Public Safety Committee on March 31st, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Yes, Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

The purpose of the amendments with regard to the existing provisions is to lower the thresholds so that they can be better utilized in respect to the intent of this bill, which is to prevent terrorism, prevent radicalization, and really stop something terrible from happening in this country before it does. This amendment would actually be the opposite to what the intent of this bill was. Anyway, I won't be supporting it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

We will now to to Ms. May, Green Party 34.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is in response to many briefs, but I refer briefly to the submission of the BC Civil Liberties Association, where they noted that C-51 “Expands an already troubling regime of preventative arrest and detention. Currently the Criminal Code permits preventative arrest in cases where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a terrorist activity will be carried out...”.

We're now significantly lowering that threshold to “may be carried out.” My amendment suggests that we should ensure that the quite extraordinary powers of being able to arrest someone before they do anything be on a standard of “believes on reasonable grounds that a terrorist activity will be carried out imminently”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I may have heard it incorrectly, but I think the Green Party member mentioned the BC Civil Liberties Association. This is an organization that opposed, going way back to 1983, the original CSIS Act. They had similar concerns about the 2001 Anti-terrorism Act. Of course, none of those came to fruition. The sky did not fall back then, it didn't fall in 2001, and it's certainly not going to fall in 2015.

This amendment has the completely opposite intent to the proposed paragraph in the bill. We heard very clearly from credible witnesses in law enforcement, security and intelligence gathering, including Inspector Irwin, how important these measures are. We heard from Commissioner Paulson with respect specifically to the Criminal Code amendments, and the importance of lowering the threshold so that our law enforcement have the proper tools, the ability to actually conduct this type of work. Again, the intent of this bill is to prevent terrorist attacks from happening.

I will not be supporting this amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you.

Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Chair, we will admit that we've had a fairly substantive debate within our own office on this particular point.

I would ask the officials who are here from Justice if they could expand on the concern out there that this may lower the threshold too much.

How substantive a change is it from current law, from your perspective?

[Douglas Breithaupt]

The proposal in the bill, as indicated, is to alter the test from “believes on reasonable grounds that a terrorist activity will be carried out” to “believes on reasonable grounds that a terrorist activity may be carried out”.

This proposal is to have the test as “believes on reasonable grounds that a terrorist activity will be carried out imminently”.

The recognizance with conditions is designed to disrupt nascent terrorist activity. Adding the word “imminently” could possibly further narrow the scope.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Colleagues, we will now go to Green Party amendment 35.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Chair, similarly, amendment 35 looks at when the peace officer needs to believe, on reasonable grounds, that the detention of a person is necessary to prevent the carrying out of a terrorist activity that involves serious or imminent threat to the life or health of another person. It's an attempt to deal with the many critics who see this bill as going far too far in a free and democratic society.

I saw that Roxanne didn't like the reference to the BC Civil Liberties Association, so I'll quote someone from the Conservative ranks: Conrad Black. I think he is really quite extreme in saying that if we don't act, Bill C-51 will leave us waking up in “unrecognizable despotism”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Is there further discussion?

Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The amendment would change the current law, which requires that a police officer “suspects on reasonable grounds” that the detention of the person in custody is necessary in order to prevent the carrying out of a terrorist activity. Given the serious nature of a terrorist activity and the potential harm it could cause, raising the grounds here to “believes on reasonable grounds” would make preventative arrests more difficult, and thus would be inconsistent with Bill C-51's legislative objective to facilitate the use of these terrorism prevention tools, which, I might add, has been supported by the Supreme Court in the past.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you.

Is there further debate on PV-35?

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Colleagues, we have clauses 17 and 18 both without amendments. The chair will deal with both, unless....

[An hon. member]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

There's no agreement on that.

We will then deal with clause 17.

Yes, Mr. Garrison.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We will be voting against this clause. Once again, the primary problem here is that the government has not demonstrated the need for this reduction in the threshold for using recognizance with conditions or preventative arrest. We are lowering our threshold from “will” to “may”, “will” to “likely”, and “necessary to prevent” to “likely to prevent”.

What we are really going against here is 800 years of British legal tradition in which we actually require someone to be involved in a real act before we make them subject to penalties. The BC Civil Liberties Association, which I intended to quote, has already been cited by Ms. May, very eloquently, in saying that we are going down the wrong road. However, Ms. James said that witnesses testified that this was a problem.

In fact, if you go back to the RCMP Commissioner's testimony, he did not say that. He said it “might” be useful to lower these thresholds, but when I asked him specifically whether the threshold had been the problem in obtaining either recognizance conditions or preventative arrest, what he answered was that there was a greater problem with the court process than there was with the thresholds. Unfortunately, he did not have a chance to tell us in great detail what that meant, but the example he gave was one where a court, because of its business—and one could only presume lack of resources—put off a very important decision for a month. I understand that in that case subsequently there was success in getting restrictions placed on that person.

Again, before we take large steps which restrict civil liberties, potentially for those who've had nothing to do with a specific act, we have to be convinced on this side that there is a real need to do that. If the problem really is resources at the courts and delays in the courts, which the RCMP Commissioner seemed to say, then we need to attack that problem first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

Now we go to Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I also recall the evidence, and I am not bringing in to disrepute the pieces of what the RCMP Commissioner and other police officers said, but when they were asked in general terms if this piece of legislation would be of assistance to them in carrying out their job and keeping us safe, there were emphatic in their positive response. The answer was yes.

For the edification of a lot of folks, we hear the Bar Association, etc.... I don't recall, in the nine years I've been here—and of course I am sure Mr. Easter will sling some really cool remark across, given his expert time as a politician here—I don't recall them ever coming before any committee I was on—I was on the justice committee and I've been on this committee for nine years—where they've never agreed with any piece of legislation we brought in. As a matter of fact, I think the best thing they ever said about one of the pieces of legislation was “Well, it really isn't needed; it's basically redundant and it isn't needed.”

I am going to remind folks of a few statements, and then I will tell you from where I extracted them and what bill they refer to:

[The] bill...is far-reaching legislation. In several respects, it calls into question many of the rights and freedoms we enjoy, some of them hard won, rights and freedoms that should not be abridged without good reason.

Then in their brief, they go on to talk about many things, and say how the piece of legislation was somewhat imperiling. They said:

Defining terrorism is not a simple task. Our courts have consistently refused to define the term.

We now know that they have now or that we have a definition now.

The proposed definition is too inclusive and unwieldy. It could catch activity that is not terrorist conduct, such as wildcat strikes or public demonstrations. We are also concerned about the potential for discriminatory impact.

I could go on and on. You know who said that, Mr. Chair? It was a submission on Bill C-36, the very same concerns that are expressed here. Bill C-36 has been upheld. The Supreme Court did require the government of the day to fix a few areas of it, but the basic bill was not changed significantly. That is what we hear again and again. It's the same people saying the same things about the same situation.

As my colleague, Ms. James, said that the world didn't come to an end. We have heard from witness upon witness—even witnesses from the other side have testified—that terrorism is evolving. They are changing. They know what the laws are, and they are adapting their methodologies to get around them. This bill just hopes to keep up with it—not get ahead of it, just keep up with it.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Now, Ms. Ablonczy.

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

I think it would be helpful to hear from the witness with respect to the reason that “will” has been changed to “may”.

[Douglas Breithaupt]

If we're talking about recognizance with conditions, it's reasonable grounds to believe that a terrorist activity “will” be committed. It is proposed to change that to reasonable grounds to believe that a terrorist activity “may” be committed. The reason provided is to facilitate the use of these preventive tools and to better prevent terrorist activity from occurring.

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

Precisely.

We can't set the bar so high that people about whom there's a reasonable belief that they're a danger to the public cannot be removed from a position where they could do that.

We heard that from a witness, Ms. Vincent, whose brother was run over by a terrorist. She said the bar was so high that although authorities, security people, knew he was a danger, they didn't have the tools to remove him.

So that's what we're trying to do here. I think not very many people would be caught by this, but for the ones who need to be caught, it's important that we have the tools to take them out of circulation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

That's enough for the debate.

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

I'd like a recorded vote.

(Clause 17 agreed to: yeas 6; nays 3)

(On clause 18)