Public Safety Committee on Feb. 13th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I interrupted you, so I'll give you a little extra time for another question.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to go back to the passenger protect program, which was in place before the new act.

In the past, a presumed terrorist could board a plane and come to Canada. Under the new law, however, we have seen a few cases, for instance, of a child of three or four years of age who could not attend a baseball game in the United States. It is as though doing too much prevents us from functioning, while not doing enough leaves too many doors open to various possibilities.

You said the problem sometimes arises when people board a plane in Canada that flies over the U.S. Are changes to the passenger protect program being considered?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I think we need a program that meets Canadians' expectations. On the whole, I think this program does that because the problems are isolated cases. As some colleagues also mentioned, even one bad case or false case is too one too many. At the same time, however, there are not dozens of people who are barred from taking flights every day.

Any government program will cause problems for certain individuals, give rise to isolated cases, and not always work properly. In short, we need to focus on these individuals rather than reviewing the entire program. I think the program works well on the whole and seems to be fair and effective.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Go ahead, Mr. Clement.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, madame and gentlemen, for your presentation.

I want to start with you, Mr. Neve, if I could, because I felt as though there were two different things being said. I'm sure that wasn't your intention, so I just want to unpack it a little bit.

At one point you said that there really doesn't have to be a tension between national security and human rights issues and that the appropriate application of national security concerns would be in favour of human rights being protected, but further to some of the things you said, and having Professor Leuprecht here as well, we have in fact talked about balancing and that there's a natural tension that we strive to balance in our legislation.

I'm a bit confused. I would have thought that Amnesty International's position is human rights at all costs, and everything else be damned. Surely that's the essence of what you're trying to put into the public space. Then others would have a different point of view, and through Hegelian dialogue we come to some sort of synthesis and life moves on. I don't want to put anything into your mouth, so why don't you express it the way you want to express it?

[Alex Neve]

Can I use that slogan for our next campaign?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I was going to put it in my pamphlet. I'm sure it will get me lots of votes.

[Alex Neve]

As my colleague Madame Vaugrante laid out, what we come back to is that the international human rights system itself already strikes the balance we're talking about, so you do not need to look outside of or beyond human rights in order to anticipate or decide what the balance is.

As she noted, there are a number of human rights that are defined in the provisions of international treaties. Freedom of expression is a perfect example of acknowledging that there's a balance that needs to be found. There are very careful limitations on that, but it's right there in the definition of the right.

There are a handful of other rights that international law recognizes in extreme circumstances, and international law is very strong here, saying that in the case of “threatening the life of the nation”, it's even possible to suspend some rights for a limited period of time and only as is absolutely necessary.

Then, finally, international law recognizes there are some rights that are so profoundly important, so essential to the notions of human integrity that are at the heart of human rights and also at the heart of us being secure, that they can never be violated. The protection against torture is a perfect example there.

That's what we're putting in front of governments: that you do not need to look beyond the human rights framework to figure out how to resolve that tension and find the balance. Governments—and of course, it was governments, not Amnesty International, that crafted those treaties over many decades—have already done so.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Fair enough. I understand your position a lot more clearly now. Thank you.

However, we do live in a world where the threat is metastasizing and changing extremely rapidly, such that sovereign countries are playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to figure out how to deal with these threats as they alter. The threats of 1938 and 1940 aren't the threats of 2017. As governments, as sovereign nations who are ultimately responsible for their own borders and security, how do you...? It's not just a stasis. There are new threats and therefore new responses to threats, so is it still appropriate to deal with something that was crafted in 1938?

[Alex Neve]

It's much more recent than 1938.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Okay. I thought somebody said something about 1938.

[Alex Neve]

It begins in 1948, which is when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was crafted. There have been numerous treaties in the decades since then. Even now, United Nations human rights gatherings of governments continue to re-examine—but in doing so, reaffirm—the fundamental human rights framework I've just described.

Yes, absolutely, governments should be innovating, exploring new strategies, being more preventive, reaching out to communities, and finding new ways to gather information. However, when they do so, we would argue—and governments themselves have argued—on the most obvious issue of all, torture, that torture never has a place in any of those activities. Whether they are the old frameworks or the new security approaches that are being explored today, torture should never be part of it, just to use one example.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I appreciate your clarity on that point. I appreciate that very much.

Professor Leuprecht, I have a couple of questions.

You talked a lot about cybersecurity infrastructure. Thank you for raising that issue. Are we falling behind internationally here in Canada on that?

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

Yes.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Dianne says yes, so I'll have to read that into the record.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Look, we're world class on some of the things we do. In some of the very specific capabilities we have, we can play with the best. I think we also have serious challenges in areas where we're not looking forward.

For instance, there's no foresight in this country on the way electronic communication is changing. People used to write letters to one another; then they wrote emails, and now we write text. Much of the communication in the future is going to be between machines—your phone and your fridge, your laundry machine, and whatnot—

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

It's the Internet of everything.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Under these circumstances, what should we be watching? What can we be watching? Where might the threats emerge? As far as I can tell, nobody has actually seriously thought about where this is headed and how we need to prepare for it. Nobody has asked questions in this country about whether what is being delivered on cyber to the government in terms of intelligence and strategic intelligence is actually what the government needs. As far as I can tell, the priorities for the government are not well aligned with the sort of products the government actually receives from some of its agencies, for instance.

Also, I think that we in this country have a serious challenge in terms of our overall capability. Every week I get a call from someone who asks me, “Christian, we just got authorized to hire 20 new people to help us on our cybersecurity front. Can you give me some names of some folks we could hire?” These people do not exist. The government has not thought systematically about how we generate the research capacity, how we generate the HQP, the highly qualified personnel, to make sure we can actually provide for Canada what Canada needs to be competitive and safe.

You've probably heard this expression, often referred to as “phase two”. “Phase two” means it's not just about cybersecurity; it's Industry Canada now also thinking about.... It's that if we can't keep the investments that people make in Canada and in intellectual property safe and protected, then people are not going to put their money into Canada. They're going to put it into Australia or into Israel or into the Netherlands, countries that have a strategy to protect their intellectual property. We're going to be seriously left behind in terms of our prosperity.

I think that in the current environment, we need to make sure we're competitive. We have one province that actually has a somewhat coordinated strategy, and that's New Brunswick. As far as I can tell, in the other provinces, it's—

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Way to go, René.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

It's a complete free-for-all.

I think, regardless of what party is in power, we have an interest in making sure we actually have a coordinated strategy here. I would encourage—

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I need to bring this Hegelian dialectic to an end.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Mr. Dubé is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for the representatives of Amnesty International Canada and pertains to torture.

You talked about a change in mindset, so to speak, as to sharing information with the United States since Mr. Trump has opened the door to torture.

As I understand it, you co-signed a letter calling on the minister to review the ministerial directive. The minister said the directive covers the use of information as well as the prohibition on using it initially in any way until it has been read to the end. That is the key.

Are you in favour of repealing that directive and replacing with one that explicitly prohibits the use of any information obtained through torture?

[Alex Neve]

Would you like to answer the question, Ms. Vaugrante?