Good morning, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
In my view, this amendment is contrary to the fundamental goal of Bill C-59, which is essentially to give our security agencies the tools they need to protect Canada and Canadians while respecting our rights and freedoms.
The amendment seems to achieve two things. It retains CSE's active cyber operations mandate under proposed section 20, but it then removes the ability of the minister to issue authorizations that would allow the CSE to undertake activities in this regard that would otherwise contravene an act of Parliament or any foreign state.
The authority to conduct active cyber operations is needed to support strategic objectives that go outside of a military or domestic threat context. The deletion of these sections as proposed in the amendment would limit Canada's options to respond to threats. It should also be noted that the authorities under the proposed bill would only take place within very strict legal parameters and approvals at the highest level of government.