Public Safety Committee on May 30th, 2024

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you.

This is to Public Safety Canada.

In part 4, under “Definitions”, the definition of "arrangement" talks about being “in association with a foreign principal”. It can cover just communicating with a public office holder.

I know this act is country-agnostic, but certainly there's a hierarchy in terms of the Canadian public's perception of certain countries. There's a concern in the interpretation of the words “in association".

Can you comment more on how you interpret that?

[Richard Bilodeau]

The definition of "arrangement" is, as you point out, general in the sense that it would not require.... I'll preface it by saying that the interpretation of all this would be up to a commissioner and eventually to a judge of the Federal Court if a decision were to be challenged.

An arrangement wouldn't need to be a written contract. It wouldn't necessarily need to be spelled out on paper. It can be a verbal understanding. Ultimately, it would be up to the commissioner, based on the facts available to them, to determine whether there was an understanding, an arrangement, an agreement to conduct these influence activities. It's purposely drafted in a way to not limit it to just that one contract that says I will pay you X to do Y.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We'll start our second round now. We'll go right now to Mr. Caputo for five minutes.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I'm very grateful to have the expertise around the table that we have. I thank all the witnesses for being here.

I generally don't put my questions to one person in particular, because I know that there's a lot of overlapping expertise. Please, among you, just feel free to chime in if you feel like you have a good answer to the question.

My first line of inquiry looks at what we've colloquially called the foreign influence registry. When it comes to that, what would be the minimum amount of time that it would take to set up something like this? What would be estimated? I think one year was thrown around, but I'd like to get to a bit more of a solid answer, if I could.

[Richard Bilodeau]

A year is what we are currently estimating it would take to set up the registry. That's taking into account—just to get into some level of detail—regulations that are required to launch the operation of the regime. There are some pieces of regulation that are necessary to do that.

For example, there's the information that must be provided to the commissioner by a registrant, and then there's the information that the commissioner shall make available on a registry, just to give two examples, but there are others.

It requires building an IT solution to do that. It requires developing investigative capabilities. It also requires hiring—the commissioner was referenced earlier—and standing up the physical organizational structure.

It is a significant amount of work; therefore, a year is what we are estimating would be required to start the operation of the registry.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Therefore if this bill does not receive royal assent in the fall, and the election must occur by a date in October of 2025—moved back a week, I might note, so that the leader of the NDP can get his pension—

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I have a point of order.

I have great respect for Mr. Caputo, but if he wants to have a proper line of questioning without interruptions, he can probably just stay on the topic at hand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

When it comes to the timing of the election—and we do have issues with the timing of the election, regardless of what others at this table may agree with or not agree with—we're looking at an October 2025 election. If this bill does not receive royal assent before we break, or at least we have substantially done the work and we are into the fall, we could then not even be in a place to have this in place and functioning prior to the next election, if it were to occur in the fall of 2025. Is that accurate?

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

We're estimating about a year to put in place the registry, the commissioner and the office around it. We can look at how timelines could be accelerated.

What I want to mention is that the new SOIA offences and amendments would come into force 60 days after royal assent, and that would be well in place for that timeline.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I'm sorry; could you repeat that last part, please?

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

The SOIA amendments and the Criminal Code amendments will be in place 60 days after royal assent.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Right, so the amendments will be in place, but I think what concerns people—me anyway, and the people around this table—is that there's no use in having a registry if what it is aimed to combat really can't be combatted because we ran out of runway, which really does speak to Mr. Cooper's earlier points.

I mean, we had Bill C-282 from a former colleague in this House, MP Kenny Chiu. Fairly clearly, there was electoral interference that may have cost him his seat, and we could be running into that very thing. That's of concern to me.

I'm going to ask a few other questions about the appointment of the foreign influence and transparency commissioner. Am I correct that the appointment occurs through an order in council?

[Richard Bilodeau]

That's right.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Okay, and at this point, there has to be consultation with the House and the Senate. Is that accurate?

[Richard Bilodeau]

That is correct.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Okay. Now, for other officials—and I don't want to draw a parallel between the officials—sometimes there has to be some sort of approval by Parliament and the Senate, as opposed to simple consultation, because consultation can be ignored. Would it strengthen the independence of the foreign influence and transparency commissioner if there was a requirement in the legislation to have formal approval by the House and the Senate?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That's your time, but the witness may answer.

[Richard Bilodeau]

Amendments to the bill will be up to Parliament. The legislation proposes a number of elements that would make the commissioner independent in their decisions to pursue action, and those are built into the legislation.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We go now to Mr. Bittle for five minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

My first questions will be for CSIS.

What operational gaps does this legislation look to fill?

[Sarah Estabrooks]

Really, there are quite a few. There are four aspects of the current CSIS Act that are significantly impacted by the proposed amendments.

Operationally, for the service, one of the biggest activities we're coming up against limits on is the sharing of information and the equipping of national security partners and stakeholders outside of the federal government. Across Canada, every day, CSIS officers are engaging with communities and businesses and with provincial, municipal and territorial governments, and they're encountering significant limits in how they can share information to meaningfully build resilience. This bill would address that gap with some proposed amendments.

The second aspect I would highlight relates to judicial authorizations. Currently the service has a single warrant authority that is tailored to highly intrusive techniques and very much appropriately built for that purpose, with high safeguards and significant requirements. However, today in the digital world we operate in, there are a vast number of fairly routine and basic investigative activities. Here I would point to, for example, identifying the individual behind an online disinformation campaign believed to be driven by a foreign state.

For the subscriber, the identifying information of an account holder online is something for which we would need to go to the Federal Court for a warrant. That warrant requires the same elements that intercepting phone calls does, so you can see that it's not really appropriately tailored to the kind of data we would be getting. Therefore, one of the proposals in the bill today includes a production order. There are two others in that suite that would allow for much more tactical and regular approaches to the Federal Court earlier in investigations, and we anticipate that this could yield significant operational value and a much more nimble investigative posture.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you.

In designing the legislation, what lessons, if any, did you take from the enabling legislation that exists in other Five Eyes countries?

[Sarah Estabrooks]

For CSIS, we certainly always consider our allies, especially the Five Eyes and their legislative schemes. Obviously, they're all very different.

The U.K. has done some important work on data, which has informed elements of our data authorities. It just recently amended its data authorities after about a similar amount of time, recognizing the incredibly dynamic pace at which the data and digital world is advancing. We always understand the authorities of our partners when it comes to, for example, engaging with stakeholders and looking at the disclosure of information.

You may also want to go to others at the table with that question.