Evidence of meeting #1 for Public Safety and National Security in the 43rd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Committee Researcher
My name is Holly Porteous. I'm really happy, mainly because I have Cynthia as my partner in this. I love doing the cybers. I love doing the national security stuff and I love sitting back and letting others lead. I was smiling about the corrections, etc.
I don't know what to say, other than I've been with the library for 10 years. Before that I was in government in various capacities, in the private sector and in academia, and I wear sunscreen.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
It's apparently quite effective.
You were super helpful on that committee report. I think we'd all agree with that.
Cynthia.
Cynthia Kirkby Committee Researcher
I'm Cynthia Kirkby. I have also been with the library for 10 years. I have a legal background.
Committee Researcher
Thank you.
I was most recently on the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, although I do have some experience on this committee as well. I think my primary focus will be on the firearms aspects and correctional aspects.
In the audience right now, we have Robin Whitehead, who will be assisting us as well.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
As I was saying, I'd really be keen if we pursued that cyber study. This is the committee that brings all of the cyber issues in the government into play.
We had the extraordinary opportunity in the last Parliament to renovate the security architecture of Canada. I think that we should flesh out how, where and what we want to do with this, and possibly even create a subcommittee, but that's another issue.
Are there any other issues that people want to put on the table?
Oh, my goodness, this is an easy committee.
Maybe we don't need to go through the fuss of—
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
John, I'm sorry, but my colleague Rob has something to say.
Conservative
Rob Morrison Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I didn't have a chance to write it up, but I think it would be important for us to get into an information and intelligence sharing committee, especially since we have all the federal agencies that we can bring in as witnesses. My experience in the last 30-plus years internationally and nationally has been that the information sharing between agencies is awful at best. We say we share but we don't—RCMP, CSIS, CBSA, CRA, you name it. When we're talking about cybersecurity, we better be sharing information. It's really important. In fact, the backbone of intelligence is information sharing.
You can view this as software being the information and hardware being intelligence, but it's all the same, and I think we need to flush out why we are not doing it and how do we can do it safely. It should be near the top of our list.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
We did hear a lot about the silos of security, and they don't talk to each other.
Conservative
Rob Morrison Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Maybe there's one other one, since I have the mike open.
One thing I'd like to do, especially given recent events, is to bring the RCMP in as our federal police force and ask them what their internal policies are on things like road blocks and court orders, and find out what exactly they are mandated to do and whether they are following through with what they're supposed to be doing.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
For clarification, were you talking about the information sharing within the study of cyber or do you mean doing a study in itself for information sharing?
Conservative
Rob Morrison Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I'm talking about information sharing throughout the federal government. It would be part of cybersecurity for sure, depending on how far we go with it. I think there should be information sharing. There should be a process of information sharing that the federal agencies are required to follow, and I would suggest that we bring in our provincial and municipal partners, as well, if we're going to be sharing intelligence.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I'm sorry, but again, just to clarify, are you saying we should do an entire study on just the information sharing or that it should be a component of the cyber study?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Okay, that gives the subcommittee something to chew on.
Are there any other thoughts?
Tuesday we could potentially look at the supplementary estimates or get Mr. Zinger in here. I'm assuming, from your motion, you want something a bit more substantive than a one-off.
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
I'm expecting to have a subcommittee meeting after that to decide on the schedule.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
We can do that. Have we exhausted our 15 minutes? We are adjourning after 15 minutes. That's fairly crazy.
As you can see, I'm not entirely a fan of all of the silly rules that go on around here.
With that, is there anything else that people want to put on the agenda?
I'll see you on Tuesday morning.
The meeting is adjourned.