Public Safety Committee on March 31st, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Good morning, colleagues, and welcome to meeting number 62 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Of course, today we will be dealing with clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-51.

Pursuant to Standing Order 75(1), consideration of clause 1, the short title, is postponed.

(On clause 2—Enactment)

We have NDP amendment number one.

Yes, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

On a point of order, are we not having Justice officials here? There will be a number of questions on this bill related to the charter and other issues as we go through it. It was my understanding that there would be officials here from the Department of Justice to explain some of the contradictions in this legislation.

As well, I'd say, while I'm at it, Mr. Chair—I don't believe it's in our package, I haven't looked yet—if you remember the last witness we had, Mr. McKenna from the Air Transport Association of Canada, we had asked him to forward some amendments. The clerk has those. I don't know whether they've been distributed, but when we get to them I may move them because they're not in our original package—just to give you a heads-up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine, thank you very much, Mr. Easter.

Just two quick responses. The officials are here. It's been indicated, and they are of course sitting here now. Should you wish to call them to the table at any particular time, I think that would certainly be in order, but there's no sense having everybody just sitting there right now. Certainly, I would expect—

Yes? Just a second, Ms. James, I'll just finish my other point.

As to the other point on the amendments, it's my understanding that they have been translated and have been circulated electronically.

Yes, Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just for the sake of the committee and so we don't have to invite the officials up at some point later on, maybe the chair could invite the officials to join us at the table to be able to answer any of our questions that we have along the way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

That's fine.

Mr. Garrison, on the same point.

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

If we don't know who's here, it's hard to know who we're calling to the table, so I think it would be better if we had some idea of who's here.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

That's a good point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay, we understand. We have approximately 13 officials here, Mr. Garrison, so we can certainly bring a number of them up now, put up their name cards, and advise members of the names of the other people who are here so that they're available to the committee.

At this point, then, we will suspend briefly and we will call some of our witnesses to the table, fill the chairs, and put name cards there, and then advise the committee of who else is here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay, we are now back in session and we will now go ahead and call NDP-1. Before I call this to the table—

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

I do not have an electronic copy of those available to me, and before we discuss this, I do need to know which officials are available to call upon. I cannot proceed without knowing who is here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

That's a fair point, Mr. Garrison, and the chair is willing to wait until we have all of that information available to all of the committee.

We will now suspend again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay, colleagues, we will resume. You have the list now.

If the witnesses whom you wish to speak to and/or ask for comment are at the table, you can obviously do that. Should you wish to call another witness to the table, simply advise the clerk and/or the chair at that point, and we will make that happen.

We will now resume discussion on amendment NDP-1. The chair would just make note as well here that if amendment NDP-1 is adopted, then Green Party amendment PV-1 and Bloc Québécois amendment BQ-1 cannot be moved, as they would be in line conflict. Should amendment NDP-1 not pass, then we will deal with amendment PV-1 and amendment BQ-1 as they come up in sequence.

On amendment NDP-1, is there comment?

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm hereby moving this amendment, which is a very simple one, but it gets to the heart of one of the main problems that we see in Bill C-51. That is the vast expansion of the definition of what is to be the subject of CSIS activity.

In essence, what the amendment does is to return to the existing definition in the CSIS Act, which says that threats to the security of Canada mean just four things, from A to D: espionage or sabotage; foreign influenced activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve threats; activities within or relating to Canada directed to or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence; and activities directed toward undermining by covert unlawful acts the constitutionally established system of government in Canada. What Bill C-51 does is expand that list from those four things, which I think almost all of us would agree with, to a list of A to I in the bill.

The purpose of this amendment is to return to what is the existing practice for CSIS.

I am disappointed in the list we have. We don't have anyone form CSIS here at the table. I might not sure who I should ask my questions of, given that CSIS officials are not here. Reading through the officials list, I assume that at least one of those we have at the table now would be Mr. Davies, though I'm not sure he can answer these questions because he is not from CSIS.

Regarding of the change in definition, does he have any knowledge whether this change in the bill was requested by CSIS? In other words, where did this demand for this much broader definition for CSIS come from? Why is it here before us today? He may or may not have that information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Davies.

[John Davies, Director General, National Security Policy, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

The answer is no.

The purpose of the bill is not just about CSIS. It's much broader than that. I believe there's a schedule attached to the bill. There are 17 departments and agencies that are involved in national security in one way or the other. I think the amendment would narrow the scope greatly because those other departments and agencies have a national security role much broader than CSIS.

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

Thank you very much. That's a very useful answer because I think it's exactly where I was going with this. What we've done is not only expand what CSIS looks at, but we've also expanded for 17 government agencies what information can be shared with CSIS.

[John Davies]

That is not the case. This does not change the mandate of the service or the powers of the service in any way. All we wanted to do was to make sure that the definition allowed for the mandates of other departments and agencies involved in national security to lawfully receive information relevant to the threshold in the act.

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

This does not change the information to be shared with CSIS by those 17 government departments in any way?

[John Davies]

No.

Again, the 17 are the receivers. They are the national security departments and agencies that are somehow related. The act is about sharing of all of the Government of Canada with those national security agencies. There's no change in collection authorities by anyone in the act.

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

Wouldn't those national security authorities include CSIS? It's one of the 17.

[John Davies]

It's one of the 17, but what they can collect does not change. This is making sure that all of the 17 have the authority to collect information, and that information can be disclosed to them. We're not changing the powers of the service at all.

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

If I understand correctly what you're saying, the 17 government departments would now be limited to the definition of threats to security of Canada that's in the existing CSIS Act.

[John Davies]

No.

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

Then why is there a necessity for this?

[John Davies]

It's because the 17 that are in the schedule of the act need all of their mandates to be encompassed by the act, otherwise the act won't have an effect. It will only have an effect for CSIS if we use the CSIS mandate defined in the CSIS Act in section 2. We needed to make sure that all of the 17 were somehow brought into the proposed security of information sharing act; otherwise, information relevant to national security that undermines the security of Canada cannot be disclosed to them. We're not changing section 2 of the CSIS Act here at all. We're defining examples of the kinds of things that meet the definition of undermining the security of Canada that will allow all 17 to be included in the act and receive information under the act. No collection mandate is being changed here.