Information & Ethics Committee on Dec. 8th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

I think that's probably the wiser route, given the fact that we're already at four minutes.

If there is some information on your reporting or investigations you can share with the committee to answer Mr. Blaikie's question, we'd be happy to receive that information. I think he's asked a very good question

[Pierre Blais]

Mr. Chair, would you suggest that we provide our report to the committee when it's done?

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

That's a good interpretation of what I was saying.

[Pierre Blais]

Excuse me; my only question is technical. I just want to make sure. I will look at how it could be done. We remit the document to the minister, and the minister, I think, has the obligation to file it in the House. We'll make sure that we respect that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

We wouldn't ask you to—

[Pierre Blais]

I don't want to be sued by your colleague, the Speaker of the House. You see my point. I just want to be prudent—

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Given the fact we're discussing the rules, we should follow the rules.

[Chantelle Bowers]

We'd be happy to come back once it's tabled.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

That's fantastic. Okay. Thank you very much.

We will now move on. Colleagues, we have a few people who haven't had a chance to ask a question. I want to make sure every parliamentarian has an opportunity to do so.

Mr. Lightbound, Mr. Bossio, and Mr. Erskine-Smith have indicated they still have a little bit of follow-up.

Mr. Bratina, I did cut you off. Did you want to follow up on your line of questioning?

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

I'll hear the other guys' questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

All right, let's do it that way.

Go ahead, Mr. Lightbound.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I would like to thank the witnesses for being here with us today.

Obviously, SCISA deals with national security and activities that undermine the security of Canada. If I, as a citizen, witnesses an activity that risked undermining the security of Canada, my first instinct would not be to contact the Department of Health or the Department of Transport.

Mr. Blais, you talked previously about the national security community. Who is part of this community? Are the 17 institutions listed in schedule 3 of SCISA part of the community?

I can understand why the Department of Finance is one of the institutions that can send or disclose information, but I can't figure out why several organizations are in schedule 3 as recipients.

My question is for the representatives of the three organizations that are with us today.

Given your national security experience, where do these 17 institutions fit in with schedule 3 of SCISA?

[Pierre Blais]

We aren't the ones who decided which institutions would be in the schedule. However, I can say that these institutions share information one way or another.

For example, the role of the Canada Border Services Agency is different from what it was 15 or 20 years ago. Currently, the agency directly addresses the possibility that some foreigners are entering Canada, while representing a terrorism threat. The same is true of organized crime, and the Department of Finance has a role to play in that area. The Department of Transport must deal with potentially dangerous situations that occur on board airplanes and trains or in stations.

That is why the government decided to put all these institutions in schedule 3, even if the percentage of security information that they may provide is 2%, 10% or 80%. The government didn't want any department with security-related information to be left out. In fact, the government would be better equipped than I am to answer this question.

Here is my vision of things. We often receive information, and it may have taken a different route than through the police or CSIS. It may come from another department. I think that we wanted to ensure that all information will be shared.

At one point in France, there was a problem at customs. The people responsible for I don't know how many deaths at an establishment in France entered the country from Belgium. Information from border services hadn't been shared. If that information had been shared, one of those people might have been stopped.

In order to act, all the services involved must receive information from every possible source. That's the best answer I could give you on that, Mr. Lightbound.

[Jean-Pierre Plouffe]

I would like to provide some additional information.

Paragraph 2(a) of SCISA deals with activities that undermine the security of Canada. The passage reads as follows:

(a) interference with the capability of the Government of Canada in relation to intelligence, defence, border operations, public safety, the administration of justice, diplomatic or consular relations, or the economic or financial stability of Canada;

I guess that's the reason for the 17 institutions. Each one has a role to play, based on the definition in that paragraph.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Evans, do you want to add anything?

[Richard Evans]

Just to add from our perspective, I agree with my colleagues. You have to think of national security as more than counterterrorism. It does go quite broad.

With our review, it's not just going to be about information sharing under SCISA. It will be information sharing writ large. What that means is that there may even be more than the 17 that are listed where information has been shared. Our report will be made public, so you'll be able to see that. It might give you a better sense of the nature of the information we're talking about and how it touches on so many different areas.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I asked because only three of the 17 institutions that receive information have an

expert review body.

One solution might be to reduce the number of agencies that receive information. I'm not sure if this has been tried already. In any event, I agree that the definition is very broad.

Thank you. That was my only question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Mr. Bossio, welcome to the committee.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here today.

I found this very intriguing and informative and I appreciate the opportunity of being here today. I follow along the similar line of questioning as Mr. Lightbound and Mr. Erskine-Smith.

It seems to me the biggest problem is information in isolation. How do you connect the dots? You have one piece of the puzzle of a very large picture; how do you validate and evaluate the value of the information that you're receiving and therefore the potential threat to the country? There's also the potential abuse of that information or the misuse of the information or the relevance of the information or the false or inaccurate information that's received, and then the destruction of that information.

In an ideal world, it would be great to be able to assign the 14 agencies—or, as Mr. Evans just indicated, it could be more departments that share information—to a related oversight agency or a new one. Ideally, you could take one individual from each one of those oversight agencies to be a part of a super-agency with resources to target the bigger picture. You'd have the microcosm that is focused on those specific areas and have a larger group to look at the big picture and the overall threat. Would you agree that this would be an ideal scenario?

[Jean-Pierre Plouffe]

In theory, we could argue that a super-agency would solve all the problems. In practice, and in the meantime, there are ways to improve the system, if I may use the expression. The way to do it is very simple. It's to give the review bodies an explicit authority to co-operate.

This is quite easy to do. The government could it. Then, if they do that, it will be quite easy afterwards to make joint investigations and share operational information that we cannot share right now.

Again, I come back to what I was saying previously: it's that in the meantime, it's very easy to create a coordinating committee among the existing review bodies so that we are more efficient and more open-minded.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

But nobody is explicitly legislated or chartered with the sole purpose of connecting the dots.

[Jean-Pierre Plouffe]

Not to my knowledge.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's what I'm saying. Even under your situation, it would be organic, on an as-needed basis.

I would argue that you need somebody whose job, whose focus, is connecting those dots, and who then has the legislative authority to request that information to connect those dots. Unfortunately, you have silos in all the departments. The natural instinct is to silo and protect the information. If it isn't legislated to share it, you know as well as I do that a lot aren't going to share it.

[Jean-Pierre Plouffe]

I cannot answer for the agencies. I suspect that, for example, that the CSE chief might appear before you, and this is the type of question I would suggest you ask her at the time. In the meantime, with regard to review bodies, I come back to the comments I made a few seconds ago. It's quite easy, if they want to improve the system as is, to improve it. This is the recommendation that the existing bodies are all making. We are unanimous in that direction. Give us explicit authority to co-operate. Let's create a coordinating committee in the meantime. It will be easier and more efficient to deal with the committee of parliamentarians that is about to be created. Let's be practical in the meantime, and let's be efficient.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Plouffe.