Public Safety Committee on May 13th, 2019

[David McGuinty]

I think it's fair to say that NSIRA's mandate will be chiefly based on examining the activities of different security and intelligence actors on the basis of their lawfulness and whether they're operating within the powers they have vested in them. They also have some mandatory yearly reviews to perform. They'll be becoming, as they say, a bit of a super-SIRC, so they'll have to review SIRC as well as the Communications Security Establishment on an annual basis.

Public complaints will be a big factor in terms of receiving Canadians' complaints. That will be a very large component, but we'll wait and see. We've already met with the folks at SIRC and other agencies that are in place, and we fully intend to meet up with NSIRA, when it's created. I'm sure we will be co-operating and sharing information, research, and analysis. One of the benefits of having a secretariat, which will be led by Ms. Marcoux, is that the institutional memory will remain constant, transcending any one government or any one membership of the committee.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Do you think having that kind of a super-SIRC agency will result in the creation of another base of information that will help you do your work?

[David McGuinty]

We think so. It's going to be in a position to have access to key information and classified materials, and I fully expect that we'll be sharing and co-operating as best we can.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

In paragraph 69 of your report, you talk about the threat of espionage and foreign influence that's growing in Canada, and then at the end, the last sentence refers to Australian legislation. It says, "The committee agrees and notes that Australia passed legislation in June 2018 to better prevent, investigate, and disrupt foreign interference."

I'm wondering if you'd be able to tell me a little bit about that legislation, and what you think we could learn from it.

[David McGuinty]

Well, we can't learn very much as this stage, because we're actually in the throes of reviewing the government's response to foreign interference, and that's one of our major reviews for 2019. Following this 2018 report, we want to shed light on the scope of the threat of foreign interference.

We also want to assess the government's response to that threat. We want to do this particularly with respect to Canadian institutions and different ethnocultural communities in a Canadian context. We are not looking so much at electoral integrity or the acquisition of Canadian companies under the Investment Canada Act. Those are not areas or cybersecurity, not the areas that we're honing in on. We're going to be looking at who these foreign actors are, what they're up to, and how well we're responding.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Is there anything you would be able to comment on about the Australian legislation? It's referenced in this paragraph, so is there something you can tell us about the Australian example?

[Rennie Marcoux]

I don't have the details of the legislation in front of me, but I remember something of the discussion at committee. I was struck by the fact that Australia had enacted explicit legislation on foreign interference, whereas here in Canada, foreign interference is listed as a threat to national security under the CSIS Act. Australia felt that the threat was severe enough to draft and enact explicit legislation on it—probably a whole-of-government approach as opposed to that of a single agency.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

You're working on that right now, so it's something that hopefully we'll get to—

[David McGuinty]

You will have more to say.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

—talk to you about a little bit more.

This is the last one, as I only have a minute.

You've talked a bit about the lack of awareness among Canadians about our security agencies. When you looked into it, what did you find was the biggest misunderstanding, if there was a biggest misunderstanding? There's one part you note in the report about lack of knowledge about what our agencies are, but was there anything where you actually spotted a misunderstanding as to how our agencies work?

[David McGuinty]

It was more basic than that. Very few Canadians could name our core intelligence agencies. Very few knew what CSE was. Very few really understood what CSIS was, what it was doing, how it was operating. It's an even more rudimentary lack of understanding not so much in precision about the way they act, but simply the very existence of the organizations or the number of organizations that are acting. This is very new for Canadians.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

A chart of all the organizations is in here, so that might help get that information out.

[David McGuinty]

We hope so, thank you.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Dabrusin.

Mr. Eglinski, for five minutes, please.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank both presenters today. Thank you for the work that you're doing for our country. It's a lot of long hours, and I appreciate what you're doing.

I noticed in your report, especially paragraphs 67 and 68 and even partially going into 69 where.... I think in 68 you mention CSIS has raised concerns about Chinese influence in Canadian elections and stuff like that. Is your agency involved in any of the preparations for the 2019 election to ensure there's no political interference from foreign agents, or could it potentially retroactively look at this issue? Are you going to look at it before...? Have there been any studies done?

[David McGuinty]

Not at this time, not by NSICOP. In our foreign interference focus, as I mentioned, our first objective is to simply shed light on the breadth and the scope of the threat by foreign actors in terms of who these primary threat actors are, what threat they are posing, and what they are doing, and also, how well our country is responding to the threat. We're not focusing so much on electoral integrity in this forthcoming election as we are the general role of outside actors.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Your organization itself is not. Do you know if the other groups, like CSIS, are doing some active research, study or intelligence work in that area?

[Rennie Marcoux]

One of the reasons we didn't look at the upcoming election in terms of foreign interference is that the government—they informed us—was doing so much work in terms of assessing the threat and then taking action to prevent the threat of foreign interference.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

Being a new organization and working with our basically eight major intelligence gathering organizations in Canada, how have you found over the last year the co-operation with these outside agencies? Quite often these agencies are reluctant to give information, reluctant to trust a new organization or outside.... Has the transition been fairly good? Are they buying into the need for our national organization—you, your group?

[David McGuinty]

That's a great question.

Generally yes, I think most folks we work with are very supportive, but it's new. We're building trust and building a relationship of co-operation and getting access to information, pushing and poking and prodding from time to time to get what we need.

I mentioned earlier the Department of National Defence has never had a spotlight shone on it this way in terms of its intelligence activities. That was a great learning experience, and there was a lot of trust.

This year, we're doing a major review on the Canada Border Services Agency, which has never been reviewed by an outside body of parliamentarians. We've already received roughly 15,000 to 16,000 pages of documentation from CBSA, so the co-operation is very good so far.

I think most folks think that this kind of external review is helpful in terms of how they conduct their affairs, and look forward to the findings of NSICOP because they are non-partisan, and because they are very much recommendations for improvement.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

Just expanding on that, how are you finding your group being recognized by international communities?

[David McGuinty]

We're very proud of the report; the annual report has been well received around the world. We've had commentary from the U.K., the United States, Australia and New Zealand. For example, we heard from New Zealand's intelligence commissioner, I think she's called—

[Rennie Marcoux]

She's the inspector general.

[David McGuinty]

She has said that chapter 4 on national defence—