Public Safety Committee on Oct. 19th, 2016

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thanks very much for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Ms. Watts.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you very much.

I have a quick question for the senator, and then I want to have a conversation with the professor.

I think it was already touched on in terms of the model that was originally set up in the U.K. that you prefer that model as opposed to the way it has transitioned now to 2013, but you did say something that was quite disturbing. You said that if it goes to where the U.K. model is now, it would be a threat to national security in Canada. Can you tell me why?

[Hugh Segal]

That's simply because the notion of how the committee is now appointed in the U.K., the notion of not having the protections that existed at the beginning, would send a message to the security agencies that work on behalf of all of us—and I think all of us around the table share a high regard for the men and women who devote their lives to our national security—that this would be a committee that they could not necessarily be frank with or trust. Until that relationship is established over a period of time, it could have a negative effect on the risks they're prepared to take within the law and the Constitution to protect our national security.

I'm very much of the view that even though the U.K. has progressed from where they were decades ago to where they are now, because this is our first real parliamentary oversight committee that actually has security clearance to get the whole truth, we should be starting where they started and not where they are now.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Right.

You think that being that it's under the Prime Minister's office and governed by the Prime Minister, they would feel more secure in terms of talking about what they need to talk about in that model.

[Hugh Segal]

Yes. I would argue that they would be more frank and more open, knowing full well that if something entered one of the reports prepared by the committee en route to Parliament, the Prime Minister, basically based on the advice of his national security adviser, could do what is necessary in the U.K. and remove whatever that one line may be.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

They can doctor any of the reports they want.

[Hugh Segal]

But they also in the U.K. have to indicate that they have doctored the report in that paragraph and at that place, which will produce public interest in what that was about.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

My submission would be that doctoring the report and taking things out is not instilling transparency and openness.

I also understand very clearly that there are issues with national security that have to be out of that realm, so I get that.

I'd like to move on.

I'm very interested in this, because I think there's a really long road to radicalization. I think radicalization is at this end of the spectrum and that many things have to occur to get to this end.

You talked about building resilient communities. You talked about making sure community engagement...and especially about having law enforcement be engaged in the community so that a level of trust is there. In my experience, that is absolutely and exactly the way that communities need to function and build resilience.

I want to ask you this question, though. I'm not talking about any one particular area or country. If there are children from a war-torn country who have witnessed violence, who are struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, and who may have lost parents or what have you, would you say that, if left without the support—and I know that they would be more at risk—they would be more at risk of being radicalized? I know they're more at risk to get into gangs and into criminal behaviour and all of that—that's proven outright—but does that thread go to radicalization?

[Prof. Ron Levi]

We don't have evidence on that. That's a simple and clear answer: we don't know. I've seen no empirics that suggest that.

That said, I think what we would want to think about, as a research matter and thus as a policy matter, would be how to distill a pathway to violent radicalization that doesn't presume what is thought about in the literature as a conveyor belt theory, as though somehow A causes B causes C and that this leads you on a conveyor belt to violent radicalization. We have not seen good evidence of that. The Aaron Driver case is one example. We have not seen evidence of predictive power around it.

Coming to the question of how we can predict and whether we can predict based on past experience, I haven't seen that evidence.

I would say that this is about determining what the vulnerability points are and acting on those vulnerability points. I would say that if we thought of it that way, I would want us to think about two things. The first would be to work at a primary level face to face, to work at a secondary level within communities, and to work at tertiary levels with law enforcement and other organizations of the state and others.

I also think you would need to do this in ways that are individual and that also attend to people who have had no contact with that risk, people before the fact, people who may have had some contact with that risk, and people who have in fact already been either radicalized or, as we say, radicalized to violence.

We have to figure out where that threshold is. I don't think the green paper tells us that, and that's going to be a judgment call. I think a lot of attention needs to be placed there. We have to think about those things.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Right. In the absence of the research—I mean, for getting ahead of that curve—would it be advantageous to...? There are many countries around the world where we've seen radicalization that is far greater than what we're seeing here in Canada, so it would seem to me that if we want to learn about that, we should go to a variety of other countries that are seeing that increase and see what the indicators are and look at that within your matrix.

I think it's a question of getting ahead of the research. There's a committee being set up about radicalization, but we don't have the data, we don't have the benchmark, we don't have the research. We have to get some.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I have to cut you off and I can't let you comment on that.

We would remind you that if members have questions they'd like responses to in writing, they can also ask. Right at the end, we'll see if there's anything you want from the witnesses.

If you're willing to give it we may ask you for submissions to the committee.

Mr. Dubé, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Segal, I don't want to litigate Bill C-22 too much, because we will have dedicated hearings for that, but since you are here, and some points were raised, I do have a few concerns. I just want to hear you out on that, and perhaps I'm misunderstanding. But I know in the Arar commission, Justice O'Connor specifically talked about the importance of having a broad integrated expert oversight, and every expert we've heard from has said that the expert oversight and parliamentary oversight go hand in hand.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to understand that you're almost thinking that a robust parliamentary oversight should act alone almost. Am I misunderstanding that?

[Hugh Segal]

No. What I said in my presentation briefly was that the support basis that operates, the bureaucracy that operates underneath the committee, should have the finest experts, the most competent people, with experience, to support the committee, but it should be a parliamentary oversight, where the expertise is used for the purpose of analysis and oversight. The notion of having a parliamentary oversight and another oversight allows a competition in oversight, which allows the minister of the day to choose which particular view he or she thinks is appropriate. That's unconstructive.

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

Okay. I appreciate that clarification.

The other point I just wanted to raise is this concern over going through the reforms that the British went through with and moving too quickly. I can understand that, but at the same time, when you raised the idea of earning the trust of agencies like CSIS, the most important thing for me is we also need to earn the trust of the public. The chair of the British committee specifically said when he was in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago that for them these reforms, such as having the chair be elected by parliamentarians, were ways of earning the public's trust. While I can understand the concern of going through with these reforms too quickly, aren't we losing as well the public's trust by not implementing those reforms immediately by amending the bill?

[Hugh Segal]

That's a completely fair question. It strikes me that if we perhaps move from where the committee would start to a status that is similar to the present committee in the U.K. within the first five years, we will have achieved both. But if we move directly to where the committee is now in the U.K., while we're just starting for the first time to have real parliamentary oversight, I think we'd face some risks of being counterproductive.

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

Okay. If I gave you a specific example, I think in the British model they elect the Prime Minister's nominees to the committee. If we just said at least have the members selected in a more traditional way— if we could put it that way—and at least have the chair elected, then at least the committee would earn trust that way by not having someone who could be perceived as simply a pawn of the PMO. I'm not saying that would be the case, but the perception is important, correct?

[Hugh Segal]

It is. In my view, the mere creation of the committee is a dilution of the Prime Minister's sole discretion, which there has been historically on national security, and that's a good thing. If we're going to dilute that discretion through an oversight committee, we do have to leave the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety, whichever government's in power, whoever they happen to be, the ultimate capacity to protect national security, because that is their responsibility, period, full stop. It supercedes everything else. If they're not given that authority by being able to make the redactions and other things that we've discussed, and appoint the members of the committee in the first round, we are I think diluting their capacity to protect the national security of Canadians, to which every Prime Minister is committed.

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

I appreciate that.

My final question, because I do have a question for Professor Levi afterwards and my time is limited, is, would you not argue that the Prime Minister has traditionally had that power, and yet with Bill C-51 it's an unprecedented—some would say and I would say—attack on Canadians' rights to privacy? With the information sharing pieces that exist in the legislation, among other things, can it not be expected that the Prime Minister and the Governor in Council should see their powers reduced given how much they've asked for and taken with this bill?

[Hugh Segal]

I agree with you that Bill C-51 was excessive in many respects. I agree with you that it needs to be changed. I agree with you that the position taken by the then third party in the House of Commons, that they would support the bill but make changes afterwards, was in fact strategically and tactically quite compelling. I also believe that many of the excesses in that bill will be struck down by the courts, as they should be, because they violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and other changes, which will be made over time, which the present government has committed to, will be appropriate and constructive. But I don't think we want to mix the excesses in that bill with what needs to now happen with respect to parliamentary oversight.

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

Thank you.

Professor Levi, perhaps it was something I misunderstood, but in your comments you talked about counter-radicalization and this fear in communities about surveillance. I'm just wondering if that's related to existing legislation. I'm not quite clear on what exactly you meant by that.

[Prof. Ron Levi]

I think the study you're referring to is a study that was done in Toronto, not by me but by my colleagues. They find that where there are existing counter-narratives in communities already amongst youth vis-à-vis radicalization or radicalization to violence, the circulation of those counter-narratives—people willing to talk about them and to use them—is, itself, suppressed when people feel they are being monitored and targeted by law enforcement. The very act of talking about counter-narratives worries people, and so people refrain from doing that. That's a resource available in communities that could, otherwise, be tapped if communities did not feel targeted in that way.

If I might, in terms of counter-narratives, the green paper speaks about narratives and counter-narratives throughout. One thing that I don't know that we know is whether narratives to violence themselves are causal, that people fall under the influence of a narrative to violence or to violent radicalization, or whether they're justificatory, that they provide justification for people's actions. There is psychological evidence about this that goes either way. This is something that needs to be parcelled out when we think about narratives.

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

If we look at existing legislation and measures, something like the no-fly list, where there is a risk of profiling and certain communities being more at risk of finding themselves on this list in an unfair way, does that cause problems for the counter-radicalization effort, when you're seeing legislative measures and agencies behaving in a way that makes certain communities feel targeted?

[Prof. Ron Levi]

What we know from the procedural justice literature, which is not about a no-fly list in particular, is that when people feel that the target of law enforcement is a biased target, in the sense that it's been chosen in a biased manner, that has a negative influence on whether people perceive law enforcement to be legitimate, and would then have a negative influence, we would posit, on the likelihood of co-operation with law enforcement. Where it's seen as broad, the fact that some people versus others are on the list does not get in the way of people's view of legitimacy of the institution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.

I'm just going to interject one little question in here.

Ms. Cheung, I drew a little picture as you were talking about oversight. You brought in the judiciary as oversight explicitly. I added the minister. The department has oversight of those agencies. We also have various inspectors general and ombudsmen. We have the expert panel advisory, perhaps a super-SIRC, and parliamentary oversight.

Mr. Segal is suggesting that it all come under parliamentary oversight, which, in some sense, it theoretically does anyway, but not explicitly.

Do you have any comments or anything written on this that you want to point us to?