Public Safety Committee on June 5th, 2012

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

With regard to the exchange of international information, not every country has a program with the United States like NEXUS—and, of course, people do this voluntarily and they're trusted travellers. It goes without saying that we have much more control over what we do domestically than we do with the exchange of information with other countries. What mechanisms and safeguards are being put in place to make sure that the rights of our citizens are being respected and not taken advantage of in the information we exchange?

[John Davies]

What particular kind of information are you talking about? Would that be advance passenger information shared between airlines or, for example, are we talking about information that law enforcement agencies would share on certain targets and sources?

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

To be honest with you, I have no idea what type of material is exchanged. That's within your realm. I'm talking about material that would be particularly relevant to security issues, so you tell me what the safeguards would be.

[John Davies]

Again, it depends on what you're talking about. If you're talking about passenger information, there are treaties, for example—

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

That's the simple part.

[John Davies]

—being negotiated between Canada and the European Union to ensure the proper transfer of information, so that we are both bound legally to follow certain steps. These would be enacted through memorandums of understanding, and so on.

The same thing applies on the operational level. The RCMP, for example, would have a protocol, an MOU in place, with whatever security agency it works with in the U.S.

So there is a web of clear agreements. They're backed by either treaties or clear legislation in that regard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move back to Mr. Garrison, please, for five minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much.

I just want to provide a little bit of a preface here, based on the comment that Ms. Hoeppner made earlier. I'm going to be asking some questions that are not based on a suspicion of CSIS, but on the idea that we have to maintain public support for a national security strategy and our national security organizations. To do that we have to have strong oversight. We have to have respect for the rule of law and respect for rights; otherwise you will lose the cooperation of the public. So it's not a case of our saying that we are suspicious of all CSIS agents as somehow being evildoers who have to be bound and constrained, but the necessity of maintaining public support.

I have two questions, if I can get them both in here.

The minister made reference to bringing in new legislation about leaving Canada for the purpose of carrying out a terrorist act. Do you have any information you could share with us, first on the timeframe for that legislation? Secondly, it's of concern to many immigrant communities if their rights to travel outside the country are restricted, and there is already a bit of fear that they might somehow be racially profiled and have trouble leaving the country as a result of their membership in a group. Do you have any information you could share with us now on the provisions of that proposed legislation, or review mechanisms that might be in place under that regime?

[John Davies]

I believe that's under Bill S-7, which is updating the Anti-terrorism Act. There's a provision for travelling for the purpose of terrorism, which is clarifying the legal—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

So that is the provision he was referring to.

[John Davies]

Yes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I'm sorry, but I haven't read Bill S-7, to be quite honest. Is there a provision for review of decisions on restricting freedom to travel in that legislation?

[John Davies]

Allowing for judicial review of those decisions or...?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Well, short of judicial review, which is expensive and difficult for most people to mount.

[John Davies]

I believe Bill S-7.... Again, Justice leads on this file, but the idea around Bill S-7 is to make it illegal to knowingly participate in activities of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of a terrorist group to carry out an act of terrorism. So the idea of leaving Canada to go to a terrorist training camp...it will be made a very clear crime to do so.

I'm not sure how you would review that decision. It's part of the Criminal Code amendments.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Right. Okay. We're both in deeper water than we like to be in at this point, I think.

[John Davies]

Yes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

My second question is this. When you're talking about partnerships, the strategy refers to engaging with, what is, a whole lists of people, including foreign governments. So my question is about the “engaging with” part. Does “engaging with” mean simply exchanges of information, on which Mr. Goguen asked some very good questions? Or is it more than that? The minister used an example of the Shiprider program and joint enforcement programs.

My question is, what does “engaging with” really mean, and is there some kind of hierarchy of engagement with various different countries, because you often make reference to non-traditional partners?

[John Davies]

I think there's quite a continuum with that word and what it means. I think in some cases, such as with the U.S., it could be much more about working together on joint threat assessments, for example, and harmonizing around admissibility issues, and so on.

In the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum, for example, which is a new forum of 30 different countries, the idea is to exchange information on best practices for countering violent extremism, those kinds of things. So it's a bit more of an information exchange. There are obviously lots of bilateral exchanges. The case of Israel was brought up for its having a very strong aviation security program—and, of course, we'd want to talk to them and learn from them.

So it really depends on the issue, from loose engagement to very strong, I would say.

[Michael MacDonald]

I think there's also an important distinction, or at least an important point to make, about information-sharing, which answers your question about the architecture in the international community.

Information-sharing does not always involve classified information. We share unclassified information, as I'm sure you're all aware, on a daily basis. There is also financial intelligence information and security intelligence information. There are criminal types of information, and then general unclassified information, of course.

The international community, if you look at it broadly, is organized in the security intelligence community itself largely by those who collect intelligence. So there are certain expert groups of our trusted allies, the Five Eyes as we typically call them, and they exchange information and share information of all kinds, per their legislative mandates. Then we also have other international bodies, some very formal, such as the G-8 and the G-20. In the G-20, looking at issues of national security or terrorism is a relatively new effort. We have the G-7, which looks at the financial aspects, but we also have new partners, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Europe, the OECD. The OECD has approached my area to talk about national security issues in regard to foreign investments, for example, and they actually have a working group on terrorism, which is something new for us.

We also have some of the other bodies, such as the Financial Action Task Force, and the regional bodies that Canada is asked to join to help other countries and so on. It's a plethora, but there are structures.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Garrison. That was five minutes and twenty-seven seconds.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Ms. Hoeppner, please.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you. I have a fairly brief question.

Mr. Davies, when the minister was here, I think Mr. Norlock asked him about the investments that our government has made, and I recall your commenting that other countries actually look at us with envy because of these investments and are looking to us for leadership.

Could you expand on that? As well, when we look at the strategy, have many other countries, in the G-8, for example, developed their own strategies?

Maybe Mr. MacDonald could comment on whether other countries have strategies, or are we also playing the leading role with the fact that we have a strategy? Could you talk a bit about our role on the world stage in countering terrorism?

[John Davies]

Sure. My reference to envy was certainly about Kanishka, the $10 million for research on countering violent extremism and counter-terrorism in general. A number of countries commented to us that we are extremely lucky to have this resource. As Mr. MacDonald was saying, there's no shortage of global counter-terrorism groups out there now looking to fund and catalyze research in this area.

It's helped us play a leading role in a number of these groups. Particularly, one aspect is evaluation of programs linked to countering violent extremism. We hosted a seminar here early in February. In fact, at that seminar the minister launched the counter-terrorism strategy that other countries thought was very successful. We're now leading the second stage—and this is a group of 30 different countries.

No one else has money or resources to fund research in this area, but there's hardly any research on it, so it puts Canada in a very strong leadership position on this issue.

The second part of your question, I'm sorry, I missed.