointed a chair of the committee long before the legislation was written, or certainly before it was presented and long before it was debated. The person appointed, from my understanding, has very little expertise and does not have a history in these issues.

One of the issues here is that committees usually elect their own chairs and do not have ones imposed by the Prime Minister's Office.

The Liberals promised they were going to form this committee. It is not a parliamentary committee. It is controlled by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. I do not know how anyone in the House could possibly see a committee set up like that to be non-partisan. What does it mean when the Prime Minister has the authority to appoint the members of the committee? Again, as I mentioned earlier, if Liberals really wanted to treat this matter seriously, why would we not be talking about co-chairs and an equal number of party representatives in the House? Without that, we really have nothing useful.

This is just one more broken promise. The budget is being presented this week, and we will be reminded again of how many promises the government has broken. This is one more of those broken promises. This will not be a non-partisan committee. The Prime Minister will be controlling it. It will not be a parliamentary committee. It will not have the powers of a parliamentary committee. What the committee gave the legislation in its work the government is now taking away.

The point is that if it were going to be effective, it would not be under the control of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. It would be under the control of the members of Parliament who sit on that committee. If there were equal numbers of members and a sharing of the chairmanship, Conservatives could see how this committee might work effectively, but the government has made a decision that it is not going to do things that way, and that is unfortunate. It is unfortunate that the government finds itself in a situation like this today, but it is even more unfortunate that Canadians will end up paying for another mistake that has been made by the Liberal government.

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

Mr. Speaker, what I find unfortunate is that the Conservative Party is completely out of touch with what Canadians really want on this issue.

The Prime Minister made a commitment to bring in parliamentary oversight, and that is exactly what the bill would do. It is a promise kept by the Prime Minister. It seems it is only the Conservative Party that really does not support parliamentary oversight.

The member across the way focuses his attention on the powers of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister works in consultation with the leaders of the opposition parties to assist in some of those appointments. Government members are actually a minority on the committee itself.

In many ways, this legislation is more robust than legislation where there is parliamentary oversight as part of the Five Eyes nations. Would the member ultimately argue that the EU parliamentary oversight system and the New Zealand parliamentary oversight system are fundamentally flawed? We have some areas that are more robust than those areas.

It just seems to me the Conservatives are—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

My colleague across the way is scrambling this afternoon, Mr. Speaker.

I understand the committee did a lot of hard work on this and it came up with a number of amendments that would have given powers to this committee. It would have made it non-partisan. Appointments would not have been made by the Prime Minister. It would have brought in an acceptable level of accountability and transparency. The government rejected those amendments.

Canadians need to be paying attention tonight when we vote. They need to look at what the government is doing to this committee, because when it is done, the committee will have little review. It will have no transparency. It will not have the accountability it should have. It will not have powers of subpoena, even though other parliamentary committees do have that authority.

This committee does not need to be an extension of the Prime Minister's Office. That seems to be what the government is bound and determined to make it.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, since we are talking in the House today about what Canadians understand and the fact that Canadians are watching, I wonder if the member could highlight once again for Canadians exactly what is happening. Some of the recent comments by the hon. member from the governing party do not delve into what really is happening and what Canadians are concerned about.

I wonder if my colleague would discuss some of the issues with regard to parliamentary oversight in the counterpart Five Eyes nations and some of the shortcomings that our committee actually mentioned, which were about appointing the chairperson. Does he think there is a risk with no trust from Canadians if the books are not handed over to the government and other information that has been withheld? Maybe the member could expand on some of those shortcomings.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I had more time to speak to this today because it is important that Canadians understand what the government is doing. Actually, it is important that they understand the work that the committee did.

We have a committee with all members on it who worked together to try to make the bill better. They brought back amendments and the government rejected the amendments that were made by a committee on which the government has a majority.

We need to make sure this thing has transparency. The government is going to remove that tonight with its vote. I am told there are multiple locking mechanisms entrenched in Bill C-22 that block committees from accessing information and calling witnesses. The government is making sure that those locks are in place so the committee will not be able to do the work it should.

We need to make sure this committee is non-partisan. The government is not guaranteeing that. Its chair and its members should not be appointed by the Prime Minister. We need to see that happen. Members of the committee need to be appointed by Parliament. Most important, the committee needs to report not to the Prime Minister but to Parliament. If it could do that, perhaps it could do some work that would be really valuable for Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, although I do not think I agreed with a single thing my friend from Cypress Hills—Grasslands said, we are friends.

I want to know if he can explain why the previous Conservative government in the 41st Parliament in omnibus budget Bill C-38 did not allow for any amendments or any discussion and used time allocation at every stage, eliminated the office of the inspector general for CSIS, the only internal oversight that used to exist for CSIS. I think we need to bring back that office, as well as have the parliamentary committee.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to talk about Bill C-22 and the committee the government is proposing to establish for the future.

We need to come back to the fact that the committee needs to have authority. It needs to report back to Parliament, not to the Prime Minister. It needs to be appointed by Parliament. It also needs to be able to do a good job of intelligence oversight, or else we are just pretending that we have something that we really do not have.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure and honour to speak today to Bill C-22.

This bill will give Canada its first national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians. By enacting legislation to create this new committee, our government is fulfilling its commitment to protecting national security while ensuring the utmost respect for rights and freedoms.

I would also note that the government has made it a priority to make Parliament more useful by consolidating its institutions and mobilizing parliamentarians. The national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians that will be created by Bill C-22 is intended to be a forum where national security agencies will be able to exchange highly classified intelligence with parliamentarians who have received the proper security clearance.

The public wants national security and intelligence activities to be carried out in a responsible way. They are entitled to know that this important work is being done in accordance with the rule of law and in full recognition of individual rights, including the right to privacy. Because our government knows this is possible, it is committed to consolidating the national security framework in order to protect Canadians without compromising their values, rights and freedoms or the openness and inclusivity that this country represents.

Within the strong framework laid down by Bill C-22, the government will be able to disclose highly classified information to a committee that will include members of both Chambers and all parties. The parliamentarians who sit on the committee will have a broad mandate, defined in the bill, that consists of verifying whether the government’s work in the realm of national security and intelligence meets high standards and is carried out rigorously and responsibly. For that reason, I would like to focus on two fundamental aspects of this bill: accountability and transparency.

People expect that we, as parliamentarians, will be able to hold the government to account concerning the work done by national security and intelligence agencies. My esteemed colleagues know that SIRC, the Security Intelligence Review Committee that oversees CSIS, the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, for the CSE, and the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP are well established entities that were created many years ago to ensure the transparency and accountability that people expect of the corresponding agencies in their mandatory annual reports.

Each of these entities oversees a national security or intelligence agency to ensure that it adheres to the rule of law and the directives given by its minister, namely the Minister of Public Safety for SIRC and the CRCC and the Minister of National Defence for the CSE.

To date, however, Canada has not been able to address national security and intelligence issues from a government-wide perspective, that is, to cast a wider net than any of the three entities we just spoke about do, wider even than the three of them together. That is what we want to remedy with Bill C-22. I would like to commend the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for the fine work it did in its examination of this important bill.

At this stage, the government is proposing to reinstate several important provisions of Bill C-22. More specifically, the government wants to reintroduce three mandatory exemptions relating to the committee’s access to classified information: first, protection of information respecting ongoing law enforcement operations; second, protection of the identity of informants and sources; and third, protection of persons in the witness protection program. This is because it is essential to guarantee the independence of police investigations and the safety and security of individuals who work in national security and intelligence.

The government has also proposed an amendment that reinstates clause 16, so that ministers have the necessary discretion not to disclose certain special operational information, but only if providing the information might be injurious to national security, for example, where operations or the safety of the individuals involved are in issue. As an additional safety measure, the bill provides that a minister who exercises his or her discretion in this regard must do so on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, the minister must, under the bill, inform the committee and provide the reasons why he or she has done so.

I congratulate the government for responding to the concerns of the standing committee while at the same time preserving the necessary protection measures and guarantees specified in the bill. I support the amendments proposed by the government.

I also want to point out that parliamentarians must review the bill every five years, starting from the date on which it comes into force. This is an important provision, because it establishes a legislative basis that gives the committee the ability to make changes.

As parliamentarians, we introduce, debate, and promulgate legislation dealing with matters of national security. The committees of the House and the Senate consider matters of national security policy and carry out studies of the government’s national security and intelligence activities and of the associated laws.

To date, however, Canadians have not had the benefit of an entity that gives parliamentarians a mandate to examine the government’s overall national security and intelligence infrastructure. That is what we are seeking to accomplish with the bill we are proposing, Bill C-22, an act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain acts.

By creating the committee of parliamentarians proposed in Bill C-22 and holding a debate on the amendments proposed by the government at this stage of the report, we are showing Canadians that the government is resolutely taking a stance as protector of their individual rights, their freedoms, and their values, while at the same time focusing on their security and their safety.

That is why I intend to vote for the bill, and I encourage all my colleagues to do the same.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech, which I listened to with interest.

I would like to go back to 2014, when the Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and nine other ministers voted in favour of Bill C-622, which sought to create an oversight committee with complete access and subpoena powers.

Why is the government trying to take these tools away from the committee proposed by Bill C-22? Why are the Liberals flip-flopping today, when they are now in government?

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to recall that the government has made a point of taking the time to consult its colleagues of other authorities, in order to see what the best practices of those parliamentary committees were. The government’s conclusion that the minister should be allowed certain limits is based on reasons of security. That is why the government is maintaining its restrictions, which are still very limited and must be justified to parliamentarians.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to hear the comments and concerns about the lack of transparency of this new committee and yet the party on this side would have the minority of the people on it.

Perhaps because the appointments would be made by the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister would have some enormous power that would actually neuter the voices of those sitting in the opposition preventing them from raising issues as they saw them come up, especially about the process, especially about the transparency. Surely if they saw a problem, they would have the freedom to speak up.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that obviously the fact that the Prime Minister would appoint the parliamentarians that would sit on the committee would definitely not be an indication that they would be limited in the scope both of their work and of their liberty to do the work as fully as necessary to do their job.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not at all reassured when I hear my colleagues opposite saying that the fact that the government does not have a majority on a committee means that there is more democracy within that committee.

Let us recall the electoral reform committee. When a committee says the opposite of what the government wants to hear, the government could not care less about the committee’s recommendations and decides to make the decisions itself. That is our criticism of Bill C-22. Let us have a real parliamentary committee that will really have its say, and not a committee managed by the Prime Minister’s Office. The proof is that this bill is being passed under a gag order, because they are tired of hearing opposition representatives tell the truth about Bill C-22.

What does the member have to say about that?

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member on this side has a good memory and recalls very clearly the 10 years of Conservative government during which the infamous gag order was imposed on us at nearly every turn, and during which that committee never had a chance to see the light of day because the government refused to allow it.

I really do not need any lectures from my opposition colleagues.

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

Mr. Speaker, would the member provide some of her thoughts with regard to the valuable work that we saw at the committee stage, in particular, those who made presentations and the committee members who got together with some amendments?

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely commend the work done by the committee members. It was a very thoughtful process. They took the time to examine and to receive all the witnesses they could to provide as much information as possible in coming up with their recommendations. I think the government was also thoughtful in coming back with some acceptance and some non-acceptance of the recommendations from the committee. I have to commend the work done by the committee.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise today to take part in this very important debate on Bill C-22.

I feel honoured to give voice to the serious concerns that many of my constituents have in the great riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I also want to note that this debate is taking place under the yoke of time allocation. In other words, the ability of parliamentarians to provide oversight on a bill dealing with oversight has now been curtailed by the government.

Bill C-22 cannot be debated without being properly placed in the context of Bill C-51 from the 41st Parliament. Bill C-51 was one of the most draconian pieces of security legislation to emanate from the previous Conservative government. Indeed, more than 100 of Canada's brightest legal experts from institutions across the country sent an open letter to all members of Parliament at the time, expressing their deep concern about Bill C-51. They called that bill a dangerous piece of legislation, in terms of the potential impacts on the rule of law, on constitutionally and internationally protected rights, and on the health of Canada's democracy.

We had former prime ministers, former justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, and all sorts of experts who gave close scrutiny to Bill C-51 and were convinced it was unconstitutional. Many of my constituents were very vocally opposed to Bill C-51, and indeed many of them took part in the protests that erupted across Canada during that time.

It was a sad day in Parliament when the Liberals joined with the Conservatives to pass that bill. I think, and many of my colleagues will agree with me, that on Bill C-51, the Liberals were indecisive, unreliable, and plain wrong to support it at the time. I do not think they realized how much of a serious misjudgement they had made with the Canadian public on the mood of Canadians.

Then, when we edged closer to the 2015 election, we suddenly saw a commitment in the Liberal campaign platform to introduce new legislation that would balance collective security with our rights and freedoms. Part of that promise was to establish an all-party national oversight committee, which we see today in Bill C-22.

In our system today, we have a history of having opposition chairs in oversight committees. Committees on ethics, public accounts, status of women, and government operations all have elected opposition chairs to ensure proper accountability and oversight. It is most unfortunate that the government, through clause 6 of the bill, has provided for the Governor in Council to designate the chair of the committee. In fact, the government has not even bothered to wait for the passage of this bill, because, as we all know, it has been widely reported that the member for Ottawa South is to be the chair. The government has also rejected attempts at the committee stage to allow for the committee to elect its chair, something which I think is unfortunate.

If I could deliver one message today, it is that Canadians expect to have a watchdog and oversight committee that has real teeth. I think this committee must have full access to classified information, have adequate resources, and, most importantly, it must have independence subject only to justifiable limits and the power to share its findings with Canadians in an informative and transparent manner.

Without adequate access to information, the committee will not be able to do its job effectively. I think this work is far too important to do half-heartedly or ineffectively. I will not support creating a committee that cannot properly provide oversight in accordance with what Canadians expect.

One of the government's proposals is to allow cabinet ministers to withhold information from the oversight committee. This is evident in Motion No. 5, which the government has presented, which seeks to reinstate clause 16. It is worded in a way that allows a minister to withhold information if he or she feels that it is special operational information or that the provision of the information would be injurious to national security.

If injurious to national security is not a blanket statement to cover any kind of reason, I do not know what is. I have heard Liberal MPs say that there is a proper accountability in oversight because the minister simply has to inform the committee of his or her decision and the reasons for it, as if that somehow makes everything okay.

I cannot support such a reinstatement of that clause. The public safety committee and the experts who were heard made it very clear that the the executive branch having this kind of power over an oversight committee simply will not fly. It would make the committee completely ineffective anytime that a minister wanted to withhold information. With regard to the way that the government wants to write the bill, the minister could claim that a confidential inquiry somehow jeopardizes the country's national security. I think that giving the government the ability to shut down any kind of investigation into its actions is too dangerous for a functioning and accountable democracy.

The other thing is that we need to build Canadians' trust in our security and intelligence community, and the way to do that is to create meaningful parliamentary oversight. We need to have a fully briefed parliamentary oversight committee that can issue authoritative reports to Canadians. Without full access and full trust from the agencies, the oversight committee cannot help those agencies earn the trust of Canadians. It is very disappointing and frustrating that the Liberals are not living up to the commitments they made trying to fix Bill C-51. To rebuild this trust, the committee must be strong, independent, and effective. The Liberals must fulfill their promise to “repeal the problematic elements of Bill C-51”.

I find it very troubling that the government cannot seem to place its trust in a select group of parliamentarians who will be security cleared, sworn to secrecy, and who will have waived all immunity based on parliamentary privilege. To underline how ridiculous this premise is, I would like to point out that there are members of the Conservative Party in opposition who were once members of cabinet in the previous Parliament. At that time, they had access to all kinds of sensitive information and are still bound by secrecy. Why the government will not now trust this committee to have full access and provide proper oversight remains an elusive mystery.

All parties worked hard during the committee process to improve Bill C-22. The final product, as was reported back to this House, was praised by four of Canada's leading authorities on intelligence and oversight issues. They wrote a joint op-ed in The Globe and Mail, calling on the government to accept the improvements and pass the bill. The last-minute changes that the government is now trying to make are unsupported by evidence heard at the committee, and they would undermine the effectiveness of the committee and the trust of Canadians. The Information Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Kent Roach and Craig Forcese, the first chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and a representative of the Canadian Bar Association, all testified that the oversight committee should not be restricted in its access to necessary information. I do not understand why the government is attempting to reject that expert evidence.

There are three core agencies responsible for security and intelligence work in Canada: CSIS, CSE, and the RCMP. They have a combined budget of approaching $4 billion, and they employ close to 34,000 people. Clearly such a vast network needs to have the accountability and oversight of Parliament in order to regain Canadians' trust. The role of Parliament is to scrutinize the government, represent the Canadian people, and bring forth good laws to govern our people.

I call on the Liberal MPs sitting in the back rows to go back to that special day on March 8 during the vote on Bill S-201, when they had the courage to stand up and assert their power as legislators in the face of the opposition from cabinet. As they did then, those Liberal MPs should reject the government's 11th-hour amendments to this bill, and instead listen to the evidence that was so clearly presented to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I ask all MPs in this House to remember that the government is accountable to Parliament, not the other way around.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the member, but I disagree with a number of the points. I was there when there was a great deal of opposition to Bill C-51. The Liberal Party was different from the NDP back then. We believed there was a need to see Bill C-51 passed because of a wide variety of reasons. The security of Canadians was the predominant reason. We also made the commitment back then that we would bring in the parliamentary oversight. This bill would do just that.

My question for the member is this. I have been a parliamentarian now for about 25 years. I know how committees work. At the end of the day, I believe in the integrity of the members who would make up that committee. A majority of that committee would not be held by government members of Parliament. The government members of Parliament would be in a minority. It would take others to be onside in order to get something passed. Does that not provide any reassurances whatsoever for members across the way?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in a short answer, no, it does not. I appreciate that members of the governing party on a committee may not have a majority position. However, if the member had correctly listened to my speech, I do not really care about that particular section. My main concern is with clause 16 of this bill, which still allows a minister, with this blanket provision, to keep information from that committee. No matter what the membership of the committee is, the problem is not solved if we still have a clause allowing a minister to withhold information. We need proper oversight. We need proper accountability.

I do not know what the government's problem is when we have parliamentarians who are sworn to secrecy, have received security clearance, and basically have waived their right to parliamentary privilege so they will be accountable and fully subject to the law if they break that secrecy. I am not sure why the government cannot trust those parliamentarians when there are members in this House who used to be members of the previous Conservative government who are still maintaining that oath of secrecy.

I think what the member is talking about is window dressing. He did not address our real concerns regarding this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford for putting the concern so very clearly as to why that parliamentary committee of MPs and senators, with all of the stringent qualifications they would have to undertake to be members of the committee, should have information withheld from them.

I do plan to vote for Bill C-22, because I think it is important to have parliamentary oversight. We have never had it. However, I am still putting forward my own amendment, which I hope the hon. member will support, to delete the clause of the bill which removes parliamentary privilege from MPs. Other countries with parliamentary oversight of intelligence operations do allow their MPs to continue to have parliamentary privilege. I see that one deletion as a way of pushing back on the overall message from the government that MPs are not trusted with information.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for that part. I am still examining her proposed deletion of clause 12, because I think that in our system of checks and balances, in order to afford parliamentarians that privilege of accessing this information, there do need to be some checks. However, I do not think that the government would accept that in any case. Therefore, one of the important amendments that my colleague from Victoria has moved is the deletion of clause 31. If the government rejects everything else, we hope at least that by deleting clause 31 in this bill we can allow that accountability to a federal court, because we know that certain federal judges are sworn to secrecy. They deal with very sensitive information on an ongoing operational basis, and sometimes they have to issue warrants with very sensitive information. We hope that, at the very least, by eliminating clause 31, we have that recourse for the courts to actually enforce some of the things the committee is trying to do.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the House today with respect to the passage of Bill C-22, which would establish the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians, also known as NSICOP.

Canadians want and need to be assured that our national security and intelligence community's activities are conducted responsibly. This means that these important activities fully respect individual rights, including privacy, and that they are carried out according to the rule of law.

Canadians also expect that we as parliamentarians are in a position to hold the government accountable as to the conduct of these activities so that both Canada's national security and Canadians' rights and freedoms are assured.

Bill C-22 provides a well-designed framework within which the government would be able to share highly classified information with a statutory committee of members of the House of Commons and the Senate to be selected on a multi-partisan basis according to the provisions set out in this legislation. As members of this committee, they would be able to review the government's national security and intelligence activities to ensure this highly sensitive work is conducted responsibly and thoroughly.

Such a bill is long overdue. Once it is enacted and when the committee of parliamentarians becomes operational, the committee would be independent of the government for the purposes of its mandate. This would include the ability of the committee to decide which matters to review, in what priority and to what depth, while ensuring that the appropriate safeguards are firmly in place.

Bill C-22 enables the committee to review any federal department or agency that performs national security or intelligence activities. For example, activities at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, the Communications Security Establishment, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a number of other organizations would be part of the committee's responsibility.

The national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians would be unique in Canada in that it would have a government-wide mandate that sets it apart from other bodies established to review a specific agency, for example, either the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment, or the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. In this way, NSICOP represents the biggest change to the national security review structure in a generation.

The proposed committee of parliamentarians would review the legal, policy, and administrative frameworks that underpin national security operations. It would also be able to scrutinize the operational aspects of security and intelligence work. To do this, Bill C-22 grants the committee the powers to access the information it would need, including highly classified information.

It is important that hon. members appreciate that Bill C-22 has been carefully crafted to avoid unnecessary duplications of efforts within the broader national security community. This means that relevant information, such as reports, findings, and opinions, may be shared between the committee of parliamentarians and the other review bodies during the conduct of their respective work. This represents an important way of leveraging the good work of these organizations to help NSICOP get up to speed on issues and to fulfill its role in ensuring that national security and intelligence activities are in Canada's best interests.

To ensure accountability and transparency, the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians would be required to report annually on its work, including its findings and recommendations, as appropriate, and these reports would be tabled in Parliament. The committee would also be able to independently issue special reports as necessary.

Although the bill requires that reports would be submitted to the Prime Minister before tabling for the sole purpose of ensuring that classified information is not contained in the reports, I want to reassure hon. members that the bill does not provide the Prime Minister with the power to change the committee's findings or recommendations. To reiterate, the intent of this provision is to ensure, in the final stages before a report becomes public, that classified information is not inadvertently included. This is in everyone's interest.

It should also be noted that Bill C-22 enables the committee to provide classified reports to a minister or ministers at its own discretion. In doing so, however, the committee would still be required to include an unclassified summary of any such report in its annual report.

While it is vital to involve more parliamentarians in examining how federal national security entities and agencies carry out their national security responsibilities individually or collectively, there must also be some boundaries to ensure that ministers remain fully responsible and accountable for their department's activities. Every department and agency of the security and intelligence community reports to the minister, who is ultimately responsible for its conduct. This minister is accountable to Parliament, and ultimately to Canadians, for ensuring that the organization under her or his charge carries out its duties to keep us safe, while respecting our fundamental rights and freedoms and the rule of law.

With respect to access to information for the committee of parliamentarians, I believe that the amendments proposed by the government at report stage represent a balanced, reasonable approach to some of the changes proposed by the standing committee. Notably, the proposal by the government to reintroduce some of the mandatory exceptions to the committee's access in clause 14 is intended to ensure that certain categories of sensitive, highly restricted information are protected from any inadvertent release that may cause harm to individuals and/or to national security related operations.

The government's proposed reinstatement of clause 16, as it appeared when the bill was tabled, would further provide ministers with a mechanism to ensure that special operational information can be protected, but only where necessary to protect national security.

Bill C-22, with the amendments proposed by the government, provides the necessary checks and balances, and I encourage hon. members to join me in supporting it. For example, if a minister determines it to be necessary to withhold information from the committee at a specific point in time to ensure the integrity of a national security operation, the minister would be required to explain the request to the committee. If disputed by the committee, the committee would have the ability to report this matter to Parliament.

I can assure hon. members that Bill C-22, with the proposed amendments, would give the committee of parliamentarians the ability to hold the government accountable as to its national security and intelligence activities. Also, the committee would be able to play a key role in ensuring that ministers take the necessary action to address problems and to fix deficiencies within their own areas of responsibility.

I want to emphasize that the bill would provide the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians significant powers with which to conduct its important work. However, it is also important to add that the bill also provides support for the committee by creating a professionally staffed secretariat.

Bill C-22 demonstrates that the government intends to set the bar higher for national security and intelligence matters because of the transparency and accountability it requires. Our government wants Canadians to feel confident that their Parliament will be able to hold the government to account in this regard.

I want to share with hon. members that it is my wish that the bill be seen as one of the building blocks to restore a high level of trust and respect of Canadians in parliamentarians. I hope hon. members from all parties will join me in supporting the enactment of the bill with the amendments we have proposed at this time.

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

Mr. Speaker, whether it has been the minister of public services or the minister responsible for House business, we have seen a great deal of working with opposition members and the many different stakeholders. We have seen a number of amendments actually brought through at the committee stage. The presentations from the expert witnesses were very convincing. Now we have a good piece of legislation that all of us can be very proud of.

I would ask my colleague to provide some of her thoughts on how important it is that today we will be voting on something that is somewhat historic as this will be Canada's first attempt at having a parliamentary oversight committee, and even though it is our first attempt, it is a very robust system we are putting in place. It is arguably some of the best legislation, even in comparison to other Five Eyes countries that have parliamentary oversight legislation. Perhaps she could provide her thoughts on the significance and importance of providing that oversight for Canadians.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think all of us the House of Commons can understand that we have a role, a responsibility, and a duty to Canadians. Oftentimes that duty comes with oversight. For something as important as national security and our intelligence agencies, it is members of the House who ultimately must ensure that the rule of law and human rights, that all of these things are always being upheld. In my opinion, it is for that reason that this oversight committee is long overdue. I think it is what Canadians expect of us and expect of a reasonable government.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day. Here we are again, debating important legislation and the Liberals have moved closure on it, not allowing us to have a full debate and denying members the ability to speak to the bill.

The member talks about how great the bill is, but we know that the proposed changes by the opposition in committee were not accepted by the Liberals. We know the Liberals are trying to withhold information from this new security and intelligence committee to do its job. There is censorship. The PMO has oversight over the ability of the non-partisan, all-party committee to get down to the heart of whether our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and privacy are being protected, whether our national security agencies, such as CSIS, CSEC, the RCMP, the National Security Agency or an investigation agency within national defence, are performing their duties and responsibilities in a way that not only protects Canadians, but also protects our privacy rights and our Charter rights.

Does the member agree that the government is doing the right thing by censoring the ability of the committee to call for papers, to call for people, to call for reports, and publish those reports on a public matter without having them edited and censored by the PMO?

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in my speech, I clarified the fact that the Prime Minister could not actually alter the recommendations. It is simply a review to ensure that privacy of national security is not inadvertently leaked to the public for obvious reasons. While I appreciate my hon. colleague's comments, saying it is “censorship”, I would think national security and keeping Canadians safe is a non-partisan issue that we all should advocate.

This legislation and this committee is really about balance: how do we ensure we have the right oversight without risking national security? I think Canadians, broadly, will appreciate that we are working on that balance, that it is a sensitive mix. I am proud that our government has that balance right. Frankly, I do not take many lessons from the members of the Conservative Party who, in the previous government, decided never to consult with Canadians on matters like this and instead decided to impose their will and their opinions. This balance is what Canadians expect of us.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak today in support of Bill C-22, an act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain acts.

After considering this bill at second reading and reviewing it in committee, we now have the opportunity to examine it at report stage. The sound parliamentary process has served us well. The bill was carefully reviewed by members from all parties in the House, who listened to advice from expert witnesses, and the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security proposed amendments.

As currently worded, the bill will move our country towards a more accountable and effective national security system. The creation of a new national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians will allow the government to keep one of its major promises to Canadians.

This committee will be a very important addition to our parliamentary landscape and will allow the following: extraordinary access to classified information in order to closely examine intelligence and security operations; increased scrutiny of national security and intelligence activities; a broader mandate than that of corresponding committees in other modern democracies; the ability to develop its own agenda completely independent from government; the duty to be accountable to Canadians by reporting annually to Parliament; and the power to examine activities across the entire federal government, including ongoing operations.

Under the current version of this legislation, the committee must meet the dual objectives we set in that regard at the outset: ensuring that our national security apparatus works properly in order to keep Canadians safe, while also protecting Canadians' rights and freedoms.

When this bill was first introduced, it proposed a more robust committee than those of many of our international allies. The amendments would further broaden the scope, powers, and access we are proposing for the committee, and the government indicated that it would accept most of those amendments.

With respect to the scope, for example, we all agree that the committee must have the authority to examine all operations related to national security and intelligence. As amended, this would now include the activities of crown corporations. Furthermore, according to the amendments, if the minister were to determine that a study would be injurious to national security, his power to delay would be limited to the time during which the activity is under way. The committee could examine the activity afterwards.

The provision concerning whistle-blowers is another important amendment that would require the committee to inform a minister and the Attorney General of any activity related to national security or intelligence undertaken by a department that may not be in accordance with the law. Like my colleagues, I am pleased to see that this amendment received broad support.

I also agree that the committee chair should have a vote in the event of a tie. I also agree with the many changes regarding exemptions to access to information that the bill initially proposed. The recent amendments, for example, will allow the committee to receive information about activities under way, related to defence intelligence, in support of military activities.

The Committee will also have access to pertinent information collected by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada and the information protected by the Investment Canada Act. The government also agreed to amend the bill so that the reason for any redaction is provided.

The government was open to reasonable amendments throughout the parliamentary process. Not only did we carry out a careful study of this vital bill, but we also benefited from many years of reflection on the creation of a committee, and a long collaboration with international partners.

Each member of the Five Eyes alliance, including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, has a legislative body with access to classified information in order to monitor national security issues.

Canada has tried for more than a decade to create one. It is time for us to give Canadians and parliamentarians a mandate to examine these activities that we all want to have and that we all need.

Today, we are taking one more step toward implementing this important new body. We are getting closer to a system in which parliamentarians are in a better position to hold the government accountable. We can have greater assurance that concrete measures are taken when we target the flaws and problems associated with our security framework and operations.

We have learned lessons from some of our allies’ best practices. We are getting closer to a genuinely Canadian approach to accountability when it comes to national security. This is a major step forward for Canada.

This bill is as bold and progressive as it is well-thought-out and balanced. I am very proud to be part of the Parliament that will finally, I hope, put this essential accountability mechanism in place.

I would like to thank all the members and all the parties for their support, advice, consideration, and discussions, as well as the constructive attitude that has made it possible to craft a better bill. I urge all my colleagues to support the passage of this important legislation.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting to hear all of the comments with regard to the bill coming forward.

I want to stress for Canadians what is actually happening here. I would like to have the member explain for Canadians why it does not pose a risk to have information withheld from a committee that has the mandate of oversight and why it is not a risk to deny information with regard to financing and books to an auditor.

Could the member explain how this committee can actually move forward and be a bona fide oversight committee with these glaring shortcomings? We expected this to address some of the concerns that came forward with Bill C-51. Now we have something that is toothless.

I am very concerned. Perhaps the member could explain why these risks are acceptable for Canadians to take on, when we are creating this new committee that is supposed to have oversight but actually has no weight whatsoever.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

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

I would remind my hon. colleague that what I have just said is that certain information that is kept confidential during operations will be available to the committee members afterward, so that the committee can analyze national security-related operations.

I would also remind the member that the party to which she belongs was prepared to remove from the legislative landscape the bills that we are trying to improve to ensure Canadians can be safe, which is the basis of this bill, and, most importantly, can have confidence in a committee that will be able to verify and oversee what at least 17 agencies, organizations, and bodies in the security field are doing, to ensure that operations are conducted properly and that their freedoms and rights are upheld.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil. I will let him know that there are just shy of 10 minutes remaining for his remarks. I will give him the usual indication just before his time is up. He will have approximately eight and a half minutes.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if truth be known, I only expected to speak for four minutes, so I want to thank you for the extra time. I just wish my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman would have stood up and asked a question at that point.

However, I want to speak to a very important issue as the last speaker in this debate. What is interesting to me is to see the level of control that is going on within the Liberal government and within the Prime Minister's Office. In the election campaign the Prime Minister talked about doing things differently, holding his hand over his heart saying that for Canada things will be better, yet here we are, dealing with a time allocation situation. There have not been that many speakers, quite frankly, to speak to this very important issue.

The reality is that this was a campaign promise that was made by the Liberal government, and it is effectively fast-tracking it through Parliament.

As I prepared to speak to this issue in the short time that I had, I saw that a Google search on Bill C-22 shows us the level of concern that exists among Canadians, and certainly it has been been editorialized as well that we have to make sure we get this right. Getting it right is important. That means giving oversight of this committee to this body, to Parliament, not having it consolidated through the PMO. It means making sure that information is accessible to this committee. That is extremely important.

I know that the NSICOP would report to the Prime Minister's Office when it should be reporting to Parliament. The Prime Minister campaigned on a reduced role for the Prime Minister's Office, but again his actions do not speak to and certainly do not follow those words. There were several amendments that were proposed at the public safety committee to make this security committee much more effective. Some of those proposals and amendments would have provided truly effective scrutiny for members of Parliament on this oversight committee, yet they were rejected. As a result, the committee will not have the power it needs in order to have true oversight.

A lot of discussion has gone on about our Five Eyes allies. What the government has done is it has not used some of the examples from the United Kingdom with respect to a very similar parliamentary committee that the U.K. has. The new committee does need the powers to ensure that it has this democratic oversight.

One of the issues that is concerning all of us is that this bill, Bill C-22, was tabled in the final hours of the last session of Parliament to ensure there would be virtually no debate. That is effectively what is happening here. The government is shutting down debate on this issue. My colleagues and I on this side do not think that needs to be done. However, it is a systemic pattern of the current government.

I go back to the campaign. I know the government can criticize the time allocations brought by the previous government all it wants, but when we go back to the throne speech, when the Prime Minister's words were delivered by the Governor General in the Senate, it said that every voice in this chamber would be heard. In the throne speech it said that every member who represents Canadians will have their say, yet so far, not many voices in this chamber have been heard. Those voices were even echoed at committee, yet the Liberals, through the committee, decided that they would not accept any of the amendments.

I am pleased to say that there are a couple of amendments that we will be voting on this evening. One is from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. This motion was moved to remove the provision of the bill that states that the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians is not protected by parliamentary privilege. This is an amendment that is easily supportable, because the committee proposed by the legislation would make any type of disclosure or whistle-blowing from the proposed committee liable to prosecution under the Security of Information Act. That is a critical element.

The member for Beloeil—Chambly is also proposing an amendment to the motion, and this amendment to the motion is due for consideration because it would partially stifle the Liberal attempt to remove powers of the proposed committee. That really is the basis of concern with respect to this piece of legislation. Just what powers will the committee have, and how much of that power will be controlled by the Prime Minister's Office?

The other area of concern, and it has been mentioned several times, is that the committee chair has already been appointed. The committee chair was known a year ago, even before this legislation came to Parliament. Do we know the qualifications of the chair? Is this just a partisan play, in saying to a member that the member will not be in cabinet but will be put in charge of this important committee? It is not a committee of Parliament but effectively is turning out to be a committee of the Prime Minister's Office. Will it be a political arm of the Prime Minister's Office? A fair question for Canadians to ask is, what are the qualifications of the members who are going to be on this committee?

We on this side of the aisle understand how important it is for government to look after the safety and security of its citizens. Many times in the history of this Parliament it has been argued, and I would argue the same thing, that this is the number one priority of government.

The committee will view a lot of information, but unfortunately the truth is that it is not going to get to see all the information that it needs. In order for the committee to be effective, in order for it to achieve its objective as a true national security committee of Parliament, it needs as much information as it can get.

Furthermore, the committee should report to Parliament. Parliament represents Canadians. We are the ones that the committee should report to.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to emphasize how important this legislation is. We went through a process at committee stage. The member made reference to the number of people who spoke to this legislation. Well over 40 members have spoken to the bill here in the House, not to mention the over 120 opportunities for people to get engaged in the House. There was plenty of feedback at committee stage.

All the fine work that has been done has led to a number of amendments that ultimately have given more strength to the legislation. I wonder if the member could provide some comments in terms of the effectiveness of the committee at proposing amendments.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as we have heard throughout the day, many of the more significant amendments to this piece of legislation were rejected by the Liberal majority on the committee.

This speaks to the issue of the openness of this Parliament. As I said earlier, the Prime Minister said that members of the House will have a voice for Canadians, but that voice is being denied because of the actions of the Liberal government.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

It being 6:45 p.m., pursuant to an order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the report stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on the motion stands deferred.

The question is on Motion No. 2. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion, the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on the motion stands deferred.

The question is on the amendment to Motion No. 3. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on the amendment stands deferred.

The question is on Motion No. 4. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion, the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The division on Motion No. 4 stands deferred.

The question is on Motion No. 5. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion, the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on Motion No. 5 is stands deferred.

The question is on Motion No. 7.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on the motion stands deferred.

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred divisions at the report stage of this bill.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on Motion No. 1, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #214

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare Motion No. 1 carried.

The next question is on Motion No. 2.

(The House divided on Motion No. 2, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #215

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare Motion No. 2 lost.

The question is on the amendment to Motion No. 3.

(The House divided on the amendment to Motion No. 3, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #216

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare the amendment to Motion No. 3 lost.

The question is on Motion No. 3. A vote on this motion also applies to Motion No. 6.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

(The House divided on Motion No. 3, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #217

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare Motion No. 3 carried. I therefore declare Motion No. 6 carried.

The next question is on Motion No. 4.

(The House divided on Motion No. 4, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #218

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare Motion No. 4 carried.

The next question is on Motion No. 5.

(The House divided on Motion No. 5, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #219

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare Motion No. 5 carried.

The next question is on Motion No. 7.

(The House divided on Motion No. 7, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #220

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare Motion No. 7 lost.