Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to address this issue. As a former police officer, I had numerous occasions to utilize confidential sources for information that led to maybe lengthy investigations and some major charges, which were only solved through the need to have a source. Those sources were very much protected as well as registered.
In fact, now I think all police departments in the country have a registry for sources. There were many dangers fraught with using sources among the police because the sources began to run the police. They would provide information to one police officer in one jurisdiction. At the same time, they would supply information to another police officer in another jurisdiction. Before the registry and the structure was developed, they were committing criminal acts themselves and getting away with it, sometimes unbeknownst to the handlers of the sources. Therefore, they became rather dangerous to any police officer who managed these sources, even though it was pertinent to the investigation.
I am not quite sure how journalists look at their position in this issue of protection of a source. Yes, they can receive confidential information. I can recall journalists being under substantial scrutiny by the police for obtaining information that was embargoed, even embargoed from the House. A lengthy hearing would pursue and journalists were subject to police scrutiny.
I do not know if it is a good idea to remove the authority of the police when it comes to investigating any kind of activity that may involve a source who has passed information, maybe very sensitive information, on to a journalist.
What does the member define a journalist as? I do not know if the bill clearly defines what a journalist is. Is it someone who carries credentials, or someone who is recognized by the media overall, or someone who temporarily acts in that position, or is the tag “journalist” put on anyone who reports to another new media or another source? It is difficult to understand where this is all going.
The provisions of the bill supercedes all other federal acts. I do not know if that is the intention of the crafter of the bill. Many of the provisions of the bill, especially the search warrant provision, should be in the Criminal Code rather than in the Canada Evidence Act. Throughout my history and knowledge of the Criminal Code, those provisions have always remained in the Criminal Code as opposed to any other act.
There are illogical provisions in the bill that appear either to overlap or to contradict each other. There is no question that there is a substantial amount of clarification needed to make the bill an acceptable instrument.
I will talk about a few other gaps that exist.
For instance, there is no waiver provision in respect of the privilege. What if the handlers, who we will call the journalists, decide that the sources they are using have gone beyond what they are even comfortable with, that they may be going deeper into some kind of other criminal activity, but they are also supplying information to those journalists.
If the source is doing such things, where is the provision for the journalist to waive that provision? There does not seem to be any such provision in the bill. It is something to really pay attention to, given the fact that sources can go on a wild tangent. I personally have experienced that, even on a police investigation. Until a tight rein is put on them and restrictions on how that information is used, journalists could run into serious problems, but the bill does not provide any way out. There is no requirement that the journalist must be an innocent third party.
This is a very touchy area on any investigation. If the police were looking for the source of information that the journalist received and reported on and the source had, for whatever reason, determined some information that was very sensitive in the House, for instance, or even if it were a breach of national security, how would it be handled as far as the evaluation of the police and their relationship with a journalist? Would the journalist be looked at as an innocent third party? It is highly unlikely. If there were an investigation into some major breach of security, journalists would be considered as much of the problem as the sources would be.
I assume this is where the crafter of the bill is going with it. He wants to provide absolute protection to any journalist who may receive that kind of information.
I guess the only absolute protection for any group or any individual would be within the legal community, and there are even some limitations there. I can reflect back to the Karla Homolka trial and a source that one of the lawyers had, and it failed. The police never recovered evidence that was confiscated by a lawyer, but the source provided that information. In here, lawyer-client privileges supercede all.
There are many gaps in the bill. There is no requirement that the information in the possession of a journalist must relate to the journalistic activity. Therefore, it appears a fair amount of study is still required to deal with the issue of the protection of journalistic sources.
I suggest the member address some of those points maybe in the future, because I cannot support the bill the way it is.