National Defence Committee on May 19th, 2016

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

The incident, actually, that the member referenced was covered in, I want to say, last year's report by our commissioner. He looked into this incident, and he determined that CSE, number one, had the authority to conduct the activity, the study, and also did so in a lawful manner. I thought that would be important to put on the record.

In terms of addressing the commissioner's recommendations, I noted he's made over a hundred recommendations. Dom will correct me in terms of the actual number, and we have implemented over 90% of those recommendations. The recommendations that the member has cited were recommendations that he made in his most recent report, and we are still in the throes of actioning those.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Given the problem that came up with information-sharing of metadata with the Five Eyes, and I know you were asked previously by Mr. Fisher whether that sharing is taking place, I just want to reconfirm that while we're still collecting and still analyzing that metadata, without a new ministerial directive we're not sharing that with any of our partners at this point.

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.

As I did note before, we have not resumed the sharing of that type of metadata with our allies, but we do continue to collect it and to analyze it.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

There was a remark by Ms. Gallant earlier that of course CSE doesn't monitor Canadians, and I think we all understand that on your own legal authority, your mandate doesn't include monitoring Canadians here or abroad.

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Correct.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

But under the third piece of your mandate, you provide assistance to Canadian law enforcement authorities. Isn't it true that in fact CSE does monitor Canadians under the legal authority of other agencies?

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

I think it's very important to reflect on the various parts of our mandate. I have actually given out a little summary sheet about the three-part mandate. In terms of our foreign signals intelligence and information protection mandates, the part A and part B, it's in our legislation, and we do not direct our activities at Canadians—anywhere or anyone in Canada.

We do have a part C mandate which is an assistance mandate. Under that mandate we can provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies in the performance of their lawful duties and under their authority. It's under their authority that these activities take place.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

To be clear, then, your agency is involved in doing this.

My question would be, do you take for granted when those requests come that they're lawful, on behalf of the other agencies, or is there an independent review of those requests in your agency as to their lawfulness before those activities are undertaken?

[Greta Bossenmaier]

When we receive a request, it is a request. We review that request to ensure that the lawful authority is there.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Do you report these activities that you undertake on behalf of other agencies as part of your annual reporting or your reporting to the commissioner, or do you depend on those agencies to report those activities to their monitoring bodies?

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Thank you for the question.

In terms of the commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment, I already noted earlier that he has the authority to review all of CSE's activities, and again, that includes our information, our people, our systems, etc. His review and his authority to review cover all three parts of the CSE mandate.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

There is no proactive monitoring of Canadians for other agencies to any body.

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Proactive review; we do produce a classified annual report to the minister. I produce that to the minister, so I do report to the minister on an overview of all of CSE's activities, and again, the commissioner also produces a public report that touches all of CSE's activities.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

But do those reports contain at least a summary of your activities undertaken on behalf of other agencies which monitor Canadians?

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Dom, do you want to provide an overview in terms of what the reports include?

[Dominic Rochon]

The annual report to the minister, the classified annual report, absolutely does. It covers those activities.

I'll just clarify again that actually under me, we have a responsibility, whenever there is a request that comes from a security agency such as the RCMP or CSIS, to verify that they do have lawful authority, meaning they have to have a warrant or whatever it is. Then when we engage, we're operating under their lawful authority, so we're acting as their agent. We're acting as though we were a CSIS or RCMP employee, and absolutely, those are reviewed by the commissioner. The commissioner reviews those activities making sure that we actually verified that.

We have Department of Justice staff on the premises to help us, if there's any question as to whether or not the lawful authority is indeed in place. So, yes, we report annually to the minister in a classified report and those contain statistics, yes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have about 30 seconds for a question and an answer.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much for those answers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Spengemann, you have the floor.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have two brief questions, and I'd be happy to defer the remainder of my time to the next Liberal speaker.

If I could refer to page 2 of your testimony, the second paragraph, “It's important to emphasize that CSE only targets foreign entities and communications, and is prohibited by law from targeting Canadians or anyone in Canada”.

Bracketing the “in Canada” portion, how seamless are operations in the case of Canadians with dual nationalities? If someone is Canadian and holds a second nationality and is outside the country, are you still prohibited by law from gathering information with respect to that person? If you're not, is somebody else able to?

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Thank you very much for the question.

Mr. Chair, I might ask my colleague to provide some further detail on that.

Madam Bruce.

[Shelly Bruce, Deputy Chief, Signals Intelligence, Communications Security Establishment]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we do not distinguish between dual nationality and Canadian citizenship. We use the definition under the Immigration Act of what constitutes a Canadian.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

If you don't have authority, is there another entity in the security establishment that would have authority? I'm thinking of our police forces.

[Shelly Bruce]

Absolutely.

We work very closely with the security and intelligence community within Canada. Everybody has their own remit and their own mandate and they operate within those constraints. The RCMP and CSIS would be the two that are more likely.