Public Safety Committee on Feb. 1st, 2018

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

Any aspect of this legislation.

[Chief Paul Martin]

Okay. I'll speak to the encryption piece and I'll let Laurence step in from there. I know the debates with respect to privacy and individual rights versus the collective safety and well-being. As I said at the outset, it's about the principles of intercepting those private communications, as opposed to the technology being used today, so that's what I've encouraged the committee to think about as it goes over this bill.

In the case of telecommunications companies, they are required to maintain this information for a period of time, subject to proper judicial authorization to look at this information. That may not currently exist with some of the applications and things that we see nowadays. As to how that is done, you're probably in a better position to answer that than I am.

It's about the principles of intercepting communication of people that intend to cause harm through terrorism or organized crime, as opposed to the technology used.

If I could sum it up very quickly, that's what I would ask the committee to consider.

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

Legislative reform is required to keep pace with the changing technologies—that's the bottom line—everything from data preservation standards for corporations that hold data, as they're getting shorter and shorter, so that it's more of a challenge for police to collect that data....

Again, enhancing powers to enable domestic production orders for foreign data and advocacy for effective lawful access.... We recognize that some ability to access evidence when judicial authorization is granted is required. We can look to Australia and the European Union, as to what they're doing in terms of cybercrime legislation. We recognize that secure data and communication enables commerce and social interaction in today's reality, but when we have a court order and we can't get the access to information on a computer that's been judicially authorized, then that's a problem for the police. That's not just for national security, but for the policing of organized crime in every other facet. I think more so now than ever before, every crime we seem to investigate, whether it's got a national security component to it or not, has a cyber-enabled component to it. At times, the challenges that we're facing seem insurmountable. Therefore, a balance has to be struck to recognize that if we're given access to enter a house with a court order, we can enter a house, but we can't enter a computer if it's encrypted.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Motz.

Mr. Dubé, you have seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair, and thank you both for being here today.

When we debated C-51 in the previous parliament, one of the issues that came up was that a lot of talk is given to legislation for keeping Canadians safe, but often one of the pieces that's forgotten is actually providing proper resources for police. One of the things that comes to mind is the police officer recruitment fund from the federal government that existed to help provinces and municipalities, as you obviously well know, and provide additional funding. This is a fund that was cut that's never been brought back that we wish would be there and be permanent. How important is it to actually have resources, beyond all the talk of legislation and all the procedures, so you know that you have the ability to properly equip and train those men and women on the front lines in order to keep Canadians safe?

[Chief Paul Martin]

That's a very good question.

I've had discussions with our colleagues at the RCMP throughout the province and nationally through this committee and then, of course, locally. I would suggest to you that this type of threat that we're seeing with terrorism, which a lot of people attribute to the watershed moment of 9/11, has really drawn on our resources. I know for a fact that whether it's the RCMP or whether it's locally, we've had to redirect resources from other things in order to address this ongoing and serious threat. Depending on world events, that's scalable. It moves up and down depending on what's going on in the world.

We've dedicated resources to counterterrorism and anti-terrorism, but have not been able to backfill or replace those resources behind that to deal with other, more traditional things, such as organized crime and other things that the police deal with, either within jurisdictions or federally.

Therefore, it is very much an issue and it's one of those things—to use the analogy, you can only spread the peanut butter so thin and then what happens when things start to fall between the cracks.

I'll turn it over to Laurence before I get on my pulpit.

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

On the heels of the chief's remarks, looking at it again, and from a municipal perspective, we're attempting to increase our number of secondments to RCMP E Division INSET unit. We currently have only two members seconded. We're going to three, but I would like to see that increase even more.

Within the Vancouver Police Department over the last six years, we've increased the number of files that my unit, which looks into counterterrorism and national security files, from 13 files to 268 files, without an increase in our staff. In fact, it's a decrease because, as Chief Martin pointed out, we're having other issues, like a regional gang war that's going on right now, so we're very much stretched to the limit. We are called upon, in the first instance, to look at potential bomb calls; anti-government remarks regarding ISIS or al Qaeda; suspicious circumstances, such as people taking photographs of critical infrastructure; and then individuals who are involved in terrorism or radicalism. We, as a police jurisdiction, will look at those files initially, and if they meet the threshold for national security, then they are forwarded to INSET.

We're doing a lot of the training ourselves, in-house, whether it's a counterterrorism information officer training project or Operation SECURUS, working with the private sector to train businesses to become familiar with what to look for in terms of potential terrorist threats.

That said, our relationship with INSET has probably never been better. It's just that we're all at our end—and I won't speak on behalf of the RCMP—spread very thinly.

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

Hypotheticals are always a dangerous thing in this line of work, in politics, and you might not want to go down this slippery slope, but how many of these cases would be dealt with simply by having more resources to deal with them, as opposed to actually bringing in legislative change?

[Chief Paul Martin]

From my perspective, it's about dealing with things in a more timely manner. I don't know if we'll necessarily.... We'll always redirect our resources to the higher priorities—if things are not at the highest priority, they may take a little more time to respond to—so obviously we're going to respond to them more quickly.

I think the question came up that it's not just returning foreign fighters, that it's not just radicalization to violence that we've seen on the Internet, but there has been right-wing extremism in this country, and it's rising again. We've seen it in the United States in some of the acts there, and of course in Quebec. All of these things are happening at the same time.

To answer your question simply, I think it's about dealing with more priorities in a more timely fashion, if we had the resources to do that.

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

You mentioned intel-to-evidence, but there is also this issue even with regard to terrorism charges. With the situation in Edmonton, if I'm not mistaken, the terrorism charges in many of these cases become moot because the other crimes that have been committed, the different forms of violence, provide enough charges where the prosecution can proceed without having to go down that path.

How challenging is this notion of identifying what is or isn't terrorism, and how does that pose any challenges for the work that you do?

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

Chief, can I jump in?

[Chief Paul Martin]

Go ahead, please.

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

On the point you just made, to prove a component of a threat to the security of Canada, we're looking at having to collect evidence that demonstrates the crime was motivated by political, religious, or ideological objectives within Canada.

The issue we have—and, again, you've appropriately noted it—is that investigators are looking at an offence that involves perhaps the murder of an individual. While there could be a national security component, the elements of that traditional offence for murder are met and that investigation is launched.

The other issue we're dealing with now, whether it's traditional crime, if you will, or national security or terrorism, is that we have the Jordan decision out of the Supreme Court of Canada that sets prescribed timelines from the moment a person is arrested and charged until they're convicted, so the clock is ticking for collecting evidence. If we have the evidence at hand to prove a murder charge versus having to dig deeper to collect the evidence for political, religious, or ideological elements of that offence, that poses a challenge, and then police have to make that decision. Of course, it's in discussion with the RCMP because of the nature of the act, but those are the challenges we face.

If I could just add one more thing, the additional challenge—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Can you add one more thing on another question, please, possibly in response to Ms. Damoff?

Ms. Damoff, you have seven minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I just want to start by thanking you both for your service and for being here today with your testimony. It's much appreciated.

I first want to start on the encryption piece because when we were doing our study on the national security framework, the chiefs of police were here talking about the need to have access to encrypted data. Then when we subsequently went on the road with the committee across Canada and had further witnesses, we heard overwhelming testimony that encryption isn't what we used to think about during the First World War or Second World War where it's encrypted data and somebody breaks the code and everything's good. It's actually when we give a back door to the good guys, like you folks, we actually are giving a back door to the bad guys as well. I've had numerous conversations with people who work in that field who said that's absolutely true.

You're in a bit of a conundrum here, as you don't want to make it easier for the bad guys to have access to data. I'm just wondering if you want to comment on that and if there's anything in this legislation that would be able to assist you without also assisting the bad guys from getting access to data.

Either of you would be fine.

[D/Chief Laurence Rankin]

I'll start. I don't know if there is an easy answer to that question.

I'd say that the barrier of encryption prevents us from obtaining a full picture of the evidence that is in the possession of the individual the police are investigating. I've talked to some of my tech crime people and they say you can have encryption technology today that will eventually be defeated and there will be a workaround or, though research, we'll be able to find a way, if you will a back-door way, to defeat the encryption. I think that whatever we will come up with, the bad guys will find a way or discover it in the same manner. I think what we find now is that police are simply not equipped to deal with it as effectively, in some cases, as the bad guys. That's the position we find ourselves in time and again.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

We are talking about terrorists. We've already brought up 9/11, ISIS, al Qaeda, that side of it, and certainly you were talking about the far right. We've seen it in Sainte-Foy, in Las Vegas in the United States, and we tend to not focus on that. I'm just wondering if you could comment on the challenges you're facing. When the minister was here, he said these types of acts are by lone wolves and they're very difficult for law enforcement or Public Safety to deal with, these lone wolves who've been radicalized, but we are seeing quite a few of these radicalizations to the far right and we don't talk about them quite as much.

Could either of you speak to that?

[Chief Paul Martin]

I'm fortunate to live in a jurisdiction where one of our professors at the university is a subject matter expert on right-wing extremism, so I have a little bit of knowledge from her. The one thing about right-wing extremism is it cannot be underestimated here or elsewhere.

The biggest difference, to my understanding, between right-wing extremism and what we're seeing from Islamic extremism is really how organized they are. So when you talk about them being lone wolves, there's perhaps a little bit more to that, but they're not quite as organized nationally and internationally perhaps as others. That's really the biggest difference, as I understand it, but it cannot be underestimated and it is still a threat within this country and elsewhere.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Turning to the legislation itself, we have had testimony on this, as well as an open letter that was talking about the new offence that was in Bill C-51 on advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general and the broad definition of “terrorist propaganda”. When we had the minister here, he talked about how, in Bill C-59, we've amended that wording because it was actually too vague and no charges had been laid because they weren't enforceable in court.

Do you feel these changes will assist you in actually being able to lay charges that can be enforced in court?

[Chief Paul Martin]

It is a change. It's a bit of a different threshold, but “counselling” to an offence has a firmer position in law than what we see with “advocating”. When you talk about advocating, probably the closest thing I can think of is the hate crime legislation. There has been rarely, to my knowledge, but certainly some activity or some prosecutions under that legislation as well. From my perspective with the CACP, “counselling” has a firmer place in law and probably is going to be better to move forward, should we want to lay those charges.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

We certainly want you to be able to lay charges and then have them go through when it gets to court.

[Chief Paul Martin]

It's going to be a little more restrictive, as opposed to just advocating on YouTube and then promoting it. From what we can determine, it'll probably be more successful in the end.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

We also heard about challenges caused by law enforcement working in silos. You have the RCMP, CSIS. Do you think the proposed national security and intelligence review agency created in Bill C-59 will help ensure that information will be shared in a timely manner? Have you looked at that aspect of it?

[Chief Paul Martin]

I know that at CSIS national security headquarters, there's a constant flow of information between CSIS and the RCMP. The only thing I've heard, in my own jurisdiction, is that the disclosure letters go directly to the RCMP. They don't share them with other intelligence agencies, like the provincial anti-terrorism squad here in Ontario.

Through the national security headquarters, there is a constant flow of information between the RCMP and CSIS. I think the information flow is very good at the top end, the federal end. Then it's just what it takes to move from the federal to the rest of the agencies across the country.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Mr. Paul-Hus.