Public Safety Committee on Oct. 4th, 2016

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Okay, very quickly, Mr. Wark, you spoke about the problems with the green paper with respect to “suspiciously neutral” and that it tends to steer public conversation to a precluded decision, but on the other hand, you talked about this being an unprecedented process in Canada with the 7,000 responses that have been logged.

You also spoke of an independent expert advisory panel to look at those responses. Are you suggesting that an independent expert advisory panel also look at some of the discussions this committee is going to have across the country and disseminate those results and come up with a conclusion?

[Wesley Wark]

Mr. Brassard, thank you.

It certainly could do. What I had in mind was that if the government is going to be faced with a virtual deluge of responses, which would be the best outcome from a public consultation of this kind, and if perhaps, as the science indicates, they are not ready with a plan as to how to deal with that volume of information, then it might be very helpful to have an additional set of critical eyes on the inputs from the consultation process.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

What would the makeup of that advisory panel look like? What types of experts would you recommend?

[Wesley Wark]

I would be looking for people who have expertise in national security law with regard to national security practices, with regard to law enforcement, with regard to intelligence, with regard to civil liberties and privacy issues. I think you could put together a useful, diverse group of that kind, and perhaps there would be other voices that would need to be heard there. The main idea behind this suggestion is that it could be of great value to the government in sorting through the responses they've had. It would give more legitimacy to how the government might respond to those inputs. It might give them some new, original, creative ideas to deal with as they proceed down the road to policy and legislative changes.

In my mind, it's a practical suggestion, and certainly its mandate could reach out beyond just the inputs themselves, if the government decided or the committee suggested to include the kinds of things your committee will hear as you go on the road and talk to Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Mr. Wark.

Monsieur Dubé, go ahead.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I must admit that I have a sense of déjà-vu because we're hearing the same concerns that were expressed last year in the committee.

My first question is for both of you. We talk about the importance of expert oversight. The CSIS inspector general position was eliminated. Can that type of position be reinstated? I understand it's one of many positions. However, I'm mentioning it as a example of a position that should be reinstated to ensure independent oversight.

[Daniel Therrien]

The inspector general certainly played a useful role. I have no particular opinion on the system—once again: one committee, several committees, how to divide oversight roles—other than to say that all the agencies working in the field should be monitored. If all the departments are monitored, there can then be different system models that are more or less effective and more or less costly. However, if all departments are subject to actual and serious oversight, I think that would be satisfactory.

[Wesley Wark]

Monsieur Dubé, I would add that we probably have to keep our attention focused on the problem we are trying to deal with. The inspector general was a small office within what became the Department of Public Safety to provide reporting directly to the minister on the activities of CSIS.

The real problem I think we have to address is something the commissioner has already raised, which is that in the existing system we have for independent expert review, we have created this very siloed system with different independent review bodies looking at single agencies without any capacity to link those views into a kind of strategic overview, and without any capacity to address the broader Canadian security and intelligence community.

Once upon a time, the Canadian security and intelligence community was small. Now it's large. I think the government has some difficulty in even deciding how large. The count is between 17 and 20 agencies that have different kinds of national security and intelligence functions.

I don't have a solution to this. The public safety minister has mused about the idea of creating a super-SIRC, as he has called it. Disappointingly, from my perspective, there is no reflection on these possibilities in the green paper itself. In fact, one of the ways in which I would say the green paper steers the conversation a little too vigorously is that it steers it away from a discussion about enhancing independent review and making sure it's strategic and capable of linking all the activities. There is even a hint of a suggestion that if you create this new committee of parliamentarians in Bill C-22, you may not need an additional layer of independent review, which I think would be a terrible backward step.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Therrien, I want to go back to the troubling information obtained by the Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act. The issue concerns the information being collected by CSIS regarding Canadians detained abroad who turn to consular offices.

Is that an example of situations that could be reviewed because too much leeway is given to the authorities? Take Mr. Arar's case, for example. There could also be a situation involving a Canadian who has simply lost his passport and found himself in a turbulent situation somewhere in the world.

[Daniel Therrien]

I'll refer to my opening remarks. I think it's a good thing that the Green Paper goes beyond Bill C-51.

However, the Green Paper and the discussion paper on information sharing, for example between Foreign Affairs or Global Affairs Canada and CSIS, addresses only information sharing within Canada. It does not address information sharing at the international level, with countries where our diplomats work.

The entire legislative framework and all the relevant national security policies must be reviewed to have a clear idea and to ensure the lessons learned—I hope—from September 2001 are applied. It's not enough to take into consideration only Bill C-51 and information sharing within the country. We must look at the whole situation.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Perfect.

Thank you.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Professor Wark, you mentioned the no-fly list. A lot of the problems that arise there seem to often come from using the Americans' list and some of the incongruities that exist. When we're talking about information sharing, some of that also has to do with our allies as well, not just within departments in Canada.

Could you perhaps comment further on some of the problems you see there and how they can be resolved?

[Wesley Wark]

Certainly.

First of all, I think that probably all Canadians would agree that if we can in Canada, we want to avoid the problems the Americans have had with their own multiplicity of no-fly lists, border lists, watch-lists, and so on, which is a machine which is truly out of control. It impacts on Canada, to the extent that Canadians can be caught up in various American lists.

We share information with the United States and other allies. One of the problems I think around the way in which Bill C-51 deals with enhancements to the passenger protect program, which I think were necessary but I think can be fine-tuned in revised legislation, is that the whole regime for information sharing with allies, in terms of what we will share and under what circumstances, is not clearly spelled out in a way that it needs to be spelled out.

As I say, I think it would be an important exercise in public reassurance and transparency for the minister in charge, the Minister of Public Safety, to actually publish an annual report simply indicating the number of individuals on the passenger protect list. It's not naming names, but just indicating the number, so that Canadians don't feel that this list is out of control, too large, or that they don't have another kind of suspicion, that it's too small and the government is not doing their work.

I think that would be an important measure, and it's also an important measure of control and accountability. That's one of the things I would like to see. I think there are other ways in which the passenger protect provisions of Bill C-51 can be improved, including the responsibilities that the minister has to respond to appeals to be taken off the list. That is a very awkward piece of drafting at the moment in Bill C-51.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Mr. Spengemann.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

For my questions, I'd like to take you away for a bit from the role of government and the legal framework, and focus a bit on Canadian society and Canadian culture as it relates to national security.

Monsieur Therrien, maybe to take you up on your last sentence in your submission, you state that it would be important to discuss how monitoring of the Internet to prevent radicalization should not create a climate such that ordinary Canadians feel they cannot enjoy fundamental freedoms—individual freedoms, presumably. I would like to also add that probably it should not be steps that threaten the fabric of our society.

I want to ask each of you what your perceptions are—not your own perceptions of our national security framework, but your perception of Canadian perceptions—on national security. How does Canadian society, Canadian culture, think about national security in the decade and a half since September 11?

Give us as fine-grained a view as you can for the understanding of the committee and Canadians at large. Where I'm going with this is to sort of probe with you the resilience, potentially, of Canadian society toward radicalization, or keeping what we have, what we cherish, against what is described as an increasing and potentially unknowable external threat.

[Wesley Wark]

It's an excellent question, sir, and I think it would be difficult for perhaps either of us to give you a truly fine-grained, evidence-based answer to your question. I have views on this, and they're views of long standing that have evolved since 9/11.

I think the first thing that has to be said is that what I call Canadian literacy on national security issues is low. This is not the fault of Canadians themselves. I place the fault squarely at the feet of governments for failing to educate and inform Canadians adequately about national security threats and the kind of response capacity we have to them. I'm hoping that the new Liberal government will change that pattern of past behaviour, and perhaps the green paper is one sign that they truly intend to do so. But I think it has to be systematically done.

I've often responded to media questions whenever there's a terrorist incident or a prevented terrorist plot in Canada. The question is often about how Canadians have responded. My anecdotal feeling about that—and that's all it is—is that Canadian society has shown remarkable degrees of resilience. We haven't faced, fortunately, too many real or prevented terrorist plots since 9/11. But in the instances where we have faced such attacks, as in the Parliament Hill attack, or in Quebec, or things like the Aaron Driver affair, and other conspiracies that have been prevented by law enforcement and intelligence work, I don't see signs of Canadian overreaction or Canadian panic or Canadian misunderstanding of the circumstances. Nor do I see the opposite, which is what is often asked particularly by outside observers of Canada, which is whether Canada is too complacent a country about these kinds of issues.

I think we have, and are capable of having, a mature conversation on national security threats. The challenge for us in having that conversation is that while terrorist and other threats are real, we're not at the epicentre of these threats. We can be impacted by them any minute of the day, but we're not at the epicentre. We're not a European country directly facing the degree of threat that a country like France, for example, or Germany or Italy might. We're not the United States. But we are a country that can be affected by these threats. It's a bit more difficult to judge the reality.

Going forward—and I'll end on this point—I think it's vital that we begin to have a larger conversation about national security. We have been, for the past decade, focused on terrorism as a threat and, from time to time, that's a good focus, but I think it's insufficiently broad for the kind of conversation we have to have going forward. We face other kinds of very significant national security threats that we have to have a national conversation about, including cyber-threats, including the security implications of climate change now and in the future, which are going to impact us and global society. So, the sooner we start having a conversation that is about more than just terrorism, the better off we'll be. I'm sure that Canadian society is capable of having that conversation.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks very much for that.

Monsieur Therrien, perhaps I could get your views as well.

[Daniel Therrien]

I agree that the level of literacy is low. I'll just take a minute to talk about the importance of more transparency on the part of government in this regard.

The green paper, for instance, with respect to the new investigative capabilities, apparently asks Canadians how do they perceive the sensitivity of metadata, because the paper implies that with the answer given by Canadians to how sensitive they perceive metadata, that might influence the kind of legal framework that would follow. That might be a good question to ask, but not before you explain to ordinary Canadians, whose views are sought, what is behind metadata, because people do not have a clue as to what is behind metadata.

I'm just making that point to say it is crucial that there be more transparency. Obviously, there are limits to transparency when you talk about national security, but there is no doubt in my mind that more can and should be done to inform the public, so that the political, societal debate as to the right balance between security and human rights takes place in an environment where the participating public is as informed as possible.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Very briefly, once it is more educated, what role do you see for Canadian society in, first of all, establishing better security, but also making sure we don't lose our individual rights and societal values that we've worked so hard to build?

[Daniel Therrien]

The kind of process that has been started is an excellent point. If there are more educated Canadians who participate in an exercise like the one initiated by the government and the one that you're undertaking now, I think it would make for better laws, and perhaps more importantly, laws that have a greater consensus in society.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

It was just mentioned by my colleague, do Canadians even know what metadata is? I take it both of you agree that education is paramount in establishing a good framework for national security.

[Daniel Therrien]

Absolutely.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think that's my time.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

You have three seconds.