Information & Ethics Committee on Sept. 27th, 2017

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Are those measures posted? If you want to know how to file a complaint, can you find the procedure on the Internet? Is it accessible to the public?

[Robert Mundie]

Yes, you can find it on our website. It gives the details. You can either mail in a complaint or you can submit it electronically.

[Martin Bolduc]

In the window, there is a place for complaints and another for compliments, which we also accept.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Of course, compliments are always welcome.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Next is Mr. Erskine-Smith, for seven minutes.

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

I take it, from a question put by my colleague Mr. Gourde, that you'll provide the committee with the number of searches of cellphones that the CBSA has conducted over the last number of years—say the last three years.

[Martin Bolduc]

No, right now we're not tracking separately how many cellphone searches we have done. I asked my team to start tracking those—

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

—as of today?

[Martin Bolduc]

No, that request was made a few weeks ago.

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

Okay.

[Martin Bolduc]

I want to make sure that we have the ability to track systematically and with rigour, so that whatever becomes public is solid.

What I committed to do was on the question, when did we start looking into cellphones, and I don't have that answer.

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

Okay. So that I don't forget to ask six months from now, when we hit the six-month mark and you have the number of searches conducted over a six-month period, perhaps you could provide that number to the committee.

[Martin Bolduc]

Sure. It's quite easy to do so.

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

Thanks very much.

It would also be interesting, as you track the number of searches you've done, to have you track how many searches turned into something substantive. It's interesting to note that Mr. Stroud said that we don't do this at the airports, that they don't feel it's necessary. It's curious that we would feel it's necessary to do it at the border. It would be good to know what percentage of cases leads into something.

[Martin Bolduc]

That's fair, recognizing that it may lead to something not immediately, but further down the road.

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

It's interesting that you say that. I understand from the operational bulletin that you are searching for customs-related purposes principally, and not for any secondary purpose. How, then, would it lead to something down the road?

[Martin Bolduc]

I'm just using an example in a general sense. If we come across a traveller who has propaganda on his cellphone, that may lead to having reasonable grounds to believe that the person might be involved in other activities. When I referred to your colleague's question earlier about case-by-case sharing of our information with colleagues from the RCMP and CSIS....

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

It's not, then, that you are searching for it in the first instance, but that if you find it in the course of an otherwise legitimate search, you might share it with other agencies.

That gets to my next question. What would prompt a search? I see language in the operational bulletin, “multiplicity of indicators”. Maybe you could give us examples. What does a multiplicity of indicators mean? Give us a multiplicity of indicators.

[Martin Bolduc]

Without going into too many details, it could be your behaviour, the way you answer a question asked by the officer, the coding you have on your suitcase that doesn't match where you are coming from, or the fact that your ticket was purchased the day before. That's what we mean by a multiplicity of factors.

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

It's interesting that you use those examples, because I take from the operational bulletin that searches are only to be conducted for customs-related purposes. How are those indicators relevant to customs-related purposes?

[Martin Bolduc]

Again, we have to dissociate the search of a cellphone from the secondary search we conduct. As I explained before, some people are referred for what we call a secondary examination. You go to a kiosk, or talk to the first officer and you are referred with your luggage to a secondary area. We will start going through your bags and asking you questions to see if there is any contravention of the act. If we find evidence that may cause the officer to believe there might be contravention, one of the things we can do is ask to look into your cellphone.

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

The cellphone is typically near the end of an investigation, then.

[Martin Bolduc]

We carry out an examination. We are in a public forum, so I won't divulge all our techniques, but we make our examination in a progressive fashion. Unless you show up in the secondary area and you disclose to the officer that you have contraband with you—that will expedite the search—but usually, people don't come clean when they see the officer.

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

CCLA was before us, and in answer to one of my questions, they delivered a factum arguing that the search under the Customs Act of an electronic device without a warrant is unconstitutional. Do you have a constitutional analysis of warrantless searches of electronic devices at the border? Has that been conducted by the CBSA?

[Martin Bolduc]

I am not aware of that.