Evidence of meeting #41 for National Defence in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was review.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
We will review the activities of CSE. The commissioner has no jurisdiction, of course, to review the activities of NSA or GCHQ, or the Australian or New Zealand equivalents. But we do have the ability to ensure that whatever activity CSE is conducting and the interceptions they are conducting, comply with the laws of Canada and with the internal policies and agreements that they have.
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
As you might know, CSE cannot target Canadians or persons in Canada. It's a foreign agency.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Except with ministerial permission, and except if one of the parties to communication is outside the country. These are pretty big exceptions.
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
Yes. Let's say CSE targets a foreign fighter in Syria. In doing that, they might unintentionally or incidentally—
NDP
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
Yes.
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
No. This is where the minister, through an authorization, would permit them to do it. Otherwise, they would commit a criminal offence, under the Criminal Code of Canada. It's a private communication, so therefore—
Sorry, sir.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
That's okay. We have to wrap that one up.
Mr. Spengemann, you have the floor.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to you, gentlemen, for being with us this afternoon.
Commissioner Plouffe, thank you for your service as a member of the armed forces, as a jurist, and as a public servant.
My questions will be addressing the interests of the Canadian public in this matter, which is complex, and in my view, probably not as well understood as it should be.
You mentioned public trust in your comments, and I think probably the single biggest asset any public institution can have is trust. There are two dimensions of trust with respect to the agency you are overseeing. It's trust vis-à-vis the Canadian public, but it's also intra-agency trust to ensure that intelligence is transferred and that access to information is available.
I'm wondering if you could comment on, first of all, the level of Canadian awareness of the security agencies we have in place and what you think could and should be improved to raise awareness. You mentioned the Snowden affair, and I think that the Snowden affair has increased general awareness of this issue and that there are things going on that we may not see or hear about. It's also in some respect potentially eroded trust. What would make your work easier in terms of the extent of knowledge by the Canadian public of the subject matter you are engaged in?
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
That's why I talk about transparency. For the last three years, I've been pushing and pushing and pushing CSE to release more information and to give more explanations to the Canadian public about their activities. If you don't do that, it's pretty hard to maintain public trust.
There is all kinds of information that could be released. It could be statistics. It could be all kinds of things. I'll give you an example. The word “metadata” four years ago was secret. We could not talk about metadata. It was secret. Today it's not, so if it's not today, it wasn't then.
CSE is like CSIS—they are secret organizations. We have to change the culture. The watchdogs, including me, are there for that purpose. It's to push for more transparency. Also, I must admit that in the last three years CSE has made a lot of effort to become more transparent. They have released more information. They participate, for example, in some conferences across the country. Their website has been revamped. They give more information to the public. I think this is one of the ways to do it, because if you keep everything secret, people become skeptical.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
What about other institutions that could contribute, not just CSE itself but perhaps this committee of parliamentarians or the press? What's your sense of the extent to which other factors could be helpful?
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
As you know, my mandate deals with CSE. However, I think the principle I'm talking about here, the transparency, would apply also to this new committee. I think this new committee would in my view enhance public trust. It's a good thing. It's a step forward in the right direction.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
That's helpful. Thank you for that.
You mentioned earlier that you're not an expert in the technical subject matter of what CSE does, but could you give us your view, for the benefit of Canadians who may not be familiar with it, of the general operational setting of foreign intelligence or foreign signals gathering? What's that work like and what's changing? What's changed in the last five years, and what's accelerating?
I'm assuming part of the problem is simply the growing mass of data that agencies have to sift through to distill any kind of valuable information. How much is that a constraint and what other factors come into it when you talk about the fairly rapid and fluid environment?
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
That's quite easy for me. I'll ask my expert to answer.
Executive Director, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
Thank you, Commissioner.
Part of our task in the commissioner's office is to ensure that we are staying abreast and up to date on what is happening within CSE. We do that through the reviews we're conducting, through briefings we request from CSE in specific areas, and through demonstrations of particular systems we want to examine, whether or not we can determine that there may be risks to compliance or to privacy in those systems or in the activity. We then have a risk assessment to determine where risk is higher for particular activities. Then we assign a priority to begin conducting reviews. We have engaged on contract a computer engineer, for example, to help us better understand the technology.
However, it's incumbent on CSE, through ministerial directives and authorizations, to assist the commissioner's office in the conduct of our reviews. If we were to find that they were not, for example, willing to provide a certain presentation, briefing, or demonstration to us on a particular area we were interested in informing ourselves about, then the commissioner would speak to the chief and say “please”.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Have you come under capacity constraints, strictly quantitative capacity constraints, in terms of the amount of work you have to oversee?
Executive Director, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
The latest departmental plan for the office, which we're required to submit to Treasury Board, indicates that the commissioner will be requesting an increase in the resource base. That, of course, is not a large amount of money, but the commissioner frequently asks me if I have enough resources to conduct an adequate review of CSE. That is something we look at.
CSE is a technology-intensive organization, so the number of people isn't the same as for, say, human intelligence organizations.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
That's your time.
We're going to go to five-minute questions.
Mr. Gerretsen, you have the floor.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Plouffe, you talked about the fact that you've been—I think you said—“pushing and pushing and pushing” the CSE to provide more info to the public. It implies that there has been push-back. Has there been push-back, and if so, what has that been?
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
Are you suggesting that they're not co-operating?
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
No. When you say I've been pushing and pushing and pushing them to do something, it implies that you've been really struggling with them to do it.
Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
I see what you mean. Maybe it's not the right choice of words.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm suggesting to them very strongly, every year in my public annual report and every time I meet the chief, that they should be more and more transparent. Since the Snowden—