Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 20th, 2023

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Cooper, I'd like you to tell us whether you think it's appropriate to conduct an independent public inquiry. As we've all seen, matters with the special rapporteur came to an abrupt end, and the reports of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians have produced no results.

What do you think of that?

[Samuel Cooper]

My thoughts accord with many of the experts'. I believe Mr. Elcock's colleague, Mr. Fadden, says that a public inquiry should take place. A number of the witnesses you've already heard from say that a public inquiry will remove the partisan bickering and the point-scoring on either side. You won't have to hear from more journalists who take the unusual step...of being called to testify.

There will be an independent, deep and rigorous public study of not only what happened but also what we can learn from Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and other nations, by the way, that are taking this very seriously. There's Germany and Taiwan. We need to learn from others in a public inquiry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Madam Romanado.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Through you, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

I'll be sharing my time with MP Fergus, but I just want to make a statement.

Mr. Cooper, you're here today based on your reports. I was really hoping for some answers. Your unwillingness to engage on simple questions and your lack of preparedness to respond to some of the questions is disappointing. I understand that you cannot discuss something that is before the courts, but we've had multiple questions that were very simple in nature.

I just wanted to get that on the record. I was hoping to get some answers, as I take this subject very, very seriously.

With that, I'll turn the rest of my time over to MP Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Romanado.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Elcock, I have a couple of questions for you. Some have called the persons responsible for leaking the information “whistle-blowers”. I've also heard you say that you don't consider them whistle-blowers. Can you tell the committee why you don't consider this person or these persons whistle-blowers?

[Ward Elcock]

Madam Chair, I think the simplest explanation for that, in my view, is that usually in the case of a whistle-blower, there is some element of disclosure of wrongdoing on the part of the government. In this case, nobody's really alleging that there's wrongdoing. People are alleging that the government should have done more. It's not quite the same thing as wrongdoing.

Just because you get a security clearance, it doesn't mean you have the right to disclose information that's within your charge. Whoever the leaker is, they are, in point of fact, probably guilty of offences against the Official Secrets Act—actually, not the Official Secrets Acts, as I'm going too far back in my time—but the security of information legislation. They're in violation of the legislation and should be prosecuted.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

You don't have to apologize for having experience, Mr. Elcock. Indeed, in your experience, when raw intelligence is presented to you, reported to you by women or men in the field or from some of our allies, how do you treat that information? Do you treat that as gospel, or do you treat that as information that needs to be confirmed?

[Ward Elcock]

Madam Chair, I'm a lawyer by background. Intelligence is not evidence; it's information. You can give it some more credibility by collecting more information by using other sources and technical methods to confirm the information. At the end of the day, intelligence is simply information you've received of whatever credibility you can attach to it.

In the case of intelligence services, we probably have better means of confirming that information than do, say, the news media when trying to confirm their intelligence, but in some senses we're very similar. We're dealing with information that is unproven until we can add some more credibility.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

As a result, unless that is of a spectacular or a most pressing nature, I imagine, then, that the information wouldn't be circulated until it had some corroboration.

[Ward Elcock]

Yes. Information that has not been confirmed, unless you have received it from a credible source, and it is really time-sensitive information.... There may be cases where information has to be moved up, but you would have to be very clear to whom you are providing that information, that its credibility is open to question.

But you're right that if there isn't something time-sensitive about it, information needs to be confirmed before it flows up.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you very much for that.

I will just assume then, as you mentioned, that in journalism, just like with intelligence gathering information, it wouldn't be responsible necessarily to report on that unless there were the caveats you added to it, without having some corroboration of that information. Is that right?

[Ward Elcock]

I can't speak to the level the journalists go to, although most of the journalists I have known over the years do make efforts to confirm the information before they publish it.

Having said that, the reality is that intelligence services do have ways of gaining credibility or giving credibility to information that is not really open to journalists. By definition, journalism is a somewhat more inexact science than even the work of intelligence collection agencies.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Elcock, and Mr. Cooper.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Elcock, thank you for your time today. Thank you for the insights you provided. If anything else comes to mind that you would like committee members to receive, please share it with the clerk. We'll have it translated in both official languages and circulated to all members.

We're going to suspend for two minutes to see our guests out, and then we will be coming back to committee business with the floor going to Mr. Cooper.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I'm calling the meeting back to order. We are entering our third hour, and we will be dealing with committee business as per the top of the hour.

Mr. Cooper, you had asked for the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I am calling the meeting back to order. We are entering our third hour—kind of—and we will be dealing with committee business.

As for the top of the hour, Mr. Cooper had asked for the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I am going to move a procedural motion for which I hope there will be unanimous consent or support, based upon past practice.

The motion is that committee business scheduled for the third hour of this meeting and the meeting scheduled for this evening be held in public.

Before I cede my time, the reason I put forward this motion is that the business we will be taking up is a motion that I put on notice calling for key witnesses to be brought to this committee, and the production of documents and summer hearings. It's important, given the considerable public interest in getting to the bottom of Beijing's interference, that these issues be debated openly and with members voting on the record.

We have done this consistently, so I am hopeful that there will be no disagreement that we continue that practice of being transparent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Cooper.

I have Mr. Fergus followed by Ms. Blaney and then Ms. Sahota.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

My comment will be very brief. I think I just missed what Mr. Cooper had proposed, so I am wondering if he or you could explain.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

He is just proposing that the committee business take place in public, not in camera.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I see.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I'll just rewind as to what I had agreed to do at the top of the hour. It was that—

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

On a point of order, Chair, are we in public or are we in camera right now?

[Some hon. members]

We're in public.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

If I may, the notice that we put out was to have committee business in camera. Mr. Cooper had signalled this morning that he wanted to put his motion that had been circulated around last night on the record. He wanted it to be in public and for the meeting to continue in public.

I had said that we would talk amongst members to see if we could achieve consensus. The approach Mr. Cooper is taking is to move the motion and so allow it to be debatable. Then we'll vote on being in public or in camera.

That's where we are: We are choosing whether to stay in public as opposed to being in camera like the notice had said.

Mr. Fergus.