Public Safety Committee on Feb. 1st, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Good morning. Let's get started.

We have, as one of our first witnesses, for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Laurence Rankin.

You're out in Vancouver, so I hope we haven't gotten you up too early in order to be able to give testimony.

We also have Paul Martin, chief of the Durham Regional Police Service.

I understand you're going to split the time between the two of you. The floor is yours.

[Chief Paul Martin, Chief, Durham Regional Police Service, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police]

First of all, on behalf of the CACP, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to be here today to speak to the committee. Laurence and I have been looking forward to this.

Laurence is going to start out by basically talking a bit about the CACP counter terrorism and national security committee's mandate. Then we'll talk about a few things just to set the context from the CACP standpoint. We'll be open to any questions after that.

I'm going to turn it over to Laurence, and he can start off.

[Deputy Chief Laurence Rankin, Deputy Chief Constable, Investigation Division, Vancouver Police Department, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police]

[Technical difficulty—Editor] Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, CACP, is to lead numerous efforts to promote coordination and collaboration amongst Canada's law enforcement community to address threats to national security. As part of these efforts, the CACP has implemented structures to help manage incidents and share information in support of a mutual goal to protect the safety of Canadians.

The counter terrorism and national security committee, which is part of the CACP, has a mandate to harmonize the work of Canadian police agencies throughout the country in identifying, preventing, deterring, and responding to criminal activities related to terrorism and national security threats.

This committee has five priorities or objectives: one, to “promote collaboration and integration among law enforcement agencies and with appropriate public/private security and intelligence partners”; two, to “improve ability to operate in a cooperative and integrated manner” with a view to addressing emerging trends with respect to counterterrorism and national security; three, to “develop processes and facilitate strong communication at all levels”, so at the municipal, provincial, and territorial levels; four, to “recommend legislative reforms”; and five, to “promote education and training in matters of counter-terrorism and national security”.

There have been a number of initiatives that the committee has worked on over the past year. I'm going to focus on three for today's presentation.

The first initiative is the provincial and territorial counterterrorism guide. This guide is designed to support the efforts in developing counterterrorism strategies at the regional, provincial, and territorial level.

There are 11 key activities within the guide that are focused on four key strategies. The first is to prevent individuals from engaging in terrorism. The second is to detect the activities of individuals and organizations that may pose a terrorist threat. The third is to deny terrorists the means and opportunities to carry out their activities. The fourth is to respond proportionately, rapidly, and in an organized manner to terrorist activities and to mitigate their effects.

The second initiative is the provincial and territorial integrated response structures. The co-chairs of the counter terrorism and national security committee have met with provincial and territorial chiefs of police across the country in an effort to encourage and develop an integrated provincial and territorial approach for each province and territory to investigate and respond to terrorist activities.

The third initiative is the subcommittee of the counter terrorism and national security committee, the countering violent extremism sub-committee, developed in August 2015. The subcommittee is focusing on building training material that's consistent, that addresses previously identified research gaps, and that has a built-in evaluation tool to determine the efficacy of the programs that we are rolling out.

Those are the three key initiatives.

[Chief Paul Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll continue.

Building on what Laurence spoke about in terms of harmonizing and working together as police agencies, from the federal agencies to the municipal agencies and the provincial in between, there are three major concerns for the committee to consider from the policing standpoint. There are perhaps many, but certainly three for your consideration: the terrorism peace bonds, the intelligence-to-evidence conundrum, and then encryption. I'll speak to them separately.

The terrorism peace bonds manage some of the threat posed to Canadian citizens but not all. They do help manage in some cases, but something to consider is that with the terrorism peace bonds there are conditions imposed. I can provide an example of an individual subject to the peace bond who is not permitted to use computers, or not allowed to access the Internet for a number of different reasons that I'm sure are obvious. There is no mechanism in place right now for police officers of jurisdiction to go in and ensure that the person is complying with those conditions, so that's something for consideration.

With respect to the intelligence-to-evidence conundrum, we know how the intelligence lives in one space and the enforcement piece lives in another space. It's my understanding, after talking to my colleagues, some more learned than I, who have been involved in this field for some time, that this discussion has been ongoing for more than 15 years in terms of how we can improve the speed, flow, and direction of this information so that we can share it in a quicker fashion. Incidents such as the Aaron Driver one made it very obvious to the policing field how fast information moves, and how fast it has to move in order to detect, deter, and ultimately deal with a threat nationally.

Something to consider is how that's going to happen. The 9/11 Commission was very clear on the fact that information needs to be shared amongst the different agencies. Police agencies right now do share a lot of information, but that's something for this committee to consider as this bill proceeds.

With respect to encryption, we've heard a lot south of the border as far as going dark is concerned. We've heard all these different terms, but encryption, whether it be in the hardware itself or with the use of applications that are encrypted end to end, poses a very difficult issue for policing and how to monitor people who would carry on criminal activity, whether it's for terrorism or for organized crime. We've seen a number of examples in our jurisdiction and throughout Ontario, and certainly across this country.

The important thing is that we must be focused on the principles and not the technology, and where an individual or group is using any form of communications to support terrorism or other designated criminal activity, this may be intercepted by specified authorities with the proper and appropriate judicial authority.

Laws regulating access to communication data would be, in principle, the same as those currently in place for other forms of telecommunication intercepts, companies ensuring data is available to access if required, warrants being issued by the appropriate authority, and then both time limits and regular scrutiny and review.

I throw that out to the committee to consider as we go forward and you talk about this bill. These are really the top three concerns that seem to spread generally across the policing community: the terrorism peace bond and the future of that, the intel-to-evidence conundrum, and encryption.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Chief Martin and Deputy Chief Rankin.

Our first questioner is Mr. Spengemann. You have seven minutes, please.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Chief Martin and Deputy Chief Constable Rankin, thank you for being here. Thank you for your service and offering your expertise to the committee.

To begin, could you outline for the committee your sense of the current threat environment with respect to national safety and security? Your work is focused on terrorism and counterterrorism. Where does that rank with respect to other threats that the country is facing, including potentially cyber threats against our critical infrastructure?

[Chief Paul Martin]

It's always a consideration for us. Probably the biggest concern right now, as we discuss it at the committee level, is really the returning foreign fighters and the collapse of the caliphate overseas. That poses a problem. Certainly we can look to our European counterparts and others in the Five Eyes community to say what has happened there, what we can expect here.

It is always top of mind with us, but there are a number of different ways terrorism can occur. You've talked about the cyber-attacks. We have the physical attacks, what we've seen overseas, and even here for that matter, including in Edmonton, where people have been radicalized to violence, so it is always a concern for us.

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

Could I just add something? Recognizing that national security investigations are a federal responsibility, we as a municipal agency often are far more likely to engage or encounter the issue at the first point of contact. What we are finding is that the issues we're dealing with that could have a nexus to counterterrorism or national security are often incorporating the subjects we're looking at, cyber-enabled components of that crime. Just to add, these are issues that dovetail with encryption and that also have connections to radicalization that we are trying to mitigate at a municipal level but working in collaboration with the RCMP and in particular the integrated national security enforcement teams, INSETs, that we have members seconded to.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you very much for that.

If it's fair to say that terrorism and extremism remain a prominent threat, is it also fair to say—you spoke about the imploding caliphate and returning fighters—that recruitment, either by right-wing extremist groups or by international terrorist groups like al Shabaab and the remainders of ISIS, remain a threat; in other words, fresh recruitment of Canadian youth who are particularly vulnerable to radicalization, to recruitment, and to becoming incorporated in these organizations?

[Chief Paul Martin]

I would agree with that statement. The fact is that individuals who are interested and motivated to recruit people and incite people to violence and to take action are using the cyber-world, and they have used it quite effectively. That is probably, next to the returning foreign fighters, one of the biggest concerns that we have as a committee. We do try to address that issue as well.

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

With the assistance of the federal government, at a municipal and provincial level, countering radicalization to violence is a key priority for the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General's office in British Columbia, by way of example. We're creating a hub approach to this issue because we've determined that we have to address it before it goes from young people becoming radicalized to their actually acting upon those beliefs. The hub approach is a venue for various community service providers to work together, really with the aim to redirect individuals who may be on the path to radicalization.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you very much. That's extremely helpful.

I wanted to ask you a follow-on question. You've in a way pre-empted what I was going to ask about. From your experience as serving police officers, in addition to serving on the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, what are central levers at our disposal to mitigate the risk of being radicalized? I say radicalized with respect to the propensity to be subject to a right-wing extremist group, as we saw with the individual who committed the massacre in Sainte-Foy just over a year ago. There's no evidence that he belonged to a group, but there is certainly self-radicalization, one could say, and also Islamic terrorist groups. What do we know so far that would facilitate the work of preventing young Canadians from ever falling into this trap?

[Chief Paul Martin]

We've taken a multi-faceted approach within our police service. It's about educating our police officers on recognizing the signs of radicalization. Probably the more effective means is community engagement, making sure that our police services, especially the municipal and those closer to the ground.... I know the federal agency, as Laurence has pointed out, ultimately has authority for national security investigations, but it's the police of jurisdiction that's going to see this. Our activities are about engaging the communities for a number of different reasons, not the least of which is to make sure they trust us and feel there is legitimacy with the police services so that they can confide in us if they see that members of their community are being radicalized to violence.

The other piece is putting out education to these young individuals who may be getting a message from one side to say that there is some glory or something that's good for them to go to this act of violence, to say that in fact, it's quite the opposite.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

If I can follow up, I only have a minute left with a more specific question along the same lines.

Is there a pattern, a profile—not to say a stereotype, but a propensity—that's identified so far that raises the risk of being radicalized or being recruited, in terms of socio-economic status; in terms of racial, religious, or cultural background; in terms of networks that one does or doesn't belong to? Is there anything yet that we can use as a sort of marker for the way forward?

[Chief Paul Martin]

Laurence can step in and correct anything I may say on this, but we've had this discussion at the committee level, and there's no specific profile of what a person who gets radicalized looks like.

Generally speaking, there are things where they are vulnerable, they perhaps feel disaffected, they don't trust people, and they're on their own—they're loners. That's probably the closest thing you're going to get to a profile, but as far as a specific socio-economic status or age, no.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately we're going to have to leave it there, Mr. Spengemann.

Mr. Motz, you have seven minutes, please.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chief Martin and Deputy Rankin, for being here today.

I want to go back to the comment one of you made earlier with regard to peace bonds. We know that Bill C-59 increases the threshold from “is likely” to “is necessary” to prevent a terrorist activity in order to even obtain a peace bond in the first place.

Determining that a peace bond with certain conditions is necessary to prevent an act of terrorism is a pretty high bar. The amount of evidence that would go into proving that is nearly the same as to prove a criminal charge, to lay an information.

Can you explain to the committee the importance of peace bonds, and if you've used them, how often you've used them? In your opinion, could this new, increased threshold be a risk to Canadians?

[Chief Paul Martin]

With respect, the RCMP has used peace bonds a total of 14 times that they have records of, five of which were the 810.011, which was the peace bond introduced as part of the Anti-terrorism Act of 2015. Currently there are none in effect, but those are the statistics.

There's always a concern if the threshold is made higher. As I said, peace bonds are not the panacea. They're not necessarily going to stop it, but they can help control and mitigate it. It's not going to stop all threats, but yes, there's obviously a concern any time the threshold is made higher. We feel that we currently have a number of tools that help us to detect, deter, and respond to terrorism in this country.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Deputy, do you have anything further to add?

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

The benefit of them once they are imposed is the ability, among other things, to conduct full-time surveillance on the subject if there's GPS tracking involved, interview the subject, and monitor the individual. It's effective in managing some of the threats posed by an individual, but there are limitations, as the chief mentioned in his opening statement, in terms of enforcing conditions such as access to the Internet when they're using that computer device in their own residence.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

We have the peace bonds, but the other aspect now of Bill C-59 is the preventative arrests. We understand the language in the new legislation limits it to an arrest that “is necessary” to prevent a terrorist activity. Under the old Bill C-51, the threshold was “is likely to prevent”, which was the language that was used. In fact, the committee heard from the justice department earlier in this study, and they confirmed that the threshold to make a preventative arrest was being raised. They said that, “It would require the police to present evidence of a greater link between the conditions to be imposed on the person or the arrest of the person and the prevention of terrorist activity.”

Again, similar to peace bonds, do you believe that this higher threshold will make it more difficult for law enforcement to make preventative terrorism-related arrests?

[Chief Paul Martin]

My simple answer is that it could. The idea behind the preventative arrests and the recognizance is really to give the police time to determine whether the evidence is there, to see if in fact they are planning a terrorist act. Of course they also allow the judges to assess the evidence to determine if something is there. Every time you raise a threshold, there is a potential.

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

I'd like to add to that. The proposed increase of the threshold would limit the situations in which this tool could be used, as it requires us to demonstrate necessity in order to prevent terrorist activity. Yes, it would raise the threshold, and it would limit the range of our solutions.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you.

I have one last question for each you. I have about three minutes left.

Chief, you spoke specifically to the three concerns that you have as a police association with respect to terrorism peace bonds—which we've kind of covered off—the intel-to-evidence, and the encryption. We've heard from a few witnesses so far at this committee who have expanded upon their thoughts and given us some indication of what they would like to see more of or improved upon in this bill as it's currently written, which is why we're having the debate now, before second reading. We can make some changes, which is great.

If you were to change Bill C-59 in ways that you think would be absolutely critical for public safety—keeping in mind the balance between rights and privacy—what would those changes be, and how would they be accomplished?

I'd like to hear from both of you on that, if I could.

[Chief Paul Martin]

Are you speaking specifically to the encryption piece?