Evidence of meeting #98 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 c-59.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Thank you for being here today and for the work that you're doing.
I take your point on definitions of national security and, as you say, absent a definition, you're in a difficult spot. You said that you were currently, though, operating under a definition.
What is that definition?
12:50 p.m.
Interim Vice-Chairperson and Acting Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
No, we are not operating under that definition, because we don't have to operate under it.
What I said—
12:50 p.m.
Interim Vice-Chairperson and Acting Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
What I said is that in going back and looking at the cases—the complaints we've had—we believe that there are five or six of them—
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
What criteria are you using to assess those cases as national security matters?
12:50 p.m.
Director, Research, Policy and Strategic Investigations Unit, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The most obvious ones. The ones we've looked at relate to charities, terrorists listing for charities, high-risk travellers. That language is in it, so sort of on the face of it, it's very obvious.
We have others, though, that we potentially might count. One, for example, is where an individual was complaining about the RCMP's actions because he was denied a passport. That's all the information we have. Given the location, the RCMP does federal policing in that location, so we're assuming that maybe it's related to national security. That's one of them where we would have to make a few more calls and dig into it a little further to determine if in fact this is a national security related matter.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
This has always been a problem when it comes to national security. It's a very ambiguous concept. I am on the Department of Public Safety website, and under the heading of national security, it's ambiguous here too. They say it's a multi-faceted endeavour. They have a number of subheadings that pertain to national security. Counterterrorism, counter proliferations relating to weapons of mass destruction, critical infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Could you not use something like that as a general framework when complaints come in? If they fall within these categories, then you shift them over to NSIRA. Wouldn't that be helpful?
12:50 p.m.
Director, Research, Policy and Strategic Investigations Unit, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The one that sticks out for me in that is critical infrastructure protection, and I've had conversations about public safety and the RCMP. It's in SCISA, it's linked to national security. But given how the RCMP is set up, it's usually not national security. Sometimes it is but for the most part it isn't. That's where the challenge is for us in trying to notionally define what is closely related to national security or elements like that. Same with the issue of intelligence, and I know it's been raised here. It's not listed as part of the mandate change for CRCC; the word intelligence has been omitted because the RCMP does intelligence-led policing; that's what they do. It's in the national security and every other aspect of their mandate. If we were to restrict to everything the RCMP does in collecting intelligence as national security, it would probably be almost every complaint we have to a degree. That's really a definitional issue. We would look to NSIRA and how they frame it, and we would look to the RCMP and how they frame some issues. Just because the RCMP is collecting intelligence on a protest, and doing it perhaps in plain clothes, doesn't necessarily mean it's a national security matter. We would probably make the call to find out—
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
It could be an issue of civil liberties; is that where you're going?
12:55 p.m.
Director, Research, Policy and Strategic Investigations Unit, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
It could be just an issue of public safety. They were worried that violence might occur. It may not have any link at all to Nexus or national security in how the RCMP frames it.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
It's an interesting point.
Those are my questions, Mr. Chair.
Thank you.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Assuming Mr. Picard has no further questions, Mr. Dubé, you have the final few minutes.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
With that, assuming no other questions from any other side, I want to thank you both for your contributions.
The meeting is adjourned.
