Hi. I appreciate your time and the chance to be here.
I'm a private citizen. I'm now retired. I used to work for each of the largest telephone companies in Canada. I had dealings with CSIS. They always needed a warrant. Of course, I've been retired for a while.
I'd ask the committee to remember why CSIS was created. CSIS was created because it was seen that it was really dangerous to have a police agency that had intelligence power. CSIS was created as a separate entity to take that away from the RCMP. Bill C-51 gives police powers back to CSIS. If you don't see why that is dangerous, then you really need to do some reading. You need to understand what all the privacy commissioners in Canada have said and why they oppose this bill.
Right from the start they opposed this bill. A couple of hundred legal academics opposed it. Almost every other former prime minister opposed it. The only people that I could see who were for it were the spooks and the people in the Harper government who saw a chance to take advantage of a terrible incident and bring in these really draconian powers on the part of CSIS.
I have a couple of suggestions. One suggestion is that if you want more information about the danger of trying to put back doors into encryption, then take a look at the writings of Dr. Bruce Schneier. He has a much-read blog. He's a very well-respected part of the information security community. He's at Schneier.com. You'll get a lot of really good information there about the dangers of trying to put back doors into encryption and why it's a danger to our economy to do that. If you removed encryption, then many businesses would fail.
Another suggestion I have is about this idea of CSIS going before a judge to get a warrant. Although it doesn't appear to be happening, that's very troubling. When CSIS does go before a judge to get a warrant, there's nobody representing the other side. CSIS on their own makes the decision of whether they should go for a warrant. Then they're the only ones presenting information to the judge. I think you need to involve the privacy commissioners or somebody like that to provide a counterbalance for what CSIS is requesting.
The privacy commissioners are a resource in the country that I think you're not utilizing. Your government is not utilizing that resource with respect to CSIS.
I can go on for a long time, but I don't think we have much more time.