Public Safety Committee on June 9th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

[A moment of silence observed]

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

As you will note, everyone in this room appreciates your heartfelt condolences, which we would like to share with your community as well.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you. I think it's important for Canadians to see parliamentarians standing together when it comes to that sort of thing. Excuse my emotions.

To go back to the matter at hand and this amendment, can I just say how deeply thankful I am for all of you here? I know it's been a long time. We're asking very in-depth, very crucial questions. I'm really thankful for how much attention you've paid to this. You've been actively listening to all our questions and concerns. That means a lot to me personally as we delve through this.

It feels like some members come to the committee with decisions already made. I feel somewhat disappointed that the questions being posed and answered aren't being closely listened to, or not as well as you all are listening to our questions, so we can make informed decisions about these amendments. It's important to me that we make informed decisions on the amendments.

Ms. Gibner, I appreciate your help in all this. You've helped clarify a lot of things for me. You mentioned that when something is less intrusive, the threshold of suspect versus believe is acceptable. I'm with you on that to a point.

If I didn't feel like all of the amendments we're putting forward for part 1 and part 2 to qualify language, which are upcoming and have already passed, quite frankly.... When we want to qualify and clarify language to be “namely” versus “including”, for instance, as in the last amendment we looked at, being very careful to limit what you mean by “subscriber information”.... It seems that, in general, at least the Liberal members on our committee aren't willing to specifically name and qualify so that we can get more specific. We might have been more willing to accept the threshold of “suspect” if we understood what exactly it was.

I understand with this one that it's specifically in terms of.... It's not subscriber information. What's the wording? I'm sorry. I'm losing my train of thought. It's to find out whether or not they're a subscriber, yes or no.

[A voice]

It's the confirmation of service.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Yes. It's the confirmation of service. Thank you. It's been a long day. I realize that I'm going until midnight tonight, so it will be a lot longer.

I'd like to hear from all of you on this question, if I can. It would be all four organizations—CSIS, the Department of Justice, Public Safety and obviously the RCMP. If the committee were to adopt this amendment and make it “believe” versus “suspect”, would there be a problem with that, and if so, what would it be?

[Kimberly Gibner]

I'll start, if I may.

The tool would not assist police the way it was designed, because what you heard the officer say was, “I have no idea who the service provider is. I don't know. I'm at the start of my investigation, and I need to know where to start.” That's the point. What I heard him say is that it's impossible to reach that threshold, so it doesn't go anywhere.

That's why I would say that the tool wouldn't be.... I think you heard my friend say that they would just be back to the drawing board. They would be in the same general production order world, where they already have to meet reasonable and probable grounds.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'll go to everyone else, but you've made me wonder about another question. Essentially, you're saying that you don't know whether to go further in an investigation. You have a suspicion. You're not sure whether to move forward—perhaps RCMP and CSIS should get in on this too—or whether you should proceed with an investigation until you know...the confirmation of service. Would that even make a difference? You know already whether or not you want to proceed with an investigation.

[Kimberly Gibner]

The IP address was one of the examples used. They said, “I have an IP address, but I don't have reasonable and probable grounds that it's Rogers who holds it. I don't actually know who it is associated with.”

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

What does finding out that it's Rogers, then, do? Then you get the production order—

[Kimberly Gibner]

That allows them to go to court, because, of course, the court order says that they need to know who holds the information to get in the door—

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That's rather than ask everyone.

[Kimberly Gibner]

Yes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Okay. That is making sense to me. Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts on that.

Who would like to go next?

Thank you, Ms. Hiegel.

[Shannon Hiegel, Director General, National Security Policy Directorate, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

I'm happy to chime in here, just because we've been working with the RCMP and CSIS on challenge functioning and trying to pressure test the concepts that we're talking about today that are in the bill.

We really saw this as a building block. It is the first block, and my colleague has done a great job of explaining how we saw this very much as a yes or no. With the ground of suspicion, that makes sense. If, say, we get.... I mean the royal “we”. I suppose it could be from any side, but certainly with law enforcement. When the U.S. child sexual exploitation centre, which has greater flexibility within the investigative space, provides the RCMP's unit with an IP address, it's literally put on the shelf right now.

To go back to the numbers and stats that Ms. Gibner gave, this would at least allow us that first crumb in order to figure out who in fact the IP address belongs to. The building block of that investigation, in its totality, has to be presented in a court in order to have somebody charged and prosecuted. All of that information would be put bare for all of the public to see.

For us, the collection of all of that information and all of the steps that both of my colleagues have spoken eloquently to certainly gave us pause and gave enough of a rationale to encourage that it be put forward to the table for consideration.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Is there anything to add? Does it make sense? Are you good?

[Ramzi Nashef]

Just quickly, our bread-and-butter investigative authority is section 12 of the CSIS Act, which is at RGS—reasonable grounds to suspect. For a section 12 investigation, obviously we have to have RGS that there's a threat to the security of Canada. Not to get too technical, but section 2 of the CSIS Act lays that out broadly: espionage and sabotage; foreign influence; terrorism, essentially; and subversion. Those are the four broad definitions that we would be looking at.

On our side, there's an additional safeguard, let's call it, which is “strictly necessary”. That's to avoid what's been deemed here as fishing expeditions. Not just as a resource question but from an authorities perspective, we can only collect and retain information that is strictly necessary to advance an investigation for us at the RGS level, pinned to section 2 of our act.

Hopefully, that helps.

This is an additional tool, at the same standard, that would allow us, as we've talked about, to get one of the very first steps. Let's say there's a phone number that we think is involved in a terrorism case, for example. We need to determine which provider owns that phone number, whether that's Rogers, Telus, Bell or somebody else, so that we can then come back with the higher level of authorization, which, again, is coming from judicial authorization.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

To clarify confirmation of service, let's say that in that example, you have a phone number but don't have a name attached to that phone number. When you're getting confirmation of service, you go to Rogers, let's say, and ask, “Is this phone number...?” You said it was a yes-or-no question, but are they also providing the name of that person?

[Ramzi Nashef]

No. We come back with judicial authorization to get the name and address—that more invasive set of information, let's say.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Gosh, I feel like that's the clearest thing I've heard all night. That's great. It's not because you all haven't been clear. It's that people are having a hard time understanding it. My background is in education—I've said that before—so I like to bring things down to a level where everyone can really grasp what's going on.

I honestly have less of a problem in this one particular spot with having “suspicion” versus “belief”. I think it's a problem in other places, but if it's literally a yes or no and then a production order to find out a name and that sort of thing, I can get behind it.

As I said, my reticence and hesitation come with all of the rest of the amendments. If we're not willing to qualify, name and clearly define some of the terms we're using in this bill, and if government members aren't willing to help us get amendments through to clearly qualify that.... That's when I'd be more supportive of this type of amendment. I'm not saying whether I would or wouldn't, but I'd have to hear a bit more from other colleagues who know much more about these particular things than I do, like Mr. Mantle. He's the one with the book beside him. He knows some more of that information.

However, that is very helpful to me, and I appreciate it very much.

The only other thing I'll comment on is what someone on the other side said to Mr. Mantle: “You have to earn unanimous consent.” I would argue that it honestly wouldn't matter whether we earned it or not or whether the argument was made or not. I am convinced that members on the other side would block and deny all of our wishes for consent, as they did with mine about the Privacy Commissioner.

I would like to reiterate, as I close, that Conservatives are committed to helping law enforcement. We are committed to getting through.... I've said this before. I personally would like us—I put in a notice of motion, but don't know whether we'll be able to get there—to split this bill, because I truly believe that if we can move along and get part 1 passed, then....

I'm sorry. I'm having a hard time concentrating because there's so much talking on the other side.

If we can move along on getting part 1 passed, then we can all get.... We're on the same page there, with some minor amendments, but I'm not feeling like there's any willingness to move on it, which makes me nervous as a member of the opposition, as I try to do my due diligence and my job as not only my constituents but Canadians expect me to. I'll end with that.

I thank everyone on this committee for the moment of time they spent in remembering the officer who passed away today in the line of duty. I will leave it there.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, Madam Kirkland.

MP Au, go ahead.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

Early on, I asked questions about the estimate of the number of times you will use this new measure if it's adopted. I also asked about the impact of not having this measure or tool in your hands in the past. I was told that there's no concrete information.

However, I want to draw your attention to a piece of information, a report completed by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians in 2025. The name of the report is “Special Report on the Lawful Access to Communications by Security and Intelligence Organizations”.

As I mentioned, this report is as recent as 2025. On page 54 of the report, there is some very interesting information. I would say it's relevant to what we are talking about. I will read it out for you. Note that by “committee” I mean the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians:

The Committee did not see any clear, empirical data to substantiate claims by Canada's security and intelligence organizations that they face serious lawful access challenges because of rapidly evolving technology. CSIS and the RCMP do not systematically track how often they encounter various technological challenges in their national security investigations....

Further on, it reads:

As a result, they do not know in quantifiable terms the degree of impact and overall significance of these challenges.

Further down, it has:

This is an important omission because as these organizations advise the government and attempt to convince Canadians—particularly those concerned about the potential erosion of their privacy—that new legislation and resources are required to keep pace with evolving technology....

I would ask for comments and feedback on that. Is there any response to that piece of information?

[Richard Bilodeau]

The NSICOP report you referenced—what we refer to as the “going dark” report—has a number of findings on lawful access and the need for lawful access. As you heard today from some of the witnesses, it is difficult to track because the RCMP and the police of jurisdiction have some of these requests.

I think it goes without saying that if we were able to track every single instance when our law enforcement tried to get information, it would be helpful. Obviously, NSICOP found that law enforcement and CSIS didn't do that.

I'm not sure what else we can say. We can rely, however, on the experience that CSIS and the RCMP have had over the years, what they've shared with us and what they shared with NSICOP. The information that was shared with NSICOP still led NSICOP to conclude that lawful access reform was necessary.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

Are there any other comments?

[Kimberly Gibner]

I'll add just one other comment. One reason I got that data for you was to highlight some stats that I was able to get at my fingertips, if it assisted you, on the thousands of investigations that were not closed as a result of not having these basic tools.