Public Safety Committee on Oct. 5th, 2026

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

Thank you.

How is it that somebody with two identities, somebody who had committed fraud, somebody who was previously barred from work, got past a secret level clearance? If you can't answer, I understand that's the answer we're going to get, but Canadians really want to know. We were told that the minister would get to the bottom of this 70 days ago, and we still don't have an answer. The spectre of an “ongoing investigation” is going to loom large, and who knows how long that's going to take.

A secret level clearance is a high-level clearance. It's actually a higher level clearance than I had as a parole officer. It's a high-level clearance. Background interviews are done. Credit checks, I'm sure, are done—things like that. How is it possible, hypothetically, that somebody with the factors I outlined got, at least, a secret level clearance?

[Vanessa Lloyd]

Thank you for the question.

As we've been discussing this afternoon, there are various parts of a security clearance process. What I can speak to is the CSIS process, and that is based on information that is provided by the sponsoring department to CSIS, in comparison to information that we have in our holdings at the time of that request.

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

We have a few more seconds here. The last question—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you. Unfortunately—

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

Can I ask a quick question, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

You have to be very quick.

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

If this were missed, would that not be a massive intelligence failure?

[Vanessa Lloyd]

Thank you for the question.

My quick response would be that intelligence and security professionals are rigorous and dedicated in doing their duties. They provide the assessments to a sponsoring department based on the information available to them and in comparison to the information we have about security and intelligence threats, as related to loyalty at the time of that request.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Ramsay, go ahead for five minutes.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

I'd like to begin by thanking the five witnesses for their patience and co-operation.

Ms. Lloyd, Mr. Bilodeau and Mr. Hatfield, you told us that Canada's security screening process is constantly evolving. There were changes in 2014 and 2025. I can't imagine that you don't monitor what is being done elsewhere when you have to draft new directives. You certainly monitor what is being done within the Five Eyes, and perhaps what is being done elsewhere more generally.

I would like the three of you to tell us what you've learned from this monitoring you've done. What lessons or insights have you drawn from that monitoring?

I imagine that you have done such monitoring again in recent months. Therefore, I would particularly like to know if you have seen anything that is not being done in Canada that we could implement now.

[Adam Hatfield]

I thank the member for his question.

Our Five Eyes allies and I, in Canada, collaborate extremely closely on matters of security screening, and so does NATO more broadly. A Canadian secret clearance or top secret clearance is considered an equivalent to a NATO or a Five Eyes clearance. All of those equivalencies are done. When you talk internationally to experts in this field about security screening, all of the same issues are coming up, and many of them have been raised today.

We now live in a world that is very globalized. People have connections all over the place. How do you assure a trusted workforce? How do you ensure that the person in front of you is reliable and loyal at the moment you hire them, and how do you ensure that through their career, as their life changes and as they encounter life events, they remain reliable and loyal? Those are difficult questions to answer.

All of our security screening practices—and by “practices”, I include the work that is done at the working level by screening officials, the tools they use, the information they base it on and, ultimately, the policies by which they do this that are set by Treasury Board—are in play at any given moment. Very frequently, when we learn lessons, it isn't at the level of policy. It's at the level of the training of a security official, the tools that they had and the criteria that they used.

These are judgment decisions that are made. You can look at judgment decisions from two different government organizations and see that one would say, “Based on our threat environment, we would have said yes”, and another would say, “Given our circumstances, we would have said no in that situation.” There are always cases that are right on that edge.

These are ongoing conversations, and the discipline of security screening is a very active one. We are constantly looking for ways to do this better.

[Richard Bilodeau]

I would add that, at Public Safety Canada, whenever something doesn't go as planned, we ask ourselves what we could improve. With that in mind, as part of our review of our own security measures, we decided to add an Internet check, which we've been doing for a few months now.

[Vanessa Lloyd]

Perhaps I'll add for the consideration of the committee that there are different systems. A question that was asked earlier was with regard to whether vetoes are in play in our system. They are not. In other systems, they are. Certainly as a community of high-security organizations, we look forward to the considerations of this committee on recommendations to improve going forward, both at the individual institution level and as a community writ large.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

When you say “veto”, does this go back to what my colleague mentioned earlier?

[Vanessa Lloyd]

Yes.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

Okay.

Other deputy ministers may be less aware of everything. Since you're telling me that responsibility lies across all departments, what do you plan to do to ensure that everyone is on the same page?

[Adam Hatfield]

I can speak to that.

Across the federal government, every government department that is subject to the policy on government security is required to name a chief security officer who is responsible for all of this. Those chief security officers are all members of a council of chief security officers that meets on a regular basis. This specific issue is absolutely being discussed. Everyone, on a continuing basis, is asking themselves and asking their colleagues, “How is it that you do this? Are my practices similar to yours? Can I learn something from you?”

The security community in government is an extremely active one and a very collaborative one. All of that is underpinned at a more profound level by intelligence from organizations like the service and like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Morrison, the floor is yours.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Columbia—Kootenay—Southern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

To start with, I was really surprised to hear the RCMP say that there isn't an interoperability issue. I think that when you talk about information sharing, there is so much work that could be done. I'm glad Treasury Board's here too to be able to link databases.

When the RCMP have challenges within their own agency because of the number of databases that are there, I would think that in this case, when you're talking security clearances, especially getting into the secret or top secret security levels or indoctrination levels, we could do so much better in the RCMP as an organization if you could somehow figure out your interoperability issues, and I don't think you're anywhere close to that. We know that you can't talk to certain agencies. You can't electronically share information, given how challenging it is. I think we could do a lot there.

I'm curious about who sets the national security clearance levels. Does each agency do its own? Do they figure out a position and figure out what level it's going to be?

[Adam Hatfield]

That is correct.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Columbia—Kootenay—Southern Rockies, BC]

With 200,000 applicants every year, that's an enormous amount.

Can you give me a rough idea how many would be enhanced, how many would be secret and how many would be TS?

[Adam Hatfield]

Roughly 60% of the screenings done every year are at the reliability level, 30% are at the secret level and 10% are at the top secret level.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Columbia—Kootenay—Southern Rockies, BC]

We all know—that's anybody who's gone through the top secret or secret process—how long it takes with CSIS because of the resources needed. Even 10% of 200,000 is a huge number.

Is there something we can do so that we can be better at, I guess.... It's like what's happened with this case where the individual missed a fraud investigation, which is crazy. The RCMP would never hire anybody if they saw that. It would be a no-go automatically, yet somehow that squished through the system.

What could we do? Please give a short answer, because I'm going to share my time with MP Caputo.

[Adam Hatfield]

I'm happy to respond to that.

The rigour in the system is very high when those high screening levels are applied.

To your comment about interoperability and better sharing of information, I 100% agree there's room for improvement there. A lot of that turns into an IT and data problem. Where we would see improvement is in the speed, transferability and consistency. It wouldn't necessarily affect the rigour of the system, but it would certainly let us use our resources far more effectively and hopefully cut down some of those times.

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

Thank you.

I said at the beginning of my last intervention and my last opportunity to speak that we were no further ahead, and we're still no further ahead.

I know that you all have limits to what you can say that are set by the government or by your positions, but I haven't heard any answers today. All I've heard is shifting: “Well, this person is responsible for this, and that agency is responsible for that.” It's a lot of pointing fingers. It's like I'm looking at the Spider-Man meme with everybody pointing at each other. Everybody's talking about who should be doing what.

I asked a really basic question—no disrespect, Ms. Lloyd—about whether this would be a colossal intelligence failure. I think that's a really simple question, and we did not get a simple answer. We got a lot of, “Well, it depends on this, and it depends on who knew what or when.”

I think that at your levels, you all know what happened. You've all been briefed on what happened or you have a pretty darn good idea, and you're not allowed to share that with this committee, but can we not just answer some simple questions?

Was this an intelligence failure? Yes, it was. Did Canada's international standing suffer because of this? Yes, it did.

How could this happen? We have no answer for that. All we were told was, “We'll get to the bottom of this.” We were told that 70 days ago. We don't even know when this investigation is going to be done, from what I heard—and correct me if I'm wrong. What we were told here was that this is Belgium's investigation and we're co-operating. What about Canada's investigation? Everybody around this table is responsible to their constituents and to Canadians. As a member of His Majesty's loyal opposition, my job is to be critical where it is appropriate to be critical, and that's why I'm making these remarks. It's not personal. It is just that we have no answers. I don't even know if there's a Canadian investigation going on here. I have no idea how our national security was compromised.

Can we even confirm that? Is there a Canadian investigation going on? Can somebody give me a yes or no answer to that, please?