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.