Evidence of meeting #17 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Would you say you provide the Americans with more information than they provide you, or it is a two-way street?
9:20 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
I would say it is a two-way street, but I think you have the traffic flow reversed. My experience to date at CSIS has been that we are significantly a net importer of information from foreign governments. In part, that is a function of the fact that we have, among other things, responsibility for security screening assessments.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
If the American authorities had information about a Canadian citizen's dealing with terrorist organizations, would they provide you with this information so that you could keep a better eye on this individual.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
If the American authorities had some information that you did not have and you could not provide to Justice's O'Connor regarding Mr. Arar's involvement with terrorist movement, it is unthinkable that the American authorities would not have passed on this information had Mr. Arar returned to Canada after his time in Syria.
9:25 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
Hypothetically, that would be a reasonable conclusion, but it's not necessarily true in all cases. I don't know that I would be able to confirm absolutely that it would be the case.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
I understand that you cannot give us absolute assurance, but this is indeed very likely. Had the American authorities had information about the terrorist involvement of a Canadian citizen such as Mr. Arar, you would expect them to give you this information so that you would better understand the risk presented by this Canadian citizen. Is that not so?
9:25 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
In an ideal circumstance, that would certainly be an expectation.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Of course, during the review by the O'Connor Commission, you would have informed the judge about the reasons why the American had grounds for thinking that Mr. Arar had terrorist dealings, reasons other than the false information the RCMP gave the American authorities. Is that not the case?
9:25 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
It's a two-part answer, sir.
In conducting his inquiry, I believe Mr. Justice O'Connor had unfettered and full access to any and all information that related to this.
Secondly, as you know, there are some aspects of this matter that are subject to national security confidences. They have not been made explicit in the public report, and they are in fact now the subject of review by the courts. Whether or not there was anything related to Mr. Arar emanating from American authorities in that regard, I don't know.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
In my opinion, it is not unreasonable to think that the American authorities used only the information provided by the RCMP to send Mr. Arar to a country they knew use brutal interrogation techniques and whose prisons have about the worse reputation on the planet.
9:25 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
I think Mr. Justice O'Connor made it clear in his report that, absent testimony from representatives of three foreign governments, it was difficult for him to ascertain what, if anything, they knew or did not know about Mr. Arar. My recollection again is that when the former Solicitor General testified before this committee, he noted that he had been informed by an American interlocutor that there was in fact U.S. information that had been partly the basis for the American action in this case, but I don't know that it was ever shared with us.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
It is quite unbelievable that you were not given this information if it concerned a Canadian citizen likely to return to this country.
9:25 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
As a general principle, one hopes we would have information regarding a threat in Canada.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Thank you, Mr. Judd.
We will now go to our third questioner, Ms. McDonough.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Alexa McDonough NDP Halifax, NS
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Joe Comartin, my colleague who is regularly on the committee, is very sorry to not be here today. A family emergency required that he return to his riding.
I don't have the benefit of having been in the committee through much of this testimony, but I have to say that I'm deeply disturbed, Mr. Judd, by two things this morning. One is your refusal in any appropriate, humane way to make an apology to Mr. Arar for the role.... I agree that the findings of Justice O'Connor on the very serious concerns about CSIS's conduct were not as extensive as some of the other actors in this, but it's very disappointing that the apology is not forthcoming. It's a question of understanding that a person's life has to go on, and it would be impossible for any one of us to say that we could get on with our life without that apology forthcoming from all who contributed to this horrendous ordeal.
The second thing I have to say I'm deeply disturbed about is that I'm aware that in Justice O'Connor's findings he indicated he did not feel that CSIS did an adequate reliability assessment as to whether the information about Arar, which certainly condemned him in the public mind and kept him in this horrendous situation, was likely to have been obtained as a product of torture. Justice O'Connor goes on to say that CSIS's assessment was that it probably was not.
I have two questions. Could you be more forthcoming with the committee about what the basis was for coming to the assessment that it was probably not obtained under torture, given that I think it was widely known, believed, and understood by a great many people that it could very well have been?
Second, I'm not the least bit assured by your comments this morning that CSIS is any more impressed today that this was a very serious problem, by what seems to have been--and I don't want to be unfair--rather casual justification several times this morning that we can't assume, and maybe it wouldn't have been....
I guess I'm wondering how you would deal with that differently today. Surely in addition to arriving at an appropriate position of an apology being owed to Arar, the really critical thing is the assurance to Canadians that this situation will not repeat itself. Yet it seems to me there is quite a reluctance on your part to acknowledge even the possibility that this evidence, eked out of Arar and obtained through torture, should be a very serious signal to extremely cautionary behaviour on the part of CSIS.
I wonder if you could address those two questions.
9:30 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
I think Mr. Justice O'Connor has dealt with the issue of the reliability assessment at some length and come to his conclusions on that. Some were based on the fact that he judged that the individual responsible for that at the time did not have the appropriate training or background to recognize this as having been the case in respect of this information.
I tried to convey in my opening comments that since then the organization has taken a number of steps to ensure this would not happen now or in the future. Our policies and practices have been amended, in part in response to earlier reviews of Mr. Arar's case by the Security Intelligence Review Committee.
I think it's fair to say that the organization today is extremely cautious about dealing with information that may come from a country with a poor human rights record. Moreover, as a matter of principle and practice, the organization always seeks to corroborate information, irrespective of its provenance, before coming to any conclusion or any determination on it.
I guess Mr. Justice O'Connor has described the situation as it was in respect of Mr. Arar at the time. It's very regrettable that happened, but I think we have since taken steps to ensure that would not occur in the future.
9:35 a.m.
NDP
Alexa McDonough NDP Halifax, NS
I have a follow-up question.
As somebody who doggedly asked questions again and again in the House and outside of the House, it was very shocking to me--I still feel really quite shocked by the fact--that I had a cabinet minister say to me, “Everything I hear is that this guy is really a bad cat, so you may want to be careful about being associated with his case”, which totally missed the point that there was no justice being applied here. Also, because of either deliberate leaks or this kind of casual treatment of the Arar situation, even journalists were saying, “Well, I don't know. From everything I hear, he sounds like a really bad cat, so why are you persisting in this?” In fact on one occasion two embassy personnel--at least people who identified themselves as Syrian embassy personnel--approached me after a meeting at which I had been calling for a full investigation into the Arar inquiry to say, “I think you want to be careful; this guy is really a bad cat.”
With all of that kind of discussion going on, I'd like to understand--because I can't believe that wouldn't have reached CSIS ears, seeing as they are in the intelligence business--why, given all of that, all of the pertinent officials would not have come out as one voice to say there is no possibility whatsoever of justice being brought to bear on this situation unless, as Monia Mazigh, Maher Arar's wife, said publicly again and again, we “bring him home and bring him to justice”.
What would account for the position CSIS took, that rather than bringing this person to justice they let all of this dangle out there with the distinct possibility that the information had been obtained under torture?
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
First of all, neither I nor anybody else in the Canadian government can take responsibility, I think, for anything that Syrian embassy officials tell you about Mr. Arar.
With respect to the issue of leaks, regarding Mr. Arar or his circumstances, I said in my opening statement that they had all been the subject of investigations, both within the service and as part of Privy Council Office investigations, and that there had been no evidence or conclusions arrived at that would suggest that any of these were coming out of CSIS or CSIS personnel.
I think that's the best I can do to respond to your questions on that.