Public Safety Committee on May 13th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Motz, please.

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

That's all I'm getting at.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Please, a brief answer.

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

As I said, we consulted with a whole variety of agencies to get their input.

I'll ask Mr. Rigby to talk about the total numbers that are involved in the intelligence community within the Government of Canada.

I think when the people who wrote the material were using those expressions that you've just referred to, their intent was to narrow the focus, but when members of the public saw those expressions, they actually saw the situation through the other end of the telescope and thought the criticism was actually getting broader rather than narrower. That's the dilemma here of finding the language that is accurate and precise, but at the same time, fair so that we're not having consequences that we don't mean to have.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave the answer there.

We'll go to Ms. Sahota, for five minutes, please.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I'm going to follow on what my colleague Julie was saying earlier.

In the right-wing extremism section, it says:

It may be difficult to assess, in the short term, to what extent a specific act was ideologically driven, or comment while investigations are ongoing or cases are before the court.

To one of my previous questions, it was mentioned that there are fluid investigations ongoing and that we would not want a plot to occur on Canadian soil. I agree with you 100%. I would never want to see what had happened in 1985 ever happen on Canadian soil again. I hope you catch the people who are up to no good, because they indirectly, or directly in this case, end up impacting whole communities at times. I think all of us would be outraged if any religion, Catholicism or Protestantism, were ever brought into any organization that had committed an act, and we wouldn't do that. However, it seems as though, from this perspective, there's an insensitivity originally to other faiths that don't originate from the western world.

In short, why wasn't the “but” language, which is included in the right-wing extremism section, included in those other sections? You're saying they are fluid investigations. How do you know for sure whether they were ideologically driven? Those exceptions are definitely referred to in the right-wing extremism section.

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

David, can you comment on that?

[David Vigneault]

I'm not the author of the report, so I cannot comment on exactly why the final wording is there.

However, I can say from a CSIS perspective, as I mentioned earlier, that we're not looking at a specific religion; we're looking at the activity of individuals. If the activity of individuals is plotting to use violence to achieve political, ideological or religious objectives, that's when we would be investigating.

With the example in New Zealand, that individual invoked about five, six or seven different reasons as to why he committed the activity. When you start to mix what is happening online with mental health issues, and so on, what exactly was the motivator of an individual can be extremely delicate to determine. That's why when we work in the sphere of national security, when our colleagues in law enforcement are investigating, we might not know exactly what we're dealing with initially.

I can only speak to the types of investigations. In terms of the report and why these other caveats were not added to the others, I cannot speak to that angle.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

There has been a lot of skepticism since the release of the report. From my investigation and from my talks with Minister Goodale, I found out that about 17 different agencies and departments were involved in feeding into this report.

I don't think we got to that number.

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

That's approximately correct.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I also found out that, when compiling this report, no evidence is taken from any single source.

Can a single source be feeding allegations or evidence into all these various different departments, and therefore, when it comes out of more than a few departments, it elevates to the level of being in the report? What are your comments on that?

[Vincent Rigby]

I'll defer to David in terms of some of the source reporting from a CSIS perspective, but I can only repeat what you just said. When we went out to those 17 agencies and departments representing the breadth and scope of the security intelligence community, we looked at all sources.

Everything that came up to us was intelligence, open sources, consultations with academics right across the board. What you see reflected in the report is a composite picture of all the evidence, all the intelligence, and all the analysis, open-sourced right on down across the spectrum.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Could it be bad intelligence coming from another country?

[Vincent Rigby]

How would you define bad intelligence?

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Is it verified intelligence by our own independent agencies?

[Vincent Rigby]

I'll defer to David on this, but we are in regular consultation, without a doubt, with our allied partners, particularly in a Five Eyes context, so we're often looking at the intelligence they provide as well.

I should stop here and let David finish it off, but we are going to make our own assessments. We will certainly look at what our allies are saying, but this is a Canadian assessment at the end of the day.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Vigneault is going to have to finish it off very quickly.

[David Vigneault]

Mr. Rigby described the way it is done very well. I mentioned in my first answer to you, Ms. Sahota, that it was based on our own investigations. I want to be very clear that they were CSIS-led investigations.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I want to thank the minister and his colleagues for their attendance and a thorough discussion of this issue.

We're going to suspend and then go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]