Well, to go back to the security of Canada information sharing act, we recognize that the threat environment is changing. The UN Security Council has also recognized that. But we don't understand why you wouldn't plug in proposed section 2, in particular the terrorism-related mandate to section 2, with respect to information sharing.
Aspects of part 1 almost seem deliberately provocative, because it has such a broad definition. Concerning the exemption for lawful protest, as Professor Forcese said, we've been here. We had that debate in 2001, and Parliament recognized, after the bill had been introduced, that it was best to take the word “lawful”—the qualifier—out. I look at that and at the lack of regard for the Air India commission's recommendation about mandatory information sharing. When you think about how that is going to interact with Bill C-44, it means that any human source to whom CSIS has promised confidentiality will have an absolute veto about being a crown witness in a terrorism prosecution.
Professor Forcese and I are actually, on some of these matters, quite “law and order”. We think that those offences that Parliament enacted in 2013 are quite valuable offences, and we see the prosecutions that are ongoing in a number of our cities now. But we worry that the combination of Bill C-51 and Bill C-44 and all the new powers and privileges that they give to CSIS could have the unintended effect of making prosecutions more difficult and also affecting CSIS-RCMP cooperation. I say this as a person who for four years was director of research legal studies of the Air India commission.