Evidence of meeting #18 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 csis.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Chair, Security Intelligence Review Committee
Only the members of the committee are part-time. The staff are all full-time.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Let me add in passing that I share Mr. Chan's opinion and that I'm very appreciative that people of your quality have accepted such a difficult mandate which may require very, very long days of work for the job to be done properly.
Generally speaking, when you need documents from CSIS, is it difficult for you to have access to them? How much time does it take for you to get a document?
5:10 p.m.
Chair, Security Intelligence Review Committee
It depends on the nature of the inquiry or the review. There are times when thousands of pages of documents are being poured over and many, many electronic communications and all sorts of other information is being pursued.
If the question is, are we ever denied access, the answer is no. Are we ever delayed access? We would have to be reasonable in terms of how much information we want and how much time it takes to get it. Do we ever act, shall we say, more assertively to try to get information more quickly? The answer is yes. If we believe they ought not to be taking as long as they are to get us information we need, then we certainly put our foot down and go after it.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Very well.
This year, what was the longest time you had to wait to get a document?
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
I suppose that, if you can't say what type of document required ten weeks to be released to you, there may have been many others that required six, eight or nine weeks. That may be the reason why you forgot what type of document it was that required ten weeks.
5:10 p.m.
Chair, Security Intelligence Review Committee
I can't be specific about what information we ask them for. The difficulty is that virtually everything we're asking is highly classified information, top secret material in many cases, so I can't give you a description of it.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
All right.
Do you have access to the places where those documents are kept?
November 1st, 2006 / 5:10 p.m.
Chair, Security Intelligence Review Committee
Our staff typically go right into the CSIS operations, have access right into their database, their bibliographic reference system, which is the operational database of the entire CSIS operation.
5:10 p.m.
Chair, Security Intelligence Review Committee
Accompanied by somebody from CSIS?
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
When you're an employee is on-site, has it ever happened that he had instructions from your Committee to ask for some documents by surprise? In other words, do you ever do surprise visits? Are you able to make sure that people do not take advantage of the delay to try and hide some documents that they don't want you to see? Had you ever asked for some documents on the spot, without notice, to see how they would react?
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
But according to my watch, I've only used four minutes so far.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
All right. I thought it was four minutes but you may be right.
5:15 p.m.
Chair, Security Intelligence Review Committee
The answer is no, we don't operate that way. We don't do surprise visits.
I can tell you that in the course of doing some investigations, there are always cross-references. In other words, it's not just in one place. When information is exchanged or communications are exchanged, there's a sender and a receiver, and typically the information shows up in different places.
So to erase something from the files would be very difficult, because it may be in many different areas. It may have been copied to a number of people. Obviously there are ways in which we can keep on top of this and assure ourselves that nothing is being hidden from us or has been purposely destroyed. Our researchers, analysts, and investigators are very good at what they do, and we have every reason to believe that this kind of thing doesn't happen.
