Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 1st, 2024

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Yes. Look, I asked another OPQ that somebody in the room might have signed off on in the last little while.

In the last decade, there have been approximately 250,000 secret security clearances applied for across government departments. Obviously, it's not that large, but that's over a decade timeframe. Do you know how many were denied out of those approximately 250,000 applications for secret security clearance? It was 23 at the secret level.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

There have been 250,000 applications in the last decade, and yet, as it presently stands, a sitting member of Parliament, putting aside being in cabinet, being a parliamentary secretary and having a clearance from a previous career, is shut out. I mean, it seems passing strange. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, having regard for the fact that parliamentarians' core function is to hold the government to account on matters of national security, foreign policy, national defence, public safety and so on.

How does it make sense that 250,000 Canadians have secret security clearances, but if I, as a member of Parliament, applied, I'd almost certainly be turned down?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

That's why Bill C-377 has been tabled, Mr. Cooper.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

You noted in your testimony a key recommendation of this committee's report on the question of privilege concerning MP Michael Chong and other members arising from the government's failure to inform them that they and their families were being targeted by the Beijing regime. The recommendation is that “the government work with recognized parties’ whips to facilitate security clearances, at Secret level or higher...to ensure that they may be adequately briefed about important national security matters”.

That effectively is what your bill would enshrine—or at least, I guess to be clear, it's the first step of that, correct?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Yes. In fact, this committee has already unanimously made a recommendation that goes much further than what my bill would actually achieve. My bill just allows parliamentarians to apply for a secret security clearance. It doesn't garner access. You as a committee have already unanimously passed that you feel that certain committees need to not only have a clearance; they need to have a higher than secret-level clearance. That's what you guys determined here. They then actually get the information and get briefed on it for certain committees.

Again, I wholly support that recommendation made by the PROC committee. My bill doesn't actually go that far.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

On second reading debate on your bill, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety said with respect to your bill, “it does not address what information [members of Parliament and senators] would be looking for, where they would access it physically, how they would maintain it and, on this ad hoc basis, what would actually come of it”.

Don't those arguments from the parliamentary secretary entirely miss the objective of your bill?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

They do. It goes to the next step.

Again, my bill only addresses the right and privilege of parliamentarians to apply for a secret security clearance. They're valid concerns. Once a committee has decided, it's no different if it were PROC that said, “Here's a potential study for this committee.” Maybe it's more for BOIE, and it would be, “All right, should a committee have all their members appropriately cleared, and should Parliament decide, going forward, that the next step is we need to be doing more studies of a more classified nature, how do you address the resources?”

The point I want to get to is that when I was in the military, my last job before I went to Iraq was handling joint training for the whole Canadian Armed Forces. I put together a consequent management exercise working with the government ops centre in public safety. There were 47 different government departments and agencies involved in that, which imagined an improvised nuclear device having gone off in Peggy's Cove and how we would deal with that. Again, it was not a DND lead or a CAF lead, but we know it's the force of last resort.

One the huge challenges we identified, and this is all unclassified, was the lack of infrastructure and even the lack of government people with the appropriate clearance right across this country at the other levels of government. How many people in a hospital have a secret level clearance or access to secret level information? If a terrorist threat were coming down the pipe and you wanted to be prepared to deal with the consequences of it, where would that happen?

I could go on forever about the challenges and some of the necessary infrastructure and investment that needs to be put into the ability to share classified information, but, again, that's a step past my bill.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Cooper.

Mrs. Romanado, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

MP Ruff, thank you for being here. You know that I supported your bill at second reading to bring it to committee, and I think it's important that we have an adult conversation about how we classify information. I think we do have overclassification, but that is not the point of this bill.

You highlight very clearly in proposed subsection 13.1(1) that the bill is “for the purposes of the consideration of their application”. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about how a security process rolls out.

I don't want to call it “need to know” because the need to know is referenced somewhere later on in the process, but this is more of a reason to apply. Why do you need to apply for one? In order to actually get your clearance, you need to have a reason to apply, so staffers who work in ministerial offices have to have someone who's authorized to put their name on the list to even apply. After the person applies, they have to go through the process and they have to pass the said process.

Once they get the process, and if they have secret clearance, that does not mean we can now read the JFK files and have access to everything under the moon. That is not what this is. That's where the “need to know” comes in to compartmentalize the information at your disposal.

Ministers who are Privy Council members do not have access to every classified ministerial document out there. There is another process for being able to access specific information, so this is not opening up a Pandora's box to any member of Parliament who wants to know where our intelligence assets are or anything like that. I think it's really important that members of Parliament understand that, because this is allowing you to apply for the clearance. Am I correct?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

You just said that much more eloquently than I did in trying to make my case, so I do appreciate that. That's why the preamble is as long as it is, actually, because, in the end, as you know, this bill is literally one or two sentences long, and that's it.

This is only for allowing you to apply. It doesn't take away any of those necessary protections or safeguards that are already in place.

Part of my goal in bringing this forward was to be here today to have this conversation and talk about this. We don't get to talk about it otherwise, and it is very important that we, as a Parliament, get our heads wrapped around it and take national security and intelligence more seriously. The best way to do that is to get educated on the process for how we protect the information.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Further to that, I previously sat on the national defence committee. I have in my hand a letter, signed by a former chair of the national defence committee, to a former Minister of National Defence, dated December 7, 2017, in which we explained to the minister that, during the studies on “Canada's Involvement in NATO” and “Canada and the Ukraine Crisis”, information that the committee needed to do that study was not available to them, and that:

As a result of not having access to certain critical information through briefings or documents, the Committee feels they have been unable to complete their work related to this study in an effective and comprehensive manner.

The first issue appears to stem from the requirement of officials to confirm security credentials of Members of Parliament before providing information to the Committee.

We're doing incredible work here, work that is affecting global situations. We, unfortunately, can't complete the work because we do not have access to the information.

I honestly believe that we are all honourable members, and that, given the responsibility of our own national security, I do not think members of Parliament would be using it for nefarious reasons and that they'd be standing up in the House of Commons and using parliamentary privilege to spew information, as they understand very well what that would mean. I think this is a learning opportunity to have those hard conversations because the face of intelligence and our national security have changed. Do you agree that it is time that we actually start having these conversations and move the dial forward to make sure that members of Parliament are able to do the work that they are required to do?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Absolutely. How did a former Minister of National Defence respond to the defence committee's ask or pointed recommendation to get more access?

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

He didn't believe that members of the national defence committee had security access.

I'm good. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Ms. Romanado.

We now go to Ms. Gaudreau for two and a half minutes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

This is a very interesting discussion.

I want to come back to the Peggy's Cove incident. Clearly, we want to have the required security clearance to know certain things, but how does it work?

As I understand it, when you have top secret security clearance, your hands are also tied when it comes to the information you have access to. How does it work when you get access to information?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

You don't get access to it if you don't have the clearance, and that was the challenge, even in an imminent threat in this scenario. Again, this wasn't about ensuring that parliamentarians had the information—obviously, the government had it—but actually all the different levels of government. When you're dealing with a massive....

Again, I'm using the example of a security threat, not something like consequence management of an earthquake, a flood or a fire, but when it comes to a security threat and the scenario to play it out. I mention this because I wrote the scenario and ran the exercise. It wasn't about the initial improvised explosive device having gone off, which overwhelmed the system and required the military to help support different levels of resources in Nova Scotia, and our being dependent on allies, like the Americans, to bring in capabilities. I wrote an inject into the exercise that said, “Now we have another potential improvised explosive in Montreal. We now have a threat. How are we going to brief the appropriate authorities in Montreal?” Guess what? Half of the provincial government people and nobody in the hospitals or the transportation system had the right clearances.

That's the good thing about Bill C-70, which will help fix some of that, since now CSIS finally has the authority to share classified information with levels of government other than just the federal government. We're moving the needle in the right direction on the sharing of certain information.

This is just an extension to it, in a parliamentary case, that should.... A great example Ms. Romanado brought forward is that the defence committee, the foreign affairs committee and the public safety committee all had studies in which they brought this forward and said, “Look, we'd like to know more here so that we can actually make good, solid recommendations to Parliament and the government of the day, to fix and address threats and shortfalls within Canada.”

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will ask my other questions later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau. You always finish right on time.

Ms. Mathyssen, you'll end us off with two and a half minutes here.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

One of the concerns I've certainly heard as a sitting member of the defence committee is that we overclassify information. Is there a concern that if those who hold the information already and classify it might, if they understand that all members of Parliament might get the information, classify things differently and increase the level of security clearance and make it even more out of reach?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Not at all. As somebody who was in that business for 25 years, there's no thought of that. You can pull up the Treasury Board rules, and each of the departments has its own guidelines on how stuff gets classified. It has nothing to do with who has access or who has clearance. It's all based on whether the information poses a security threat to Canada if it gets out.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Another concern I had was that all members of Parliament would be granted security clearance, depending on if they pass or what have you, but if they don't, would that not be seen as a breach of their privilege because being a member of Parliament would then give you access? Isn't that a bit of a loophole in that regard?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

It's as I go. Just because you have clearance doesn't mean you get access to anything. You could make the case that I sit on NSICOP and I get access to stuff, so is that a breach of your parliamentary privilege because certain members get access to information? No. This is no different. This is just saying you have a right to apply. That's all it does.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'm talking about a situation where you apply and you're not granted clearance. This bill says that I get to apply because I'm a member of Parliament, but if I'm not granted it, wouldn't that raise a concern of a breach of privilege?

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

No, because there's nothing within the Parliament of Canada Act that says you have a right to classified information. My bill would only allow you to apply for a security clearance. It doesn't breach your privilege. If you were to fail, that would raise a valid question that we should be debating. It would be a concern to not only Canadians but also to Parliament if we had parliamentarians, whether they were MPs or senators, who failed to pass a security clearance.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Right, but again, isn't that a breach of my privilege if I fail? You're saying that we have every right to question that, so wouldn't that go through the Speaker as a breach of privilege?