Public Safety Committee on Aug. 28th, 2024

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I understand your reticence, but the fact remains that the effectiveness of our oversight services is at stake. Seriously, six years after granting citizenship to someone…

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Fortin.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We go now to Mr. MacGregor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister, I also want to ask a few questions about that video from June 2015. I understand the limitations you have in answering specifics about it, but to Mr. Fortin's point, June 2015 was among the final months of the previous Harper Conservative government. It's over nine years ago. It is a publicly acknowledged video, given that it was reported by Global News.

Minister, I guess what I want to know is this. Broadly speaking, when videos like this are released to the public through various outlets, can you talk a little bit about the procedures in place nowadays—I'm sure the biometrics technology is very different in 2024 compared with what it was in 2015—that allow the analysis of these videos? As well, without jeopardizing the current investigation or the case before the court, what lessons can you publicly tell us that you've learned from this experience that you may be now applying to future analyses of videos of this nature?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. MacGregor, thank you for that very good question. Because it is very technical and we don't want to bump into what Deputy Commissioner Larkin said, I think Ted Gallivan from CBSA can answer specifically for you in terms of the timeline and perhaps other technologies. I want to give Ted a chance, because you'll get a precise answer that won't somehow allow me to end up stepping into a criminal trial where I shouldn't.

Ted.

[Ted Gallivan]

Independent of the criminal investigation, the CBSA, subsequent to media reporting, went and obtained an instance of this video from the dark web. It's part of the review where we're asking ourselves questions about the procedures.

I think I can confirm, through a review of the treatment of these individuals, that the video wasn't available to the CBSA officials who were screening the individual. I can say that the preliminary indications were that the video of the father was not available, that instance that we found, in 2018 or 2021. It was only made available more recently. We are trying to see if there are other instances of that video or if it could have been obtained in other ways. We're also asking ourselves the question around the feasibility of finding a video like that if you don't know about it.

I think I can confirm to the committee that the CBSA has an independent copy of that. We're being very careful in what we say. We're looking at it in the context of this review that the minister mentioned. Preliminary indications by the CBSA are that they certainly weren't available in 2018 and 2021. That's the purpose of the review, to get to the bottom of those questions. Preliminary review wasn't available during the screening in 2018 or 2021, with serious questions about whether it was findable if you didn't know what you were looking for.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Caputo, go ahead on your point of order.

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

Thank you.

It's been raised a number of times here that we only got access to this chronology that really should have been in our hands weeks ago. I believe we probably have agreement from most people, but I would propose that the minister stay for one extra hour here, depending on his availability, because I think there are still a number of questions to be answered.

We are also not hearing from the Minister of Immigration this week, which was part of our motion. We haven't had an explanation for that either.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Minister LeBlanc doesn't answer to that question. That's for us. We did invite Mr. Miller, but he was unavailable.

I have an understanding that the minister can stay for a short while longer. I had envisioned two more five-minute slots—

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. McKinnon, you may have the wrong understanding. I'm happy to be here. I agreed to come for one hour. I am leaving on a flight for New Brunswick, going almost straight to the airport, with one stop at the public safety department to sign a particular document. I'll be spending tomorrow morning getting my monthly immunoglobulin treatment to boost my immune system. I don't intend to miss that, and I don't intend to miss the flight.

That being said, I'm happy to take a few more questions, but I cannot stay an hour. I've been an opposition MP too. I get exactly what Mr. Caputo is doing. We certainly released all of the documents the moment they were prepared by the Justice officials and we could rely on them. There was certainly no attempt to wait. The documents had to be translated, and we wanted to, of course, respect that rule.

I don't know, Mr. Chair, if there are another few minutes. I see that it's after 11 o'clock, and I will have to leave very shortly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Minister.

To finish the second round, we would do one more five-minute question from the Conservatives and one from the Liberals. Would you be able to stay for 10 more minutes?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Excellent.

That being the case, we will go with Mr. Brock for five minutes.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Minister, two weeks ago, or actually 16 days ago, the Prime Minister notified Canada that his government was taking the case very seriously. He secondly said that this was a very serious situation and that you, sir, as the Minister of Public Safety, would be doing a full follow-up to understand exactly how this happened and share all that was learned “at the appropriate moment”.

That was 16 days ago. You've indicated the process, by which you've disclosed this five-page document to committee literally 20 minutes before the commencement. In my former career as a Crown attorney, if I tried to pull something like this in front of the judge, I would get a severe tongue-lashing. This is not procedural fairness. This is highly, highly suspicious in terms of the timing by which you released that.

Moving on, I too want to talk about the video, the notorious video from 2015. According to Global News, they easily obtained a copy of that. It appeared to match the one that resulted in the aggravated assault charge that the RCMP recently laid. It shows “a prisoner wearing an orange jumpsuit and suspended from a pole in a desert. A man wearing a black robe and a cap bearing the ISIS logo then hacks at the prisoner's limbs with a sword”, cutting off his hands and cutting off his feet.

Global News continues:

His face briefly visible, he appears to be a middle-aged man with a henna-tinted beard.

It is unclear whether the victim was already dead when he was dismembered. The video, titled “Detering Spies,” was published in June 2015 by the media arm of the ISIS branch in western Iraq, according to an expert.

We know that Mr. Eldidi received his citizenship in September 2023. I'm looking at the chronology here: “Security Screening Note: Application referred to CSIS for security checks in NOV2023; CSIS returned a favourable recommendation.”

What type of message does that send to Canadians regarding our national security agency when a video that was widely distributed some eight years previous was not flagged against any advanced biometrics? The man's face was clearly visible. Is CSIS not tracking these videos? What other terrorists are walking the streets here in Canada right now waiting to commit terrorist acts on innocent Canadians? What the hell is going on?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Brock, through the chair, I would also think that when, in your previous job as a Crown attorney, you would be commenting with the benefit of parliamentary privilege on something that you know very well may form part of the evidence in an upcoming criminal trial, as the deputy commissioner of the RCMP said, I'm not sure you, on the steps of a courthouse in the middle of an ongoing trial, would have been as dramatic as you were for your social media clip.

Now, that being said—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Minister, I am not a Crown attorney right now. I am a parliamentarian asking the tough questions that Canadians want to know.

Why did our national security agency not flag this video eight years prior and use the image of this terrorist, if not killer, who was dismembering limbs from a person on a pole? Why was that image not flagged against every other asylum claimant to ensure that there were adequate security checks being done? According to your note, CSIS cleared this individual, returning a favourable recommendation. How did that slip through? How did that slip through, sir?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Again, you're referring to alleged dramatic images in a video—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

It's not alleged. It happened. The video is not alleged.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

I think we should be careful talking about criminal evidence. As I said in my opening comments, and Ted Gallivan will be able to give you some precision with respect to the video and how security screening agencies came into possession of that information, at the time when the relevant decisions were being made by the immigration department and the security services were doing their work, the existence of that video or the information that you have now recounted to the committee was not available. I think Mr. Gallivan can provide some precision in terms of why that was the case.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

It begs the question as to why.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Brock, that's enough. I think we should let Mr. Gallivan speak after the minister is gone.

We will go now to Ms. Damoff for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair. It's a pleasure to be back on this committee. I was on here from 2015 onwards.

I have to say that I'm really proud of the investments the government has made to restore our security agencies to where they should be to deal with these kinds of security threats. Someone recently said to me that under the debt reduction action plan, a fine fishnet had become pretty porous because of cuts. One of the first things we did when we got elected was to update our national security framework and pass legislation that actually has given tools to our security agents to deal with these evolving threats, which have become more global in nature. They cross borders, so it's becoming more difficult.

Minister, I know you've only been in the role for a year, but I have to say that you have led this group of people admirably. Since we got elected in 2015, I'm quite proud of the investments we've made. I wonder if you and perhaps the heads of the different agencies could comment on....

First, actually, I'd like to congratulate you, Ms. Lloyd, on your new role leading an agency that does such important work for Canadians.

In spite of the fearmongering that's been going on here, can Canadians have confidence in our agencies and can Canadians feel safe that we have the tools, and the continuously evolving tools, to deal with these kinds of terrorist threats?