Public Safety Committee on Oct. 21st, 2016

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

Good evening.

Welcome to the 38th meeting of the Standing Committee of Public Safety and National Security of the 42nd Parliament.

I want to welcome members of the public here, acknowledging that it's a Friday evening. I am glad that you are here with us.

I want to begin with a couple of remarks about what we are doing this week in the context of our study on the national security framework, and then I will have the members of the committee introduce themselves to you.

My name is Rob Oliphant and I am the chair of this committee. This past week, our committee has been undertaking a study of the national security framework that exists in Canada, which we began the week before in Ottawa. As you know, the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, was the culmination of a set of different acts over the last number of years that had restructured the national security framework.

It was felt that when this government was elected they wanted to make some changes, so we felt, as a parliamentary committee, that we should do a study on this security framework, both to advise the government of what Canadians were thinking, and as well to respond to what the government was doing in terms of study or legislation.

There are two consultations going on right now. They are simultaneous. The first consultation is being done by the government, through the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. He has issued a green paper, a shorter version and a longer background document, that is engaged now in public consultation. You can respond to it online. We can show you how afterwards, if anybody doesn't know.

Parallel to that is a parliamentary review. In this committee we represent Parliament, not part of government. Some of us are on the government caucus and others are not. However, we have not come here with an opinion. In some cities we have had large gatherings where people have wanted to know our opinion on issues, and we're not at an opinion stage. We are consulting with the public to find out what you think about the parameters of the national security framework.

We were in Vancouver for two meetings on Monday, in Calgary for two meetings on Tuesday, and in Toronto for two meetings on Wednesday. Yesterday in Montreal we had three meetings, and we're here in Halifax today. Our afternoon meetings are with experts in the field who may be academics or practitioners, and various civil society groups that come and give us their expertise. We have a chance to question them. Our evening meetings are your opportunity to tell us what your concerns or thoughts are.

The end of this study isn't quite clear yet. The goal is to report back to Parliament, and thus to have the government read our report and respond to it as well. Normally, when a parliamentary committee issues a report, they request a government response to that report. This study will also be fuelling all the legislation that the government is going to be bringing forward in the area of public safety. There's one bill that has already been tabled that comes under this umbrella. It's Bill C-22, and it establishes a committee of parliamentarians to do oversight of national security agencies. We are looking at oversight, but we will be studying that bill in depth beginning next week.

Tonight is your turn. I'm going to turn it over to the committee to introduce themselves. I let them tell you where they're from, and then we're going to turn on the microphone.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Good evening.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Colin Fraser. I'm the member of Parliament for West Nova. I'm not a usual member of this committee. I am substituting this evening and look forward to all of your comments. Thank you.

[A voice]

What party are affiliated with?

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I'm from the Liberal Party of Canada.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'm Pam Damoff, the member of Parliament from Oakville North–Burlington. This committee is composed of members from all parties. We have an equal number of government and opposition parties travelling with us. I'm a member of the Liberal Party.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

As I said, I'm Rob Oliphant. My riding is called Don Valley West. It's in the middle of Toronto, in southern Ontario. I'm part of the Liberal Party as well.

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

I am Larry Miller, member of Parliament from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound, in southwestern Ontario.

Thank you to all of you for coming here today.

[A voice]

What party are you with?

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

The Conservative Party.

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

My name is Dianne Watts. I'm the member of Parliament for South Surrey–White Rock in British Columbia.

[A voice]

What party?

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

Conservative.

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

I'm Matthew Dubé. I'm the member of Parliament for Beloeil–Chambly in the suburbs of Montreal. I'm the committee member for the New Democratic Party.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

That was fine. I will say that I will not be responding to comments from the floor when you're not at the microphone, just to keep the meeting going.

We're giving members of the public three or four minutes each to make their comments. Members of the committee may have questions for you or they may not. You may be succinct.

We have four people who have requested to speak. The first is Scott Burbidge.

We invite you to come to the microphone.

[Scott Burbidge, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Members of the standing committee and audience participants, it's an honour to be able to speak to this committee.

I come from a background that has in a way prepared me for this meeting but in a way has left me totally unprepared. I have a background in sociology and social work. I spent 20-odd years in the federal ministry of the solicitor general, working as a research officer and a policy adviser to the deputy minister. Our role was to assist that minister, the solicitor general—now the Minister of Public Safety—in fulfilling his statutory responsibilities for directing the commissioner of the RCMP and the head of CSIS. That relationship was one of accountability and control. It was a true oversight relationship.

I retired in 1998, but I never lost my interest in policing and public safety issues, so I got myself involved in the Arar inquiry in 2005-06. The policy review side of that inquiry looked at the need for oversight for the RCMP's anti-terrorist activities.

I have just a couple of quick points, given the limited time available.

I want to focus a bit on the minister's role, because I joined the ministry in the late seventies, at a time when of course the security service and RCMP activities were becoming of great concern in the context of a terrorist movement in Quebec, the FLQ. That led to the McDonald inquiry and, really, I worked in a department that had been shaped by the recommendations of Justice McDonald.

Central to that department was the central role of that minister, the solicitor general, in providing policy direction to the commissioner of the RCMP, as well as to the director of CSIS. In support of that role, there was an inspector of CSIS, there was the minister, SIRC was constituted, and there was a department headed by a deputy minister who provided the minister with policy and research support in his role as the minister responsible for the RCMP.

Much has changed since then. Having left in 1998, I have no experience from the inside in terms of what happened early in the 21st century. The war on terror changed everything in the sense of how we thought about the issues of public safety in Canada, and it changed the way we address public safety. As we've seen again in the discussion today, there's far more emphasis on the key role of our national security agencies and on providing them with the means and statutory justifications for powers to intervene in civil society and citizens' activities that are unprecedented, except in times of war and national emergency.

Having seen quite a number of the proposals for augmented review of national security activities, including the RCMP, CSIS, and CSEC, I have no difficulty with them. I don't think the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has either, given the scope and openness of this consultation. But what I think is missing from that discussion, that national conversation, is an examination of the capacity of the minister who, by statute, still is responsible for these agencies, to actually govern effectively the RCMP and CSIS, given the hugely expanded and more complicated scope of national security activities.

I think that is a huge issue, because no amount of post-review by SIRC or any new broader committee can make up for the absence of strong, consistent, and authoritative exercise of the role of the minister, and ministers cannot do that if they are not informed on an ongoing basis by the RCMP, on the basis of ministerial direction and their mandated responsibility to keep ministers abreast. I would remind you that the Arar commission was initiated because the prime minister of the day, the Right Honourable Paul Martin, and no less than four solicitors general all stated that they could not get a straight answer from the RCMP with respect to what was the Arar affair.

The Prime Minister initiated the inquiry because the RCMP had failed to be fully accountable. Subsequent to the Arar inquiry, a number of ministerial directions were initiated that required the RCMP to concentrate their anti-terrorist activities so they would be better controlled from headquarters, and to require the RCMP to keep the minister abreast of any sensitive or high-priority national security investigations. This was part of the response to the situation.

Since that time, my concern is that this has not happened or has not been consistent, and I think in particular of the B.C. Supreme Court Regina v. Nuttall case, which demonstrated an appalling lack of control and management of the investigation of the alleged terrorist plot in B.C. by a B.C.-based unit, and no indication at all that the minister of the day was being kept abreast of this evolving case, which turned out to be a disaster for public relations and public confidence in the RCMP. So that's my concern.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Don't go away. I should have actually ended it quite a while ago, based on the time, and I'm just going to warn the rest of you that I'm not setting a precedent. We have one question already and we may have more.

The reason I actually gave you more time than we would normally give, is because we have been on the road and we've heard expert testimony and we've heard public testimony. The public testimony has become increasingly repetitive. You offered a different insight to the committee, very frankly, that we have not heard before. It was unique from your experience and the contribution you make. I'm just warning people that I may not be so lenient with others, but the role of the minister is something when we've been looking at oversight and activity.... We've had people talking about the legislation. We've had people talking about practice, about resourcing. We've had people talking about a parliamentary committee etc.

That was unique, so that's why I did it.

Mr. Dubé has a question or a comment.

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

Thank you very much.

I'm from Quebec and I appreciate the historical perspective of some of the things that went on leading to the McDonald commission.

I don't want to take too much time. I have two quick questions. The first is in terms of the role of the minister. Is this something related to how the minister exercises existing power or would this be a statutory and/or a legal change to the power that he has over different agencies? That's my first question.

My second question is does that run parallel with the nonetheless existing need for independent and expert oversight, which does get provided to the minister at the end of the day anyway regardless of how it's shaped? Are you imagining those two things existing together and allowing more accountability on the part of these agencies? Those would be my two questions for you.

[Scott Burbidge]

Thank you.

I have relatively uninformed comments because I haven't had the benefit of hearing the other witnesses before this committee.

Taking the second question first, my understanding and my experience in the ministry is that ministers have always welcomed review committees. These agencies were welcomed not only by the minister and the department, the secretariat or the department of the solicitor general, but also by an important school of thought within the RCMP.

The same is true I believe of CSIS historically, although there was a very rough patch at the beginning of CSIS because initially they thought they were an oversight committee and they found out they were only a review committee, for after the fact reviews, which itself is important. I think they're complementary.

Going back to the first question, my understanding of the history in Canada of the relationship between the minister and the RCMP is there is the notion that the RCMP is accountable to the minister and that the minister provides policy direction, except for quasi-judicial activities of deciding to investigate individual acts, arrests, etc. That has always been the core notion in the relationship between the RCMP and successive solicitors general.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Are there any other questions?

I have a couple. The role of the inspector general was fairly important in my understanding in that original legislation that established CSIS after the McDonald commission. The last government got rid of the position of inspector general. Do you see it as something that is missing now in the system?

[Scott Burbidge]

Yes. As I've understood the distinction, SIRC is independent of government, but the inspector general was an office within the ministry of the solicitor general. It was another channel for the minister, which enabled him to determine on an annual basis, based on the work of the office of the inspector general, whether there were any issues in the conduct of CSIS in terms of compliance with the charter, with the Criminal Code, with any number of statutes, that the resources of CSIS were being effectively and appropriately used in the pursuit of their mandate.

When this came up in the Arar inquiry, the policy review, my view at the time was that—like this government channel with regard to CSIS—there should be a parallel channel with regard to the RCMP because it was another way for the minister to maintain control and be informed. It didn't imply a lack of trust, although McDonald did not trust police and he didn't trust the politicians to do their job in directing police either.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Are there any other questions?

Go ahead, Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much for your information tonight.

We've had a few witnesses who have talked about the position of a national security adviser. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on that. It would be a position similar to the Auditor General or the Privacy Commissioner, so it would be someone who reports to the PM.

[Scott Burbidge]

To my understanding, there is such an office already.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Yes, there is an office of the national security advisor to the Prime Minister. The thought is that perhaps that should be beefed up. They could even be an officer of Parliament, like the Auditor General or the Privacy Commissioner.

[Scott Burbidge]

I have two thoughts on that. One is that a committee of parliamentarians should not be a department of government reporting to a minister, who in that case, if it becomes law, would be the Prime Minister of Canada. A committee of parliamentarians should be a committee of Parliament. It should be the summit of the chain of accountability and responsibility for our national security efforts.

With regard to a kind of national security czar or someone with an office of oversight over all the different agencies, the kind of thinking I had at the time of the Arar inquiry, and I still believe in, was that we should do what the Australians and the Brits both did a decade or so ago. They completely reorganized their national security framework so that they had a coherent, integrated, comprehensive approach to national security. The lines of governance and control were clear.

I think we need to look at the roles and responsibilities of the RCMP in this regard. We need to look at the structure, the organization, and how these agencies work together. The inquiry into the Air India disaster showed the dysfunctionality of the separation of the security service from the RCMP in terms of unanticipated consequences. It was just a disaster. I think we need to go back, however difficult and intractable the issues, and look at it again.