Public Safety Committee on Oct. 21st, 2016

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I want to go broadly for a second to both of you, and after that I'll have more narrow questioning.

We are now in meeting number nine of this tour. Human rights groups, civil rights groups, and legal groups have been pretty clear and unified in their concern about the overextension in the form of Bill C-51 and our need to rebalance. We get that. Why are you not afraid of terrorists?

[Michael Karanicolas]

I work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so I spend a lot of my time in countries where the terrorist threat is considerably higher than it is here. I wouldn't say I'm not afraid of terrorists, but having been in countries where there is a stronger threat, I would say that maybe my guard is a little lower when I'm in Canada.

Beyond that, I do think it's important to tailor the restrictions that we put in place to the threat that's there, and I'm not sure that the threat from terrorism today is worse than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Based on a threat analysis, really, the threat analysis that you perceive does not warrant an overreach into our rights and freedoms.

[Michael Karanicolas]

That's part of the idea of proportionality in human rights law, which says that certain civil rights can be suspended in times of emergency—for example, if we were at war, with tanks rolling in the streets. You see that happening and it's not necessarily illegitimate, but when you suspend something like that for something like the threat of terrorism, which is an indefinite threat that we're going to be facing, then there are real challenges. These suspensions and exceptional circumstances need to be taken in a time-tested manner.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Without wanting to lead you too much, does the provision under the former Bill C-51 that indicates that it is okay to infringe upon charter rights bother you?

[Michael Karanicolas]

Yes, I think that's a problematic provision.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Do you have any comments?

[Christina Szurlej]

I do.

Every day I'm concerned about the protection of my privacy, particularly working in the field of human rights. Never have I woken up in the morning and thought to myself that I hope I don't die in a terrorist attack today.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Fine.

That's probably my time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have about 20 seconds.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I'll yield it to my colleagues. I'm that kind of person.

[Christina Szurlej]

May I make a final point about a question that was previously raised regarding security in a digital age?

I think one of the key questions that needs to be raised is on what the role of business is here. In considering that, you may want to take a look at John Ruggie's protect, respect, and remedy framework, and how that would impact.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Perfect. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Do you want to take the chair, Mr. Oliphant?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I quite miss getting to ask questions.

Go ahead, Mr. Miller.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both Christina and Michael for being here.

To your second-last comment, Christina, I don't wake up every morning worried about dying in a terrorist attack either.

To carry on from something you said, Michael, you wondered if the terrorist threat was any worse than it was 20 years ago. I guess my comment would be that in 2006 we had the group of 18 in Toronto; two years ago we had Warrant Officer Vincent killed in the Montreal area and Corporal Cirillo in Ottawa; then just recently, not that far from where I live, a couple of hours to the south, there was a would-be terrorist, so I would say, respectfully, that the threat is probably there.

You were certainly correct that we can't compare it to Afghanistan, or even to some of the recent happenings in Europe—in Paris and what have you—but I think we do live in a different world today. You're nodding your head, so I presume you agree with me there.

Carrying that out, until we started these meetings earlier this week, I hadn't heard the term “metadata”. Of course, “encryption” is a word that we've heard lots of times, but not with the meaning that comes up here.

You made a comment earlier about strong encryption, which sounded like a good thing to a degree. Some of the criticism that comes out of Bill C-51 on some of the securities is about that encryption. Can you explain to me the difference between strong and good encryption, and how we deal with it, and the opposite?

[Michael Karanicolas]

I'm not sure that BillC-51 itself deals with encryption, but I can certainly answer that question.

Think of encryption as being like a safe. You can put material into it and you can lock it, or you can open it and have the material accessible. When you talk about strong encryption, you are minimizing the ways in and out of that safe, as opposed to allowing for a different way of access or multiple different combinations. Every change that you make other than that one single way in or out weakens it by necessity.

The reason this is so important is that it's the same encryption standards that are guarding Gmail messages or instant messages that are going back and forth, that are taking care of government's messages, that are taking care of your bank integrity when you're online banking, that are taking care of personal information when you're on the Internet. For that reason, it's very difficult to design a system where.... If you undermine a particular type of encryption, if you undermine the encryption standards that are widely available, that are widely enforced, if you require them to have a back door into them, then that will necessarily weaken the encryption that everybody's using.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Are you saying that it's proposed to weaken that encryption?

[Michael Karanicolas]

That's an idea that's been floated quite a lot. There's been a lot of discussion about that in the U.S,. and it always comes up against the wall because there's very strong resistence from the technology community, which says this will weaken everybody's security. Generally the government has asked for it a bunch of times and backed down a bunch of times.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay, so it's being asked for, but it's not actually happening at this point.

[Michael Karanicolas]

That's right.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay.

I'll move back to metadata. That word almost sounds all-encompassing. Can you have metadata and exclude some things that would solve some of the concerns that you too may have?

[Michael Karanicolas]

You can restrict it to search for particular information, but it will be difficult to craft a legislative formula forward that allows for warrantless access, I think, in the wake of the Spencer decision.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Christina, do you have any comment on that?

[Christina Szurlej]

Not on that point, no.