Public Safety Committee on June 4th, 2026

[Normand Wong]

That was the term that I used.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Can you clarify what you mean by that?

[Normand Wong]

The convention in the Criminal Code is to use words that describe what we want it to achieve or the types of services without naming the services. One of the things that we did back in Bill C-13—I don't remember which parliament that was—was to remove the word “telegraph” from one of the provisions in the Criminal Code, because no one uses a telegraph anymore. We replaced it with something akin to “means of telecommunication”, which covers any sort of mode of telecommunication.

This is what we generally mean when we talk about future-proofing. We use general language that actually gets to the heart of the criminal behaviour, and we do not specify the mode used to accomplish it.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

If I'm going to be honest with you, though, that term is really what stops me and makes me pause.

How difficult was it to amend and remove the word “telegraph” in that example you gave?

[Normand Wong]

It seems difficult for any piece of legislation that I work on, so I would say it was quite difficult.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Is it safe to say that you're always on the difficult legislation? It seems like it.

[Normand Wong]

I work in the area of investigative powers, so....

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

For safety and security, quite frankly, I would think that the way we protect Canadians' privacy is to do what is needed at the time. Should amendments be needed five years from now, we would address that need at the time. I think that's why the Privacy Commissioner made these recommendations.

I have a great deal of respect for what the Privacy Commissioner has said and what he has proposed. I don't think Mr. Housefather meant to make it sound like the Privacy Commissioner was being silly by his not getting it in terms of the recommendation, because I would find that quite offensive.

Let me do it this way. I am going to ask this question, and I would love to have an answer from each of you, including Mr. Nashef from CSIS, Mr. Wong and Ms. Gibner.

Mr. Gilkes, perhaps you might have input on this as well.

It feels as though your job here is to explain to us why we need to provide lawful access and much more lawful access. We want to give access to law enforcement. That's the deal here, but we have to balance that. That's our job. We have to consider charter rights and the expectation of privacy.

With that and with the Privacy Commissioner having made these specific recommendations, if this amendment is so difficult and puts up such a barrier and such a roadblock to lawful access, I would ask each of you to tell me why you think the Privacy Commissioner has suggested it.

[Ramzi Nashef, Director General, Policy, Planning and Accountability, Canadian Security Intelligence Service]

I wouldn't want to speculate on his specific motivations.

To circle back to Ms. DeBellefeuille's framing earlier, which I think was helpful, I think that reasonable people coming from different perspectives could try to strike the balance between privacy and security in different ways, and I think we're all trying to do that and get it right.

I might add one line from our perspective. I take her point that we're intelligence and that we're law enforcement on this side of the table, so we stand where we sit and we come with a specific perspective. At the same time, we're actually deeply motivated by striking that balance. We might strike it in a bit of a different way, but we certainly appreciate the criticality of both ends of that.

If I were speculating on my own stuff—so maybe not on Mr. Dufresne's perspective—I would say that I think Canadians would be quite worried if they understood the challenges that law enforcement and intelligence have in carrying out the bread-and-butter protection of national security and the prosecution of crime in this country. To be able to do that work, we're trying to modernize in a responsible way by striking a slightly different balance, which I think has gone out of whack because legislation has been difficult to modernize, to be really frank with you.

That's how I would answer.

I'll pass it to Norm or Rick.

[Normand Wong]

Thank you.

I'm also not going to speculate on Mr. Dufresne's motivations for putting forward this recommendation. I will underline that part of my job at the Department of Justice is to ensure that the laws that are introduced comply with the charter. That's core to my job.

Going back to what Ms. DeBellefeuille said, the objective of this bill is to provide greater lawful access, so yes, I do have an interest in this because that's what the objective of the bill is.

There is a public outcry in this country about public safety and the crimes on the street that we're seeing. What we're hearing is that police today don't have the tools to properly do the job. I know that statistics were provided to this committee from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection in relation to how many cases get cleared, and I think they reflect how difficult it is to investigate crimes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I hear you, but can I just clarify something you said?

I believe you're here to provide information to us regarding this bill, but it almost sounds as though you're admitting that you're here to advocate for this bill as it's written. It sounded like that to me.

[Normand Wong]

I'm sorry if that's the way that it came across. Maybe I'm too invested in this bill, having lived it for the last three years.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

All right. Let's move on to the others. What are your thoughts?

We have to respect the Privacy Commissioner. He has a job to do, and he has done a very good job. If we don't balance it....

I don't know how many more amendments we have to look at that are recommendations from him, but if this committee continues to strike down recommendations from the Privacy Commissioner, I think we're going to be in a heap of trouble from the Canadian public.

I think we have a duty to uphold that expectation of privacy. That's why I'm asking this question very specifically of everyone. This was obviously important to the Privacy Commissioner, enough so that he gave us a recommendation for amendment. That's why I want to know from all of you why you think he would make that recommendation.

[Richard Bilodeau, Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you for that. I'm just going to say one thing, and I think the RCMP will be able to supplement.

Putting aside the conversation about how difficult or not amending legislation can be—because that can vary, depending on the circumstances—it's not really for us to say and it's not our role to pass legislation.

We have talked about future-proofing. Part of the reason that “subscriber information” or other parts of the legislation are worded the way they are is that technology is changing fast. What might be a way of identifying a subscriber today—name, address, email and phone number—is relevant today and works today, but if it were an exclusive list, that might limit police in identifying a suspect in a specific crime during the course of an investigation, even when there were other ways of identifying the person.

That can be a limiting factor in real time because technology changes so quickly. There are probably even things that exist today in technology that speak to identifying subscriber information that aren't listed here. There's a real on-the-ground impact, and the RCMP can speak to that, but things evolve so quickly that even if you were doing legislation super quickly, it could have real impacts on real investigations.

[Richard Burchill]

I would add that I, too, am not going to speculate as to why the Privacy Commissioner has put forward what he's put forward.

From a law enforcement perspective, I can say that we're looking for, as the bill started off saying, timely access to information at the beginning of an investigation involving a crime and a victim. I can say with assurance that there are no investigators who are looking to have evidence that is not charter-compliant as part of their file and then going to court, giving disclosure and having the case thrown out.

From a law enforcement perspective, we're looking at the guardrails and the balances in the legislation as proposed so that we can advance investigations, because although the Privacy Commissioner has a mandate that he's speaking to, law enforcement's mandate is public protection and doing successful criminal investigations for victims of crime. The fact of the matter is that technology is an integral part of all investigations in this day and age.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you. I do appreciate that.

I'm what you would call a typical law-and-order Conservative, so I am completely with you in terms of how we can make it so that you can catch the bad guys, but we still have to balance the privacy of Canadians. We would be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't do that.

I guess what I was hoping I would hear from the witnesses here in terms of why you thought Mr. Dufresne would recommend these amendments was that his motivations are to defend the privacy rights of Canadians, because that is the answer. That's why he made the recommendations. It's to defend the privacy rights of Canadians.

With the permission of the committee, I really believe we need the Privacy Commissioner in our future meetings. I don't see any reason the committee would have anything against this. I don't know how to present it. Perhaps it's a unanimous consent motion to ask that the Privacy Commissioner be invited to appear for the remainder of our clause-by-clause meetings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Unfortunately, we can't submit any motions at this time. We already have one.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Can we get consent of the committee to invite the Privacy Commissioner for the remainder of clause-by-clause?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I doubt there would be unanimous consent, and it's not possible from a procedural perspective.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair

Just to elaborate on that, when we are no longer considering this clause, can Ms. Kirkland then move her UC motion?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

No. We're moving motion after motion, as set out in the agenda.

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

Okay, so her motion cannot be moved at any time throughout this meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

No, not as we proceed through clause-by-clause.

Go ahead, please.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'm sorry, but may I....? There was something you said just a moment ago. I just have a question. You said that you doubt we would have unanimous consent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Well, that comment is irrelevant because we don't have the opportunity to discuss other motions—