Public Safety Committee on June 16th, 2026

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Oh. Okay. That's unfortunate, but I understand.

On the subamendment, Mr. Wong, in our previous exchange you talked about the exigency in clause 14. Perhaps you could point me to it. I'm not seeing where in clause 14 those exigency authorities, for lack of a better term, would apply to the process we're looking at in clause 9.

[Normand Wong]

That's because in clause 14 it's the ability of law enforcement to act in exigent circumstances. Those circumstances are using their common law ancillary powers to do regular police work and act in emergency situations. There is no warrant or production order. All we did was spell out that police can obtain this information in those circumstances without having to go to court.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

This brings us back to a discussion we had earlier, in another context, where we're talking about what looks like a deliberate reason to exclude information or exclude clarity in the actual legislation.

I'll turn to our colleagues in law enforcement. I described a situation in Strathroy, Ontario. I'm sure you're very familiar with the Aaron Driver case. In your careers, you've probably encountered numerous situations where you haven't had the time to go through this process. Do you view specific recognition in statute of those circumstances and giving a mechanism for that as being valuable?

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

I'll give a general response, and then perhaps my colleague can get more specific, if you want more of an operational example.

In our experience, if it's legislated at 30 days, then 30 days will become the standard. Traditionally, it removes the latitude for.... As Mr. Wong mentioned, banks and telcos are key partners in our investigations, particularly in major investigations. There is a back-and-forth, and depending on which region of the country it is, there are relationships established with these businesses. If we need subscriber information, the size of the telco or the company could be the difference in how quickly that happens. A larger one might say, we're going to need three days. We go to the judge and request. In the affidavit, in the court documents that we produce, we could even speak to that and say, we spoke to the provider and they think they can provide this in three days.

There's the opposite too, where a company or bank may not feel like that's a priority for them, as Mr. Mantle had alluded to. That's when the 30 days become the default, and if they're late, then they're late. Essentially, that becomes the default, a late, post-30-days production on some of those things.

If you're dealing with a major file with multiple targets and multiple devices, and you're trying to get through production orders, that all extrapolates into a very lengthy process. Some take you right to the 30-day point to say, we don't have it, and then you're starting again from that point.

If you add all that up on a major file—the types of crimes that cause the greatest harms to Canadians—there's jurisprudence in Canada, R v. Jordan, that starts to kick in with those large files.

All that is to say that I can't speak to the amendment or the proposed legislation. All I can speak to is the fact that experientially, the 30 days, once legislated, becomes the benchmark.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

To your point, Superintendent, that's one thing we're trying to protect against.

We disagree on the value, potentially, of having a window there, but if there is a window, I guess that's where the subamendment kicks in. We want to make sure that window is not being treated as, to your point, a floor or as a baseline.

When you've had to get a warrant under extreme, pressing, time-sensitive circumstances, what is the standard and the quickest time frame that you can get something in those circumstances, where hours matter?

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

I'll default to my colleague, as his operational experience is a lot more recent than mine.

[Aaron Gilkes]

It really depends on what it is that you're actually looking for in terms of information. If you're simply trying to confirm a name associated with an IP address, with a phone number or something like that, and the exigency is very imminent, there are times when a service provider may actually just provide it to you over the telephone, because they know that something is going to happen within hours or minutes. That is a very quick turnaround, because they're sensitive to that.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

To that point, do you find that smaller providers that don't necessarily have the bureaucracy and the processes that your large companies do are generally more flexible and more amenable to dealing with this? “We need this now, and we don't have time to go through a judge to go through that process, that voluntary turnover?” Do you find smaller companies are more flexible on that?

[Aaron Gilkes]

If I speak from personal experience, I've had very positive experiences with both smaller service providers and larger ones. There are some very dedicated individuals working in both spheres. They've been very co-operative from time to time. They do recognize that when we are asking for something like that, generally it's because we need it to prevent something horrible from happening.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

It's very helpful, Sergeant.

Since you and your colleagues have those relationships, what would change, fundamentally, in the majority of circumstances if this bill were passed? You already have this voluntary process that seems to work in a lot of cases.

[Aaron Gilkes]

It's about exigency.

It depends on who we're dealing with. A lot of the time, service providers have their own criteria for exigency. In other words, it's about what they consider exigent versus what we consider exigent. If they determine that the exigency has already passed, as Mr. Wong cited earlier—if the exigency no longer exists—we're out of luck on whatever the request may be. It becomes a back-and-forth between the police officer and.... Police officers have varying degrees of experience with this type of request. They may be going up against a team of lawyers at a very large service provider, and there may be an argument back and forth about whether the exigency exists any longer. They may ask, “What is it? Does it meet our criteria?”, and if it's refused, the police officer is no further ahead in the situation.

In terms of what it provides, this would be outside the powers we normally exercise around exigency, because it is a warranted request. The response is coming back in response to a warrant, not an exigent situation.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

One thing I'll point out here, and Mr. Caputo earlier indicated it, I think, quite effectively, is that it is parliamentarians' obligation. Certainly I take this seriously as someone who values civil liberties tremendously. My respect for those is one of the reasons I ran for office. It's one of the reasons I'm sitting in this chamber.

We have to pass laws that are constitutional. I'd say we have an obligation to go above and beyond. We shouldn't look at checking the box of the government charter statement as being our floor, to use the concept we've been discussing here. We should be looking at ensuring that we are a country that protects in a very robust way the rights, freedoms and privacy of Canadians while also that ensuring that law enforcement officials have the tools they need.

The reason I bring that up in the context of what we're discussing here is that I want to make sure we're passing a law, when we look at criminal justice reform, that focuses on safe streets but doesn't create a bigger problem. This is one of the things the Liberals pointed out a great deal in the discussions about Bill C-16. They used court rulings as justification to put bad policy through at other stages in the law. They said that the court ruled this about this; therefore, we have to do this other thing, which ended up being basically a get-out-of-jail-free card on mandatory minimum sentences.

What's interesting in the context we're looking at now is that Mr. Mantle's subamendment, I think, is quite shrewdly worded in that he says, “or within such shorter period as is specified in the order where the justice or judge is satisfied that the circumstances make a shorter period necessary”.

My read on that is that it necessitates a record that can be used to assess Bill C-22, assess the legacy of these measures if this bill becomes law. We have a very clear path where we can understand how judges are using this, how law enforcement members are seeking this, what sort of production orders they're seeking and what language they're using. I would love to see—and again, I believe we have later on some amendments or clauses that deal with the reporting requirements—a pretty detailed accounting of how these authorities are being used, especially when we get to part 2. I regret to have to say how they will be abused, which is going to be, quite unfortunately, inevitable, given what the Liberal government is trying to do in part 2 of this legislation.

I think having the judicial record, ensuring.... This is with no disrespect to law enforcement. My brother's a police officer, and I speak to law enforcement quite regularly in my community. I think it's important that we also understand that our system relies on and requires checks and balances. It sometimes requires judicial authorization after the fact, whenever possible, on these things. We would want that check and balance. We would want that safeguard beforehand. I think what we're trying to do here is come up with that delicate balance.

I think Ms. Kwan's amendment is quite reasonable. I want to insulate as much as possible this concern that the 30-day deadline will be treated as just a baseline. If we are going to force electronic service providers and other companies to rebuild their systems, rebuild their apparatus and rebuild their mechanisms for response to these requests, it is crucial that we don't just put in place a system where they take 30 days to do this.

We find that law enforcement are now slowing down something that they might have been able to do in two or three days before. That's certainly not what I believe Ms. Kwan was trying to achieve. I certainly think that Mr. Mantle has done yeoman's work here on this.

There are a couple more points that I would like to make, and I think Mr. Powlowski wanted to hear a bit more, but he'll have to wait for the next meeting, because I realize we're coming up against the end of the clock.

I thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, MP Lawton.

Ms. Kwan, there are two minutes left, and I cannot turn to you unless others are willing to let you speak first, because there are a couple of other MPs who were before you on the list. If everyone is fine, we will let you speak for two minutes in total.

Thank you.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It seems to me that everybody was nodding, so I take that as an affirmative. I want to thank committee members for allowing me to do that.

I apologize that I wasn't here when this amendment came up. I had run into the House to deal with yet another guillotine motion on Bill C-26. I wanted to get my comments on the record in the House with respect to that.

I'm back here now, and I think the guillotine is soon coming down on this one as well.

I should first say that the premise of this amendment is actually something the Canadian Chamber of Commerce brought to my attention. They raised this issue with regard to the timeline for responding to production orders. This amendment that I tabled would restore the 30-calendar-day default, as is generally the case with the Criminal Code standard.

I would welcome and support the amendment that has been brought forward by Mr. Mantle. By the way, the Chamber of Commerce itself also noted that it would welcome shorter periods. It would welcome them with written judicial reasons in exigent circumstances. That is the premise behind the amendment here. It's to allow for that flexibility in that way.

I heard officials comment that if they can't meet it in those 30 days, then the default would be that they just won't meet the order. I would hope that this is not the case. I would hope that people would work really hard to meet the order, because the Criminal Code standard is 30 days and people work toward achieving that. In this instance, bringing that forward is an important benchmark, if you will.

Part of the problem with this bill and the approach that's being taken is that there's not really good collaboration about what needs to be done and how to bring the best bill forward. These are substantive changes to Canadian culture that would impact privacy and civil liberties. I get the importance of doing it so that we can facilitate the work of law enforcement, CSIS and the people who keep us safe. I get all of that. As a target of foreign interference, I get it. Please, I get it. I want to make sure we get it right, but not at this sort of breakneck speed of trying to push it through.

When I say breakneck speed, I'm talking about not engaging in a process that would actually allow for fulsome engagement, input and meaningful consideration. I know that the government has gotten itself a majority, and it is going to ram it through. I don't think that's the best way to make law.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, MP Kwan.

Thank you to everyone. There is not enough time to thank you in detail and with the consideration you deserve.

Perhaps we'll do so on Thursday, when we may meet again.

Thank you, everyone. Good night.