Public Safety Committee on May 12th, 2022

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much, Ms. Soper.

My next question is directed towards CSIS. Could you give your perspective on some of the greatest terrorism threats facing Canada today? What action can our government be taking at the federal level to address these threats?

[Cherie Henderson]

Thank you for the question.

Today, right now, we are faced with threats from all across the spectrum, and we look at what we term “ideologically motived violent extremism,” which we're here to speak about today, as well as religiously motivated violent extremism.

In the service, we have moved a lot of our resources across over to look at IMVE. We see that as an increasing threat at the moment within Canada.

As indicated by my colleague from Public Safety, this is a threat that is not only within Canada. All of our allies around the world are experiencing the same rise of ideologically motivated violent extremists. The challenge with this particular...and I can't even call it a group, because it is a—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Cherie Henderson]

—variety of groups. It is across various spheres.

Those are the two biggest threats on the terrorism side that we're facing these days.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would invite Ms. Michaud to begin her six minutes of questioning.

It's good to see you, Ms. Michaud. The floor is yours.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here.

Mr. Duheme, you are practically a regular at the committee now. Thank you for your availability.

I was discussing this very matter recently with Mr. Sauvé-Laframboise of the National Police Federation, which you are very likely familiar with. He said that one of the greatest challenges facing the RCMP right now is staffing. There are clearly not enough officers on the ground. In his opinion, even if the government were to implement new regulations or new policies, it would not be enough. As MPs, we want to create a legislative framework, but if there is no one to enforce it, we will be no further ahead.

Is this a problem you are facing in combatting the rise of IMVE? Are you aware of this lack of human resources?

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

It is not unique to the RCMP. Other police services in Canada also have difficulties recruiting members. The RCMP has also had its share of problems brought on by the pandemic.

I will talk about what we are doing in our program. In terms of IMVE, we prioritize files and work closely with CSIS to keep pace with emerging threats. One advantage of our program is that I can reassign resources to other priorities.

This is a temporary measure, but we have made progress. We are now hiring civilians as investigators, which will help address the staff shortage. We will catch up on the backlog in due course, but it is indeed a challenge right now. We are addressing it by mobilizing various resources.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

That is interesting. Thank you very much.

Mr. Sauvé-Laframboise also said that one of the reasons for the staff shortage is the bad publicity about police in recent years.

As in any occupation, some people can slide into extremism. The media said a lot about former RCMP or armed forces members being involved in the “freedom convoy”. That of course did not help the image of these organizations. It is unfortunate, but it is the case for all organizations. In the case of an organization that is supposed to protect the public, however, that hurts us more.

To your knowledge, have any specific internal steps been taken to raise awareness among your team members in order to prevent them from getting involved in extremism or this kind of movement? Even if everyone is in good faith, it can happen to anyone.

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Ms. Michaud, the identification of those people internally starts right at recruitment stage. That is when we determine whether candidates have the necessary personality traits to do police work.

Throughout the career of a police officer, RCMP officer or certain employees, we regularly review their security clearance. I believe it is every ten years for a secret clearance. The challenge is identifying people when they are starting to shift to a different outlook that is in keeping with these ideologies. This can be challenging, and we are aware of it.

Unfortunately, we have no control over people when they retire. Sometimes they even derive self-esteem from their experience as police officers and use that to gain a certain status in these groups. This challenge is not unique to the police. Various departments face the same challenge and have to identify these people in advance, before they join this group.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Duheme.

This is for the witnesses from CSIS.

Some media outlets reported that your office that countered right-wing extremism was closed in 2016. I assume it has been reopened, but that is part of my question.

Mr. Vigneault, the service director said that your service did not necessarily have enough staff to effectively monitor all kinds of extremists and that you might have some catching up to do as regards changes in technology and the threat.

Can you tell us whether you have reopened that office? Why are you paying particular attention to all extreme right-wing and ideologically-motivated violent movements?

[Cherie Henderson]

Yes, you're right. Back in 2016, I think it was, we did take down our investigation on what we were terming “right-wing extremism”. After the attack at the mosque in Quebec, we again really highlighted the threat of what we have now termed “ideologically motivated violent extremism” and the importance of engaging on this file to try to protect the safety of many Canadians.

We often see that the IMVE realm goes against our marginalized communities, our minority communities and women. We worry about the impact on the LGBTQ community as well.

It really did cause us to relook, and expand and reopen our investigation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Cherie Henderson]

As the director and I have noted, we have moved resources. About 50% of our CT resources have moved into that last year.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Mr. MacGregor, we'll go over to you, sir, for your six minutes of questioning.

The floor is yours whenever you want it.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for appearing today.

The last couple of days have been a very sombre time for the NDP caucus. As our witnesses are probably very well aware, on Tuesday in Peterborough, our leader, Jagmeet Singh, had to wade through a group of people who were calling him a traitor. They were hurling expletives at him and saying they hoped he would die. They were hounding him all the way to his waiting vehicle.

This is the exact same kind of behaviour we saw littered throughout the occupation of Ottawa. It's time for us to wake up to the fact that this kind of behaviour has real physical manifestations and real threats.

I want to know from public safety and from CSIS.... You did talk about the rise of this, and I'm glad to see that this issue is being taken quite seriously, but the rhetoric we saw in Peterborough on Tuesday was the exact same kind of rhetoric we saw throughout Ottawa during the convoy and in its lead-up.

My question is for Public Safety. In the convoys and rallies we have seen, is there evidence that these have been used as recruiting tools to foster greater connection and co-operation between various IMVE groups?

[Lesley Soper]

I will begin, but I think the question is better placed with Cherie Henderson from the service on the data and what we understand about the threat.

Certainly we don't see the terrorism threat as indistinct from other broader societal issues that are going on. We have been looking to Heritage Canada and the work they have been doing in the online hate space and in the anti-racism space. We've been looking to those cues about how we can best work with those bigger policy issues. They are important.

As I indicated in my initial remarks, this is a whole-of-society question. There are certain preconditions that have given rise to incivil discourse and the type of treatment that—

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

Can I just interject? This is not the first time it's happened to Mr. Singh. We had someone from an anti-Islamic group called Rise Canada interrupt him in 2017. There was a man named Brian Kidder who followed him down the street in September 2020, threatening to arrest him. We've just had this latest incident.

I guess we have this growing evidence of the threat that exists out there. How much longer do we have to wait before we treat this seriously and put in place the tools to prevent this? I'm really worried about the trajectory our country is headed in.

[Lesley Soper]

In relation to the protection of parliamentarians, I would like to turn the floor over to the RCMP, because there is significant work happening in that space, so perhaps we'll start there.

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Thank you, Lesley.

To your question, sir, the protective policing, again under my program, has responsibilities to protect members of Parliament. We do have a ministerial liaison team that liaises with not only the ministers but also with the leads of the official parties to discuss any ongoing security concerns.

I did find out about this. We are following up on it. It's unacceptable. It's not the first time. I'm well aware of Kidder because it happened here in Ottawa, and we're following up on it to determine what can be done.

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

Thank you.

We had a brief submitted by Dr. Stephanie Carvin. She lamented the fact that there seems to be a general lack of interest from Parliament, and I don't think our politics reflects the level of concern that there should be about IMVE. She lamented the lack of interest in national security legislation. She identified the fact that Australia, for example, usually introduces legislation to update its national security laws every couple of years. By contrast, we do it about once every decade.

I think as parliamentarians we need to understand from the experts before us today about what your agencies are missing both in policy and in legislation. Maybe you could just take the next minute to inform us as parliamentarians of the tools that you would like to see Parliament fully and responsibly discuss in order to allow your agencies to fully meet this threat and to keep Canadians safe.

[Cherie Henderson]

Perhaps I can start. As you are all very well aware, the CSIS Act was created back in 1984, and the threat environment has changed dramatically since then. When the act was created, there was no awareness of where technology would be today, so the service definitely needs to have technological tools we can use to run really good investigations and get all the data we need. Of course, at the same time, we need to make sure that we respect privacy, that we're operating in a clear, legal environment and that we respect that rule of law in Canada.

And in another spot, we could—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Cherie Henderson]

Another spot would even be the ability to share information beyond the federal government. Under section 19 of our act, we can only really share information—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we'll now move to the next round of questions.

To lead us off, I will invite Ms. Dancho for her five minutes.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for your testimony today.

I want to ask CSIS a few questions about some recent ransomware attacks in the United States, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, and the threat level in Canada.

I'm sure you're very aware of this, but the FBI was involved in the investigation there. The attack shut down a critical pipeline for several hours. Seventeen states and Washington, D.C. declared a state of emergency. Then, of course, this past February we saw the attack on the Coastal GasLink pipeline in B.C. There was millions of dollars of damage, and the workers were terrorized. The damage to sites we saw was unbelievable.

Can you elaborate to the committee on what investigation you're doing in this regard? Is it on your radar? Are you concerned about attacks on our critical infrastructure such as pipelines?