Public Safety Committee on Feb. 18th, 2016

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant (Don Valley West, Lib.)), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I call this meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to order. This is our third meeting of this first session of the 42nd Parliament.

Thank you to our witnesses. It is funny calling you witnesses. Thank you to our officials from the Government of Canada who are with us today and are taking time to help this new committee of a new Parliament orient itself to our shared work, which is ensuring the safety of Canadians and our public security. Thank you for the work you do every day, and thank you particularly for your work with us this morning.

I understand that Ms. Wilson will begin with the presentation and then we'll have questions.

Ms. Wilson, we will generally go through you, and you can direct to whomever you think is the most appropriate person to answer those questions.

[Gina Wilson, Associate Deputy Minister, Public Safety Canada, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

That's good.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to appear before you today.

I understand that we are your first witnesses—let's say your first guests—and we're here to present you with an overview of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, which we refer to as the Department of Public Safety.

I'm going to talk about public safety and our structure, our role, and some of our priorities. I am joined by my colleagues from the five branches within the department, and I will be introducing them as I go through my comments.

Broadly speaking, Public Safety's mandate is to keep Canadians safe from a vast array of threats, including natural disasters, crime, and terrorism.

The department was established in 2003 to ensure coordination among the federal departments and agencies that deal with national security, emergency management, law enforcement, corrections, crime prevention, cybersecurity, and border security issues.

The department is one of six organizations that constitute the public safety portfolio, all of which report to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Mr. Goodale.

The portfolio at large is considerable in size and scope. It has more than 65,800 full-time equivalents, our employees, and it has an operating budget in 2015-16 of $8.5 billion.

Later today or soon after, I believe, and next week, you'll have an opportunity to hear in depth from each agency, but I'll briefly list the key mandates of each. We have the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, which manages our national borders and supports legitimate cross-border trade and travel. We have the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, which protects Canada's national security interests by investigating and reporting on activities that may pose a threat to our security. There is the Correctional Service of Canada, which is the federal agency responsible for administering sentences with terms of two years or more, which also supervises offenders under conditional release in the community. There is the Parole Board of Canada, which is an independent administrative tribunal that makes decisions on conditional release and records suspensions as well as making clemency recommendations. Last, there is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which enforces laws, prevents and investigates crimes of all types, and helps maintain peace, order, and security here and abroad as part of our international deployments.

There are also three review bodies that play a key role in accountability and review functions related to the work of their respective agencies, and these are the Office of the Correctional Investigator, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, and the RCMP External Review Committee.

Allow me now to shift to the Department of Public Safety itself and some of our work. As of December 2015, we had 991 indeterminate and term employees. The budget approved in the 2015-16 main estimates and supplementary estimates to date is $1.14 billion, and we manage a substantial grants and contributions program with close to $1 billion budgeted for this fiscal year alone.

The vast scope of the department's work means that we have employees working in every part of the country and around the world.

This includes regional offices in Ontario, Quebec, Nunavut, the Atlantic region, the Prairies, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, and the Yukon. These offices help us deliver on key priorities like first nations policing, crime prevention and emergency management.

I will now talk about the major program areas and priorities found within the department itself.

Here with me we have Monik Beauregard, who's our senior ADM for national and cybersecurity. The department works to deliver on the government's priorities related to national and cybersecurity. We're developing legislation and policies to keep Canadians safe from terrorist acts and to improve accountability and oversight of our national security agencies. We're working to create an office dedicated to countering radicalization to violence, and we're reviewing and strengthening Canada's cybersecurity strategy to build resilient cyber-networks and create cyber-savvy citizens.

Our ADM, Lori MacDonald, at the emergency management and programs branch, couldn't be here today but she is ably represented here by Craig Oldham, who manages our government operations centre, which I'll talk about in a moment. Emergency management is a significant portion of the work we do at Public Safety Canada. For example, we manage the disaster financial assistance arrangements or the DFAA program, which provides financial support to provinces and territories in the wake of significant natural disasters like floods and wildfires. Recognizing the increasing risk and costs of disasters, the department runs the national disaster mitigation program and this program fills a critical gap in Canada's ability to effectively mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from flood-related events. These are the four pillars of emergency management.

We're also supporting the government's efforts to help first responders and public safety officers coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, or occupational stress injuries. This includes holding national consultations and developing a national action plan. As mentioned, the department also houses the government operations centre—I mentioned Craig—which coordinates the integrated federal response to human-induced and natural events of all types. Also, quite recently we assumed responsibility for the National Search and Rescue Secretariat, which used to be part of the National Defence portfolio.

We also have here Kathy Thompson, who is our ADM responsible for community safety and countering crime. Public Safety provides federal policy leadership, coordination, and program support for issues related to crime prevention and law enforcement. We work with the United States and the CBSA to secure our borders while encouraging trade and travel through the beyond the border action plan. We ensure that effective policy and legislative frameworks are in place to support the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies in order to combat serious and organized crimes like drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, child sexual exploitation, and human trafficking.

We support indigenous communities that seek to reduce violence against women and to develop community safety plans that are culturally relevant. Through the first nations policing program we also provide funding to many communities for access to professional, dedicated, and culturally appropriate policing services. We support crime prevention programs through the national crime prevention strategy, and finally, we review key aspects of the criminal justice system, including record suspensions, parole, segregation in correctional institutions, and improving the use of restorative justice approaches.

Now I would like to introduce Paul McKinnon, assistant deputy minister of the portfolio affairs and communications branch.

Strategic policy and planning integration within the department falls under the portfolio affairs and communications branch. Through this work, we engage and consult with stakeholders and citizens, notably through the cross-cultural round table on security.

We push forward on a significant research agenda and partner with academics, including the Kanishka program, which supports research into understanding and addressing terrorism threats in a Canadian context.

In terms of corporate management, also present on this panel is our chief financial officer and assistant deputy minister of the corporate management branch. This is Mark Perlman. That branch is responsible for financial and human resources management, procurement and asset management, as well as information management and information technology.

I trust this gives you a good overview of our department, the portfolio agencies, and some of our top priorities, and as well introduces you to some of our senior officials who you will likely come to know over the upcoming months. I look forward to the discussion and answering questions that you may have.

Thank you, merci, and meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much. You've done this before, and you have five seconds remaining in your time.

Mr. Spengemann, you have seven minutes for questions and answers.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your excellent presentation, Ms. Wilson, and welcome to the committee.

My thanks to both you and your colleagues for the work you are doing, as high-ranking officials, on the country's behalf.

I have two areas of inquiry. Time permitting, we will get to both of them. One is domestic and one is international.

I think I speak for a number of my colleagues when I say that there is some interest among committee members on the state of our first nations, in particular in terms of vulnerabilities and perhaps also with respect to Correctional Services, disproportionalities in our prison population, and gender violence.

Could you start out by giving us an overview of the state of affairs within Public Safety? What is the thinking currently taking place with respect to providing public safety as a public good, which is really an exercise of providing effective security and safety, but also balancing our charter rights against measures that are in place?

Please bring the committee up to date on that very important area.

[Gina Wilson]

Personally, I'm very excited to talk about the work we do with indigenous communities. I will let our ADM talk about some of the work we do around community safety plans, as well as first nations policing.

[Kathy Thompson, Assistant Deputy Minister, Community Safety and Countering Crime Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

At public safety, we have a number of programs that are directed to indigenous communities and have been in place for a number of years. One of those programs that we're very proud of and that is extending to communities across the country is called community safety plans. We work with indigenous communities. Some of them have self-identified and asked us to come and work with them, and others we have approached to work with them. It's very much an engagement process, where we work with the communities and they bring the community together. We help them to facilitate, but they bring together the community members, the elders, the youth, and the community organizations.

We're also partnering with our provincial and territorial counterparts to bring communities together to develop community safety plans. This is really an integrated approach to crime prevention. The very first step is engagement. The communities develop their own plans. The plans vary from one community to the other, depending on what their priorities are. Some are at the macro level and some are very much at the micro level. To date, we have 80 communities participating in the program. So far, 17 have completed community safety plans, and others are at different stages of developing their plans. Really, they are communities across the country. Now we're working with those that have completed plans to help them to identify and match them with resources to try to implement the action plans that they have developed.

In our experience, we've seen a lot of programs. We think this is the best model for working with indigenous communities because it is very much a community-designed process where they identify their resources. They bring the groups together and they go forward with implementation.

The other program I would talk about is the first nations policing program. We provide funding for dedicated professional and responsive aboriginal community resources for policing. There are different types of agreements. In some cases, those resources are RCMP policing, and in other cases they're police services from the community. To date, we fund approximately almost 1,300 police officers in indigenous communities. That program has been evaluated and has demonstrated to be very effective in terms of reducing crime in those communities.

Those are two community-focused programs. We have others that are focused more broadly across different communities, but that touch on indigenous communities. For example, we have an exiting prostitution program. We have a national strategy on human trafficking that looks at issues and has worked with indigenous communities. We have a national crime prevention strategy, which is the key framework for advancing crime prevention in Canada. That program offers approximately $40 million a year in grants and contributions to communities. There is one stream of that program that is directed to northern and aboriginal communities. Within the national crime prevention strategy, there are different priorities, but youth six to 12 are a priority, as are offenders who are no longer under community supervision. There are different streams with that, but there is one stream and dedicated funding particularly to northern and aboriginal communities.

[Gina Wilson]

Mr. Spengemann, I would also encourage you to ask that question of our colleagues from Correctional Service Canada who do significant work with the indigenous communities both in the community and the institutions.

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

Given the limited time remaining, I will maybe open this up as an area of inquiry and then allow my colleagues to zoom in a bit more.

My question is about the intersection between the international and the domestic. There are all kinds of threats out there internationally, and they may or may not translate into threats here at home.

In terms of the overall strategy, I'm wondering if you can give us an overview of what those threats might be, how they evolve, including movements of goods, people, and ideas across borders. Is there a strategy in place to look at international threats versus domestic ones?

[Gina Wilson]

In the time we have, I'm going to turn briefly to Paul or Monik to respond to that.

[Monik Beauregard, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

There are a lot of ways to answer that question.

I guess I'll start by saying that we don't necessarily have a strategy in place, but we do have mechanisms in place to assess the threat. Obviously what is happening internationally does resonate domestically, and we've seen indications of that. We have seen how international events have had direct impacts on Canadians. We saw four years ago, I believe it was in 2013, when there was an attack on an Algerian gas pumping station, that two Canadians were part of the terrorist plot. I think that really brought home to us this whole idea that some Canadians are out there to commit terrorist acts.

We have also seen more recently the attacks in Burkina Faso that have taken the lives of Canadians. We've had our own threat situation right here in our capital city in October 2014 and the day before in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

We do have an organization that's part of Public Safety that was not mentioned in the opening remarks but sort of straddles CSIS and the rest of the community. It's called ITAC, the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Madam Beauregard.

I'll continue with Mr. O'Toole.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you all very much for taking the time to be here. We know your busy schedules and the burdens you have. We've read about that in the papers in recent days from Mr. Boisvert, a former colleague of yours, so we appreciate your taking the time.

This was quite interesting because it is very similar to the overview the analysts provided us in our last meeting, and also very similar to the materials the committee were provided with before we sat as a committee, but it's always good to put faces to names and to see the talented people we have.

Considering some of this background I am familiar with, my question is in relation to Minister Goodale's announcement earlier this week about the hiring of a counter-radicalization coordinator. I'm wondering which senior official would be responsible for that component?

[Gina Wilson]

She's putting up her hand.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Are the terms of reference for that position crafted, and what would the goal and scope of that office be?

[Monik Beauregard]

I think we've seen from the mandate letter as well that countering radicalization to violence is clearly one of the priorities of this government.

We have been working on countering violent extremism at Public Safety for quite a long time now. You may even want to ask the question of the RCMP when they are here, because they also have a very robust outreach program to communities to help understand what indicators could identify risks of radicalization to violence.

Countering radicalization to violence is very complex. We've seen from some of the perpetrators of terrorism, whether they are Canadians or not, that there's no specific profile. A lot of it right now is also happening through the Internet as we've seen. There are articles about women who are out there now in Syria, a lot of whom have been radicalized through the Internet.

There are a number of issues of concern, and the government needs to work across. Public Safety needs to work across the government with a lot of the other stakeholders across government, but we also need to work with the provinces, the territories, the municipalities, the community groups, educational groups, mental health associations, and so on and so forth.

There is already a lot of work happening outside of government. You will likely have seen that during the visit of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Montreal a few days or a few weeks ago, he visited one of those counter-radicalization centres in Montreal.

At the end of the day, what we want to be able to do is to create this national office that will provide that leadership and ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives using the same framework, and that we are sharing best practices and working together in this very complex domain.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Would the person who would administer this department be an internal hire, or would this be someone who would be hired externally? Have those specific terms been drawn up?

[Monik Beauregard]

At this point that has not been decided. We're still working with our government colleagues to put proposals on paper for that.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

You referenced the disturbing story many of us heard this week about the young Canadian women who travelled to start families with ISIS fighters, and you mentioned there's no specific profile. Does the department report say that radicalization in this case could have been through the Internet? It's also been reported, though not substantiated, that some were converts. Is there any specific attention being focused on that and on identifying the people on the ground who are radicalizing, and will doing that be part of specific efforts?

[Monik Beauregard]

We're always concerned to hear that someone has left the country and has been radicalized. Whether or not they convert, there's the whole process of radicalization to violence. In this case there was maybe not necessarily radicalization to violence, but there was enough radicalization that they wanted to join the fight for other purposes. Obviously countering radicalization to violence was already part of our terrorism strategy that was published in 2012.

Sorry, I'm catching up on the history of the department. I've been there for a month myself.

We do have a national counterterrorism strategy, of which countering violent extremism is already a part. It is part of one of the pillars, really part of the prevention pillar. We look at how to work with communities, how to build trust with communities so that they can recognize certain indicators. We're talking about radicalization whether by somebody on the ground who is in their city or through the Internet.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Can I stop you there? I apologize, but my time is limited. I know my friend Mr. Erskine-Smith wants to look at Bill C-51. Bill C-51 criminalized radicalization efforts, or the support for terrorism, online and on the Internet. Can that new tool, the criminalization of that sort of radicalization on the Internet, be used to prevent some of these situations?

[Monik Beauregard]

I don't think I can answer that question. I'd have to get back to you.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

The final thing in the announcement from the minister's office earlier this week is that a community outreach office will be created. I'm wondering whether that will be part of the counter-radicalization coordinator's overall mandate or a separate entity being looked at.

[Monik Beauregard]

We're expecting it to be the same office and the same person.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

There will likely be funding in the upcoming budget to fuel this.

All right. That's all I have for now, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

We will continue with Mr. Dubé.