Evidence of meeting #64 for Public Safety and National Security in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pre-clearance.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Andrea van Vugt  Vice-President, North America, Business Council of Canada
Joshua Paterson  Executive Director, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association

4:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

We're all set to reconvene the meeting.

First, I want to welcome the minister, but more importantly I want to welcome a group of students who have joined us today from Vancouver. They're hiding at the back of the room. I want to welcome the CJPAC group of teenage leaders who are watching democracy in action. We're delighted to have you with us today.

We are going to continue our meeting now, pursuant to Standing Order 81(4), to consider the main estimates for 2017-18.

Just for the officials' and the minister's information, at the start of this meeting it was decided not to consider the supplementary estimates (A). We'll just be considering the main estimates at this meeting, and the committee will reconvene at some point to make sure that we take time to consider supplementary estimates (A). We're not sure exactly when we'll do that, but that was decided on earlier in the meeting.

Welcome, Minister and all your officials. The room is filled, and we're very pleased that you're able to come.

Normally, we would begin with an opening statement.

4:35 p.m.

Regina—Wascana Saskatchewan

Liberal

Ralph Goodale LiberalMinister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness

That's very good, Mr. Chairman. Thank you and members of the committee very much.

I am pleased to join you for a second week in a row.

This time I will tell you about the important work of the Public Safety portfolio and about our funding priorities, as set out in the Main Estimates 2017-18.

With me at the table, Mr. Chair—I think most members of the committee will know these familiar faces—are Malcolm Brown, deputy minister of public safety; Bob Paulson, commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Michel Coulombe, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service; Don Head, commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada; Tina Namiesniowski, executive vice-president of the Canada Border Services Agency; and Harvey Cenaiko, chair of the Parole Board of Canada.

The weighty task of ensuring that Canada is well placed to address the public safety issues that we face falls, in large part, to these people and to the women and men under their direction. I'm sure all members of the committee would join me in offering our gratitude for the service they perform.

I also note that this may be the final committee appearance on the estimates for Michel Coulombe, who is retiring as the director of CSIS at the end of next week, and also for Bob Paulson, who retires as commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the end of June. These are two of the toughest and most important jobs in the public service of Canada. I want to thank both Bob and Michel for their dedication, their courage, and their skill in discharging their heavy burden of responsibility to all Canadians.

In recent days we have been witness to the impressive work of another key unit within my department, and that is the government operations centre, known affectionately to everyone as the GOC. This is the unit that has been coordinating the federal response to the flooding that has swept across several provinces. The government operations centre performed this same function exactly a year ago now, when we were combatting the fires around Fort McMurray. Indeed, whenever and wherever there is an emergency situation in Canada, the GOC is on duty.

The deployment of more than 2,400 Canadian Armed Forces personnel across Quebec was probably the most visible dimension of the federal response to this year's flooding, as coordinated by the government operations centre. The Canadian Armed Forces were welcomed and widely praised for their timely and skilful help.

Several other federal departments were also engaged, including Environment and Climate Change Canada; Natural Resources Canada; Transport Canada; the Canadian Coast Guard; Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; the Canada Border Services Agency; the Public Health Agency of Canada; Public Services and Procurement Canada; and, of course, the RCMP.

The GOC also works very closely with all relevant provincial governments and provincial emergency response agencies, as well as critical auxiliary organizations such as the Red Cross, in a whole-of-society effort to respond to these emergencies.

While conditions appear to be improving across the country generally, we should note that well over 5,000 people were displaced from their homes because of flooding this spring. They will have a very mucky mess to face upon their return and recovery, and we know they will need our ongoing support and assistance.

We also extend heartfelt condolences to the loved ones of those who tragically lost their lives in the raging waters in both Quebec and British Columbia.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank both the RCMP and the CBSA, particularly their officers on duty in Emerson, Manitoba; in Lacolle, Quebec; and in a number of other border communities. They have been managing the spontaneous and challenging arrival of asylum seekers in a professional and measured way, enforcing the law and keeping Canadians safe. Their work has earned them the praise of many local people, as well as the United Nations, and they certainly deserve our praise, as well.

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Emerson to thank the officers, both CBSA and RCMP on duty, and to thank the community. It is not an easy situation. There are no easy solutions, but we are dealing with it in a firm, measured, and responsible manner.

In the context I have just outlined and at all times, Canadians expect everyone within the public safety portfolio to keep Canadians safe, while at the same time safeguarding our rights and freedoms. Our role as government, and as parliamentarians, is to ensure these agencies have the resources they need to get the job done. That brings us directly to the subject of the numbers before us in the main estimates for 2017-18.

As members will have noted in reviewing the estimates, on a portfolio-wide basis, total authorities being sought will result in a net increase of $209.4 million, a 2.5% augmentation over 2016-17 for a total of $8.7 billion. Across the whole portfolio, the most substantial increases include $64.1 million for the settlement of class action lawsuits against the RCMP, $44.1 million to the CBSA to maintain and upgrade federal infrastructure assets, and $41 million to Correctional Service Canada, mostly due to the growing cost of prescription drugs to treat hepatitis C and the cost of contracted community beds for mental health care.

More narrowly, for the Department of Public Safety, its 2017-18 reference level reflects a net decrease of about $44.4 million, and most of that results from the completion of contributions to the province of Quebec for the response, recovery, and decontamination costs associated with the train derailment and explosion at Lac-Mégantic. Since that disaster occurred in 2013, a total of $120 million, identified under the financial assistance agreement, has been paid out, and my department is now working with the province to address any additional eligible requests.

Mr. Chair, I had some comments to provide with respect to supplementary estimates (A), but I will save those for another time when you return to that topic.

I would like to mention briefly a few of the other priorities not specifically connected to the estimates that my portfolio is working on. First of all, I want to thank the committee once again for its report on Canada's national security framework. The recommendations are being very carefully monitored as we move forward with additional measures to keep Canadians safe and safeguard rights and freedoms. The tens of thousands of public contributions to our consultations on this topic are also informing our way forward and they are, all of them, available for public review online.

Another matter of collective concern is the quality and seriousness of sexual assault investigations. Recent reports have highlighted issues regarding the way various police forces across the country investigate this crime. I raised this matter with the commissioner of the RCMP and on February 9, Commissioner Paulson directed each of his provincial and territorial commanding officers to review past sexual assault cases, work which is now complete.

National headquarters has also reviewed a sample of historically unfounded cases, or at least the label of unfounded was attached to those cases. The RCMP's contract and aboriginal policing branch at national headquarters is reviewing all of those divisional reports, as well as the sample of historical unfounded cases to understand the national picture, and to develop an appropriate and coordinated response to address the issue. The RCMP has committed to sharing the results of its review with Canadians once it is completed. I want to thank the force for being proactive in this regard.

The bottom line is that no victim of sexual assault should ever fear that their case won't be taken seriously by the investigating authorities.

On a related noted, budget 2017 included $100.9 million over five years to establish a national strategy to address gender-based violence. The strategy will include measures implemented by the RCMP, among other things, as well as a centre of excellence within Status of Women Canada.

Finally, before I take your questions, I want to quickly highlight a few of the other important investments proposed in budget 2017 that would support some key priorities for the Public Safety Canada portfolio. That includes $57.8 million over five years, starting in 2017-18, and then $13.6 million per year thereafter, to expand mental health care capacity for all inmates in federal correctional facilities. This is part of our commitment to implement the recommendations of the Ashley Smith inquest, with additional measures yet to come.

The budget also pledged $80 million over four years, with $20 million then ongoing, starting in 2018-19, to support the establishment of the community heroes award to support families of public safety officers who have fallen in the line of duty. Public safety officials are working diligently now to finalize the program's design.

The budget also doubled the funding for the security infrastructure program, which helps vulnerable communities better protect themselves against hate-motivated crimes.

As one final thing I would note, there is a meeting scheduled in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, toward the end of this month to deal with the issue of emergency measures and emergency planning. All federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for these things are expected to attend. We will be very much going over the lessons learned from Fort McMurray last year and from the floods this year to make sure that we have the very best possible emergency management framework, strategy, and plan in place—federal and provincial, seamless across the board—to be able to react to these circumstances in an efficient and effective way that keeps Canadians safe.

All of this furthers the overarching objective of the public safety portfolio, keeping our communities safe and secure, while at the same time protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians and the values of openness, inclusion, and diversity that make our country an example for the world.

With that, my officials and I would be happy to try to answer your questions.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

Thank you, Minister.

We will begin with Ms. Damoff.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

Thank you.

Minister, thank you for being here again today.

In your opening remarks, you mentioned the flooding. Certainly Canadians have been gripped by that over the last few weeks and the resulting loss of life and property damage that has been incurred.

I want to thank you for your leadership on it, and also the fast response from your department, the military, the other federal departments, scores of provincial and local public servants, first responders, and volunteers. It has really been quite extraordinary. I was just reading an article in our local paper about flooding being the leading cause of public emergency in Ontario. It is a shared responsibility in Ontario between the conservation authorities—which, in my case, is Conservation Halton—the province, and the federal government.

You mentioned in your remarks a whole-of-society response. That's something I have certainly been approached about as well, that it's not just a whole-of-government approach but a whole-of-society approach. I know there were measures introduced in the last budget having to do with funding for disaster mitigation infrastructure and implementation of new building codes, as two examples.

Could you perhaps outline the strategy and comment on how it could be put in place to better prepare us, given that in this time of climate change we'll likely be facing this more and more often?

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

The parliamentary budget officer certainly believes it will be more and more often. He issued a report about a year ago that made two points. He thought we were provisioning too little for the accelerating damages that are likely to accrue, and he also thought it would be wise to invest upstream before the fact in the kinds of things that could mitigate damages and save money, after the fact, if damages were in fact avoided. I think that's good advice. That is one thing that is very clearly on the agenda for federal, provincial, and territorial ministers to discuss at the end of this month. That discussion really has already begun in a number of ways.

There have been some programs over the course of the last number of years to try to encourage investments up front. The uptake on those programs has not been particularly encouraging, so we'll be looking at why, with available investment funds, there hasn't been more focus on prevention and mitigation. But the important news coming out of the budget was the creation of a stream of funding for public infrastructure that is in the broad category of green infrastructure, and a portion of that is dedicated for disaster mitigation and dealing with the consequences of climate change, in the order of $2.5 billion over the next four or five years.

These measures obviously have to be undertaken in partnership with provinces and with municipalities and a number of other authorities, but I think this provides the country with a really significant opportunity not only to have the investment impact that can help to expand the economy and create jobs, but also to make our country in many ways more resilient to the recurring problems that flow from climate change. If you just think of the examples recently, we have the floods right now in at least four provinces. We had last winter the ice storm that particularly affected New Brunswick, and last fall, the flood in Cape Breton. Before that, of course, just about a year ago now, we had the worst wildfire disaster in Canadian history at Fort McMurray. The year before that, it was a very serious wildfire requiring the evacuation of several thousand people from northern Saskatchewan. Before that, there were two out of the last five years of successive floods across the southern prairies that damaged southeastern Saskatchewan and wreaked havoc in cities like Brandon, Manitoba, and before that, we had the worst flooding disaster in Canadian history, which was around Calgary and High River, and the toll taken there.

You see that pattern all over the last five or six years. I think it lends credence to what the parliamentary budget officer is saying. It's a serious problem. It's accelerating. It's going to get worse and more costly, and we can save money from cleaning up the damages after the fact if we invest smartly before the fact in the kinds of structures and infrastructure design and engineering that will mitigate the consequences of climate change before they happen.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

Thank you, Minister.

It was very refreshing for me to hear you talk about the unfounded cases, sexual assaults, and gender-based violence. I sit on the status of women committee. It's an issue in our recent study that showed public safety does need to take a leadership role on this issue, so I'm pleased to hear you speak about that.

Commissioner, I applaud you for looking into the RCMP cases.

Unfortunately, that's just a small portion of the cases, though. I'm just wondering whether you see a leadership role for the federal government to play in terms of being able to provide best practices to some of these other police forces in terms of these sexual assault cases and how we're treating them, also in terms of the unfounded cases and in terms of training, which is something that we heard repeatedly.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

We need to be careful about jurisdiction.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

I know.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

But there are all sorts of opportunities for me to work with my public safety counterparts at the provincial level, and for the Attorney General of Canada to work with her counterparts at the provincial level.

What I was encouraged about is that as soon as this became a public issue—and I commend the journalist who dug it out and put it on the front pages, which was important—the response by and large across the country was very constructive. The RCMP were one of the first, but in addition to that, a number of police forces, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, a number of attorneys general, and provincial officials, responded as well. I think there is some genuine momentum there.

From my point of view, I intend to watch it very closely and I'm sure Jody Wilson-Raybould intends to do so as well, to make sure that the attention and focus that has been gathered over the last four or five months doesn't dissipate, and that in fact we follow through on making sure this—

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

I watched your press conference, and you did very firmly show leadership on the issue when it was first reported.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

Thank you, Ms. Damoff.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

Mr. Chair, Ms. Damoff mentioned that she's on the status of women committee.

I might note for the record that in addition to these fine officials who are with us today, I often have another person at this table, the associate deputy minister in public safety, Gina Wilson, who has served this portfolio very well for a good long period of time. Not long ago, she was appointed to be the deputy minister of the Department of Status of Women. We will miss her deeply in Public Safety, but she will well serve the Department of Status of Women.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Clement.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

Thank you, Minister, for being here.

If I am curt, it's only because I have seven minutes—it's not because my name is Curt or your name is Curt—so I apologize in advance.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

You're Tony and I'm Ralph.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

On our good days, absolutely.

In terms of budget 2017, there is more money committed to dealing with the problem of legal asylum seekers. On closer examination, the money isn't for more boots on the ground nor for better screening and surveillance. The money is for legal aid for the legal asylum seekers.

Can you assure this committee that your priority...? I mean, I understand why legal aid is important, but our priority is also to keep our border resilient, and as a matter of fact rather than theoretically. I'd like you to respond to that.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

Absolutely, Mr. Clement.

I have had this conversation with both Commissioner Paulson and Mr. Ossowski, the president of CBSA. I have asked them to keep me fully apprised of the trend and the flow of events. They have published the most recent statistics over this past weekend that indicate a drop to a certain extent. Obviously, these numbers fluctuate as we've been saying, so you can't draw any great conclusions on the basis of one month's arithmetic, but the numbers seem to have subsided a bit.

I have said to the RCMP and to CBSA to do what they need to do within their existing resources to make sure they have the capacity to discharge their responsibilities at the border—CBSA at the ports of entry, and RCMP between the ports of entry—and if they need more resources to make sure they have what they need at the border, to please tell me and I will do my best to get them the money.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

Interestingly, this committee was in Washington recently and had some very interesting and positive discussions with the Department of Homeland Security, as well as their border agency. There was a reference in one of those meetings to conversations you had relating to the potential for changes in the U.S. law that would go through Congress. It would enable their border security guards, if they were aware of a conspiracy to cross the border, to detain people prior to their reaching the Canadian border.

Do you recall those conversations?

5 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

There were some general discussions with Secretary Kelly about why this movement was happening, which I think was a bit of a head-scratcher on both sides of the border. He undertook at that time to examine the factors and the forces on the American side of the border that might contribute to the movement. We haven't had any report back from American officials on that phenomenon, but they undertook to examine it to see if they could identify the source and the factors that would contribute to the flow. We were both concerned about any indication that there was a trafficking operation or a smuggling operation going on. When we had the conversation, there was no evidence that could be pointed to that this might be happening.

More recently, as you may have heard, the RCMP on the Canadian side and the appropriate authorities on the American side have made some arrests about a particular movement across the border between southern Saskatchewan and North Dakota.

5 p.m.

Conservative

Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

Right.

5 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

That does not appear, at the moment, to be connected to the flow that has been going through Emerson. It seems to be a different phenomenon. But we're obviously very alert and very concerned about anything that would suggest that people are profiteering at the expense of vulnerable people.

5 p.m.

Conservative

Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

There certainly are some media reports to indicate that there could be some profiteering going on. There were sources within the CBSA who were concerned about that.

I would just encourage you—I don't have a lot of time here—to keep pursuing those conversations with the Americans.

5 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

Absolutely.

5 p.m.

Conservative

Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

If there's a U.S. fix to this, we should certainly pursue that.

I do have a specific question relating to Order Paper questions and access to information being denied. There were a couple of Order Paper questions relating to CPIC, including the number of records entered on CPIC for “prohibited from possessing firearms”. The opposition got an answer to that question in 2006. The opposition got an answer to that question in 2011. This year that question was denied. We were told, “The CPIC system is a record database and was not designed to provide in-depth statistical analysis.”

I'm wondering whether you could provide these statistics in the future. We could provide details on what the specific question was.

5 p.m.

Liberal

Ralph Goodale Liberal Regina—Wascana, SK

Mr. Clement, I'm not personally familiar with that situation, but I will look into it. If the question had been answered before—