Mr. Chair, I'm going to start with something which I think is normally not appropriate, but since the parliamentary secretary opened up the question of negotiations around this.... It's an odd strategy to me, because in my experience negotiations work best when you don't conduct them in public and through the media. But since she has, it has allowed the other side to characterize our position, so I want to be clear from the beginning.
We made a large compromise offer at the beginning of this in recognition of the seriousness of the threat of terrorism and in recognition that this is a majority government. We said that we will agree to start the hearings. We will not delay the hearings from starting when we come back, and we will agree that we will finish by the deadline that the government feels is necessary. That's an enormous concession on behalf of the opposition. But we said that what we need in return for that is an assurance from the government that we will conduct full, open, and broad hearings on this bill and that those Canadians who wish to appear here to have their voices heard will be given that chance.
We believe that this requires a very significantly larger number of meetings than the government has put on the table. They are now saying there will be 50 witnesses. The government likes to cite numbers and call them big. What I would say is that it's actually 48 witnesses by my count, but that's a bit of a quibble. When you divide those between parties, it means that the opposition parties would have something like 16 for the official opposition and something like 8 for the Liberals.
We have had, as we've said from the beginning, more than 60 people contact us who want to have their voices heard on this. It is not, as Mr. Norlock says, the same people and their cousins appearing 60 times; it is 60 people representing a broad spectrum of Canadian society, everyone from former prime ministers to former Supreme Court judges to a former inspector general of CSIS to first nations leaders to civil liberties organizations to concerned Muslims who wish to appear and talk about what they're already doing to help prevent radicalization of youth and talk about the major gap in this bill that's not being addressed.
So 50 sounds big until you divide it up and try to figure out how many Canadians can actually be heard in that time. We have said from the beginning on our side that we will sit as much time and work as hard as we must in this committee in order to make sure that those Canadian voices can be heard.
I heard the suggestion on the other side that no one really cares about this at this point. I would like to say that I just got a message from my office that since this went into public session this morning, we have had 200 calls—we just passed the 200-call mark—asking us to keep up the fight to have full hearings on this bill. So 200 members of the public have already contacted our office saying that they think it's important that everyone who wants to be heard on this bill be heard in this committee.
The honourable Diane Ablonczy says this is a charade. It is not a charade. It is an important part of our legislative duties in this Parliament to make sure that we give full examination especially to the most important pieces of legislation, such as the one in front of us now.
Again, numerous groups have contacted us now that they know what we're talking about in this committee. What they are saying I would like to relay to the committee.
We received communication from eight groups: Amnesty International Canada, English-speaking branch, Amnesty International Canada, francophone branch, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ligue des droits et libertés, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. Here's what they're saying about the attempt to limit the number of hearings.
I'll quote first from Alex Neve, secretary general, Amnesty International Canada, English-speaking branch:
Canadians are being told they should embrace Bill C-51 without question because it will make us safer. Overlooked is that this bill contains deeply worrying challenges to human rights protection, including the unprecedented proposition of empowering Federal Court judges to authorize violations of the Charter of Rights. To cut short the opportunity for these enormously consequential changes to be thoroughly examined is itself a grave human rights concern.
Again, that's Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International's English-speaking branch, pointing to the need to examine this bill very carefully.
I'll also quote Carmen Cheung, senior counsel, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. She said:
The Committee needs not only to examine what is in the Bill, but what is not in the Bill. It has become clear that a majority of Canadians, including four former Prime Ministers, are deeply concerned that there is no proposal in Bill C-51 to strengthen oversight and review of national security agencies. That critical issue cannot be considered in any meaningful way under this truncated schedule.
Next, I'd like to quote from the general counsel and executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Again, these are people communicating with us exactly on what we're discussing in this committee today. These are not general comments for or against the bill; these are comments about the process which we're about to embark on. Sukanya Pillay said:
This is the most significant overhaul of Canadian laws dealing with national security since 2001. At that time there were 19 sessions in Committee allowing 80 expert witnesses to be heard. It has come forward without any accompanying review of existing laws, policies, and resources and an analysis of where they fall short. To allow such little time for scrutiny of its provisions runs counter to the expectation Canadians have that their elected representatives will consider legislation carefully before it is adopted.
Ziyaad Mia from the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association said:
Already, lawyers across Canada have raised serious concerns about Bill C-51's compatibility with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and with the rule of law. Cutting back on the time for the Committee to study those concerns and hopefully rectify those deeply problematic aspects of the Bill leaves open instead the prospect of years of time-consuming and expensive court challenges after the fact.
Roch Tassé, national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, said:
Our coalition is made up of 41 organizations across the country. They come from many different sectors and have, over the course of many years, developed varied expertise in a range of issues with respect to national security and civil liberties. They are ready to share that input with MPs and have a legitimate expectation that they should be able to do so. Many will have no opportunity to do so with so little time on offer.
Nicole Filion, coordinator of the Ligue des droits et libertés, said:
Bill C-51 is complex and very technical legislation that proposes two entirely new statutes and extensive amendments to three others. Each of those should receive thorough consideration. Four two-hour sessions of Committee...will not even begin to offer MPs an opportunity to grapple with and understand its implications.
Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said:
Bill C-51 should be of concern to all Canadians as it has the potential to impact on all of our rights given its stunningly far-reaching definitions of what constitutes a threat to Canada’s security. As we have learned from past and recent experiences, without robust oversight, review and redress mechanisms security agencies have abused the powers ceded to them. Given the disproportionate impact of anti-terrorism legislation in recent years on Canadian Muslims, these new proposals are of particular interest in our community. Such limited time for study by the Committee offers scant opportunity for those views to be meaningfully shared with Parliamentarians.
This is just a sample of eight groups that represent literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are expressing their concern not just about the bill, but about what we're actually talking about here today: that this committee faces the prospect of not allowing Canadians who want to be heard to be heard by their Parliament.
One last person whom I wish to cite and for whom I have enormous respect is Grand Chief Stewart Phillip from the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. He issued a press release and I think it's important to the debate we're having today. He talked about the introduction of the bill and how it “will radically and dangerously expand the powers of Canada’s national security agencies and greatly infringe upon the rights of all citizens without making us any safer or secure.”
I will quote what he said further:
It is absolutely appalling that as Indigenous Peoples protecting our territories we may be faced with the many insidious, provocative and heavy-handed powers that are granted by this omnibus Bill C-51. The Harper Government has dramatically changed internal government practices, policymaking structures and decision-making processes to serve an explicit natural resources development agenda. We have witnessed the gutting of environmental legislation, clamp-down of scientific analysis and comprehensive surveillance programs of Indigenous and environmental opposition.
He concluded:
As an act of civil disobedience, I was arrested at Burnaby Mountain because I believe mega-projects, like Kinder Morgan and Enbridge pipelines, do not respect the Indigenous laws and inherent authority of Indigenous Peoples to protect their territories, land and waters from the very real potential and increased risk of oil spills and increased coast tanker traffic along our coast. I believe under the draconian measures of Bill C-51, I would be identified as a terrorist. Regardless, I will continue to do what is necessary to defend the collective birthright of our grandchildren.
Whether or not you agree with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip's analysis of the impact on indigenous people and indigenous rights, certainly, it is the obligation of this committee to make sure that voices like his are heard before the committee takes action on any such bill.
Quite often we hear things from the other side that imply we're naive about terrorism on this side of the table. Again and again we have assured people that we do believe this is a serious and urgent problem, and as I said, we have agreed that the hearings should commence when we come back from our break. We have agreed that the government's original deadline can be met, but we believe it requires much more time in this committee than the Conservatives seem willing to put in. I'm sorry but I can't find the explanation for why. What is the obstacle? What is the reason for refusing to hear people who so clearly want to make their voices heard in this Parliament?
I often reflect on my own experience working in conflict zones where terrorism was a problem. I was in East Timor in 1999 as the co-chair of the international human rights observer mission for the independence referendum, where militias that had been armed by the Indonesian government carried out terror attacks on an almost daily basis. In the end, after the Timorese population refused to be intimidated, they did in fact vote at a rate of 80% for independence, but the result was terror attacks which destroyed the entire infrastructure of the country, and killed more than 1,500 people. I was present and saw that take place. I can tell you that what I learned from that, first of all, is that terrorism doesn't have to win, and second, that what was most effective in combatting terrorism was practical hard work by front-line policing agencies.
I also served as chair of a peace-building project between Christians and Muslims in Ambon in Indonesia. When we arrived in that community, both sides were using terror against the other side. We had a series of over 100 bombing attacks. Eventually—I say that somewhat jokingly, although it's a serious topic; our peacekeeping project was a bit premature—on a particular day, the main market in town where my partner had just gone, was bombed. Fortunately, he was late, and therefore he wasn't present. But that was the day we were withdrawn from Ambon. I've seen the effects of this kind of terror up close and personally.
I served for more than four months in Afghanistan working for Amnesty International as a human rights observer in a period when the Taliban was carrying out very odious attacks on the civilian population, including on women and teachers.
My final experience with this, my most recent experience other than the one we all faced here on Parliament Hill, was in the Philippines in 2010. I served as an election observer in Muslim Mindanao which has been an area of the Philippines riven by terror attacks and separatist movements using terror against the population. On that day, a young woman was shot and killed at the polling place where I was.
So I will not have the other side saying that I don't know anything about terrorism, that I don't take terrorism seriously. I have extensive personal experience of the damage that terror does, and I take this very seriously.
What I'm most concerned about in this bill—and I am somewhat different from some of my colleagues—is that we do what's most effective in meeting terrorism, and that we not do things which will be ineffective and, in fact, interfere with our ability to meet the terrorist threats that we face.
I've used the analogy again and again that police will tell you that finding a terrorist is like finding a needle in a haystack. I always say, let's not do things that will add extra hay to that stack. Let's not cast the net so broadly that we don't have the resources to ferret out the real terrorist threats from all those people who are inadvertently caught up in those nets.
I think it's extremely important that we hear from Canadians about the aspects of this bill that concern them. That's our obligation as members of Parliament. That's why we have a hearing process.
Again, I don't understand, if we're going to talk about each other's negotiating positions, what the obstacle is to the government in accepting the number of hearings we're asking for, so that people who have already contacted us and said they wanted to appear have the opportunity to present their views on this bill.
Earlier Mr. Norlock said, I guess as somewhat complimentary, that we have in the past worked cooperatively in this committee and that he's disappointed that we're not doing that now. I would assert that I'm making every effort to do so. When the government tells me that its primary interests are in starting these hearings when we come back from the break, I say yes to that. When they say that this is urgent enough that we must complete this process by the end of March, I say yes to that—these are major concessions from an opposition party—but again, only on the condition that we do the hearings we need to do.
What are the results of not doing an adequate set of hearings? If we think about what we might hear from a former Supreme Court justice, we might have the expertise to point out potential problems in the law. This could allow us to make amendments that would avoid endless future litigation and that just might—and these are not outlandish suggestions—point to things in the bill, which I think exist, that actually make it more difficult to prosecute the real terrorists.
We know that many have raised the issue, which I continue to raise, that expanding the role of CSIS, with its regime of keeping confidential both its staff and its informants, means that quite often the information they discover would not be available for criminal prosecutions. I firmly believe that we may be making a big mistake in assigning a larger role to CSIS of the kind that is contemplated in this bill.
Mr. Norlock also talked about his goal being to keep the country as safe as he can and to do everything he can to do that. That's obvious; no one around this table has any other agenda.
We come to limits on disruptive activities. Again, this is the power that's being handed to CSIS, which we learned was very dangerous from the McDonald commission which resulted in the establishment of CSIS. It's the broad definition.
The government likes to say that the ordinary Canadian will understand if we have to disrupt a terrorist act that's about to take place that it is necessary. Of course it is, and it's allowed. But this bill, as I read it, says that CSIS can undertake disruptive activities for threats to the economic or financial security of the country or threats to critical infrastructure.
This raises the issue that Chief Stewart Phillip raised in his press release. How far does the disruptive power of CSIS go?
The government likes to say that there's a clause in the bill that disrupts “lawful” protest. Well, that's a change. The initial terrorism legislation doesn't have the word “lawful” in it. There is an exemption in the original terrorist legislation for dissent; it doesn't say “lawful” dissent.
That raises the question, as Chief Stewart Phillip did, what about people who are technically in violation of a court injunction when they're protesting against a pipeline, which is a piece of infrastructure? They weren't acting strictly legally, because they were technically in violation of that injunction, although the court chose to take no action in the end. Does that make them subject to disruptive activities? Does it make them subject to the information-sharing parts of this bill?
I would like to have those who feel that they're being affected by this bill come here and talk to us about those concerns, and I would like to hear the legal experts who can give us the technical advice we need to know whether these things are actually possible.
Mr. Norlock raised the two unfortunate incidents, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and here in Ottawa, in October. He says he doesn't want to comment on them because the investigations are incomplete. That is something I agree with him on completely.
It is very difficult for us to know how this bill might have affected or prevented those incidents when we do not yet have complete reports on those incidents. We have lots of speculation about what motivated the perpetrators in both cases, and I always try to keep from mentioning the names of perpetrators just in case their motivation was fame. I think it's important that if we are proceeding with a bill like this, we have some idea whether it would actually help meet the real threats we face.
Mr. Payne pointed out quite rightfully that the threat is evolving, so I would like to have sufficient time to have those experts on threats here to talk to us about how things are evolving and whether this bill meets the needs of dealing with those threats. Also, as Mr. Payne raised the example of the arrests around the threats to trains heading to New York, I would like to hear whether we actually have gaps there. We were able to arrest the people who were planning an attack on the train. Again, Mr. Payne concluded by saying that we want to stop terrorism where we can, using all the resources we need. I wouldn't disagree with that, but what we need to do is make sure that we get this right.
I have some concerns remaining about this bill, and I think they're serious concerns. As I said, most of mine are on effectiveness grounds. If you look at the bill, on page 51 for those who are following along at home, clause 44, proposed subsection 21.1(3) indicates what can be done in terms of disruption. Here is what the bill actually says. It says that CSIS is authorized:
(a) to enter any place or open or obtain access to any thing; (b) to search for, remove or return, or examine, take extracts from or make copies of or record in any other manner the information, record, document or thing; (c) to install, maintain or remove any thing; or (d) to do any other thing that is reasonably necessary to take those measures.
This requires a warrant. This is where a warrant is clearly required, but the difference, as I've said before here, is that this is a warrant for secret activities by CSIS, which have no active oversight, and this matter does not come back to the court for oversight of what was done with the warrant. That's the difference from a warrant in a criminal case, which will eventually be examined, if not by the judge who issued it then by another judge competent in the criminal law, to see whether the use of that warrant met the standards of the charter and the requirements that were specified in that warrant.
I find that section a concern because it doesn't have that active oversight.
Just before that, on page 49, the bill talks about “prohibited conduct”. I'm glad it has these prohibitions in clause 42, proposed section 12.2, and I want to read those out because, again, I find them kind of disturbing, because if these are the only things prohibited—