Public Safety Committee on June 11th, 2026

[Aaron Gilkes]

Different kinds of service providers—once again, it depends on the types of services they provide—could retain, for example, information in relation to the user or the types of devices being used on their networks when they're accessing the network logs—the areas of their websites that are actually visited—or it could be, for example, other services procured by that particular individual. That leads to other potential leads for police to follow and obtain additional judicial authorizations to obtain information in relation to those services.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Do you think most people know that this information is being saved by telecommunications providers? There's a very small number of telecommunications providers in the country. It's something we complain about on a regular basis. One of the things you said earlier was that one of the challenges with these orders was not knowing what information those providers save. It sounds like you actually know a lot about what kind of information they save.

Does it really vary? Do the different phone companies really differ that much in the types of information they keep?

[Aaron Gilkes]

I suppose I would answer that by saying that I'm not referring to simply phone companies; I'm referring to telecommunication service providers. For example, there are a very few large ones, but then there are other companies, like web hosting companies, web server companies and server hosts, that buy, rent or obtain services from the larger companies and then resell those directly to the public, and there are prepaid mobile services, so there are other companies that resell the platform or the services that are provided by the larger companies. When that happens, the larger companies don't have access to the subscribers of those smaller services.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

How does this subamendment help you with them?

[Aaron Gilkes]

This particular subamendment brings us back to the information that's retained and how long it's retained for. In terms of what they retain, depending on the services they provide, they may be very limited in what they're retaining, because it doesn't potentially serve their business practices, but they may retain some information that they use for other business practices that are not necessarily part of what a larger company would retain.

Because we don't always have access to those companies to have that discussion and establish exactly what's kept, we cannot write to exactly what's kept or use their language for exactly what's kept.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

How do these judicial orders help you with those companies?

[Aaron Gilkes]

For these judicial orders, when we request, we can say, for example, “including but not limited to”, and then provide a solid list of examples of the types of data that we're looking for. That way, even if it's not named specifically, they can say, “Oh, by identifier X, they mean something that we call Y.” It would then also be provided at the same time.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Then you do end up having some data normalization issues.

[Aaron Gilkes]

Could you explain what you mean by normalization issues?

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Well, that's the idea that this company calls this field X, but it's named Y in that company. We have to look at the data and figure out what it is and then match it up to the other field in the other spreadsheet. Say that we're looking for first name, or we're looking for a name, and this company has first name, last name, but this one just has it all in one field, and normalization helps. When you normalize it, you build little programs that help you figure out how to split it.

[Aaron Gilkes]

Precisely.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I just want to get back into the fact that the whole process we're talking about here is in relation to recommendations that were made by the Privacy Commissioner that we be more specific in the judicial orders.

Do you think that this subamendment achieves that balance between people's privacy concerns and the information that you receive? In this kind of order, could you see a situation where you have more information than you needed or less information than you needed through the judicial order process? What are the controls to stop that from happening?

[Aaron Gilkes]

These are controls that already exist in the courts. For example, one of the powers that police have is to ask questions. If we ask a question of someone, and they provide too much information, information that they're not at liberty to share with police, that could compromise our investigation going forward.

This is very similar. If we're asking for information that's outside of the scope of what we could ask for with this particular judicial authorization, then we could run into issues when it comes to disclosure, when it comes to trial or when we disclose what we received.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

In terms of that process, it's interesting, because when Canadians think about the judicial system, they always think about a plaintiff and a defendant, a complainant and a respondent. There's always one side and the other side when you're going to get what we used to think of in plain English as search warrants.

Who argues the other side of the argument in this context? Who makes the argument that the information shouldn't be released, that someone's privacy rights apply or that you could have a charter issue later on in the process?

[Aaron Gilkes]

In this case, this is what we consider part of the investigation process. It's part of the experience you build from going to see justices or judges with information to obtain an order. If it gets refused, then you have, basically, a review of why it was refused. It could be that there weren't enough grounds, that they didn't establish a link between the offence and a particular individual, or that you didn't prove that the information you're asking for would actually provide evidence to the offence itself.

These are things we learn that we know we have to collect in order to then go see a justice and in order to prove to the justice that we have reached that stage in the investigation where this information is located and where it will provide evidence for whatever investigation we're conducting. We're not starting off the investigation with identifying who the guilty party would be. We have to start off the—

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

You mean the accused.

[Aaron Gilkes]

I'm sorry. Yes, I mean the accused. Thank you.

We actually start off the investigation by collecting as much information as we can and then follow that information to where it actually leads.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Just to get at why this is so important, I really want to....

By the way, thank you so much for the weigh-in. You've explained this in simple language that's easy for people to understand. This morning, I was at the industry committee, and we heard testimony specifically about fraudsters and scams against seniors. This conversation is nicely dovetailed in with that. I'm grateful for it because we're doing a series of town halls in my community on it.

What I want to do, though, is move to Mr. Nashef for a moment.

The stakes on this really go up when we're talking about.... The personal stakes with regard to fraud are horrible, especially when we find ourselves in situations where people lose their life savings or things that are very important to them at a stage in their life when they cannot possibly recoup those. It's horrible, and it affects a small number of people, but that includes not just the victims but also their families.

When it comes to fighting terrorism and when it comes to the work that CSIS does, we get into a much larger arena of people who are affected. I'm wondering if you could help me explore how this kind of situation finds its way onto your desk.

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

To be direct on part 1, from a CSIS perspective, I would say that the tools in part 1 for us are a little bit more limited than they are for law enforcement. The subscriber production order is a law enforcement-only thing. There's no CSIS element or equity in that piece. For us, the element in part 1 that does engage us is the confirmation of service demand.

As has been talked about here and as I have said—but am very happy to repeat because it is an important point—what the confirmation of service demand does for us in a space where we're looking at highest harm investigations, which for us are espionage, foreign interference, terrorism and those sorts of things, is allow us to very quickly take some of those early steps.

Those early steps are, as discussed, when we might have a phone number, and we need to know who is behind that phone number. We need a yes or no to be able to target a warrant or a production order at court. At the end of the day, that is an important tool for us. More generally, the elements that are most important, from an investigative perspective, for CSIS specifically, not for law enforcement, would sit in part 2 of the bill.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

This subamendment is not a tool that you would normally use.

[Ramzi Nashef]

That's right.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

The one thing, though, that I want to touch on for a minute in that context is that when you think about the kinds of activities that CSIS is investigating, a lot of the time all of that has to be financed. If you've paid attention to the news in this country over the last few years, you've seen how the flow of funds from money laundering helps put networks together or is used to finance some of the nefarious things like the transnational repression that's happening in this country. For the people who don't spend their time at the subcommittee for human rights with me, that's the act where foreign governments want to influence what's going on in our country, through the dissidents from their own country who are here. In many cases, they're targeting people who are in Canada for domestic security reasons. Lots of their activities are actually directly connected to the kind of fraud that you see in the simple situation where someone goes into a bank because they're missing money from their bank account. The bank takes notice, because there are 10 people who are missing money from their bank accounts. Then it turns out that it's not just happening in British Columbia, but also there's a bunch of stuff that's missing in Nanaimo, in Montreal and also in a suburb of Mississauga. All of a sudden it's able to be tied to a specific foreign regime that is operating in Canada.

In terms of trying to keep Canadians safe, I find it very reassuring that the sort of blanket work that CSIS does isn't grounds for going into this space and being able to get specific information. At the same time, I also find it reassuring that in these situations where you start off with a complaint, and it leads—

[Sima Acan, Liberal, Oakville West, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. The issue is again relevancy. It's not relevant to the subamendment.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Oh, I'm talking directly about—

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

The point, as I understand it, is that even though there are 188 amendments in total, maybe focus the discussion at this point on this particular subamendment to the best of your ability.