Evidence of meeting #60 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was terrorism.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Daryl Kramp
I'm sorry, Mr. Boisvert, but we only have about 30 seconds for a response.
President and Chief Executive Officer, I-Sec Integrated Strategies, As an Individual
You know that's very difficult for me.
President and Chief Executive Officer, I-Sec Integrated Strategies, As an Individual
Cyber-threats are one of those issues that's probably best addressed in terms of the issue of radicalization, because I really think that's apropos for Bill C-51.
Getting at the messages of hate is very, very important. I don't blame the Internet for radicalization, but I see it as being a very important vector for all that activity. The problem is that it's transglobal, it's amorphous, it is ubiquitous. The Internet is everywhere.
The bill will help to some degree when the content is stored within Canada. I think it will be a very effective tool to get that material off the Internet. When servers are parked in other parts of the world, in other jurisdictions, it would be very, very difficult. Then it will come down to perhaps some other active measures to get at that data—maybe take down that server—but then there's the complexity of action.
Conservative
NDP
Jean Rousseau NDP Compton—Stanstead, QC
Thank you very much.
I want to thank you for joining us and to let you know that it's an honour to hear from you, Ms. Nawaz.
It's really enlightening to hear you talk about family, social and environmental values shared by so many Canadians from coast to coast to coast. That's a perfect example of the multicultural Canada that many political, economic and cultural stakeholders have been dreaming of for decades.
We have heard from a number of witnesses since the attacks in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and here, on Parliament Hill. One of the key points raised was that radicalization had to be countered. It does appear that combatting radicalization is crucial to eradicating many of the problems associated with certain individuals.
You are a leader in your community. What is the current situation in your Muslim community in Saskatchewan? What tools do you need to help your community combat radicalization?
Author, As an Individual
Thank you. It's interesting that you asked that question.
In fact, today is Thursday, so on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday we will be holding a three-day event in our mosque in Saskatchewan.
One day, Saturday, is reserved for inviting non-Muslim members of our community, government, social services, the universities, and the school system to come and talk to us about their concerns about the Muslim community. We are providing them with a one-day full workshop in terms of educational components about the needs of the Muslim community and how we can both work together to cooperate and meet each other. We've organized a full-day workshop on Saturday.
On Sunday, we are holding a town hall for the Muslim community where we can get people to talk openly and honestly about any concerns that anybody, parents or community members, are having about their children. If anybody is hearing anything or is concerned or is worried about issues, we want them to have a safe space where they can talk and feel that they are being listened to. Our imam will be there; members of our community will be there. We are engaging our community in dialogue so that if there are people who are feeling unsafe or would like to talk about it, there will be space for that.
On Monday, we will be holding a press conference for the media, where we will have members of the RCMP, the Regina city police, the imam, the president of the Islamic association—who happens to be my brother-in-law—and the president of the Muslim students' association. The key members of the Muslim community together will be answering questions from the media about what Muslims in Saskatchewan are doing to make sure that our youth are not being radicalized and what actions we're doing to prevent that.
To me, these are the types of actions that Muslims are engaging in across the country that are valuable and more useful in terms of making our community feel like they are an integrated and vital part of the Canadian mosaic.
NDP
Jean Rousseau NDP Compton—Stanstead, QC
Are you in contact with other mosques across Canada? Do you know whether there will be any similar initiatives? My understanding is that practically all aspects of your community will be represented. Even the RCMP will be attending. So a lot of stakeholders will be discussing the situation openly.
Do you know whether other initiatives will be launched elsewhere in Canada?
Author, As an Individual
Yes, these initiatives are taking place in almost every mosque in every province across the country, and we are aware of all of them and are helping each other do these activities. This idea actually came to me from other communities who were doing that. We had never held these types of activities in Regina before. So we are coming forward and making sure that this dialogue and cooperation and instruction is happening and that we maintain an open forum of communication.
My husband is a psychiatrist, as I have mentioned, and he will be at the town hall as a panel member asking community members to talk to him if they have concerns about any things that are happening. We have noticed over the years a larger group of converts coming to our community than we've ever had before. They tend to come from communities that are more vulnerable. This is something new for us that we have not had to deal with in the past. They feel like they're trying to look for some purpose or for some meaning. Our mosques were not set up as social service entities. They were set up as places where our kids learned Arabic on the weekend and learned Islam.
Suddenly having this new group of people enter our communities is posing challenges, so what we are trying to do is to form social service community networks within our mosque system so that we can network with the wider social service networks in our provinces and our cities so that we can prevent tragedies such as we saw with the Ottawa shooter. He he had gone to a Canadian mosque and the mosque had recognized that there was a problem and had to change the locks to prevent him from disrupting the community. We realize that it was the best that mosque could have done at the time, and I do not blame the mosque, but we need to be more proactive. So if that ever happens to us again, we need to find those vulnerable individuals more help so these tragedies don't occur in the future.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Daryl Kramp
Thank you very much, Mr. Rousseau, but we're out of time. It goes so fast I realize.
Ms. James, you have the floor.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome to all of our witnesses.
I'm going to start with you, Mr. Boisvert, and some of your testimony. You've indicated that you have 30 years of experience. On this side of the table, we brought in a number of witnesses who have decades of experience dealing with terrorism, intelligence gathering, law enforcement, people who are really on the ground dealing with these various types of issues. The common thread we've heard from all of these witnesses is that the threat is real, that it's evolved. You've described it as so intense around the world, serious and complex.
You also noted that critics say this bill is dangerous and useless. I'm just trying to put into perspective, not their credibility but the fact that what we're dealing with is terrorism and that we are providing necessary tools to our national security agencies for gaps that have been identified in current legislation, things that have been identified that have become very clear after recent attacks around the world. We only have to turn on the six o'clock news to see more people who are trying to travel overseas, families being torn apart, another terror attack happening here, and people being killed in other countries around the world.
We had a witness in, Inspector Irwin, who talked very specifically about different sections of this bill. Moreover, he described the existing sections of the Criminal Code as being too restrictive today and said that we absolutely needed the new measures in Bill C-51. He talked about the information-sharing aspects as being absolutely crucial for law enforcement to deal with the threats we face today. He also talked about the importance of having safeguards and said in fact that this bill provides adequate safeguards.
We've had a number of individuals come in from different civil liberties groups, one of whom was the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, who are saying that the sky is falling, that this is simply going to target protesters. We heard those same arguments back at the time of the original CSIS Act 30 years ago. The BC Civil Liberties Association was around then too, with the same arguments. With the original Anti-terrorism Act, we heard the same attitude that the sky is falling. The sky didn't fall in 1984; it didn't fall in 2001; it will not fall again in 2015, at least not from this bill.
I just wanted to speak to you specifically about the CSIS disruption abilities and the requirement to get judicial authorization and approval. Right in the bill it clearly describes, with regard to the application, the criteria that are required. There's been some misinformation that someone can just simply walk off the street, get someone to sign a piece of paper, and off they go and widespread mass hysteria is going to happen. But it's very clear that there are a number of points, reasonable grounds, that the warrant requires. The measures to be taken have to be reasonable and proportional; the identity of the persons have to be disclosed, if known; the persons or classes of persons to whom the warrant is proposed have to be disclosed; and a general description of the place, the period not exceeding a number of days, has to be provided, and so on.
We've had at least two witnesses come in here, and perhaps they didn't fully read the bill and maybe did not fully understand it...but the judge has the ability to review that information and say no. Also, right within this bill, it says that the judge can apply any terms and conditions that the judge considers advisable in the public interest. So there are safeguards in there that the judge can place on a CSIS agent for whatever activities they're going to undertake.
Could you please go into that and explain that judicial process and how it's required and how the safeguards are there, and how it's really going to give the tools necessary for CSIS to be able to disrupt threats. As you said, things happen very quickly now. It's not like 30 years ago where you could build a case over long periods of time.
Thank you.
President and Chief Executive Officer, I-Sec Integrated Strategies, As an Individual
Certainly.
I take great offence to the common comment that's been made around the idea of the slippery slope and that now anybody who had an issue they'd like to protest will now become a target of the security establishment. I think you should not, as a group of individuals, flatter yourself to that degree. We never had enough time, when I was the director general of counterterrorism or as the assistant director of intelligence, to do more than the top crust of those in the layer of the red, high-risk, high probability zone. That meant that we had no time to even consider looking at any lesser evils that were emerging out there. I hate to think about what my former colleagues are facing today.
The second part is that lawful advocacy, protest, and dissent is implicitly and explicitly protected in the CSIS Act currently, and it's not changing with the new legislation. In fact there are some pieces in there that reinforce that particular requirement.
Lastly and specifically to your question on section 21, the warrant process is the most onerous warrant process of its kind, in my estimation, around the world and that's the current warrant process. The enhancements being proposed will add layers of requirements, giving direction to the judiciary and giving those who are composing the warrant—whether they be the officers working at CSIS, and the legal teams at the Department of Justice, and the public safety minister's office—to hit a new threshold that will be even more complicated and difficult. Unlike law enforcement sometimes, where you can get a warrant after about three or four pages on an affidavit or an information to seek, CSIS warrants typically go on for hundreds of pages per target, explaining the rationale and making the case to be able to obtain those powers that allowed us, at the time I worked at CSIS, to lawfully intercept some of these communications, for example. I am still encouraged that this will not change. My sense from reading the legislation is that those safeguards are protected and are further enhanced.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Thank you.
I have a quick question for Mr. Harris, and thank you as well for being here. In your opening remarks you talked about Bill C-51. We've had a number of witnesses come in to talk about the evolving threat. We had a witness in here yesterday who said this has been going on for decades. The witness spoke very candidly.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
She was a Muslim woman as well, and said that since 2000 she's been raising the red flag. Do you think that Canada is too late? She compared us to countries around the world that are experiencing even more difficult situations with terrorism. Do you think Canada is too late coming to the table to try to deal with this at this point or do you think we're headed for something worse if we stand here and do nothing?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Daryl Kramp
I'm sorry, but our time has well expired. You do not have time for a response.
We will simply go to Mr. Easter, please.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for your presentations.
Ms. Nawaz, I want to recognize your efforts that you outlined in a response to a question to Mr. Rousseau, working with your mosque in your community, drawing other people in to build understanding, and trying to undermine some of those fears out there. I'm increasingly concerned by what I see in Canada, the ramping up, the inflaming, the fear factor, and the driving of wedges. That's not the Canada that I know and love, and that's a concern.
Let me turn to Mr. Boisvert. You said that you support this bill. The toolbox available to Canadians under the 1984 act was created at the time of the Cold War, and I agree with you there. The problem as I see it with this bill is that government, for whatever reason, is bringing certain sections of the bill up to 2015 times, if I could say that, but is failing to bring up the other side of the equation, which is a proper balance to address some of the concerns out there in the activist community. Lawful dissent, etc., is a concern.
Do you see anything that can be done on the other side to bring that balance? You'd know well with your experience in CSIS that you must have the community on side. What I can't understand, as a former minister, is why the government is so resistant to having oversight. The last thing you want as a minister is to have something happen under your watch that paints you in a bad light. Oversight is the greatest protection not only for Canadians, but for a minister as well.
I'm strongly advocating oversight, parliamentary oversight. The Canadian Bar Association went a little further than me on that. What are your views on that? We need to bring up both sides.
President and Chief Executive Officer, I-Sec Integrated Strategies, As an Individual
Clearly on the issue of what Canadians feel about the threat of terror, our polling numbers are consistent. It's a top priority issue for them. However, there is also some deep concern about this legislation. I don't think anybody should kid themselves. I'm clearly an advocate, as a former practitioner, of very important enhancements in the legislation that will make us far safer. As I said in my opening comments, we cannot identify this with any particular group, and of course there should be no stigma attached to any of this. It's about political and religious ideology.
Being a practitioner who appreciates a fuller and more complementary tool box is one thing, but like you, I also recognize and am in favour of commensurate levels of increased review. After working 30 years in that business, I don't think any of the seniors that I left CSIS with in the last few years would disagree with me that we were a better organization because of review, not in spite of it, as I said in my comments, and we were very exceptional. I think we were very well respected by our peer group because of that. The reason we were better is that we knew that everything we did would eventually, at some point, face some form of review by somebody, whether the Inspector General or SIRC. Knowing that keeps the mind very sharp.
At one point, 86% of our young officers in the counterterrorism branch had less than two years of service. It was a very young cohort. They were extremely talented, bright, and engaged, but they needed very clear rules regarding how to work on things. Our continuing issue of rigour, rigour, rigour drove them crazy. Why do we have rigour? It is because of review.
As for oversight, that's a slightly different issue. I'm not against parliamentary oversight. I think in this age of accountability, the leadership of organizations, whether the RCMP, CSE, or CSIS, should appear in front of parliamentarians and explain to Canadians what they're doing and why they're doing it. I think doing that will grow the consistency of support, and I think that is a favourable outcome for everybody.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
One of the difficulties, as you know, is that the government already cancelled the Inspector General, so that body is not there. However, with parliamentary oversight, we'd be talking about something similar to what our Five Eyes partners have, in which an all-party committee of parliamentarians would have access to classified information, so we could keep a sharper eye, from a political perspective, on what's happening.
You did talk about warrants—
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
—from judges. Several witnesses have come to us and basically said that's that not enough and that the oversight of judicial review ends when the warrant walks out the door. Do you have any comment on that?