Evidence of meeting #93 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 cse.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Jean-Pierre Plouffe  Commissioner, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
Gérard Normand  Special Legal Advisor, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
J. William Galbraith  Executive Director, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
Micheal Vonn  Policy Director, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association
Raymond Boisvert  Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC

Fine.

I now yield the floor to my colleague.

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

The committee has heard that the Five Eyes community is critical to Canada's intelligence community. What are the consequences if new reporting and regulations reduce our capacity to do that?

12:55 p.m.

Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Raymond Boisvert

At least in my time at CSIS and within the intelligence community, I think Canada was always a very powerful and respected net contributor to the group. However, at times it may have changed.

At the end of the day, I'm inclined to believe we're in a new era. Things change all the time. Legislation has to change. We need to improve our ability to respond to new technological advances. Equally, though, we're still in part of what I call the “post the story of Ed Snowden” age. Once we get through that, society will nevertheless have been transformed. He was a consequential figure. I recognize and respect that.

Therefore, we're in the age of accountability and transparency. As long as you have a mechanism such as emergency powers to invoke, as the chief of CSE has, I think having more layers is fine. I wouldn't want to respond to any alarmist comments to the effect that now we'll be stuck and won't be able to respond effectively. I think it's a pretty good balance overall.

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Do you think this could put Canadians at risk?

12:55 p.m.

Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Raymond Boisvert

Do you mean if Bill C-59 is passed in its current form or if we have more layers?

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Yes, in relation to the first parts of my question.

12:55 p.m.

Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Raymond Boisvert

Again, I think Bill C-59 is a good balance. I think Canadians will be better served by it and I think we'll have as good an opportunity as in the past to deal with emerging threats.

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Okay.

Does the increase in the reporting pose an issue for operations if more money goes towards administration? Do you see any...?

12:55 p.m.

Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Raymond Boisvert

There's no doubt that there's a cost, and that cost could be nimbleness. I always have to measure that. I think of a moment in time when I was responsible for the counterterrorism sector, or the principal one. Over 30% of my management team was involved in Security Intelligence Review Committee hearings and security certificate hearings, and at that time about 87% of our staff had less than two years' service.

That was one highly risk-managed environment. We had a number of kidnappings. We had Robert Fowler, Louis Guay, Amanda Lindhout. We had probably half a dozen kidnapping cases around the world running at the same time.

It's tough. If you add more layers, you should probably think about the resourcing question in terms of trying to ensure that we do not affect operational capability.

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Thank you.

On November 20, I spoke in the House on Bill C-59, and I talked about part 5, which amends the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. We have heard and read repeatedly that information sharing and breaking down the silos for information are critical to protecting Canadians. Do you believe that Bill C-59 is increasing or decreasing our ability to share information?

12:55 p.m.

Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Raymond Boisvert

Let's just say that we've gone from almost zero capability to considerable capability, and now back to something perhaps a little less than perfect. I guess, from a security practitioner and not from somebody, of course.... I would take Ms Vonn's points on that. You really have to be careful about this.

I'll share a quick anecdote. I was posted to the Middle East in the early 2000s. Suddenly one of the employees at the embassy came to me and said, “You know, there's a Canadian passport”—we had lots of serial losers of passports—“that has popped up in five different countries in the last six months, it seems, because we're getting reports, yet that person is supposedly still living in this country.” I said, “Okay, can I get their name?” He said, “Can't do that, sorry.”

Anyhow, we ended up having a long debate. It escalated up to the ambassador and all the way back to Foreign Affairs and CSIS, and I don't know if it ever got resolved. To me that was the worst example of how things used to be. We can never go back to that, because the lives of Canadians would be put at risk.

1 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal John McKay

Thank you, Mr. Eglinski.

Mr. Spengemann, the floor is yours for the final five minutes, please.

1 p.m.

Liberal

Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

Ms. Vonn, you're joining us during the week of the one-year anniversary of the shooting at the mosque in Sainte-Foy, Quebec. The country is still coming to grips with this incredible tragedy. I'm wondering if you could, just in a very general way, give us your thoughts on where you think Canada is today with respect to the balance between civil liberties and good security. Perhaps from an organizational lens you have data to back up Canadian opinion, but more personally, where do you think Canadians are vis-à-vis the time prior to January 1 of last year?

1 p.m.

Policy Director, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association

Micheal Vonn

Thank you for the question. I hope it's appreciated that the BC Civil Liberties Association takes security very seriously. The importance of getting this correct, getting these rights and freedoms of Canadians to fit together with the ability of the government to provide national security protection occupies a great deal of our bandwidth.

Canada, as you may know, was really—to use some of the language that has already been introduced—a bit of a laggard in a number of arenas, including having the kinds of transparency and accountability mechanisms that are standard in many of our ally countries. We welcome the ability to enshrine in legislation and make more transparent the accountability that is needed for Canadians to trust that national security is working in their interests. We have advanced in that regard.

Our concern about Bill C-59 is that there is a sense in which this is the moment to get the big pieces right. When we bring forward our concerns about the thresholds for bulk data surveillance, which has never been appropriately debated at a parliamentary level, we are saying that we welcome this opportunity to put the big thinking together in relation to these pieces, but that in part because we have an omnibus bill before us, some of those aspects are being given insufficient attention.

1 p.m.

Liberal

Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON

Very briefly, one of the sets of provisions that's very important—it's near the end of the bill—is the one dealing with youth, clauses 159 to 167. They bring in the Youth Criminal Justice Act, and youth, in many respects, are vulnerable.

Could you very quickly give us your thoughts on whether you think those provisions adequately protect the privacy and personal interests of Canadian youth?

1 p.m.

Policy Director, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association

Micheal Vonn

Could I get back to the committee on that? It's because I feel I have given insufficient attention to that particular aspect of the bill, being focused on other ones. We would be happy to share our views with you.

1 p.m.

Liberal

Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON

I think it would be helpful.

Mr. Boisvert, if we can take advantage of your position, you'll have a lot to say about this. Canadian youth are vulnerable not only because they are youth, but also because they are preyed upon by terrorist organizations such as Abu Sayyaf, Al Shabaab, and ISIS.

Could we have your perspective on the protection of Canadian youth with respect to terrorist organizations that prey upon them, as related to the provisions in the bill?

1 p.m.

Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Raymond Boisvert

I'll speak more perhaps at a higher level and from a practitioner's perspective.

I don't blame the Internet for radicalization, but it certainly is an important pathway and part of an ecosystem that leads somebody to falling prey to negative messaging.

I'd also like to underline, as it has been recently underlined once again in the United States in a more recent study, that the biggest threat of radicalization is actually the extreme right and not Islamic extremism. I think that's a very important piece.

Radicalization or extremism is extremism is extremism. It's the idea that we're now increasingly living in a world in which we're able to purvey hatred, and we can entice people and we can motivate them. The challenge for the security agency is that a person will come to their attention sometimes quite often through the issue of data exploitation and quite often through the issue of people posting online. Aaron Driver, the case in Ontario just about a year and a half ago, is a great example of that.

That's still an important toolset. The question is how to know when somebody goes from becoming radicalized—becoming incensed and thinking about it, maybe making some comments about mobilizing towards operational planning—to knowing when they really intend to do it. That's the big dilemma for the intelligence agencies and the law enforcement groups such as the RCMP that work together on those cases.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON

The remaining time is very limited, but I have a very brief question, if I may.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal John McKay

You have 13 seconds.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON

You'll be the perfect person to answer this. What are your views on a Canadian youth who has been inside a terrorist organization and comes back onto our shores?

1:05 p.m.

Associate Deputy Minister, Office of the Provincial Security Advisor, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Raymond Boisvert

I think it's going to be a difficult and expensive process, because for one thing, it's difficult to understand. Once somebody has been exposed to extreme levels of violence, once they have been highly radicalized and have been schooled in warfare, you'd hope that they would have just had enough, that they've seen it and know they've made a terrible mistake. I think probably the majority are exactly in that kind of mindset, but how do you know?

If my responsibility is to keep Canadians safe, if I'm responsible for our counterterrorism program, we would say, “Well, we have to run this to ground to make sure that.... Let's go out and speak to that person as frequently as we can to get a better sense of what's behind their motives and whether they've turned the corner or whatever.” The expensive part is that you still have to afford some level, I think, of coverage in the early portions of that process, but you can't cover everybody. The number of persons who are of concern greatly outstripped the capability of the security establishment back in 2012, and I hate to even think of what it is today.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON

Thank you.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal John McKay

Thank you, Mr. Spengemann. I hate to bring this conversation to a close.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for your thoughtfulness.

With that, we're adjourned.