Evidence of meeting #28 for Public Safety and National Security in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fadden.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Fadden, how was the timing of your June 21 and 22 interviews with Mr. Mansbridge selected?
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
It was selected by the corporation.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Did you review that with the Minister of Public Safety, the PCO or PMO, or the national security adviser?
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
They were made aware that that was the schedule proposed by the CBC and that I was proposing to agree.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
And did any of those individuals give you permission to do that? Did they approve it?
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
Given that the general idea of interviews had already been approved, I wasn't seeking approval. I was informing them in the event that they knew something they might want to tell me about.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Okay. Did you advise them as to what you would be saying? Were they aware of the fact that the allegations would be made about provincial cabinet ministers and municipal officials?
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
For me, today, this is the point. I don't know, we don't know, whether what you're saying is accurate or not. That's information that's classified, that you're providing to other sources. So I'm not here to say you're right or wrong. I'm here to find out, if possible, what exactly you were saying, what the details are, which you've indicated you cannot provide here today, in terms of the names of individuals and the specific details.
But this part of it I think is key for today: in the spring of 2010 you advised the national security adviser of these concerns. You had these concerns, which you indicated came about at the end of 2009. That's when you were first made aware of these cases. What I find surprising, as a member of Parliament and as a Canadian, is that the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's Office or the Minister of Public Safety did not contact you, meet with you, ask for details, or in any way get involved in circumstances that you call a real danger, after you made the national security adviser aware of these concerns in the spring of 2010.
When you gave this interview, I'm wondering whether you knew--I know you knew it, but I'm wondering whether you deliberately provided this concern in public so that Canadians would know this concern existed, because the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office and the Minister of Public Safety were doing nothing about this, which you had expressed to the national security adviser.
I'm taking you at your word. I believe you that these concerns exist; I have no information to the contrary. But what I do know is that although you expressed these concerns in the spring of 2010 to the national security adviser, the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Minister of Public Safety did nothing that you can tell us on this and didn't even contact you.
I'm wondering about that and why that would have happened, that they wouldn't have, in my view, done their jobs and dealt with you.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
I think there are two or three components to that question.
As I indicated earlier, when I spoke to the national security adviser, it was to express a general concern that we were working on a couple of files. It was a heads-up. We give a heads-up to the centre daily on a whole range of issues. Had we thought that it was a matter that merited the attention of the minister, I would have drawn it to the attention of the minister, and I suspect the NSA would have done so to the Prime Minister. But I repeat, the files we're working on are not immediate. There is no immediate danger. There is no direct critical violation of national security.
As I do on any number of files, I was drawing to her attention.... She has a coordinating role in the security and intelligence community. I was telling her that some time in the weeks or months ahead we would be coming forward with a couple of files, and I asked her how, if these files went forward, should we draw these to the attention of elements other than the federal government.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for an opportunity to get back to a question I had hoped to fit into my first round. Just to refresh your memory, it was in regard to the case of alleged Russian spies--more specifically, a story that ran in The Vancouver Sun on June 29. I want to quote that story really quickly, and then I have a series of questions.
The FBI has broken up a Russian spy ring, some of whose members were posing as Canadian citizens, the Department of Justice announced Monday. Eight “deep cover” agents working for the Russian Federation and two others on a similar mission were arrested Sunday in New Jersey, Virginia and Boston. All are suspected agents of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, Russia’s foreign spy agency. The arrests come four years after the RCMP arrested an SVR agent who was living in Montreal as “Paul William Hampel.” Three of the agents arrested on Sunday had assumed identities as Canadians named Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley and Patricia Mills. A fourth suspect, Christopher Metsos, also claimed to be Canadian. He is still at large.
What is the endgame for such agents, and what are they trying to achieve? If you wouldn't mind, please talk about the methods they are employing. Then finally, could you provide us with a sense of how the threat to Canada compares to that experienced by our close allies?
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
I think the endgame is very similar to the one we were talking about here today. There are a number of foreign powers, in this case the Russian Federation, which are very interested in acquiring influence on the development of policy in the United States. This can be done in any number of ways. In this particular case it appears that the agents of Russia were insinuating themselves into the U.S. economy and U.S. society with the long-term view--again, I say this is an important element--of being able to either acquire information or exercise influence.
What happens in these cases, generally speaking, is when a moment comes up that a decision is important for the foreign power, some attempt is made to communicate with their agents in place and they're asked to try to influence the decision-making process through the people they have there or through themselves.
The methodology they use--and there is no great state secret here--is the same as anyone would use to try to get someone to do something else. You try to develop a relationship. You try to find some means of exercising pressure. Both are basically usable in all cases. Very often what is done is you find a common interest and develop a relationship over time, and before you know it you have an individual thinking slightly differently.
In other cases, and it's one we also worry about, the foreign power exercises influence on the Canadian because they're being threatened with one thing or the other. We didn't talk a lot about this during this two-hour period, but one of the things we're trying to do in dealing with foreign interference is actually protect Canadians from this kind of pressure by foreign powers.
Is the threat in Canada the same as in the United States or greater? As you mentioned in your remarks, we had a similar case in 2006 and we had others in 1996. I would say--and again I think this is probably logical--that the United States is the premier power in the world today and I suspect they get more attention than we do. But we take a lot of decisions and we have a lot of information we share with the Americans and a vast number of other countries, so Canada is of considerable interest. So it would be difficult to compare exactly, but I would say we are probably of lesser interest but still of material interest to a foreign power.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK
Finally, just to recap, we've talked a lot about the chain of command and the appropriate levels by which information is passed. Can you just run through that again for me in terms of who supervises CSIS and the chain of command from yourself up to the minister?
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
I am accountable to the minister for the management of the service. Having said that, in the management of national security and intelligence, the national security world, the Prime Minister has appointed a national security adviser, who has a coordinating role. I wouldn't say I report to the national security adviser, but she's an important player in all of this. So a lot of the information we would give to the minister would also be given to the national security adviser, although in some cases information given to the NSA would not be given to the minister because it wouldn't meet that threshold where we think a minister needs to be informed.
If I can take advantage of this just to make one last comment, a number of you have indicated that you are either taking me at face value or not on these matters we're talking about. I would remind you that Parliament decided a while ago that the Security Intelligence Review Committee has access to absolutely everything that we have, and I would be willing to wager that they will be reporting in some detail about whether the threats I've talked about and the details I've alluded to are true. You parliamentarians decided that we were going to do this kind of control through the SIRC, and they have been very effective at doing this through the years.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Don Davies
Thank you, Mr. Fadden.
That concludes our question period.
Mr. Fadden, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Dunn, on behalf of the entire committee, I'd like to thank you for attending before us here today.
The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security stands adjourned.