Public Safety Committee on Nov. 24th, 2014

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm not sure who I should ask this question to. There's a bit of a problem I have in understanding, in terms of the legal drafting of this bill. Who here today can talk about that? Certainly, Mr. Coulombe, you said that there are no new powers for CSIS here. In clause 8 where it adds to the warrant question the words, “Without regard to any other law, including that of a foreign state”, my question is this. Could that be removed from this bill?

If it were removed, would that change anything materially here? Certainly, to me, it would affect the reputation of what we're doing in other countries. I'm not sure who's responsible for the drafting of that and what impact it would have to remove those words from this bill.

[Michel Coulombe]

That's something, Mr. Chair, we'd like to get back to the committee on, because that's a very technical, legal question.

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

I respect that. That's why I said I had some trouble seeing if you had anybody at the table today who could really respond to that.

[Michel Coulombe]

But I just want to go back to what I said earlier, that you have to recognize the type of environment and the type of countries we're talking about. Again, if you're talking about a situation where activities that we were going to do overseas had to be lawful in the country where they were going to take place, again, I'm not sure that's a viable, practical system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

I guess possibly what we're trying to say is that we're looking for perfect legislation to deal with an imperfect world. That could be, but carry on.

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

Those are words I would not accept. I think what we're looking for is legislation that will stand up to legal challenges, so that we're actually doing something effective in defence of national security.

[Ritu Banerjee]

Maybe I can add a little bit more to that. Part of the reason it's drafted this way is that, if we go back to the Federal Court of Appeal decision, we see the court made it clear—and this is again following up from what Mr. Coulombe just said—that it would have the jurisdiction to issue such a warrant, and I'm quoting the decision, “when the interception is lawful where it occurs”. Because that is very challenging to operationalize, we had to ensure that the law was clear for judges and that what they had to consider was relevant to Canadian law, primarily the charter and the CSIS Act.

So that's why it's written the way it is.

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

Thank you. I think that is helpful.

[Michel Coulombe]

I don't know if I have time to add one little thing. In terms of being lawful in the country where it's going to take place, you can imagine the difficulties in the countries I listed earlier. But I just talked about mobility. If we were to obtain a warrant where it would be lawful to do whatever we want to do in Syria, and the next week that person is in Iraq, and the following week that person is elsewhere, again, in terms of, as we say in French,

… “practical”.

I'm not sure how that system would be workable.

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

Okay.

In clause 9 of Bill C-44, it makes reference to making information, which is otherwise protected by the protection of identified sources, available to SIRC. Again, we don't have anyone from SIRC here, but it seems to me that this provides an element that is more complicated than some of the other stuff that SIRC has dealt with in the past. I'm just wondering about the capacity of SIRC as the oversight body to deal with this new responsibility that I believe does add a responsibility to SIRC. I know the Minister says there's nothing about oversight here. I wonder if CSIS maybe shares that same interpretation that there is a new responsibility for SIRC included here in the bill.

[François Guimont]

Mr. Chairman, it's new in the sense of being defined in that bill, but in reality SIRC can look at all aspects of CSIS activity, as long as it is not cabinet confidence. Their power is very broad.

It is a review responsibility, and their resource—I think they have 16 individuals, plus or minus—is a significant number of individuals who are very capable and understand the business of CSIS. I would like to think they are probably equipped to do a good job of carrying out reviews, should they decide to do so.

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

So you would say this section is really more of a clarification, that this information is not excluded from the review responsibilities.

[François Guimont]

It is clarification.

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

Okay, thank you.

Do I have another minute?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

You have about 15 seconds.

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

Oh, 15 seconds. I think we'll let that go at this point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine, thank you very much. I appreciate your consideration, Mr. Garrison.

We will now go to Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Through you once again to the witnesses, thank you for attending.

I'll start by saying that we live in a new world, and I don't want to have an organization like CSIS or any other organization that treats the rest of the world like some.... I don't want to belong to a country that's naive or acts like a Pollyanna and expects the whole world to be like, we respect everything you do and we would never do anything.... We know that other countries are recruiting terrorists, whether they be naturalized Canadians, people who were born here, or people with dual citizenship, who are now embedded in our country and want to do irreparable harm not only to individuals in Canada but to our very foundation. The very building we're in is the place where we exercise our democracy.

At least on five or six occasions all the questions asked in many different ways here all come down to what Mr. Guimont said. This is not an earth-shattering, new, ominous, tremendous load on CSIS. This is just a simple clarification of existing rules and regulations that a court said we needed to clarify.

Mr. Guimont, you can tell me if I'm making this as simple as possible for my constituents, who don't want to belong to a country that's naive and believes that if we're nice to everybody else they'll be nice to us? This legislation tries to impart to CSIS the same kind of judicial acceptance or protection for human resources, in other words, for informants, who want to give CSIS information in a way that won't identify them. It gives them the same type of protection that police already have with informants. Is that correct?

[François Guimont]

Yes, and as was said earlier by the minister and others, essentially Bill C-44 is a result of court decisions, if you wish—in one case, that of Justice Mosley—so we are essentially fixing this very transparently. My colleague in CSIS was operating under a regime that we thought was understood, so we're clarifying that. That's why the word “clarifying” is always there, even in the bill, as I remember.

With respect to the protection of sources, it is also as a result of court proceedings—the Harkat decision, essentially. Again, out of the logic put forward by my colleague Monsieur Coulombe, we feel that being able to offer that protection is important for them to be effective in delivering protection to Canada.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much.

It's as simple as that.

Another observation I'll make is that you can try to not support legislation by finding little bits and pieces that you disagree with, but the bottom line is that this is—as I say, I think you've made it simple—simply a clarification based on what judges have observed. All we're trying to do is straighten it out.

Thank you for that.

My next question is to Ms. Girard. You mentioned in your response to one of the questions that in this legislation that refers to another piece of legislation with regard to the revocation of citizenship, this is in line with other like-minded countries that have the same kind of legislation. It says, my goodness, being a citizen of Canada is one of the most tremendous privileges this country can offer. Citizenship is probably the most important thing, the most cherished thing, that you can be given. If you do something that imperils...or that is found to be treasonous, one of the most serious crimes, which used to have the death penalty up until very recently, if you want to do something that really spits on the privilege of being a Canadian, then maybe the state should revoke that.

I wonder if you are aware of any other countries that share the rights and freedoms that we have, the values that we have? Perhaps you could list a couple of those countries so that my constituents know that there are other countries that they may go to that share this kind of opinion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Very briefly, please.

[Nicole Girard]

Thank you, yes.

The provisions in the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, which enable revocation of citizenship from dual citizens who have done these actions against the national interest that I referred to, are broadly similar to provisions that exist in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, and other democratic European countries that we looked at including France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland. So that gives you a bit of a flavour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Norlock.

Mr. Garrison.

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

I actually have perhaps more than one point of order so I'll just try to deal with them in pieces.

One is that we've had an offer of some additional information being made available to the committee. My concern is that given our tight schedule the witnesses should be aware that we would have to have that this week really in order to deal with it effectively, as we're going to clause by clause next Monday.

So I'm looking for a commitment from the witnesses that they would be able, within about 48 hours, to provide us with additional information. I know that is somewhat unreasonable but I'm not setting the timeframes on this committee.

That's my first point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

First of all, briefly an encapsulation of that first request, and it was directed to Mr. Guimont.