Public Safety Committee on March 26th, 2015

[Michael Skrobica]

That is correct, Mr. Easter.

In the United States, there are procedures to have a law enforcement officer available just in case the situation turns violent. We don't have that. When the passenger protect program came into being, that was one of our recommendations in our consultations. The government elected not to put that into place.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I think you said, and it says in the bill, that you can be fined, or your airline can be fined up to $500,000 if proper procedures are not followed. What I am hearing is that you are responsible, but you are not ultimately in charge.

Would that be a fair way of putting it?

[Michael Skrobica]

That is correct.

You will recall the reports of an individual who was travelling with a pipe bomb. CATSA handed the pipe bomb back to the individual and allowed him to travel. Under this bill, if CATSA were to be in error, potentially we would be responsible. That is not equitable, in our view.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

We don't have time tonight, and you haven't suggested any amendments as such. We are going to be starting amendments sometime next week.

Would you be prepared to send a letter over the weekend to the clerk on suggested amendments that might deal with this problem in this bill? If you could do that, it would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

[Michael Skrobica]

Certainly.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you.

I want to turn to the Center for Security Policy. Listening to the discussion between you and Mr. Falk, I think you have a grave misunderstanding of what we have in place in Canada as oversight. We have no oversight at all over all our national security agencies. There is nothing that coordinates the whole works. Many of us believe we need that. In the States, you have—and I've met with them—the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which can look at classified information, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which can look at classified information and raise questions. We have none of that in Canada in terms of elected representatives. You also have the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, which coordinates a lot of information. We have none of that in Canada.

We have a review body called SIRC that can look at issues after the fact. We used to have an inspector general, until this government cut that position. Many of us are demanding that what is needed to accompany this bill is oversight that would be all-encompassing of all our national security agencies with access to classified information that could ensure our national security agencies are doing what they should be doing and not overreaching and going beyond what they should be doing in impacting civil liberties.

My question to you, based on your answer to Mr. Falk—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Very brief....

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Would you be suggesting that you should do away with any of those oversight agencies that are in place in the United States that we don't have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

A very brief response.

[Clare Lopez]

That we in the United States should do away with ours? No, certainly not.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you. No further questions, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Easter.

Now for a few minutes, Mr. Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm aware that these hearings on this bill are drawing to a close. I want to say that I feel we've had many high points in terms of testimony, excellent testimony for us, and comprehensive briefs from witnesses, in particular from the Muslim, Jewish, and first nations communities who are very much affected by the kinds of things we're talking about.

I feel honoured to have had those important contributions.

We've also had contributions as a committee from many who were not able to appear here and who've submitted written briefs. I want to assure people who may be listening in that we will be taking those seriously.

I have to say we've had some low points, including attacks on both the integrity and sincerity of some witnesses that were done under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. I always regret when that takes place. Another low point was that, despite her dedication to being present at these hearings, the leader of the Green Party was not allowed to take any part in these hearings.

We're drawing to a close this evening not having heard from some very important witnesses. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who is an officer of Parliament, we were not able to hear from—

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Point of order....

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

There is a point of order.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

We've gone over the reason why the Privacy Commissioner was not here. It was because the opposition parties did not put the Privacy Commissioner on their list and not a high priority. I want to make that clear to the committee as a whole—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

That's nothing even close to a point of order.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

—and even for the witnesses who are here before us today that is simply not the case. The government did not disallow someone from coming. If they had been a priority witness you should have placed that on the list.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine. Thank you very much.

Let's get away from this topic with regard to this “he said, she said”. Please, finish up, Mr. Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I will say that we put a motion before this committee to hear the Privacy Commissioner, which was blocked by the Conservative Party and that's a matter of public record.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Not on your list.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Or your list.

We also had three witnesses per panel. We've all seen how ineffective that has been. It leaves people with seven to 10 minutes to ask questions on a complex bill to very important witnesses. We've had 36 witnesses appear in a single week, which makes it very difficult for anyone to follow the course of the debates in this committee. Now we have a deadline for amendments at 9 a.m. tomorrow. We've just heard six witnesses this evening, including some very important suggestions from the B'nai Brith association who raised a new issue of the potential for private prosecutions. We've just heard from the Air Transport Association about some very important concerns. The rushed schedule means that it's very difficult to accommodate those.

The last point I would make, as I said earlier today, is that we've seen a very strong theme here. By my count 45 of 49 witnesses had serious concerns about this bill and suggested many important amendments that could be made. We'll be looking forward to seeing if the government is prepared to amend this bill in any fashion. We still believe that some parts are unfixable. Some important things are missing, but there were some important suggestions made to this committee regarding amendments that would allow us to meet real threats in effective ways and protect both our safety and our civil liberties.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Garrison.

On behalf of the entire committee I would like to thank our witnesses for taking the time and the energy, and giving of their experiences in providing the testimony that this committee takes very seriously. Your time has not been wasted.

Thank you very kindly. As we are wrapping up our first rounds of questions before we go to further examination, I'd like to thank our staff, our clerk, our analyst, and all of our support staff here who have stayed with us while we went through a significant number of extended meetings to give everybody the opportunity to participate. I thank them very much.

The meeting is adjourned.