Public Safety Committee on May 30th, 2024

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Gentlemen, settle down, please.

Ms. Zahid, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for appearing before the committee on this important legislation.

My first question is for the CSIS department.

Bill C-70 proposes amendments to the CSIS Act that would, among many other things, expand its warrant capabilities. I have some concerns about this expansion of authority, given concerns regularly raised by the courts about CSIS not abiding by its duty of candour in warrant applications.

Could you please outline reforms you have taken around your duty of candour to the courts and building trust with minority communities, who have in the past felt targeted by CSIS and are the very communities often targeted by the foreign interference we are trying to guard against in this legislation?

[Sarah Estabrooks]

Thank you for the question.

The service has put a significant amount of effort in place to address previous concerns about significant gaps in our duty of candour. It is a duty that we take very seriously. The Federal Court and review bodies have pointed to concerns, and we have taken significant measures—including training, the development of a professional affiant corps, and embedding legal counsel in various operational activities—in order to understand and fully meet the duty of candour to the service.

We recognize this is a failing that is unacceptable and that it creates gaps in trust for Canadians.

I'm going to pass it to my colleague René to speak to the second part of your question, if that's okay.

Thank you.

[René Ouellette, Director General, Academic Outreach and Stakeholder Engagement, Canadian Security Intelligence Service]

The first thing we want to point out is that since 2019, we've created a program that significantly expands how the service does outreach and engagement with communities across the country, recognizing that it's our responsibility and our duty to protect all Canadians. We have deployed significant resources, time and effort in rebuilding trust where trust had been lost or fractured, acknowledging and atoning for some of the mistakes that we've made in the past with communities.

We have made some significant progress in building that trust. It takes time, it takes patience and it takes humility. We have brought all of that to bear in our efforts to build these relationships. We continue to have daily conversations, weekly meetings—face-to-face or over the phone—emails and everything to make sure that we are available to communities when they need to talk to somebody about the service or about threats they're feeling. We do recognize, especially in the context of foreign interference, that often the first victims of that activity are the communities themselves—diaspora communities and marginalized communities.

It's really important to us to make sure that we are protecting the interests of all Canadians.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

This legislation also enhances the CSIS capability to collect and use datasets. The protection of personal information, data management and abiding by privacy protections are going to be very important here.

Can you please outline the steps being taken to address privacy concerns and to ensure data is properly obtained and is reliable before it is used?

[Sarah Estabrooks]

Thank you for the question.

The dataset authority in the CSIS Act is an extremely complex regime that thoroughly embeds privacy protection at every step. It requires ministerial accountability and oversight. The collection, retention and use of data is undertaken through strict controls. For example, only designated officials are able to handle data in the evaluation period and it must be segregated from other CSIS holdings. There are a number of different steps in the approval process. The retention of Canadian data must go to the Federal Court for approval.

The scheme itself is heavily embedded with the appropriate safeguards for the privacy rights of Canadians, recognizing that the essential need for data is to understand dynamics in our threat environment while at the same time protecting the privacy of Canadians.

The amendments that are proposed in the bill make some significant changes in terms of the process, but they do nothing to change the safeguards. In fact, in some ways they enhance safeguards. For example, currently, when the service seeks to retain a dataset that contains both foreign and Canadian data, it goes through two tracks. We're proposing an amendment that would see all data in mixed circumstances like that be applied at the Canadian standard, which would mean it goes to the Federal Court.

None of the safeguards in the existing regime will change. The roles of the Federal Court and the intelligence commissioner remain, as well as ministerial approval for classes of Canadian datasets and designations. It's a significant improvement in process to enable us to better make use of data, but with no change with regard to the safeguards that the scheme already has in place.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is for the Department of Public Safety.

Can you outline the concerns you have heard from the diaspora communities in regard to foreign interference?

What steps are you taking to ensure they are not inadvertently victimized or stigmatized by the efforts to combat foreign interference?

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

Thank you.

We've received significant feedback from different communities across Canada. I'm not going to go into the specifics, and not the contributions, obviously, which have been summarized in the “What We Heard” report.

There are very clearly concerns around foreign repression, transnational repression, and the need for more protections for these communities. We've heard also that they may have some concerns around being stigmatized. It's pretty clear that the legislation was designed to be country-agnostic, making sure that it offers the right protections but does not identify or stigmatize a community.

We also heard that any effort to counter foreign interference needs to be accompanied by clear messages around anti-racism. We've been working very closely with Canadian Heritage to make sure that we align with their efforts for countering racism in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you. I have to cut you off there now.

I now give the floor to Mr. Villemure for six minutes.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the participants for being with us this morning.

I will put my first questions to the representatives of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

In putting together the registry, you obviously looked to other registry models, such as those in England and Australia. There are a number of models.

There was something that intrigued me. I thought I could find it in the registry, but I couldn't. I'm referring to dual registration, where the foreign principal, by your definition, has to register and the public office holder at the other end also has to register. That way, if either one of them fails to register, there will still be a way of inferring that something happened.

Why not include dual registration in the registry process?

[Richard Bilodeau]

I'd like to thank the member for his question, Mr. Chair.

The registry was proposed in such a way as to focus, as you noted, on the person who has an arrangement with a foreign government for influence activities in Canada. The registry encompasses a number of situations, as we know, such as when public office holders are targeted by a foreign agent or when people receive money to carry out influence activities. However, it also includes communication activities that are not necessarily directed at a specific person or even a specific organization, but rather at public opinion in general.

The bill therefore proposes to focus on the person who has an arrangement with the foreign government. We are also trying to give tools to the commissioner and the people in the commissioner's office who will administer the registry in order to be able to identify people who may not have registered. For example, these employees will be able to handle complaints and keep people informed. They will be able to identify registration violations. They could also receive information enabling them to report situations where someone has not registered. There are a number of compliance tools that will be aimed at identifying registration violations. The bill really seeks to focus on the person who engages in the influence, as is the case with a number of other registries.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Let's assume, as you mentioned, that the person does not register and secretly communicates with a public office holder. There may be a complaint, perhaps a whistle-blower, and the commissioner will intervene. However, the fact remains that, if the public office holder was registered and reported the activity and the other person was not registered, it would trigger an alert. That would indicate that something was going on and that it might be worth investigating, even in the absence of a complaint or whistle-blower.

[Richard Bilodeau]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One of the components of the bill, and the mandate of the future commissioner, would be education. It will be necessary to educate people on the registry and its obligations. In the example the member gave, a public office holder is approached by an individual. The public office holder, who is properly informed and suspects that the individual is operating under the control of a foreign state, would be able to check whether that individual is registered. They could consult the registry and see that the person is not registered. Then, if the commissioner is doing their job of informing and educating, the public office holder could notify the commissioner if they thought they'd had an interaction with someone operating on behalf of a foreign state. This is another way in which the commissioner could be notified of a registration violation and could take action accordingly.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Is there any resistance to the idea of this bill requiring public office holders to register?

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

In our view, imposing a registration requirement on public office holders would create an unacceptable regulatory burden. It would be even more difficult to apply to subnational governments.

In this case, the purpose of the act is to create a tool that will serve public office holders. They can consult a regime to see who is working for a foreign government. However, creating a registration requirement would probably be a burden.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

It's due to the regulatory burden, I see.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but under the proposed legislation, a foreign citizen who exerts influence on a public policy is required to register. Is that correct?

Students, or at least agents of the Chinese government, were working at the Winnipeg lab without being registered, of course. Were they engaged in influence activity? I think instead that they were appropriating trade secrets. Were they influencing public policy? The answer is no. However, there was still interference with our intellectual property.

Does the registry provide for that kind of situation or would it fall between the cracks?

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

The registry is meant to provide transparency in public policy activities and government business.

Activities related to working for a foreign government and potentially appropriating information fall instead under the Security of Information Act. We are talking about potentially criminal foreign interference activities. That's not the intent—

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I gather that's not the purpose of the registry.

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

No. The intent of the registry is transparency in the public domain in terms of activities to change public opinion or influence a government process.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, gentlemen.

We go now to Mr. MacGregor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Before I begin my questions, I need to intervene and address the points that were made by Mr. Cooper.

First of all, there are not many public office holders who know more intimately the noxious nature of foreign interference than Jagmeet Singh. It has affected him personally. It has affected his family. It has affected where and when he can go in public. To make those kinds of allegations at this committee, frankly, is incredibly disrespectful. I think the committee should take note of that.

The other part I want to make note of, Mr. Chair, is that I had conversations with Mr. Chong yesterday in the House of Commons. I thought they were conversations that were quite respectful. The NDP was quite prepared to program this bill through various committee stages. Just because we didn't go as far as the Conservatives wanted, they decided to make those kinds of allegations. That kind of misinformation is really unfortunate. It's unbecoming of the seriousness of the topics that we're discussing here. I think that needs to be cleared up and put on the record.

With that, Mr. Chair, I want to turn to a few questions.

This is more to CSIS.

Having a public registry is one thing, but as members of this committee, we can only surmise that there are an incredible number of clandestine operations in which a public registry would have no effect. Those actors are not going to take the time to register themselves and comply with the provisions of part 4 of this bill.

I know you are limited in what you can say at this public hearing of the committee, but this is a question I posed to the minister yesterday during debate: Can you at least talk about how successful we've been with existing laws in laying charges and getting convictions? Is there anything you can provide to help inform this committee as we look at this legislation before us?

[Sarah Estabrooks]

As you know, the service is not a law enforcement agency and is not ultimately responsible for the laying of charges or the prosecution thereafter.

The foreign interference space is indeed a particularly complex one. Much of the activity, as we've discussed in numerous fora recently, is extremely grey. It is not always directly linked back to a hostile actor. There are often several degrees of separation. There can be all sorts of legitimate activity, and a fragment of that could be illegitimate.

The detection, the investigation, and the ultimate downstream prosecution in these cases can be complex. Part of that goes to the package of amendments before you. Part of it goes to the offences, which I'll let my Justice colleagues speak to, and part of it goes to the challenge of using highly sensitive intelligence and disclosing it to the RCMP in such a way that they can use it to launch an independent and parallel investigation, and then protecting that sensitive information when it comes to a court proceeding.

Some of the measures we're talking about today will make incremental movements to improve that scenario.

I'll pass it to my Department of Justice colleagues, who could pick up the back end of that question.

[Heather Watts]

Thanks, Sarah,

As my colleagues have said, the idea in Bill C-70 is to really build the tool kit for the government to respond to foreign interference. The work that Public Safety Canada has done to establish a registry is one piece, and obviously the proposed offences we have in the Security of Information Act are another part of that.

Some of the activity that we've seen reported in the media may already be conduct that is criminal activity, but some of it may not. One of the things that Bill C-70 is trying to do is to bridge that gap a little bit.

In particular, I would point you to the new proposed offence that would be in 20.3 of the SOIA, which is conduct or an omission or committing an offence for a foreign entity. The underlying conduct there doesn't itself already have to have been a criminal offence. There's a distinction between two of the offences we're proposing. Part of what we seek to do is make things that are tied to foreign entities, that are a threat to Canada, that harm communities, offences in a way that is not currently captured by the law.