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.