Evidence of meeting #77 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Mr. Cooper, as I said the last time, I left government four years ago. I have no calendars, no secret documents and no records. I was not one of the 32 people Mr. Johnston interviewed, and I don't have access to the documents that he saw, so I'd be speculating.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
I recognize that you were not there in July 2021, but you did say, the last time you appeared before this committee, that you were not aware of anyone in the PCO ever withholding national security information from the Prime Minister.
Do you stand by that?
12:20 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I am not aware of and I don't recall anybody wilfully withholding information. There may have been inadvertent gaps in information being passed from one person to another. I think Mr. Johnston writes about that in his report.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
You would acknowledge that an intelligence memo citing an accredited Beijing diplomat targeting a sitting member of Parliament by threatening the safety and security of his family in Hong Kong is a serious matter. Would you agree with that?
12:20 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Absolutely, I think it's Prime Minister-worthy. It should have gone to the Prime Minister.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
It should have gone to the Prime Minister. Therefore, you were surprised that it didn't. Does that ring true? I'm not asking you.... You weren't there, but you were in the role. You did say that information regularly flows to the Prime Minister, so how is it possible that information as serious as that would not have been passed on to the Prime Minister?
12:20 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
That's the part I don't know. Mr. Johnston interviewed 32 people, presumably including everybody who was in that chain of meetings and documents.
My view, just reading the Johnston report and media clippings, is that it is the kind of thing a Prime Minister should be made aware of.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
Thank you for that.
Perhaps you could explain who, likely, in the PCO would have received a memo such as that.
12:20 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I'd be going back over Mr. Jean's testimony, I think, but the basis of it is that the national security and intelligence adviser acts as a coordinator among the various security and intelligence agencies. Information flows into the NSIA part of the Privy Council Office, and they make decisions about what to give to various people on their client list according to who has the appropriate clearance and who would be interested in particular topics. That judgment would be exercised somewhere within the NSIA branch of PCO.
As clerk, I was copied on documents. I met with the NSIA regularly. I would say roughly once a week, and I left the onus on the NSIA to tell me things that he or she thought I needed to know.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
Changing gears a little bit, Madam Chair, to Mr. Wernick, can you explain a little bit about the types of information received by PCO with respect to keeping transmission records? Can you explain how these transmission records are produced and stored?
12:20 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I can't speak about anything after April 2019. They may have completely rewired or automated the system.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
12:20 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
It may have been given to an AI chatbot now. I have no idea how it works now.
However, what we did in the Privy Council Office was keep track of what we were sending, and I know that the Prime Minister's Office kept track of what it was receiving. There also were people in the Privy Council Office, attached to the clerk's office, who did a lot of what we called “chasing”. They would keep track of documents. They had dates. They had numbers. There was a log.
Basically, there were two kinds of information passed downstairs. Some of it was for information, and you were not seeking a decision. Some of it was for a decision and it went to the Prime Minister. Those were the ones that we spent the most time chasing and trying to get what's called “a PM return”—the Prime Minister's decision of yes, no, maybe or “I want to see more work”, that kind of thing.
There were people in the clerk's office and there were people in the Prime Minister's Office who were document chasers.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
In your view, would it be difficult for transmission records to be provided to this committee? Would that be a difficult undertaking—from your experience up until April 2019?
12:20 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I think you would have to ask the current management at the PCO. I think it's possible to provide logs that are redacted. Sometimes you would want to withhold the fact that the Prime Minister was sent something or met with somebody and so on. There's, undoubtedly, some way to do that.
Just to jump ahead a little bit.... That's why bodies like the review agency, NSICOP, the Federal Court and Mr. Johnston's inquiry do get access to that kind of document when they ask for it.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I guess I'll start with Mr. Wernick first, since he's in the room, and then I'll move on to the next witness.
My first question is around the issue of the leaks that are happening from—we suspect—CSIS, but of course, that question is still open and is yet to be resolved. We also heard from the other witness here today that there could be an agenda that is being pursued, perhaps, by the leaker.
I also want to know whether, from your perspective, you think there could be an agenda of a foreign state involved in this whole matter before us right now. Do you think there is a greater agenda to disrupt our democracy that might be in place, and if so, what are your comments and maybe some suggestions around that?
12:25 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I'd be entirely speculating about the motives of somebody we don't know the identity of as to why he or she leaked.... I don't think it would be responsible to speculate on that. It can be accidental. It can be deliberate. There can be any number of motivations.
I think what I would be concerned about is the end effect of that, which is that it's done damage to CSIS's reputation with our Five Eyes partners. They will now think of it as a less secure institution, and that's permanent damage. If the Americans and the Brits start to withhold documents from us—“let's not send them to the Canadians”—we'll never know.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
That's interesting.
In terms of the foreign actors involved, do you think they could be intentionally highlighting a divide that exists currently?
12:25 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I think the point about foreign actors is disinformation campaigns. One of the things that are really hard work for the security intelligence community is to sort out information that's collected and decide what's reliable and what's corroborated. There is a possibility that it is disinformation. Mr. Johnston wrote about some of these.
I'm aware of incidents where the media ran with stories that were generated by foreign intelligence agencies. I'm not blaming them for that, but that's the information they had. That's one of the reasons that I think it's important that a wider community of people have the security clearances to look at information and to be more skeptical and wonder about whether this is authentic and corroborated or whether this is spin and disinformation by a malign actor.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Wernick.
In the previous interaction with the Conservative member, you were talking about where the communication link is perhaps broken. This was brought up in the report by the Right Honourable David Johnston. As the former clerk of the Privy Council—and part of your role was deputy minister to the Prime Minister—can you speak a little bit more about how we could correct those broken lines and how we can fill those gaps in?
12:25 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Yes, I appreciate that.
I think that could be one element of the comprehensive foreign interference legislation when it finally comes forward. Having read Mr. Johnston's report and thinking about it, I think this committee could recommend to the government, or they could bring it forward as an amendment when they finally have a bill in front of them, to legislate the role of the national security and intelligence adviser. Put it in statute. Identify its powers and identify its accountabilities, and give the NSIA a statutory accountability to make sure that the right top secret information gets to the right people at the right time. Give that person accountability for the flow of information so this kind of broken communication doesn't happen again.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thanks, Mr. Wernick.
To our other witness, Mr. Mitrovica, you said some very bold things in your introductory remarks. I wanted to give you the opportunity to also give some recommendations to this committee as to how we could better work with our agencies. You said that perhaps there are different motives behind the way they operate, and spoke about how the political side should perhaps be operating.
What are some ways we can improve the situation so that we don't have these vulnerabilities to foreign state actors?
12:25 p.m.
Writer, As an Individual
Thank you for the question. I think it's important.
The first thing I would recommend to you is to show less deference to security officials who appear before you at parliamentary committees like this.
I was particularly shocked by the Bloc Québécois deference to security officials, because if they had any understanding of the history of Canada's security services, they would know that there was a McDonald commission of inquiry struck that showed that, in Quebec, the former RCMP security service was responsible for a slew of illegal activities that resulted in the creation of CSIS itself.
The other recommendation I would suggest to committee members is to begin to learn about the history of the very institutions you are probing. I made a point in my statement of noting that a Federal Court judge found, in 2020—not in 1960, not in 1980, but in 2020—that CSIS routinely lies and breaks the law. He is not the only Federal Court judge to have found that CSIS acts in this manner.
I would also suggest that you read my book, for future reference, to get a more intimate understanding of how intelligence services in Canada operate. You'd be much less deferential to them and less inclined to bow before their expertise.
I'll leave it at that.
