Subcommittee on the Review of the Anti-terrorism Act Committee on June 21st, 2006

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

You agree, then.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I have a point that I want to make, and then I'll to go to Minister Day.

As part of that denunciation factor, it also gives some permission. It gives permission to do racial profiling and it gives permission for, I'll say, rogue elements within our intelligence services to abuse.

I have a case, Minister Day. I always brought this up with your predecessors, and I'm going to do the same with you.

I have been working on this file for three years. The man has been in the country for 13 years, and his wife came from their country of origin after him. You have this in your office, if you want to check it out. I'll give you the name afterwards.

She has her citizenship, the two children who were born in the other country have their citizenships, the three children who were born here are obviously Canadians, and he's still waiting. I can't get an answer on that.

He quite frankly feels, and I think there's some justification, that the only reason he doesn't have his citizenship in order to get on with his life in Canada is that he's twice been recruited to become an agent and has refused. He's been very vocal in his opposition to the Afghan war and support of the Palestinians. There is certainly no suggestion, from anything I can see, that he is violent.

It's that kind of permissiveness, the official stand where we go to the extreme, that I think the ATA has taken us to. We should be very careful in how we use this legislation. It authorizes that and permits it.

On the one hand, there's a denunciation factor, as we saw with the hate propaganda, and I agree on how important that is. But there's another side to this, and we have to be very careful. As legislators, as ministers, and as senior officials, we have to be very careful that it's not used.

In this particular case, and I have several others in my office right now, I believe there is an abuse going on.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Your point then, to quickly interject, perhaps hearkens back to the point I made. The definition of terrorist activity may well lead to the profiling of characteristics that are not necessary for the purpose of determining what terrorism should be defined as. I think you're making the point that I had raised earlier.

Again, it's for the committee to determine.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Day, I'd ask you to look at the file. Your officials won't tell me anything about it, and they don't tell me about the other ones. They won't even let members of Parliament make an inquiry. They won't even admit that they've got the file, even though I know they do.

Mr. Toews, you've taken the position that you don't see—

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I have to address that, Joe. I can't tell you as I sit here where in the process it is, but it is being looked at.

Information is shared with members of Parliament. You know there's an agreement that can be made from time to time, where the individual constituent would first have to agree that the information be shared.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I have that authorization in my file and you have it in yours.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I just didn't want people thinking that MPs are never told anything. If it's a matter of security classification, then there could be a restriction. But MPs are regularly given that particular ability.

On decisions related to citizenship, though, my department will be consulted if it's a security issue. Those decisions are finally left in the area of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

Also, if people have a concern about how something is being handled, there is an appeal process for everything CSIS does, through the SIRC process—through the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which is independent, arm's-length. The RCMP has an independent review also. As a matter of fact, there are a number of provisions for both the RCMP and CSIS that are arm's-length—they're not part of those organizations—for somebody having a complaint, and it is not uncommon to see that independent process rule in favour of the complainant.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

We're the only country, Mr. Minister, that doesn't have a parliamentary oversight committee, among our traditional allies: the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. You know I've been bugging you, as I did your predecessor, to get that legislation forward, because frankly I do not have enough faith, whether in SIRC, or.... Well, we know the complaints we've heard from the RCMP complaints commissioner and all the concerns she had that the system just isn't strong enough. We need something stronger to be sure that in fact, if there were abuse going on, we'd get it corrected.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I've shared the concerns with you on that, and the good work you and others have done, and I want to move that process along in terms of seeing what it could or would look like and whether there would be support for it. I want to see what's going to come out of the O'Connor commission. I share concerns similar to yours. I did when I was in opposition and I share similar concerns now.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Toews, we heard in the last round of the review of the ATA very strong concerns from charities—these aren't suspect charities, but the Red Cross, UNICEF—and their being very concerned about their charitable status because they are caught in an emergency situation.

Let me take the most recent one, the Pakistan earthquake. If they were in there, they might in fact run into some al-Qaeda. They might very well do that in the region where it was, on the frontier in Pakistan. And they were very clear.

We didn't hear this from any of the officials who came in front of us. In fact, if the election hadn't intervened, we were going to demand that those officials come back, because they didn't tell us about the problem. But we had a number of very significant charities who were worried.

I would suggest, sir, that you could you look at that and maybe go back to look at the evidence we took at that time. They are very concerned about their status. At times they think they have made decisions to not help in providing humanitarian relief out of fear that they might be charged and have their charitable status lifted.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I recall that evidence. I think back in 2002 when the hearings were going on there were charities, I believe including the Mennonite Central Committee, that made some comment in that respect.

But perhaps my official can answer that.

[Bill Pentney, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy Sector, Department of Justice]

We at the department and other departments have met with charities who have expressed those issues. There are difficult questions of balance on both sides in trying to find an appropriate approach to it, because it's also the case that through the charities listing process a number of charities that had been operating within Canada have been listed because of their connections. There is a—

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

But those aren't the ones I'm talking about.

[Bill Pentney]

I understand that. Having said that, it is a process that is under consideration within the government now. Charitable status and listing and other things are the responsibility of a variety of different ministries, so it is something that is—

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

But we were given those same assurances from the officials. Then when the charities came forward later on in the process, they said, “Yes, we had some initial discussions. We never heard from the officials again. They won't talk to us.” That was about a year ago, and I don't know what's happened since then.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you, Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Once again, I have a rather utilitarian question, but it really isn't. It has to do with prevention and preventing the terrible thing from happening.

Leaving aside the tremendous emotional and physical damage to people that it would cause, I'm wondering if your department, Mr. Day, has looked at the costs of doing business in order to prevent terrorism, to prevent the bad thing from happening, against the costs that would occur if the bad thing did in fact happen.

We have some examples that can help us do those costings. A lot of people will say these things are costing us too much money and that we should really put these dollars to another use. I'm looking primarily at the terrible experience of 9/11 and the huge costs. The whole world is paying for that, from the increased insurance costs to the need for countries to upgrade and learn from the mistakes made there.

Have you done a cost analysis with regard to prevention--in other words, the things that we're doing and their protracted costs over several years? As well, if something bad happened, you might have a scenario, because we now know what some of the targets were; in that case, what would the cost be to provide social assistance to people who are not housed anymore, as well as everything else?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

The well-intended concern you raised is something that.... I don't know that any of my officials have sat down and costed out all policing and security work, all border agency work.

You could argue it's all done from the point of view of prevention--stopping something from happening by the very existence of those policing and intelligence agencies. What you're really hoping is that you're deterring people from even thinking about doing it anyway, because the likelihood of being caught is great. That's one of the bases of security and police work. We haven't sat down to figure out what it would cost to replace the Parliament Buildings or a significant structure, but everything is done from that point of view.

That's why you saw an increase of $1.4 billion going into increasing our policing and intelligence services in virtually every area imaginable. There is $161 million going to increasing the number of RCMP personnel on the streets, cost sharing that we're going to be doing with the municipalities for 2,500 more personnel at the municipal level, and an increase of over $300 million to the border agencies.

Everything we're doing is from the point of view of prevention, because we know that any cost analysis you do will show that if these horrific events do take place, the cost would be far greater to repair, to fix. And what price is a human life? It's all done from the point of view that it's better to deter and prevent these things from happening.

On the area you mentioned in terms of anticipating, you may recall--I'm sure you've done some of the reading on this--that former President Clinton himself admits his security people brought him the information related to Osama bin Laden, including where he was and things that could be done to stop it. None of that information went through due process of law; none of it was presented to a court. He himself says they should have acted on it. Now we're getting into the area of presumption, clearly, but some would say that had it been acted on, it might have avoided some of the multi-billion dollar costs of 9/11. That's just infrastructure alone. It does not even calculate the human loss, which is priceless.

It just shows the necessity of having good intelligence and good policing. It's all done from the point of view of prevention, because the cost of not doing it will always be far greater.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

If we just look at the costs to victims generally of crime in Canada.... And to give you some idea about that, when I participated with Minister Day at the announcement of the National Victims of Crime Awareness Week some months ago, cost figures were given to me in terms of cost to victims of crime of about $70 billion in Canada on an annual basis. That's taking in all types of costs.

I know people will ask, isn't it cost-prohibitive to put people in a prison? Minister Day could probably talk about the $100,000 a year on average of that cost, but how do you calculate the fact, for example, according to the evidence I heard in Vancouver, of a crack addict who steals $1,000 of product a day, which is $365,000 a year from one individual in direct economic cost? When we're talking about the terrorism issue, I think we're looking at other huge numbers. How do you calculate that? You'd probably calculate it as a part of the annual costs to victims generally in this country.

I want to stress the point that Minister Day made in respect of prevention. We use preventative mechanisms all the time in this country in order to protect individuals. Those preventative measures are, I would suggest, absolutely essential in a free and democratic society in order to preserve our rights in a free and democratic society.

There's the whole issue of bail, for example. No one has been convicted of an offence when that individual is taken into custody and then released on certain conditions. Those are preventative measures--pre-trial custody, preventative measures. They can often spend a couple of years awaiting trial as a preventative measure.

Section 810, which I talked about earlier, is used primarily in domestic situations where a spouse has reason to be believe that—in most cases it is a woman—her life and safety are threatened, and yet the courts regularly impose measures designed to prevent that domestic abuse from occurring.

The hate literature laws--I view those laws in many ways as preventative laws to stop in its tracks certain reprehensible conduct, even though many might consider that it's an impingement on our free speech. Yet we use those types of mechanisms.

I would suggest that in this context preventative measures are no less an absolute necessity. To deprive the government and the people of Canada of those types of measures, I would suggest, would be foolish.

The committee, of course, is charged at looking at that. Can we improve that? I wait to hear what the committee says.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you, Minister.

We've got a couple of minutes to wrap up.

Mr. Cullen.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be brief because you've been generous with your time.

I have two questions.

What do you do if the Supreme Court strikes down the security certificates? That's my first question.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I'll talk from a security point of view and then we can reflect.

We respect the process we have in this country. Obviously we have made our case, and so we wait to see. I can give the broad commitment that we will always put first and foremost the safety and security of Canadians. I respect the Supreme Court process and I don't want to prejudge it in any way by saying, what if?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

You're not prepared to tell us what your plan B is today, right?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Did you glean that from my response?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I hope you have a plan B, and I'm sure you do.