Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank you and the committee for the opportunity to come here today. Given that every member of the committee comes from either Quebec or Ontario, coming to the other side of the country, in this case, is an important thing for you.
I'd like to commend the Liberal government on two points. First is for making public the mandate letters issued to ministers. Hopefully, the metrics they contain will help reinstate the singular importance of ministerial responsibility in our system of governance, and make it easier for Canadians and their Parliament to hold them to account.
Second is for issuing this green paper on national security to prompt a public discussion and debate on Canada's so-called national security framework. Regardless of how one views the breadth of the discussion that the government appears to have in mind, or the cynicism that many will hold over whether talk leads to action, such a dialogue deserves our support and is long overdue.
I'd like to tackle three points in my presentation. I hope, in a way, that they'll connect to the speakers that you will hear after I finish. The first is to talk about the breadth of what the government has termed our national security framework. The second point is how one goes about learning and this largely takes into consideration my own personal experience of how difficult it is to learn about this area of governance. Finally, to talk about something that this committee, and others in Parliament, will be doing on a regular basis, which is, how to make oversight work effectively.
By way of preparing for this meeting, I looked for, and did not find, guidance on what parameters this committee had in mind for a national security framework. Yes, there's a green paper, but perhaps and hopefully, the committee will look much more broadly than is the case with the green paper.
What is it that the committee will examine to form conclusions about the framework? Two things are perhaps obvious. One is that there are a whole range of issues in the green paper that need to be addressed. Many of them stem from Bill C-51 and if so, what reforms are needed?
I'm going leave these—what I call the nitty-gritty—to the rest of the witnesses that you're going to hear from. I want to touch on some of the things that are immediately, to my mind, missing from this national security framework.
From an academic point of view, at least, we've gone through calling this thing a whole range of names from communities to systems to networks. Now we're talking about a framework, so we really need to figure out what this thing is.
Missing, I think, from the discussion on independent review is the Military Police Complaints Commission. Arguably, its mandate was inadequate for pursuing whether Canadian troops knowingly committed war crimes when transferring prisoners to Afghan authorities. In addition to the adequacy of mandates, the experiences of the MPCC pose questions about the degree to which bodies are truly independent and have adequate resources.
I raise this because if you look at the RCMP complaints commission, this is a body that has changed—under the Conservative government, I should say—its mandate. It has a review process in addition to dealing with complaints. The MPCC doesn't have that sort of mandate at all. Perhaps it should.
The green paper also omits the historically important commission of inquiry, i.e., the McDonald commission, and it is to be recalled. The McDonald commission led to the establishment of CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, as an intelligence agency without a mandate to reduce threats. It's important to recognize that while commissions have a level of independence, they are still executive instruments where the government sets the terms of reference.
Why is this important? In the Arar inquiry, for example, Justice O'Connor could not be encouraged to consider how the various review bodies should relate to Parliament. I believe that this was a serious missed opportunity. Also, the executive, it should be noted, can close down commissions of inquiry when it chooses to do so. The example of the Somalia inquiry of the 1990s, which was also a national security issue, is a good example.
Now, to touch on what the green paper is and why I find it inadequate, I should say that I think we can agree that it is a product of the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Justice. Not surprisingly, the issues raised in it reflect those that are particularly of interest to their particular ministers. It focuses on the threat of terrorism, largely at the exclusion of other threats, how to respond to it, and the legal regime needed to confront it, while protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians. It's not a bad thing. This is something that needs to be done, but it's not the entirety. Thus, it frames a particular notion, I would argue, of national security, and may in the process divert public attention from other threats, and particularly existential threats like climate change.
Arguably, a green paper produced by the national security adviser's unit within the Privy Council Office would look very different. It would be broader in concept, consider a wider array of departments and organizations—Global Affairs, Transport, Finance, and the Privy Council itself, particularly the intelligence assessment secretariat—reflect upon the activities they all perform, and detail the threats and the national interests they ponder. It would consider defence and foreign policy implications, and indicate concern about the effectiveness of organizations and the resources available.
Furthermore, it would likely cover the importance of intelligence analysis and the sharing of intelligence, not just within Canada, as I think this green paper does, but between Canada and foreign states. A review of these kinds of security intelligence organizations suggests that any such framework would likely reflect the following: structural and functional diversity among organizations; the existence of several policy and coordination centres; intelligence analysis being conducted within several organizations; national security law expanding and becoming more complex, particularly since 9/11 and because of technological innovation; and a rising level of public concern. I think it's not been since McDonald that we have seen a level of public concern about national security issues as we have today.
Finally, there is emergence of a diversified and, I would argue, uncoordinated review framework, something which I think this committee should pay particular attention to, and I'll come to later. Arguably, this suggests a greater focus on how policy is developed, who coordinates the various organizations of the framework, and how human resources are recruited, trained, developed, and retained.
I want to make a few observations about how you go about learning, because it took me several years, and I've been doing it I think since the early 1980s.
I want to touch on some of them, which I guess is informed by my own personal experience of having been on the other side of a committee in the 1990s when a special committee of Parliament reviewed the CSIS Act and the Security Offences Act. I was its director of research. The strengths and weakness of the process has led me, in my academic career, to pursue a number of what I think are key areas.
How does one go about learning about the framework or whatever you like to call it? Obviously commissions of inquiry need to be studied and the recommendations they have made pondered in detail. I don't think we do enough of that. We seem to finish off the commission and more often than not it disappears into history.
Secondly, I think working with independent review bodies is very important. At one point, SIRC, for example, used to hold conferences where there were discussions between academics and the review process. Obviously, going inside the institutions helps. Being a contractor is one that comes to mind. Working for Parliament is another, and I've indicated my experience. From my own experience, I know I went to Parliament in 1989 with a rather naive view that Parliament, or at least the parliamentarians on the committee, would have detailed knowledge of the CSIS Act. However, surprise, surprise, this was not the case. It was, over the course of the better part of a year, a tremendous learning experience for those MPs. Unfortunately, what was the case for many, or most of those MPs, was that only two of them survived the 1993 election, so that institutional memory was lost.
Working with non-governmental organizations such as the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces is another. It, for example, specializes in comparative security sector governance and reform, and it covers a broad array of countries.
Following, of course, the work of investigative journalists is another. Many of them have used the Access to Information Act to good effect. I would like to suggest to you from personal experience that there are enormous delays in this process. Anything I've asked for over the last few years automatically seems to get 120 days added onto the process. I would add that the complaints process isn't much better. In my view, there are not enough investigators, and the process, even when it's time sensitive, is far too long.
Finally, there's academia. There was an organization, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, that held multi-day conferences attracting considerable audiences from abroad. It now is a shadow of its former self. Its membership is dwindling and greying, like your witness today.
Maybe I should get on to what I really wanted to say about oversight, if I may.
