Public Accounts Committee on May 26th, 2009

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is for Ms. Fraser. You mentioned the achievements to date. You also raised the fact that implementation is very dependent on finances. I am concerned about that.

Shouldn't funding for an area as important as that of national security be a priority? I would like to hear your comments on that. What is being done in order to obtain the funding that is necessary to implement those important projects?

[Sheila Fraser]

I believe that the issue of funding is mainly related to computerized exchanges of information, where implementation is limited. The report indicates that completing a project depends on funding.

Choosing our priorities depends on several factors including the fiscal framework, other priorities and availability of other priorities within the department.

I don't have any more information on the current situation. One of the government's realities is that funding is voted in only for one year at a time. Therefore, there is always uncertainty for projects that are spread out over several years.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

We're talking about problems that have existed since 2004, as you pointed out. There has been a lack of funding and not just for this year.

Were you talking about the secret communications interoperability project?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes. That's it.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

You mentioned that it's underfunded. Who's responsible for implementing that project?

[Sheila Fraser]

Ms. Hurtubise's department. She could perhaps give you more information.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

It's very important if we're talking about information exchanges.

[Suzanne Hurtubise]

That's right. A few years ago, we were given a mandate to develop a system that allows for secret communications. We succeeded, with the assistance of several other departments and organizations, including the Communications Security Establishment Canada that we mentioned earlier, in developing and testing such a system. It was tested and now we can use it. We know that it is operational because we established a pilot project. The system is now ready to be implemented, if so desired.

The first stage has been completed, and everything has been done from a technical point of view. Users have tested it. Everything is ready including the memorandum of understanding. We are in the middle of discussions with several other departments in order to determine whether or not there is a will to continue and go ahead with this project.

I absolutely agree with you. This project and this system are extremely important in order to allow secret communications.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

I'm surprised to hear you say “if there's a will”. Why wouldn't there be?

[Suzanne Hurtubise]

My goal wasn't to imply that there is no will. I simply want to say, as the Auditor General mentioned, that choices have to be made in order to fund various projects. Now that the pilot project is finished and that the system has been properly tested and deemed operational, we have to determine how to implement it.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Have there been any forecasts of the implementation costs?

[Suzanne Hurtubise]

I did ask that question as a matter of fact, but no one could tell me what the cost would be. I was told that it would depend on the extent of the system and the number of departments that want to use it. The more users there are, the less the cost. That is the stage which we are at.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Thank you, Madam.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Kramp, you have four minutes.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and welcome to our guests.

Like Mr. Christopherson and Mr. Murphy here, I sat on public accounts after the 2004 report, and quite frankly, we were more than alarmed. It was frightening to see just how insecure we were and the ridiculous silo mentality that existed back then between our agencies and the tremendous lack of communication. It certainly did not serve the Canadian public well, and I can tell you, I'm really encouraged to see the movement forward.

There are difficulties yet and some things to overcome, but whether it's ITAC or the Government Operations Centre now, or whether it's all the MOUs that are moving forward, it's tremendously encouraging. It just gives great credence to the value of that original report. I think we now have not a bit of a wake-up call here yet, but the job is not done. As Madame Morin quickly stated, one of the biggest difficulties we have is that every time we have a problem today, it will be a new problem tomorrow. So we're steadily adapting and modifying to the challenges we have.

What I'm really interested in is just how effective and coordinated our communications are between all these organizations in two components. One is the actual willingness, or the MOUs—in other words, basically, policy. The other one is the technology.

In the past, we had a tremendous breakdown where one system couldn't even communicate effectively with another. What is our technological capacity right now? Are we up to snuff, or are we years behind where we need to be to use our technology effectively?

Who would like to handle that?

[Suzanne Hurtubise]

Thank you very much for your question.

I should probably say that I'm not a technology expert. There are technology experts. But I won't speak to the policy for now; I'll just speak to technology.

You're quite right, technology is critical. How we communicate—just in answering your colleague's question—points to the need to be able to communicate at a secret level. We have not had a system in government to do that. We now have pilot-tested a program that is certified as operational and functioning. It is available for rollout if we want that. That's very important.

We also have, on the other hand, some very strong world-standard telecommunications capacity within the government to address some of the issues around cybersecurity, for example, and to address some questions of counter-terrorism.

The other most effective tool of communications is for everybody to be on the same wavelength and for everybody to have the same priorities and to move forward together on that.

So we are working very hard on the technological front. I think there's still a lot to be done, but we have already achieved a fair bit.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

I'm concerned as well about the number of MOUs signed, whether between CSIS and the RCMP or Transport Canada. That's paper. Are they being implemented? That's what we need to know. Are they being followed through? Is the intent there and is the composition of the MOUs being enacted, not just in theory but in principle? I'd like to know.

Maybe you can tell us, Madam Fraser, whether you're suggesting that there is complete adherence to these MOUs, or are they basically just paying lip service to them?

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you, Chair.

Obviously, we noted an issue with the MOU between Transport Canada and the RCMP. We've heard that a new MOU has been signed, and it would appear that this has been resolved.

I think it's important to understand that these MOUs are really critical, for a number of reasons. Departments just can't share information freely, so they have to have those memoranda in place to clarify what information can be shared, how it's protected, and all the rest of it. One of the big issues that came up in this report was the whole issue of privacy. It was raised several times. It is a really fundamental issue that has to be addressed going forward on the whole intelligence information-sharing issue.

We do note in the report--it was mentioned earlier--that the MOU between the RCMP and CSIS was updated. We didn't note any particular problems with information-sharing there, but we didn't go through an analysis of each one to see how well they were working.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Monsieur Pomerleau, quatre minutes.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I wish to thank the witnesses for appearing before us here today.

Mr. Ranger, as you know, when you decide to run as a member of Parliament for a political party, you sign a document authorizing the party to conduct a police investigation on you. This is openly admitted. However, you're saying that you still don't have that type of document, that you're thinking about putting one in place.

[Louis Ranger]

That will be done very quickly. We're currently designing the new application forms. A very long section was added, where the applicant consents to disclosure of their history of the past five years, including information on their spouse. It goes even further by authorizing the RCMP to hold information for a certain number of years and to share it with other police forces, for example. This will unblock an awful lot of...

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Even with such a form, you're saying that one of the problems is the quantity of information to be processed. You receive over 40,000 applications a year. A few years ago, the Bloc Québécois had the longitudinal labour force file dismantled. It had existed under the Liberals and 37 million Canadians were listed in it. I wanted to know what that file contained and I asked for my personal file. I gave my name and my social insurance number. Five days later, I received quite a voluminous file.

I have a lot of trouble understanding that with a name, an address and a social insurance number, the RCMP is incapable of obtaining something more quickly than what you seem to be claiming. Does it take a long time to obtain information on someone?

[Louis Ranger]

According to the standards we have set, it takes 30 days for a new applicant. For someone renewing a pass, it takes 10 days.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

All right.

Mr. Killam, the Library of Parliament gave us briefing notes before this meeting. In them we can read what follows:

An RCMP analysis found that there were more than 60 airport employees with criminal links at Canada's largest airports, and many organized crime groups were found working within or using these airports.

I was completely stunned to read this. Is this accurate?

My colleague, who collects all the paper she can find, has an article from the Canadian Press dated September 25, 2006. It talks about a report that was prepared by Mr. Jean-Pierre Fortin, of the Customs and Immigration Union, in which he says that the Customs Officers Union is worried about airport security, because customs officers are being pressured by unknown persons to not visit certain planes and not carry out certain inspections. This even led to Mr. Cannon demanding an investigation. A few months later, Mr. Cannon said that all the investigations had revealed that Montreal airports were perfectly safe.

There's a lot of contradictory information. I get the impression that the situation in our ports and airports is the same. You are not reassuring us; you have not demonstrated that organized crime has not infiltrated these places. What are your thoughts on this?