Public Safety Committee on March 12th, 2015

[Prof. Craig Forcese]

I can only report what it is that I've asked counterpart colleagues in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States when I posed the question whether their domestic security intelligence organizations have powers of disruption, and whether those powers of disruption are permitted to supersede either their domestic law or their constitutional rights. The answer from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom was no.

The closest analogy that an Australian colleague was able to point to was a new power that the Australian equivalent to CSIS has to delete material from a computer pursuant to warrant.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Roach, do you have something to add?

[Prof. Kent Roach]

I would also add that the Australian intelligence agency has powers to question people under warrant, but those are highly circumscribed.

One of our concerns with the preventive arrest provision, which I recognize is about the police, is that there is nothing in Bill C-51 that regulates what happens to the person when they are detained on reasonable suspicion, potentially for as long as seven days. I think we could actually learn something from our Australian colleagues with respect to regulating detention.

[Prof. Craig Forcese]

I'll just add that the Australian security service's powers to detain are tied to its intelligence-gathering mandate. It is not a power to reduce threats; it is a power they have to interrogate for the purposes of gathering intelligence.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Roach, you have done a lot of work on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so I would like to ask you questions that have more to do with the constitutional aspect.

This morning, a witness said that the new warrants given to CSIS would be unconstitutional. Do you have any particular concerns about these new warrants? Do you think they violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Are they outright unconstitutional?

[Prof. Kent Roach]

I think that there is certainly a high risk of a charter challenge. As we said, this is not a typical warrant. A warrant is granted by a judge to avoid a charter violation, whereas the CSIS warrant could authorize a charter violation, so we have an open-ended authorization for the violation of any charter right. To me, that may be very difficult to justify under the charter. We really are not being honest with the public in prescribing by law what charter rights we're talking about.

My own view is that the first charter right that will be violated by one of these warrants is the section 6 right of citizens of Canada to leave or to come back to Canada. We could be having a debate, as they have had in the U.K., about whether reasonable and proportional limits should be placed on that right, but that's a very different and more specific debate than saying to Federal Court judges that they can authorize any violation of the charter.

Obviously, the Federal Court will take a hard look at this, but we also have to remember that there is no appeal from their decision. This idea that judges would pre-authorize violations of the charter is totally novel. I'm not aware of any other provision that allows for that, and I do think it could be challenged under the charter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

That's fine. Thank you very much.

We've gone through our first round of questioning and with just two minutes left, the chair will actually suspend so that we can have a change of witnesses, rather than getting into just one minute of questioning.

On behalf of the entire committee, Mr. Forcese, Mr. Roach, Mr. O'Rourke, thank you very kindly for attending today and for offering your contribution.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, welcome to the second hour of discussion and presentation today on Bill C-51. Similar to the way we did things in the first hour, our witnesses will have an opportunity to present for up to 10 minutes. Gentlemen, substantially shorter presentations would be preferable so the committee could have more time.

We welcome here today from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, Ihsaan Gardee, the executive director; from Amnesty International, Alex Neve, the secretary general; and as an individual, Elliot Tepper, a professor from Carleton University.

Welcome, gentlemen, to this committee.

We will start off with Mr. Gardee.

[Ihsaan Gardee, Executive Director, National Council of Canadian Muslims]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear again before you about the proposed legislation, Bill C-51. Our written submission will be provided to the committee in short order, by March 23, as per my instructions from the clerk.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims is an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization that is a leading voice for Muslim civic engagement and the promotion of human rights. Our mandate is to protect the human rights and civil liberties of Canadian Muslims, build mutual understanding between communities, and confront Islamophobia. We work to achieve this mission through community education and outreach, media engagement, anti-discrimination action, public advocacy, and partnering with other social justice and public interest organizations.

We are mindful of the increased and necessary emphasis on public safety and national security in response to the real threat of terrorism, as well as the disturbing appeal of criminal violence to some disaffected youth, which has emerged over the last 15 years. Canadian Muslims, like our fellow citizens, are unequivocally committed to this country's security. We're just as likely as anyone else to be harmed by terrorism.

Canadian Muslims believe that it is both a civic and a religious duty to respect the rule of law. We thrive when Canadian society as a whole thrives. We also enjoy freedom as much as other Canadians do. We believe that all Canadians deserve to be equally free and to enjoy all their freedoms with the same expectation of privacy and respect, yet when Canadian Muslims today exercise basic freedoms, such as working, associating with friends, attending a religious service, or giving to charity, we fear who is watching, who is tracking, and what assumptions are being made.

Over-enforcement and overbroad laws actually make some people, oftentimes the most vulnerable people, feel less secure, not more secure. Many Canadian Muslims are therefore concerned that in the quest to assure security, the very freedoms enshrined in the charter will be undermined. Overreaction and fear should not dictate public policy and legislation.

This committee has heard and will hear numerous concerns raised about the potential erosion of civil liberties and privacy rights resulting from this bill. We share those reservations brought forward by civil society partners, such as the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, and Amnesty International Canada, and by legal experts, including professors Kent Roach and Craig Forcese, to name a few.

Like all Canadians, we care about freedom and privacy, and we're concerned about the erosion of important liberal democratic values in our society. The temptation to create more powers of enforcement and arrest to make the general population feel safer can be appealing, but this is a slippery slope in a liberal democracy. You can't simply spy and arrest your way out of this problem. It takes more than laws, even good ones, to effectively address the contemporary challenges to national security, that is, if the goal is to be effective, not simply to appear to be doing something for show.

This law has more flash than bite when it comes to creating more useful tools to combat threats to national security. The real bite, in fact, lies in the risks it poses to the civil liberties of Canadians. In particular, this new legislation will further undermine the equality rights of Canadian Muslims and other groups defined and protected under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I will spend the remainder of my time walking you through how the discriminatory effects transpire.

We already know that members of Canadian Muslim communities have paid a higher price for national security. The Arar inquiry report warned as follows: “Given the tendency thus far of focusing national security investigations on members of the Arab and Muslim communities, the potential for infringement on the human rights of innocent Canadians within these groups is higher.”

Since 9/11 the Muslim community has been hypervisible and under a microscope. This has had many negative consequences, caused by the interplay of Muslim hypervisibility and the existence of negative stereotyping and discrimination within Canadian society. Every time Islam or Muslims are associated with violence or threats to Canadian society, the social impact of these negative associations is felt, whether by way of acts of violence or spikes in hate and other disparaging speech, or countless other manifestations of anti-Muslim bias.

As a result of these social dynamics, Canadian Muslims pay a higher cost for the benefit of being protected by national security measures. The disturbing and well-known cases of Canadians such as Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati, Muayyed Nureddin, Abousfian Abdelrazik, and most recently Benamar Benatta, speak to the disproportionate cost and the extant pitfalls associated with administering a national security regime prone to error and abuse.

The lack of effective oversight over security agencies failed to prevent or remedy the pain and suffering these men and their families suffered unjustly. The worst part about it for the wrongly accused terrorist is that the suspicion never really goes away. These men and many others live forever with the stigma of having been a suspected terrorist, regardless of how false that suspicion may be.

As respected retired justice Dennis O'Connor highlighted in the Arar inquiry report, “The impact on an individual’s reputation of being called a terrorist in the national media is severe. As I have stated elsewhere, labels, even unfair and inaccurate ones, have a tendency to stick.”

We know for a fact that our law enforcement agencies, despite the best intentions of many who work for them, have been guilty of abusing their powers. We need to look no further than the previous cases mentioned to understand the devastating impact of increased security powers with ineffective oversight.

If Bill C-51 is accepted as is, expanding powers without any substantive increase in independent oversight of our security agencies, the risks of rights violations increase not only for Canadian Muslims, but also for other Canadian communities and groups that may be subject to increased and unjust security scrutiny, including but not limited to political, environmental, or equality-seeking groups.

National security is not enhanced when vulnerable communities of Canadians are made to feel less secure by overreaching law enforcement, especially when avenues for the redress of abuses and errors remain ineffective.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadians the right to move and travel freely. At NCCM we regularly hear from Canadians who are wrongly designated on no-fly lists without any possibility of appeal or recourse. This legislation does nothing to ensure the freedom to fly of wrongly designated Canadians. Too many Canadian Muslims have essentially been banned from international travel, considered to be too dangerous to fly. This humiliation comes at great personal and material costs to those affected.

This legislation antagonizes Canadians rather than investing in them. As former chair of the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence, Senator Colin Kenny, recently wrote, in talking about how to most effectively combat the threat of violent extremism:

A robust counter-terrorism response isn’t always the ideal approach, either. If possible, it’s safer, faster and less expensive to dissuade at-risk individuals from going further down the path of extremism before they commit a crime. This dissuasion is often more effectively delivered by people within their communities.

Canadian Muslim communities across the country have indeed been at the forefront in confronting radicalization and continue to work to address this through various projects and initiatives, including for example, the OWN IT Conference held in Calgary last year, the United Against Terrorism guide produced by the Islamic Social Services Association in conjunction with the NCCM, and the Hayat Canada project started by Christianne Boudreau, the mother of a Canadian who was tragically radicalized to criminal violence and was killed overseas.

Challenging this phenomenon is a Canadian issue, not a Muslim issue alone. To date the work done has been more of a patchwork rather than a coordinated and supported national effort that recognizes the multi-faceted nature of this problem. The tireless and good faith efforts of communities and community leaders in addressing the threat of radicalization should be supported not only financially, but also by way of specialized resource support. To date, communities have navigated this complex issue with little or no expertise in areas like counselling, deradicalization, social media messaging, and so forth.

Furthermore, it must be stated that the broad definitions found in this bill have the potential to cast a chill over political and other forms of expression in this country, and this may hamper the efforts of Canadian Muslim groups to effectively deliberate over difficult and challenging issues within their communities in the best way required to combat radicalization and misinformation.

The language of Bill C-51 is so broad it will almost certainly cast a chill over members of our community, many of whom have fled authoritarian regimes where people are often punished for their opinions. Rather than risk being accused of extremism, individuals will stay quiet, and more distressing, rather than debating opposing views and risking being associated with tainted individuals, those who could be on the vanguard of deradicalization will be scared into silence. The silencing effect will be damaging to our values of openness, free exchange of ideas, and free association.

We respectfully urge this committee to seriously reconsider passing a bill that may, in fact, be counterproductive to and undermine the efforts of those working on the front lines to address the phenomenon of radicalization.

In closing, the NCCM, an independent and mainstream civil liberties and advocacy organization, has been at the forefront in affirming that national security and human rights are not mutually exclusive; rather, they share a symbiotic relationship: the loss of one signals the loss of the other.

They say that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. That said, the rife and serious shortcomings proposed in Bill C-51, combined with the lack of any new and concomitant increases in robust and comprehensive oversight, review, and redress mechanisms for our security agencies invite similar abuses of power as we have already seen in the recent past.

In our view, Bill C-51 in its present form is not the answer to the pressing national security questions facing our country. Rather, it is a perilous exercise in law-making that will have repercussions on Canadians for several years and that will lead to the further stigmatization of Canadian Muslim communities.

Any and all concerns put forth by my colleagues about this bill are doubly concerning for communities who know first-hand how faulty laws can impact them and their families.

Subject to your questions, those are my submissions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gardee.

We will now go to our next individual, from Amnesty International, Mr. Alex Neve. You have the floor, sir.

[Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada, Amnesty International]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and good evening members of the committee.

I welcome the opportunity to be here. We want to note that I'm here on behalf of both branches of Amnesty International here in Canada, English speaking and francophone, and that represents well over 80,000 members of our organization across the country.

I come fresh from a 10-day national speaking tour that I've just wrapped up and which has taken me through Halifax, Toronto, Regina, Saskatoon, and Calgary. I've almost come straight from the airport on my return from Regina. I want to share with you, and it won't be a surprise, that Bill C-51 came up extensively and intensively at every single turn. Hundreds of women, men, and young people were sharing with me their questions, their concerns, their bafflement, their worries, and at times their fears about this legislation. I feel in some respects that I'm here as their emissary.

I feel compelled to express my grave disappointment and our organization's grave disappointment. There are many important organizations and experts who are at this stage not scheduled to appear before you, and it's almost hard to believe that these include organizations and experts such as the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Privacy Commissioner, and individuals who have served as immigration security certificate special advocates in this country.

Amnesty International implores you to open up more time for hearings and study to hear those important witnesses. Canadians expect that of Parliament and you deserve to be able to draw upon their rich expertise.

Amnesty International has worked extensively in the area of national security and human rights in Canada and around the world for decades. That work is grounded in three fundamental principles.

First, acts of terrorism are a serious concern from a human rights perspective. Governments are not only permitted or allowed to prevent and respond to terrorist threats and attacks, but they also have a binding human rights obligation to do so.

Second, efforts to prevent and respond to terrorism must at all times comply with the requirements of international human rights law, including such important rights as the right to life, prohibitions on torture and discrimination, safeguards against arbitrary arrest and unlawful imprisonment, fair trial guarantees, and the freedoms of expression, association, assembly, and religion.

Third, ensuring that national security is grounded in full regard for human rights is also essential from a national security perspective. Legislating, ordering, allowing, or taking advantage of human rights violations in the name of security betrays that very goal. It only creates more victims, more marginalized communities, more grievances, and greater divisions, all of which serve to foment greater insecurity.

In our assessment Bill C-51 contains numerous provisions that violate and undermine Canada's international human rights obligations. They are so numerous and serious that there are entire provisions of the bill that should be withdrawn and replaced only with proposals that ensure international human rights compliance as a starting point.

Allow me to briefly highlight our major areas of concern both with respect to what is in the bill and what is not.

I want first to highlight what is in the bill, and four concerns, very briefly. There are others in our brief.

First, we are troubled by the expansive definition of “threats to the security of Canada” that serves as the basis of the new information sharing regime and CSIS' threat reduction powers. Among the many concerns—and I know you've heard it—is the fact that those definitions only exclude protest activities that are deemed to be lawful. This risks imperiling an extensive range of protest activity that may not be lawful in the sense of having received advance permission, but is nonetheless not criminal. It's protected by the charter and should not be conflated with terrorism and other threats to national security.

Second, CSIS' threat reduction powers concern us greatly because these potentially coercive, intrusive, and physical powers are entrusted to an agency that is not a law enforcement force and lacks the specific training, command structures, and public transparency expected of officials with powers of this nature. Thus, great care is needed. The list of prohibited activities in the exercise of these CSIS powers fails to protect a long list of international human rights, including uncertainty about psychological torture, as well as rights associated with arrest, imprisonment, privacy rights, freedom of expression, and others.

We are stunned that the bill contemplates the possibility that Federal Court judges would be expected to issue warrants in secret hearings authorizing CSIS officers to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We are further concerned that in issuing warrants that authorize CSIS activities outside Canada, judges are instructed to disregard the law in the countries in which those agents will be operating.

Third, the new criminal offence of promoting and advocating the commission of terrorism offences in general concerns us, because it does not conform to the international requirement that limits to freedom of expression must be narrowly and precisely described and be directed to addressing a specific and direct concern.

We do have permissible limits on free expression in Canadian law with respect to such recognized offences as inciting, threatening, and counselling the commission of particular terrorism-related offences in the Criminal Code. There is anything but precision about what the words “in general” mean. They, of course, are not defined in the bill. This provision will inevitably violate free expression. It will also much more extensively cast a chill over expression. Some may be expression we would find offensive, disturbing, or even sinister; much will also be expression that engages in debate, asks questions and seeks answers. Beyond the forms of expression already criminalized in Canadian law, all should be allowed.

Fourth, the expansion of detention without charge powers under a recognizance with conditions is of concern to us, because liberty rights must be scrupulously protected, most essentially by ensuring that arrest is on the basis of intent to lay a recognized criminal charge, and that ongoing detention is connected to bringing someone to a prompt trial.

Reducing the threshold of suspicion for an arrest without charges from “will” to “may” be carried out, and the reduction of the assessment of the need for the arrest from being “necessary” to prevent terrorist activity to being “likely” to prevent it is of concern, as is increasing the potential length of arrest without charges from three days to seven. The UN Human Rights Committee has said that this sort of security detention should be used only to address a “present, direct and imperative threat” which “cannot be addressed by alternative measures”. These changes run counter to those UN standards.

The proposed new information sharing regime concerns us as well, because while we agree that information sharing is absolutely necessary in dealing with security threats, it also has a clear potential to violate human rights, most obviously, privacy rights. We also know that sharing information that has been inaccurate, irrelevant, unfounded, and inflammatory has led to very serious human rights violations, including torture. That has been documented in two judicial inquiries.

This means that the permissible reasons for sharing information widely must be tightly and carefully limited. The stunningly vast list we see in Bill C-51 with terrorism appearing only at number 4 on the list is anything but. That means also putting in place rigorous mechanisms and safeguards to ensure the accuracy and relevance of information that's being shared, as was recommended in the Arar inquiry is not here.

I have a couple of brief words about matters that are not in the bill.

First, we are deeply troubled that these reforms are not accompanied by a proposal to put in place a dramatically improved system of effective review and robust oversight of Canada's national security agencies. We've known of the need to move in that direction for a decade now, coming out of the Maher Arar inquiry. We've also had various important provisions for meaningful parliamentary oversight. We urge that these reforms, or any national security reforms, not go ahead without a parallel move to address Canada's national security review and oversight gap.

Second, numerous cases of Canadians who in the past have experienced national security related human rights violations still await answers and justice. We must deal with the past before moving ahead with new changes.

Third, it is time to legislate a human rights framework that will apply to all aspects of Canada's national security laws and explicitly guide the activities of all agencies and departments involved in national security. We all know the mantra that security and human rights go hand in hand. We believe it's time to put that clearly in Canadian law so that it actually will be implemented.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Neve.

Our third and final presenter is Mr. Tepper. You have the floor, sir.

[Dr. Elliot Tepper, Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you. The final presenter of a very long day for everyone, I'm sure.

I want to thank you, first of all, for the invitation to be here. It is truly an honour to be before this committee.

I will just introduce myself a bit more, because I think I bring a different perspective, and I've been asked because of having that different perspective from many of the other witnesses you're hearing from.

I've been a professor of international relations and political science at Carleton for some decades, and I've lived and worked in a number of countries whose names might come before this committee, so I bring a broad comparative politics perspective, and I have been following security issues for a very long time.

Also, some of my comments really are not as much directed to this very knowledgeable committee, but to the fact that there has been a lot of public discourse, which I very much welcome, surrounding Bill C-51.

This committee has more detailed knowledge, more expertise, and more background than the general public, so I hope to bring a perspective, then, to the record which otherwise might tend to get lost.... I'm tempted to say, mixing horribly some metaphors and some sayings, while we very much welcome and need the kind of detail that we are receiving from a wide variety of perspectives, there is some danger of getting lost in the weeds.

Bill C-51 is the most important national security legislation since the 9/11 era. My central message is that whatever the issues with the bill—and this evening we've heard a number of them, and you've been hearing them for some days already, and you will further after today—we need to remember the context.

Bill C-51 is designed for the post-9/11 era. It's a new legislation for a new era in terms of security threats. While it's understandable that various provisions of the legislation attract attention, we need to keep our focus on the fundamental purpose and the fundamental challenge of combatting emerging types of terrorism.

The central test of any legislation is why we need it and what difference it would make if we didn't have it, and there have actually been suggestions that we shouldn't in this particular case.

The short answer is the legislation is needed because it's a modernization of our security infrastructure, and we would be less secure if we did not have a legal update to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

The bill provides strengthened legal techniques for combatting terrorism in light of an enhanced global threat. This is legislation to prepare us for what I'm calling the transnational terrorism in the digital age, a new era.

Broadly speaking, our existing security legislation was designed to meet the types of terrorist challenges of previous eras, such as the PLO, al Qaeda, and ethnic irredentism.

We should recall that the worst terrorism in Canadian history, and we've heard something of this tonight, remains the bombing of Air India Flight 182. Indeed, the roots of the information sharing and passenger protection parts of the act can be traced back to the inquiry after that disaster.

Also, today the challenges include lone wolf attacks, returning trained terrorists, and the role of the Internet. We have certainly felt in Canada the impact of lone wolf attacks, self-radicalized individuals acting or preparing to act. We are becoming familiar with the role of the Internet on radicalization, recruitment, and propaganda, propagation of terror.

Bill C-51 is sparking exactly the kind of debate Canada requires, and this committee is hearing. I'm a lifetime educator, and I'm sorry we've had to have incidents to lead to this debate, but all democratic societies struggle to find the correct balance between freedom and security. The attacks in Quebec and here on Parliament Hill force us to face what others have faced before. Where are we as a society going to strike the balance in the face of terrorist attacks? Indeed, we are very late to this debate. Our insulation and good fortunes, however, have run out.

People of good will, and I am including in this legislators and my fellow panellists, legitimately debate where that balance should be, how we maintain a sense of individual and collective freedom while being sheltered from threats to that freedom. We've already heard that this is a false dichotomy. It's a question of how we handle where that balance lies.

The debate in Canada, of course, is now in its culmination. There's a bill on the table; there's a vote to follow, and this bill will set the parameters of our security apparatus in the new security era.

I will conclude with a few reminders and a few suggestions.

Regarding reminders, first is that, as important as this bill is, it is intended to fill just one niche in our overall response to the changing global environment. There are other dimensions of cybersecurity, intelligence gathering, and military preparedness. Another is that this bill and related legislation began before the attacks in Quebec and on Parliament Hill. However, as bad as those attacks were, we all need to ponder, particularly when we sit here with parliamentarians before us, how much worse those attacks could have been. They were by amateurs, one using an automobile as a lethal weapon, and the other an old hunting rifle. It must haunt many of the people in this room, our elected members of all parties, that the results could have been much worse had the attack been by a small squad of trained professionals who had surveyed their target and attacked with modern weapons. I know that it haunts me.

In conclusion, I have a few suggestions about the present and the future of Canada's legal security framework.

About the present, critiques of this pending legislation have come from many sides and have included trenchant comments tonight on the two panels we've had. I'm sure this committee will proceed on this bill as on all others, by analyzing the evidence and attempting to achieve consensus before the bill becomes law. I have two suggestions. Where consensus can be achieved within this committee, the committee may recommend that, in regard to the bill, first, constitutional issues, and they've been raised, may be referred directly to the Supreme Court of Canada under section 53 of the Supreme Court Act. It would be better to clarify agreed-upon constitutional issues in advance of litigation being brought by citizens at a much later date, when redress, if any, would be complicated, while perhaps compromising our security while they're being litigated. Also, with regard to this bill, amendments that improve the bill to all parties' satisfaction, or at least with minimal consensus, would strengthen the bill as well as generate wider acceptance.

In regard to the future, this standing committee's task, of course, will not be over. With the passage of the bill, the committee may have an ongoing role in monitoring, first, the law of unintended consequences. Once the bill has passed, over time unexpected results are likely to emerge. This bill clearly does chart unexplored areas in a variety of ways. In terms of an ongoing role for the future, it may also be required to monitor the law of unforeseen circumstances. This act, and the entire security infrastructure, will need to be revisited as we enter deeper into the era of transnational terrorism in the digital age. Unfortunately, what we have seen around us is likely to be just the beginning of a long-term requirement for new policy responses to protect our freedoms and security. The conditions leading to emerging security challenges are part of a historic global transformation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Tepper.

We will now go to our rounds of questioning. We will have six minutes.

We will start with Ms. Ablonczy, please.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you to all of you who came and shared your perspective with us. We're enriched by your insights. I know you come from different backgrounds, so that is very helpful.

Mr. Gardee, I'd like to start with you, because I think Canadians are hoping that moderate Muslims—and the majority of Muslims in Canada are moderate Muslims—will join and raise their voices against jihadism, jihadi terrorism, because, as you rightly say, that is a real threat here in Canada. I think your perspective on partnering with others in society in addressing the issue of the radicalization of our young people would be very welcome.

The question I have for you, though, will not surprise you, because as you know, there's a continuing series of allegations about your organization and its ties to your American counterpart. Why does this matter? It matters, as you know again, because your American counterpart has often supported radical views and publicly endorsed Islamist terrorist groups, including Hamas.

I'm sure you're familiar with some of these allegations, and I'm sure you're familiar with many more, but I'll put a couple on the record.

As you know, David Harris, who is a counterterrorism expert and director of the international terrorist intelligence program at Insignis Strategic Research, testified before a Senate committee in the U.S. saying that your organization was really the Canadian wing of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Your own director, your own leader, Sheema Khan, swore in an affidavit in the Ontario Supreme Court in 2003 saying that your organization was under the direction and control of the American organization. Point de Bascule, a Quebec-based Islamist watch group, details a chronology of an operating relationship between a Hamas front group and your organization.

As you also know, two of your board members, who were board members for over a decade, were also on the board of the Muslim Association of Canada, and while they were on the board, the Muslim Association of Canada put out a news release openly endorsing Hamas. This was a year after Hamas had been listed by the Government of Canada as a terrorist organization.

I think it's fair to give you an opportunity to address these troubling allegations, because in order to work together, there needs to be satisfaction that this can't be a half-hearted battle against terrorism.

Where do you stand in light of these allegations?

[Ihsaan Gardee]

Thank you very much for your question, Ms. Ablonczy.

First and foremost, I'll say on the record that NCCM has condemned violent terrorism and extremism in all of its forms regardless of who perpetrates it for whatever reason.

However, the premise of your question is false and is entirely based on innuendo and misinformation. The NCCM is an independent and non-profit grassroots Canadian Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization that has a robust and public track record spanning 14 years, 15 shortly, of anti-extremism work, promoting civic engagement, and defending fundamental rights.

These are precisely the types of slanderous statements that have resulted in litigation that is currently ongoing. The NCCM is confident that the courts will provide the necessary clarity on these points to ensure that they are never repeated again. The NCCM, as you know, is currently suing the Prime Minister's Office for defamation because of false statements made against our organization on the basis of innuendo and misinformation. We have every confidence that the outcome will be favourable to the NCCM.

Furthermore, the NCCM is not going to submit to a litmus test of loyalty used against Canadian Muslims and their institutions which underlies such offensive questions. We are here today to answer questions about Bill C-51 and the real concerns of Canadians, including Canadian Muslims, about the impact of this far-reaching legislation.

McCarthyesque-type questions protected by parliamentary privilege are unbecoming of this committee.

Thank you.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I see you were prepared for the question, as I thought you might be.

I think Canadians would be interested in knowing, just very briefly, the bottom line in how you believe Canadian youth can be protected from being drawn into jihadi terrorism.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Go ahead very briefly, Mr. Gardee.

[Ihsaan Gardee]

In terms of how Canadian youth, and I would say all vulnerable Canadians, can be protected against the ideology of violent extremism—because I think we've seen that there's no particular profile of an individual who is more or less susceptible to radicalization, when we have individuals who were born here and individuals who are at different stages of their lives.... I think it's important to recognize that this is a complex issue. As such, it is going to require a multi-pronged, short-, medium-, and long-term strategy in order to be effectively dealt with. It's going to require assistance and input from all stakeholders, including government, security agencies, Muslim communities across Canada, and others.

We've heard in the case of Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau that there were issues of previous mental instability. Drug use has been mentioned. All of these social services providers, drug advisers, and those kinds of inputs from various aspects of society are going to be required, because as I said earlier, this is not something the Muslim community can deal with on its own.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gardee.

Certainly we're over time. We will go now to Mr. Scott, please, for six minutes.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I thank all the witnesses.

Mr. Gardee, thank you for keeping your composure and your dignity. You were correct to point out that parliamentary privilege was behind those questions being put the way they were put, knowing that if they were said outside this room, there might be other consequences, so let's leave it at that.

You said at one point you can't simply spy and arrest your way out of this problem. I thought that was a really evocative way to think about things. You talked about the fear of Bill C-51 being counterproductive. Earlier witnesses talked about aspects of the legal dimensions of that. A couple of the things that professors Roach and Forcese have talked about is the worry about outreach chill. Wherever we are now with engagement between institutional authorities, whether it's the police or CSIS in this case, the fear is that this new offence of promoting terrorism offences in general might recklessly lead to somebody doing something that is itself terrorist, and would get in the way of what Christianne Boudreau in her efforts is calling “extreme dialogue”, where you are actually dealing with the alienation of individuals, dealing with anger, dealing with some of the reasons some youth in particular may have come to a certain point.

I've actually heard from police that they're concerned about the idea of a withdrawal and the fact that they'll no longer be welcomed into some communities.

Is anything of what I've said a concern that you have?

[Ihsaan Gardee]

Thank you for that question.

The idea of a chill and the idea of a sense of alienation are certainly matters of concern. In terms of how this threat is described, it's critical that we are discussing it. Our view is that it's important.

The language we use to talk about this issue is also incredibly important. Professor Errol Mendes recently wrote a piece about language. He said that calling them jihadis or whatever else gives them credibility and a legitimacy that they may actually crave and that could be used to attract others. Call them what they are, which is criminals, murderers, and thugs.

This is not about being politically correct. This is not about not wanting to call a cat a cat. This is about using terminology that accurately contextualizes the threat that we together face. As I mentioned, violent extremism, terrorism, affects all of us. Therefore, we all have to be a part of the solution, including Muslim communities.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Professor Tepper, the National Post editorial talked about concerns that it had, and I think those concerns were derived from speaking behind the scenes to security officials. The worry was that Internet chatter would begin to dry up on the basis of this new provision. Monitoring Internet chatter allows agencies to detect where there might be real threats and where efforts might be well invested in order to reach out and prevent threats by using, hopefully, the best and most effective measures.

Would you have any concerns along those lines if in fact it proved to be an evidentiary matter that the Internet chatter scene would begin to go silent and would have a counterproductive, almost blowback effect on the bill? Would you be concerned if that turned out to be true?

[Dr. Elliot Tepper]

This bill, of course, and the agencies it covers are by no means the only security-related agencies that Canada has to monitor Internet chatter. If the bill were enacted as is and became law and led to a drying up of chatter, perhaps it might be achieving some of its goals. I have no concern whatsoever that Internet chatter will ever dry up. It will just permutate and go someplace else.

I would like to add that Canada has in the public sphere and in my kind of sphere, the academic side, and the private sector as well very advanced techniques for monitoring and making good use of Internet monitoring quite apart from Bill C-51 that can be tapped by any agency in Canada or for that matter any committee of Parliament.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Neve, proposed section 9 of the information sharing act reads:

No civil proceedings lie against any person for their disclosure in good faith of information under this Act.

Is this of concern to you and for any particular reason?