Public Safety Committee on Feb. 25th, 2019

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

That's the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. The other programming in ISED can also be very relevant to the cyber field.

I would just encourage all of us to make sure that cyber priorities are reflected across the full range of science funding that the Government of Canada does. I know that Minister Duncan and Minister Bains are very alert to the potential here. You're looking at millions of terrific jobs, as well as science, innovation, advanced engineering, export opportunities—

[Ruby Sahota]

Absolutely.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

It's a huge field, and it will bring big dividends to Canada if we invest in it more.

[Ruby Sahota]

I agree.

I have one more question, about the security and intelligence review agency. What is its mandate? How broad is it?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

It's, quite literally, everything.

Right now, some of the security and intelligence operations of the Government of Canada are subject to specific reviews. CSIS, for example, is examined on an annual basis by the Security Intelligence Review Committee. There is a review agency that looks at CSE. It's the commissioner of the CSE, the Communications Security Establishment.

[Ruby Sahota]

What kinds of powers are granted to them?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

In those two cases, the commissioner and SIRC have very extensive powers to know everything that those two agencies do, the CSE and CSIS. They have very well-established relationships where the agencies report to the review agencies. If the review agency wants any information, under the law they have complete access to all of that information. The problem is that they work in silos. SIRC can look at CSIS, and nothing else. The commissioner can look at CSE, and nothing else.

The new NSIRA, the national security and intelligence review agency created by Bill C-59, will be a comprehensive review agency with the legal authority to look at the security and intelligence operations of any agency or department of the Government of Canada.

Apart from the couple I've mentioned, there are at least 17 different departments and agencies of the Government of Canada that have some security or intelligence function—for example, CBSA, the Privy Council Office, the Department of National Defence, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Transport and so forth. NSIRA will be able to look at all of that, without limitation.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Sahota.

Mr. Motz, you have five minutes, please.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister and officials, for being here.

Minister, you have said many times that the protection of Canadians is your top priority. Rural Canadians have shown that they're not safe and they're not protected. Our committee has heard from many victims of rural crime, and from defence lawyers. People, many times, are forced to choose between hiding in their own homes, hoping that nothing goes wrong, and defending themselves and their children, potentially facing criminal charges in that defence.

Rural Canadians are wondering why your words on this and your actions don't match. I don't see anything in these estimates that deals with the skyrocketing rural crime rates. I'm wondering whether you can point me to where you're going to be dealing with this response in the estimates you've provided.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

In the first instance, Mr. Motz, the principal responsibility, obviously, for rural safety and policing falls within the jurisdiction of the provinces. The Government of Canada co-operates and assists by providing, for example, the contract services of the RCMP to a vast number of rural areas and rural communities across the country. The level of policing—the number of officers and so forth—is a matter of negotiation in the establishment of those contracts. In addition to that, there is the first nations policing program, which brings additional resources into the policing of communities in rural and remote areas.

With regard to the concerns that have been expressed in the last couple of years, particularly in your province and in mine, Alberta and Saskatchewan, the RCMP have worked extensively with the provincial departments of the attorney general—or the relevant departments that deal with policing in those provinces—to ensure that the existing resources are deployed in the right manner and based upon intelligence.

The former commanding officer for the RCMP in Saskatchewan, Curtis Zablocki, made a point a couple of years ago of travelling extensively through rural Saskatchewan, conducting public town hall meetings with the local municipalities to get their input and advice. He then deployed that information to ensure the proper distribution and deployment of his officers and personnel.

A different, but similar, effort was undertaken in Alberta. I note that both the Attorney General of Saskatchewan, Mr. Morgan, and the Attorney General of Alberta, Ms. Ganley, have commented publicly that they have appreciated very much the work that's been done in the last year and a half to increase the level of awareness and collaboration.

The deployment of resources assisted in bringing down the angst about rural safety—and I don't minimize that angst because it's a very real concern. Progress has been made. Additional progress will be possible with new funding that we will be making available to all of the provinces to better deal with issues of guns and gangs, including rural gangs.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Minister. We have a long way to go. That's the issue.

Under your watch, we've lost control at our borders. Border security officers are being redeployed to deal with the crisis and are not being replaced across the country. As I said, rural crime is a major concern in many areas. The RCMP is in crisis, with both its urban and rural detachments and its crime labs being under-resourced and under-supplied. We have ISIS terrorists returning to Canada with little or no intervention. Some even get parole while they remain a threat to our country and to people. Corrections officers fear being stabbed, and, according to you, urban crime is rampant and gangs are out of control.

Your various legislations have met opposition from everyone except my colleagues across the way. Quite frankly, Canadians expected to see, in these estimates, something different. They wanted to see a plan. Instead, with all due respect, it appears as if your primary job is to protect and cover up for an incompetent prime minister.

Can you show me here, in these estimates, how you're going to deal with rural crime? How are you going to deal with gangs? How are you going to deal with cybersecurity? How are you going to deal with securing our borders? I don't see them anywhere in these estimates.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I think you've just missed the last hour of the meeting, Mr. Motz—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Goodale, Mr. Motz has run out of his time.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

You can't leave that slander on the record, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'm perfectly happy to let you have a response, but I want the response to be somewhat within a time limit.

I'll give you the time to respond.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Chair, what you've heard is a drive-by smear. It really is an insult to the quality of the work that one should expect to be done by this committee. That kind of litany of abuse, innuendo and downright falsehoods and untruths is simply not acceptable. I won't dignify that barrage of garbage with an answer, because it doesn't deserve one.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Picard, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Minister.

Last January, you were part of a meeting related to emergency management, in fact a signature emergency management strategy for Canada. Would you expand on that, please?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

This is something the Government of Canada and all of the provinces and territories have been working on for the last three years, the development of a new, all-inclusive emergency management strategy for the country. There has been excellent buy-in and co-operation and enthusiastic support from all other jurisdictions, the provinces and territories in particular. There are many municipalities and other organizations that are interested in this.

We've taken not just a whole-of-government approach, but a whole-of-society approach, recognizing that when disaster strikes, you need everybody on board responding completely and comprehensively in a way that is thought out in advance, planned and coordinated, so that the maximum benefit can be achieved for Canadians. The strategy lays that out.

It also benefits from extremely good communication and co-operation with indigenous communities across the country. One of the things included in our approach is doing a complete inventory in all of the roughly 700 indigenous communities across Canada to know the risk factors that affect those communities and the capacity within those communities to deal with those risk factors, and to determine where the gaps are and how we need to fill them. The coordination has been extraordinarily good.

At the meeting you referred to in January with all provinces and territories represented, I have never seen a more positive attitude around the federal-provincial-territorial table than that discussion. It was excellent, and we now have the strategy. We are all committed, federally and provincially, over the next five years, to take the elements of that strategy and implement those elements to ensure that Canadians are kept safe, in part, by having the most effective emergency response capabilities they can possibly have.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Allow me to switch to French.

Most voters in Quebec are concerned about climate change. This is the message I receive from most of my fellow MPs and, as an issue, it is becoming increasingly important. Climate change brings with it its fair share of challenges.

Managing emergencies such as those for which we have a national strategy leads us to wonder whether the amounts invested in the strategies in preparation for these emergencies and disasters matches the size and complexity of the climate changes we are seeing, as illustrated by the weather in recent days. Do the investments simply maintain operations at their current levels or is there a realization that climate change and its effects on us might warrant a much more significant response on the part of the department?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

The Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General have analyzed the pattern of increasing risk over the last number of years, and in taking climate change into account have tried to project into the future what we can expect in losses and damages, particularly from floods and wildfires. The projection is that we probably need to set aside about a billion dollars a year just for cleaning up the mess after the fact.

One of the premises in the emergency management strategy, recognizing that this is the big future risk going forward, is that we're going to either pay now or pay later. You either prevent the loss, or you clean up the mess after the fact. The latter is usually more expensive.

We have tried to identify opportunities in our infrastructure spending, for example, where, before the fact, you can build structures—some of them heavily engineered, concrete structures and some of them natural habitat—to better control water flows, so that you can try to protect yourself as much as possible from the storm that dumps a year's worth of precipitation on a community or an area in two or three days and then floods everything with huge losses.

We have a federal program called the DFAA, disaster financial assistance arrangements, which compensates for some of the losses. That program has, if my memory serves me correctly, paid out more to compensate for floods and wildfires in the last six years than it has paid out in total over the full history of the program, going back to 1970.

Obviously, the situation in recent years has been getting worse and the risk is higher. Therefore, investing in more climate-resilient infrastructure in advance will save you money after the fact.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave it there, please.

Mr. Eglinski.

[Jim Eglinski, Yellowhead, CPC]

Minister Goodale, your director of CSIS, who is here today, just recently said that it's becoming increasingly evident that the “hostile foreign intelligence services” that are targeting “corporate secrets” and “intellectual property” of Canadian companies pose a greater threat to our national security than terrorists do. That's a pretty serious assertion.

How has that impacted your decision on allowing a company like Huawei to participate in Canada's 5G program?

To take it even more seriously, the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, recently said that if countries adopt this corporation or organization in their...or fail to look at it, the U.S. may not be able to do business with them.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

We're obviously weighing very carefully all the issues around the 5G supply chain. Whether it's one particular company or country, or any or all of them, we want the supply chain to be absolutely secure. That's the consideration and analysis that we're going through right now.

A final decision has not yet been taken, but it will be in the weeks and months ahead. In making that decision, we will make sure that Canadian national security and the safety of Canadians is front and centre, first and foremost in the consideration. We will obviously weigh very carefully what all our allies say and feel about this issue, because we are heavily interconnected with all of them.

In terms of the issue more specifically, Mr. Eglinski, let me ask David Vigneault for his comments, because that was his speech you were referring to.