Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 7th, 2017

[Glen Linder]

For IRCC, if we receive information in error or information that's not relevant, the guidelines we have within the department are that the information must be destroyed immediately.

[David Drake]

On our side, SCISA is not a collection authority. I'm just looking to my colleagues, Victoria or perhaps Patrick, on the privacy side, because it's a very specialized question.

[Patrick Picard, Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

On the privacy side, for information that's collected legitimately, I believe the standard is a minimum of two years. If the information is not collected for the purpose intended, then I would suspect we wouldn't keep it as long.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

That's it, Mr. Saini.

Colleagues, we'll now move to the five-minute round. That will start with Mr. Kelly.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

Perhaps I'll begin with Ms. Fuller. Despite the “minimal” use—which is maybe not the right word—SCISA is a new law. Many of the institutions that we've heard from, including today, have not used SCISA or its authorities to exchange information, though your department has. It sounded to me like you used SCISA on at least half a dozen occasions or so to share information. In your opening remarks, I think you had characterized it as a useful instrument on at least those occasions. Could you expand on that a bit? I don't know if there's a way for you to describe what the nature of some of those individual cases might have been where SCISA was used. Perhaps the ability to share would not have existed in the absence of SCISA.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Go ahead, Mr. Linder.

[Glen Linder]

Thank you.

With respect to the information we have shared under SCISA, what I can do is perhaps give you some illustrative examples of the kinds of information that we might disclose. For example, if there's a national security investigation under way by one of our national security organizations, say the RCMP, we might disclose to them personal information to confirm the identity of someone who's suspected of planning or performing an act that would undermine the security of Canada. That would assist them in making a positive identification of the person and be able to take appropriate law enforcement action. That might be one example in terms of our disclosing to another organization.

In terms of a proactive disclosure that we might do under SCISA, an example might be an individual who is suspected of travelling abroad to engage in a terrorism-related activity and who has just acquired a Canadian passport to return to Canada. There again, proactively providing that information to our national security agencies could help them in terms of making sure that appropriate enforcement action is taken when that person returns to Canada.

Another example might be information disclosed to us by a security organization. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we're responsible for determining admissibility of people into Canada, so if an organization has information that a person is a threat to Canada's national security, that is very helpful to us in terms of determining that they're inadmissible to Canada and we should not issue a visa to them to facilitate their entry into Canada.

Those are some illustrative examples of where SCISA can be used in our context.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

And has it been used?

[Glen Linder]

I wouldn't want to comment on any specific case, but those are some potential uses.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Is the threshold of undermining the security of Canada appropriate, do you think, for your department and your use of information?

[Glen Linder]

I guess what I can say about the threshold of undermining the security of Canada is that it's working for us. I would say a more stringent threshold would have a chilling effect in terms of the amount of information we would disclose or that others would disclose to us. I think that would be normal, but we're in your hands on that.

At present I can say that we have made, as I said, a total of 70 disclosures by our department, which has a considerable amount of personal information on Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and foreign nationals. It's not a lot of times that we've used it, but when we have used it, I think it has been helpful and effective.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

You mentioned that the effect of raising the bar, if you were to adopt the necessity test and move to a higher bar, would have a chilling effect. Would it affect your organizational culture, the people on the ground in your organization with a desire to share or perhaps make them more concerned about whether they have met the bar rather than trusting their instincts on a particular file?

[Glen Linder]

No, I wouldn't say it would affect the culture in that way, but I think, as we do currently, that we would take that new threshold very seriously. If you do have a higher threshold, I think it's fair to assume that you would have fewer cases of disclosures simply because there wouldn't be the same number that would meet that more stringent threshold.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I'm pretty sure I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

You are, Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Massé, you have five minutes.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you everyone for being here to speak to our committee. Given the number of witnesses here today, I think there's a clear interest in our study.

My first question is for you, Mr. Drake.

Mr. Drake, you mentioned earlier that SCISA makes you more coordinated and effective when sharing information, for example. I'm asking this question because 17 organizations are included in the schedule to SCISA. However, at every committee meeting, I discover a new entity that falls under a department. For example, I learned today that Global Affairs Canada now has an entity called the counter-terrorism, crime and intelligence bureau.

Explain to me how it's more effective. How does SCISA make you more effective and coordinated when sharing information?

[David Drake]

Okay. Thank you for the question.

With all due respect, I don't want to avoid your question. I want to respond as clearly as possible. I think we were misunderstood earlier. I have someone with me who is really an expert and who handles this type of communication every day. She could be called on to do so on the consular side. I'll ask Victoria Fuller to give you an accurate response that describes our perspective in greater detail.

Thank you.

[Victoria Fuller]

I'll respond in English.

For us, the better coordination comes from the fact that, under SCISA, once we realize that the information is relevant and necessary and meets the national security test, we're able to take a 24/7 decision to share that information. In the world that we work in, many of our cases are in Asia or the Middle East where the hours of work are quite different; and to go through the previous exercise, which was using paragraph 8(2)(m) of the Privacy Act regarding a public interest in disclosure, required us to get authority from the head of the organization who has the delegation to do that. It's a much more bureaucratic process; it takes longer for the information to flow. As a result, at the moment of a terrorist attack abroad, for example, or in the initial stages of the detention of a Canadian citizen abroad, key things would not necessarily be able to move as quickly, and as you're likely aware, the first 72 hours of detention are the most critical for us. For us, in cases where we have a Canadian citizen detained on national security grounds, we would like to notify our partner departments immediately, where the test was met, because that ensures, first, that any relevant information they have would be given to us, and, second, that our consular officials are going first in taking the lead and providing services to the Canadian citizen now that he or she has been detained overseas.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Based on your answer, does that mean that you are in fact collecting information on Canadians?

[Victoria Fuller]

In regard to the term “collection”, I don't collect information, but I have proactively disclosed information under SCISA; and we have received requests under SCISA that we have responded to.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Let me understand, because Mr. Drake, in his testimony, said that departmental officials collect information that they believe is relevant to the national security mandate.

[Victoria Fuller]

The distinction is that our organization is one of the 17 listed entities. Within that, they have subdelegated certain parts of the department that can receive that information. Mr. Drake's part of the department is one of those areas. In consular operations, we are not one of those areas.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Just so I understand, do you collect or do you not collect information?

[Victoria Fuller]

Consular operations does not, but other parts of our organization would have the ability to receive the information that was disclosed.

[David Drake]

To receive the information, that's right. We're not a collector ourselves. That would be CSIS or others. Of course, what we're talking about here is not collection per se, but in the case of consular operations, they have a database based on their engagement with Canadians who require assistance. It's that database that is accessed in the case.

Perhaps you'd like to explain a bit more so we can clarify this.