Debates of Feb. 4th, 2014

Opposition Motion—Communications Security Establishment Canada

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the parliamentary secretary would comment on the fact that if we look even among the five eyes partners around the world, Australia has direct legislative oversight over security and intelligence, New Zealand has direct legislature oversight of security intelligence, the United Kingdom has direct legislative oversight of intelligence and security, and the United States has direct congressional oversight through both the House of Representatives and the Congress on intelligence and security. Canada does not.

If it is good enough for our partners we are sharing this information with to ensure that their citizens, through their parliaments, have assurance that what is going on is not only lawful but appropriate, why can we not?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the members of the House and Canadians at home that this government is steadfastly set on protecting the safety and security of all Canadians while respecting the privacy laws here in Canada.

That said, and I did mention it in my speech, the agencies we are discussing today, CSIS and CSEC, already have robust oversight boards, et cetera, in place. For example, as mentioned in my speech, CSIS oversight responsibilities rest primarily with the Security Intelligence Review Committee, also known as SIRC, which provides an external review mechanism that is at arm's length from the government. It is not my oversight. It is not oversight by the Minister of Public Safety or the Minister of National Defence. It is at arm's length. It is not linked to this government.

I wanted to reassure the member and all Canadians that this is actually already taking place and that in fact no issues of privacy concerns have been found.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I was a little surprised at the partisan tone of the parliamentary secretary's remarks. This is not a partisan issue. I was also surprised by the attack on the CBC. Should the House be warning the reporter, who I believe was Greg Weston? Is he going to be targeted now? Public Safety is responsible for the RCMP, for CSIS, for the Canada Border Services Agency. There are a lot of ways the government could target someone it has a concern with.

This is what the 2012-13 annual report of SIRC said:

The risk to CSIS, then, is the ability of a Five Eyes partner to act independently on CSIS-originated information. This, in turn, carries the possible risk of detention or harm of a target based on information that originated with CSIS. ... There are [also] clear hazards, including the lack of control over the intelligence once it has been shared.

That comes from the SIRC report. There is clearly present danger in terms of information being misused. That is what an oversight agency would be involved in. I would suggest that the metadata at airports and the information coming out at the moment are only the tip of the iceberg.

Why can the Conservative government not see this and allow Parliament to do its job, accept its responsibility, and provide parliamentary oversight, as the rest of our five eyes partners do?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the member once again that we already have that robust oversight mechanism in place. It is at arm's length from this government. We do not need another level of oversight. That is simply a duplication and a waste. If we were to implement another such level, then it would just diminish the work that SIRC currently does in establishing an oversight of CSIS and other security agencies.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to speak to the resolution brought forward by the member for Malpeque. It is very timely, as we all know, given the recent revelations by the reports in the news media over the last several days about the activities of CSEC, with respect to what is the newest word in Canadians’ lexicon “metadata”, so-called, but what we are really talking about is the collection of information about Canadians.

I am old enough to have been in law school when legislation was brought in that allowed wiretapping, intercepting telephone conversations between two people by a third person. It is illegal, under the Criminal Code of Canada, unless one is a peace officer who has a warrant from a judge. The judge would only give that warrant if the police could convince the judge they had tried other methods that failed and had reason to believe that the person whose communications they were going to intercept was involved in the commission of a criminal offence and this would provide evidence.

That was the level of privacy and security intended by the Criminal Code then and now.

However, what we have today is this organization, which is not supposed to spy on Canadians, collecting information about where this cellphone is, what other cellphones it communicates with, where it travels, and whether it goes through this or that place. Every three seconds, this cellphone emits a signal that says where it is.

Not only do we have the calls it makes, who they are made to, the length of those calls, and how often those calls take place, but all of this is being collected. It does not seem to be a one-off. The director of CSEC said yesterday in the Senate committee that this was not anything special, that we were not targeting Canadians, that we were not targeting anybody, that we were just doing our normal collection of data, that there was no data collected through any monitoring of the operations of any airport, and that it was just a part of our normal global collection.

That is what we are dealing with. We now have confirmation that it does this regularly.

We did not know about that. We did not know it was legal. Most Canadians would not have thought it was legal. In fact, we have privacy commissioners and other experts saying that it is not legal, so what do we do about that?

Before I move on, Mr. Speaker, I will put on the record that I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan.

That is the state of play right now. We have a situation in which Canadians do not know. Part of the reason they do not know is that they are, I think, being misled when the Minister of National Defence gets up in this House and says, “Oh, we're not targeting Canadians. We are just collecting all their data. We're not targeting particular Canadians. We don't know whether they're Canadians or who they are. We're just collecting this information. We're not tracking Canadians. No, we're tracking the cellphones of anyone who happens to be moving around in airports or maybe anywhere else.”

Is that the truth? As they say in the courts, is that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? No, it is not. In fact, it is anything but the truth. Going by Mr. Forrester's explanation, the truth of the matter seems to be that we are collecting this data as a matter of course, as part of our operations.

This is not a Canadian issue, per se. It is an issue in the United States and elsewhere. It is a political issue in the United States, this so-called “collection of metadata”. It is such an important issue that the President of the United States suggested, a week or 10 days ago, this information being collected is sometimes referred to as the “haystack”, the haystack of information, and that we might be looking for a needle in the haystack.

Instead of looking for the needle, we are actually collecting, through our governments, the entire haystack.

What President Obama has said is that the haystack is not going to be controlled and in the possession of the National Security Agency. It is going to have to be kept separate and out of its control unless it has a reason to search that data for any particular information; then it has to go to a court and get a warrant. That is what America has done in response to the concerns raised by the public as a result of the recent revelations. That how seriously it is being taken there.

This one-day debate is important. Yesterday at the Senate there was a one-day event at which senators asked their questions in public about policy and practices. However, that is not true parliamentary oversight. We get true parliamentary oversight on behalf of the members of the public who elect people to this place if we have a system to do that. As I said in my question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, Australia has it, New Zealand has it, the United Kingdom has it, and the United States has it, so why do we not have it?

The national security adviser to the Prime Minister, who also appeared before the Senate committee yesterday, said he was not sure all that was needed and that there would have to be caution. No one is suggesting we throw caution to the winds. These are some serious, sensitive matters. They should be non-partisan matters. They should be matters on which members of Parliament can exercise the obligation of oversight and do our duty as parliamentarians to hold the government to account in a special way.

We do have a legislature and we have the executive. All this is in the hands of the executive. CSEC reports to the Minister of National Defence—not even to the Department of National Defence, but directly to the Minister of National Defence. The commissioner reports to the Minister of National Defence and issues an annual report.

The oversight mechanisms have been decried by privacy experts. Both the federal interim commissioner and the Ontario commissioner have spoken out quite strongly on this as not adequate, not strong enough, and not doing the job. We have to have a legislative role here.

The motion calls for a particular committee. You, Mr. Speaker, were a part of that proposal in 2004. We are not sure we need a committee of parliamentarians, as opposed to a committee of Parliament. We are not sure that this should report to the Prime Minister as opposed to Parliament. In fact, as New Democrats, we are not sure whether senators or even the Senate should be part of this at all, so we cannot wholeheartedly support the legislation as written in 2005. In fact, we have proposed a parliamentary committee to come up with the best method of parliamentary oversight. However, something needs to be done.

I cannot pass up talking about the small irony discovered in the last few hours about CSEC and the commissioner. We talk about the commission and how important the commissioner is. He is important and plays an important role, but I am not sure he has all the information he needs. In fact, the previous commissioner said that he did not have access to the information he needed, and he could not come up with the right kind of conclusion. There have been complaints by the Federal Court about how it is operating with other agencies and going beyond warrants in what information is being given.

However, the irony is this. People can complain to the commissioner of CSEC, but they can only do so by mail. The reason is that a complaint may contain sensitive information. Complaints are accepted only by mail addressed to the commissioner at a given address. It is only by mail because it is sensitive information that someone else might discover if we sent it by email.

I wonder who. I am not normally paranoid, although I have been accused of it.

Just for the sake of this great irony, can members guess what the CSEC commissioner's address is? It is Box 1984, as in 1984. If we want to complain to the commissioner of CSEC, we must send our information to Box 1984.

We can be sure Big Brother will be watching.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my paranoid friend from St. John's East.

I just want to correct some things that the member put on the record.

The commissioner for CSEC just this weekend released the following statement:

As Commissioner, I am independent of the government and of CSEC, and as such do not take direction from any minister of the crown or from CSEC.

He is truly independent. He reports to Parliament, and we get that report on an annual basis.

They have been looking at this for over 16 years and have never found CSEC to be acting unlawfully. CSEC has to respect the laws of the land, the Privacy Act, the Criminal Code, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All of that is taken into consideration by the commissioner, who is a supernumerary judge and always has the best wishes of Canadians in his thought process as well as the security of Canadians at home and abroad.

On the comment the member made on the cellphone, I just want to point out that CSEC has to act within the law. First of all, CSEC cannot target Canadians at home or abroad. Also, when it is working with its partners in security, whether the RCMP or CSIS, it has to follow the Criminal Code. As the member pointed out, it has to be done through a court order or through a warrant.

Again, CSEC is not out there monitoring everything going on in cyberspace or what is happening on our BlackBerrys and cellphones. If it happens, it is done through a court order, within the law and the mandate it has, as well as when working with the RCMP and CSIS.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the concern is that the line goes from the CSEC operations to the commissioner to the minister. These are all extraparliamentary; they are part of the administration of government. However, we are talking about parliamentary oversight, the members of Parliament who are elected, and not just the minister. The minister is elected for a riding, but when he sits in cabinet, in our system of government, he is the government. The cabinet is the government. He is the executive and we are the legislature. Also, other parliaments have parliamentary oversight, but we do not. That is the problem.

I would also quote the former director of CSEC:

There’s no question that CSEC is very, very biased towards the less the public knows the better….

He is proud of that fact, and it seems to have worked, because we very seldom see CSEC on the front page of the newspapers.

Well, that has changed. I think Canadians, because they are aware of this situation, want to see more parliamentary oversight.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the member's remarks and the 1984 Big Brother reference. It almost seems that is what we have, across the way.

The key point here is that I really cannot understand the government's unwillingness to look at proper parliamentary oversight when two of its key cabinet ministers were in fact part of a report at one point in favour of such oversight.

We know that with this particular government, if an organization that depends on government funding comes out against the government, its funding will probably be cut.

The member went to great lengths explaining the Five Eyes and the other countries that are our allies in these issues. Where does the government get the idea that Canadians are less at risk of invasion of privacy and do not need proper parliamentary oversight, when all our allies do?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is one of the questions.

What is it with this government, thinking that everything is okay? It is like the made-in-Canada solution. Everybody else in the world, the G7 countries, deliver mail by post office, et cetera, but we are not going to do that. We have a made-in-Canada solution, and we will not deliver the mail. In the case of oversight of secret operations, we have a made-in-Canada solution, and we will not have parliamentary oversight.

Well, I think that is just head-in-sand behaviour and a failure to face up to the responsibilities of government.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion moved by the second opposition party. The motion reads as follows:

That the House express its deep concern over reports that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has been actively and illegally monitoring Canadians and call on the government to immediately order CSEC to cease all such activities and increase proper oversight of CSEC, through the establishment of a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians as laid out in Bill C-551, An Act to establish the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians.

How did we come to the point where we are debating such a motion in the House? It all started on June 10, 2013, when the previous minister of national defence approved a CSEC program to monitor the telephone and Internet activities of Canadians by collecting metadata. The program was first created by the Liberals in 2005, but was later suspended because of the concerns raised by the organization responsible for overseeing CSEC.

The minister at the time denied that statement. The law is very clear in that regard: CSEC does not have the right to spy on Canadians. The legislation that sets out its mandate explicitly states that its activities:

273.64(2)(a) shall not be directed at Canadians or any person in Canada; and

(b) shall be subject to measures to protect the privacy...in the use and retention of intercepted information.

There is only one exception to that provision. If the Minister of National Defence authorizes it, CSEC can get around that provision, which happened 78 times between 2002 and 2012.

In June 2013, the minister said that he had authorized nothing of the sort. However, in August 2013, Justice Robert Décary indicated in his annual report that Canadians had been the target of some spying activities. Unfortunately, the saga does not end there. In the months that followed, numerous documents revealed that CSEC had been spying illegally on Canadians. The latest revelations are probably the most troubling. On January 30, 2014, CBC uncovered information indicating that CSEC was able to track the movements of passengers at Canadian airports who used the free Wi-Fi networks on their mobile devices, including phones, tablets and computers. Not only did CSEC track them in the airport, but it continued spying on their devices for several weeks.

Those kinds of discoveries about CSEC's actions are alarming. What happened to abiding by the law and upholding the public trust in our intelligence systems? What happens when the system is broken and the public becomes distrustful?

That is why the NDP will be supporting today's motion. We need to take action before this problem gets even worse. However, I must point out that there are some significant flaws in this motion, particularly in relation to some of the provisions in Bill C-551.

Bill C-551 proposes to establish a committee made up of members of the House of Commons and senators who would be mandated to review national security activities of federal government departments and agencies. First, this committee would report to the Prime Minister, and he would be entitled to hide information from Parliament. It is crucial that the Prime Minister not be able to conceal national security information from parliamentarians under Bill C-551.

Second, this bill would give unelected senators a seat on the review committee. Honestly, I am not entirely sure where the Liberals stand, with their Liberal senators who are sitting outside of the caucus, or their independent Liberal senators, or their Liberal sympathizers who happen, by sheer coincidence, to be senators. It is all rather confusing. The NDP feels that only individuals duly elected by Canadians should be part of the committee.

That is why, last October, my colleague from St. John's East moved a motion to that effect. The motion reads as follows:

That (a) a special committee on security and intelligence oversight be appointed to study and make recommendations with respect to the appropriate method of parliamentary oversight of Canadian government policies, regulations, and activities in the area of intelligence, including those of all departments, agencies, and review bodies, civilian and military, involved in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence for the purpose of Canada’s national security;

(b) in the course of its work the committee should consider the methods of oversight adopted by other countries and their experiences and make recommendations appropriate to Canada's unique circumstances;

(c) the Committee be composed of 12 members, 7 from the Conservative Party, 4 from the New Democratic Party, and 1 from the Liberal Party, to be named following the usual consultations with the Whips and filed with the Clerk of the House...;

The committee's makeup would reflect that of the House. The motion also provided that:

(i) the special committee report its findings and recommendations to the House no later than May 30, 2014.

Canada is not the only country to consider parliamentary oversight of national security issues. The United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand all have well-established systems that enable parliamentarians to ask the government for reports on national security issues. That is not the case in Canada. The only thing this Conservative Prime Minister has created is a cabinet committee on national security whose job is to supervise Canadian national security activities. However, this is a cabinet committee, not a parliamentary one, so it is not accountable to anyone.

If the Conservatives had really taken national security issues, protection of Canadians' privacy and problems related to CSEC disclosures seriously, they would have paid attention to this motion as soon as it was presented in the House, and we would already have a committee of elected representatives in place to deal with this kind of situation. Instead, the government is letting the problem persist and shows no interest in managing it. Worse still, in a recent report, the Privacy Commissioner suggested that privacy protection was not a priority for this government. That is shameful.

People have become distrustful. About 80% of Canadians are now connected to the Internet. People spend an average of 41 hours on the Internet a month. In terms of Internet use, we rank second in the world. In addition, the digital economy is growing fast. In 2012, Canadians spent $22.3 billion online. They already have serious doubts about how well their privacy is protected. Some 13% of people believe that their information is well protected on the Internet. If people can no longer trust that their own government will not spy on them, what or who can they turn to?

My colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville had also introduced an interesting bill on this, Bill C-475 on privacy protection. Canadian privacy laws have not kept pace with rapidly changing technologies, which is rather alarming. Those laws have not been updated since the first generation of iPods.

The purpose of Bill C-475 was to correct the situation by updating these laws and taking personal information protection seriously. We have the right to know when our personal information is gathered, used or communicated in any type of digital format. We have the right to feel safe. In that regard, this bill gave Canada's Privacy Commissioner increased law enforcement powers and made it mandatory to inform the persons concerned of any data leaks that might affect their privacy.

Canadians should not have to worry about the confidentiality of their personal information online. We must enhance our protection measures for children, for seniors and for all Canadians.

The NDP takes privacy protection and national security very seriously. We must protect the integrity of our country and ensure that people are safe. It is a matter of maintaining a delicate balance between liberty and security. National security is a top priority.

The government has a responsibility to make and apply policies to protect the country and its citizens, and not break its own laws and spy on the public. The fundamental problem with this government is the lack of openness and counterbalance. With our current institutional structure, we must make decisions for the common good and be more transparent to ensure that the right decisions are being made.

A number of the questions we have asked the Conservative government remain unanswered. Who authorized spying on Canadians through free Wi-Fi at a Canadian airport? Was the minister aware of this metadata collection program? Were these data saved? More worrisome yet, does this spying program still exist?

We sincerely hope that the Conservative government will go public with its legal reasoning and rationale behind CSEC's metadata collection operations. The Conservatives' vague answers will not do. We need clear answers.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to share a comment and then I have a question.

I hope that we will be able to debate the content of the bill introduced by my colleague from Malpeque one day here in Parliament. Either the government should take it and introduce it itself, or else the member should have the opportunity to do so. I think that that will be the time to debate the content. We will have to take into account both sides: the right to privacy and our national security needs.

As for the government's refusal to move forward right now, I would like to hear my NDP colleague's thoughts about the fact that this bill was the result of a non-partisan, all-party initiative that concluded in 2004 that parliamentary oversight was necessary. Since then, wireless technology has evolved a great deal and become increasingly present in the Canadian market. As the member said, Canada is one of the first countries in the world to use this technology, which is why it is so easy for agencies like CSEC to collect information from the public.

Does my colleague not think it is even more important to create a parliamentary oversight mechanism now than it was in 2004?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ottawa—Vanier for his question.

He touched on a very important aspect of today's debate, which is the right to privacy and the fact that the Conservative government is dragging its feet in this debate and has not proposed anything meaningful for years.

As I mentioned, my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville introduced Bill C-475 on privacy protection. I know that my colleague opposite voted in favour of this bill, which proposed greater structure and some privacy safeguards.

We on this side of the House have noticed a flagrant lack of privacy regulations, and the fundamental rights of freedom and national security are being violated.

I find it sad to see that the Conservatives on the other side of the House do not want to create all-party structures and that they are trying to shut down the debate on the right to privacy.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, the motion today calls for a national security committee of parliamentarians. This committee would be made up of NDP, Liberal, and Conservative members of parliament.

I am a Conservative member who has been here for about two and a half years. I want to make sure that our bills are put forward and debated vigorously in the House. Some people like to say that we are non-partisan, but obviously we are all here to represent our parties and our own beliefs, ones that I stand firmly behind.

When I think of the motion calling for a national security committee of parliamentarians to oversee our national security agencies, I get a bit concerned that there may be some partisanship involved in this committee.

[An hon. member]

You think?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Yes, you think?

Currently we have robust arm's-length oversight committees in place to oversee our national security agencies, and they are doing a great job. They review things regularly and have come back indicating that there are no issues with regards to privacy concerns.

Does the member believe that a committee to oversee our national security agencies would be better if it were bipartisan, or does she believe that it should be at arm's-length instead?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to be quick. It is too bad because I had a lot of things to say.

First of all, I would like to thank the parliamentary secretary for her comments. I am pleased to see that she is happy to debate the Conservatives' bills. It would be nice to see the Conservatives rise more often to talk about bills.

I wanted to say that similar bills have been introduced before by Liberal and Conservative governments. She should perhaps look at her party's policies.

Our allies have developed more solid parliamentary structures to look after national security. It is unfortunate that we have not done the same. I also think it is unfortunate that we are not striving for a more engaging parliamentary debate on the issue.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to talk about the extremely important motion on the privacy of Canadian citizens.

I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra. Mr. Speaker, could you also give me a signal when I have only one minute left?

I am particularly pleased to share the floor with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra and my colleague from Malpeque, who spoke earlier. In December, all three of us were at a news conference when this issue came to light in Canada because of Edward Snowden's revelations. There was a possibility that Canada was spying on one of Brazil's ministries.

At that time, we talked about the importance of exercising more effective control over our surveillance agencies to make sure that they stay within their mandates.

I would like to bring up the fundamental point of this debate and the motion we are talking about today. It has to do with something that is very dear to all Canadian citizens, their right to privacy. Canadians care deeply about their privacy and they now have questions about whether it is being respected.

I am delighted that the NDP will support our motion today. I know that the Conservatives claim to care about the privacy of Canadian citizens. I remember when they decided they were going to get rid of the long form questionnaire. I remember in particular a comment by the Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time that the government had no business knowing how many bathrooms someone might have in their house. They claim to be very concerned and, in fact, got rid of the compulsory long form census because they say they respect the privacy of Canadian citizens. I share that belief.

At this point, however, questions are being raised and Canadians, particularly in this age of Wi-Fi and the Internet, have reason to question whether or not their privacy is being respected. Many Canadians come from countries that were authoritarian and know very well what can happen when their privacy is not respected. The Edward Snowden allegations that started a while back and touched on Brazil, the G8, and G20 summits, and more recently the possibility that Wi-Fi traffic is being monitored at a couple of Canadian airports to gather metadata have shaken the confidence of Canadians.

From the outset, the work that CSEC does is critically important for Canada's security. Let there be no doubt about that. One of its roles is to protect us against the possibility of terrorism, especially after 9/11. As a result of that, we expect it to be monitoring certain things. However, at the same time, we want to make sure that CSEC respects privacy and that it never monitors Canadian citizens. That is a very important point, the fact that we must ensure that while it carries out its very important and difficult task, CSEC stays within the bounds of its mandate.

In the end, it all comes down to the issue of the interpretation of this metadata. Many people are hearing for the first time about metadata and are wondering what it is. It sounds rather complicated and I am not exactly sure what it means. Yesterday, the national security advisor, along with the head of CSEC and CSIS, assured Canadians that their privacy was being respected and that there was no monitoring of Canadians. What they did say, however, very clearly, was that they are gathering metadata. In fact, the purpose of the period during which they were looking at Wi-Fi traffic in the two airports was to try to obtain a picture of the kind of traffic that occurs in a busy public space where Wi-Fi exists, as this would help them perform their task.

What is metadata? Metadata, according to Mr. Rigby, the national security advisor, is "data about data". Some people may say it does not sound as if it is very intrusive of their private lives, but let me give the House an important example. If a person is being monitored and we discover that every weekday around 7 o'clock in the evening, he or she phones the same number, that information can be extremely useful in knowing something about that person. We know that every day around 7 o'clock he or she phones a particular number. In addition to that, the identity of the person being called can also be worked out.

Another very good example is where a person phones someone several times in a particular week, with the number happening to belong to an oncologist. So there is a very good possibility that in this particular case the person making the phone call has cancer. That is an extremely personal bit of information. I do not want people to know that I have cancer, if I have it, unless I choose to share that information. I do not want people to know where I am in Canada at any particular time, unless I choose to share that information. I do not want people to know whom I am contacting on the Internet, unless I choose to share that information.

Never mind whether or not the content of my messages or my cellphone calls is not known, the fact that people know that I am phoning or using the Internet to contact particular people at certain times is very private information, and Canadians share the belief that it is private information.

So what do we do about this? We have come up with a very practical suggestion in the Liberal Party. We believe that having one retired judge, who I am sure is working very hard on this, does not cut it. In this particular case, we are calling for the creation of a parliamentary oversight committee, which can proactively look at what is going on within CSEC to ensure that the organization is staying within its mandate.

This idea goes back to 2005. This is not the first time it has been brought up. It was proposed in 2005 and it had the unanimous consent of all the parties, because we recognized the importance of keeping a closer watch over our surveillance agencies.

That unanimous support in fact came from people like the current Minister of Justice and the current Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. It came from you, Mr. Speaker, at that time and from the NDP and the Bloc. It came from people who examined this and recognized its importance.

We have tried, as Liberals, four times through private members' bills to bring this back. Currently, we are hoping that the motion today will be supported by all parties and that the bill being proposed by my colleague from Malpeque will have an opportunity to go forward. Our partners in the Five Eyes have quite clearly signed up to this. We as a Parliament of Canada need to do the same thing.

Let me conclude by quoting my colleague from Malpeque, who put out a press announcement recently to say that there was an urgent need for a parliamentary committee mandated to review the legislative regulatory policy and administrative framework for agencies responsible for national security in Canada. He said:

This proactive oversight of all aspects of national security handled by the federal government will fill a gap addressed by Canada’s major allies long ago—namely providing oversight and accountability for agencies that have functioned in nearly complete secrecy.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to go back to a similar question that I asked the NDP member previously. This bill is calling for a parliamentary committee to oversee our national security agencies. The member himself in his speech indicated that it is what he would like to see. I guess he believes that a potentially partisan committee made up of parliamentarians is better than an independent arm's-length body to oversee our national security agencies.

Most Canadians would be a little bit concerned about that statement, but if that is in fact what he believes, I wonder what he is suggesting about SIRC, the intelligence review committee that is currently in place and oversees CSIS and the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner. If he believes that a group of parliamentarians from the House is better to oversee national security, is he saying that the work of these organizations lacks any merit?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I recommend that the parliamentary secretary read Bill C-551. We are not talking about a partisan parliamentary committee but a committee composed of members from all parties, both MPs and senators. If the bill goes forward, we are certainly open in committee to looking at what the optimal structure of this would be. This is not another standing committee; this is a special committee. These people would be very carefully chosen and held to secrecy for life. This is a very important and delicate undertaking they would be doing.

I am sure the other countries in the Five Eyes are very proud and happy with the work being done by their respective agencies. Nevertheless, they have felt the need to have additional oversight, and that is not calling into question any aspect of the competence of the organizations themselves. It is just to ensure on an ongoing, proactive basis that CSEC, CSIS, and the RCMP are sticking within their mandates so that we can be sure they are doing their job while also respecting the law.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Westmount—Ville-Marie for his very interesting speech.

I believe that this debate is being followed closely by many Canadians. It shows the importance of the House of Commons as an institution responsible for overseeing very sensitive activities concerning information gathering and privacy.

I would like to ask my colleague to comment on the fact that, in 2005, under the Liberal government, the defence minister at the time, Bill Graham, gave CSEC a very similar directive to that of the Conservative government, which allowed the collection of metadata.

I would also like to know whether the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie believes that adequate controls were put in place at that time and, in light of that experience, what mechanisms should be applied to the case before us today?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. I do not know the specifics of the decision made in 2005. However, the Liberal government was in power that year and the other parties all agreed to create that parliamentary committee.

This parliamentary committee should be created in order to understand what metadata is and to determine whether this is really a breach of Canadians' privacy, among other things.

In some circumstances, the minister has the authority to have Canadians closely monitored for security reasons. Once again, it is important that we have a parliamentary committee, not just to monitor CSEC's activities, but also to be aware of the minister's decisions and determine whether he is acting responsibly when he authorizes an exception to the prescribed rules.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of our Liberal motion today.

Canadians understand and appreciate that part of their government's responsibility is to defend the realm and protect Canadians and our interests against terrorism and cyberattack. Part of the way we do this is through intelligence gathering. However, the way we gather intelligence has changed dramatically in recent years, and our structures for protecting privacy need to catch up.

I have no doubt that the men and women of Canada's security and intelligence agencies carry out their duties honourably. I do not doubt their loyalty or their commitment to the safety of our citizens. However, their job is hard and the world has changed. The very nature of national security threats facing open and democratic nations like Canada have changed. Gone are the days when our greatest security threats were adversarial states such as existed during the Cold War. Today, intelligence agencies operate in a rapidly evolved field of information gathering, where having and analyzing as much data as possible is essential. This need to collect data can potentially conflict with our fundamental right to privacy.

We have seen this several times recently, including with the Communications Security Establishment of Canada, an agency that is part of National Defence, which has been collecting the personal information of Canadian travellers who were transiting through Canadian airports. The member for Malpeque did a good job of explaining why this is a concern. This data was used to help conduct surveillance operations for weeks afterward and to track people's activities for the weeks before the data was collected through Wi-Fi users in the airport. That is seemingly a contradiction to CSEC's legal mandate. This was done without a warrant.

An analogy could be a government spy agency that begins to track individuals' mail, who is sending them mail, who they are sending mail to, where those letters are originating from, where they are sending their letters to, and where they are when they send those letters. It tracks people's mail, steams open the envelopes, but claims it is not reading the contents or opening it up and pulling out the letter. I do not think Canadians are comfortable with the idea of that kind of tracking. That kind of intrusion on the liberty and privacy of citizens is counter to the principles of our fundamental democracy. Therefore, to balance the need to acquire data and respect people's privacy and liberty creates a pressing need for a robust oversight of CSEC. It also means we need to have a detailed discussion about how we balance those interests in our society. That is the importance of our motion.

That the House express its deep concern over reports that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has been actively and illegally monitoring Canadians and call on the government to immediately order CSEC to cease all such activities and increase proper oversight of CSEC, through the establishment of a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians as laid out in Bill C-551, An Act to establish the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians.

It is unfortunate that the government appears to want to block proper oversight, such as is being proposed in Bill C-551, put forward by the member for Malpeque.

What is happening in Canada is unique in the western world. Ann Cavoukian, the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, talked about the response by the United States president, which demonstrates the kind of free, open, and candid discourse that society is undertaking on the subject of surveillance powers of intelligence agencies. However, while the U.S. is doing that, to quote the commissioner, “...our government is maintaining a wall of silence around the activities of the...(CSEC). This silence is putting our freedoms at risk”.

I ask why the Minister of National Defence is not listening to those who are raising red flags and sounding alarms about this intrusion and this wall of secrecy.

CSEC is an agency that is not being given proper direction by the government. At the Senate committee hearing last night, the director of CSEC made it clear that, should instructions by the government come that there should be a proper oversight and review by some other mechanisms, it would accept that. He was not arguing against the need for that; he was saying there was no political direction to do that. So that is a failure on the part of the Prime Minister and his defence minister.

Canadians need to have faith in their government that is elected to serve and represent them; so this is an issue of Canadians' trust in the government. I believe Canadians want to be free of unwarranted intrusion into their personal affairs. Right now they cannot trust that this is the case.

One of the senators at the committee hearing last night said that not only do Canadians need to trust but they need to be able to verify that the trust is warranted, and right now they are not able to verify and not able to have trust.

The Conservative members of Parliament in this debate have again and again repeated the idea that there is robust oversight, but that is simply not the case, and a range of people with expertise in this matter have commented on that.

One of them is Dr. Wesley Wark, who is a professor at the University of Ottawa. I am going to read a few comments that he made with respect to our current oversight situation, which is the CSEC commissioner.

According to Dr. Wark, who is an academic analyst on national security and cybersecurity issues, there has been no commitment on the part of the commissioner to conduct a specific investigation into the airport Wi-Fi project that is so concerning. The commissioner did not indicate the timeline for his “ongoing review of CSEC”. It has taken three years for the CSEC commissioner to conduct his first full review of metadata activities. That is three years, and it is important to note that this was never discussed in the commissioner's public annual report.

According to Dr. Wark:

The CSEC Commissioner's inability to bring any urgency to an investigation of metadata collection, his apparent unwillingness to engage in an targeted investigation of the Airport Wi-Fi project, alongside an abysmal prior failure to challenge CSEC's desire to keep even the term metadata secret, considerably (if not completely) undermines the value of that office as a watchdog.

This is not a robust watchdog. This is a starving, ineffective watchdog.

That is why the B.C. Civil Liberties Association has filed a lawsuit, the first yet on this issue, because it is concerned that “...unrestrained government surveillance presents a grave threat to democratic freedoms”. It is filing this lawsuit to force the government to enact specific safeguards to protect the rights of Canadians. These are the very kinds of safeguards that our motion is proposing and that the member for Malpeque's bill would provide.

According to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, “There is no court or committee that monitors CSEC's interception of...private communications and metadata information, and there is no judicial oversight of its sweeping powers. CSEC's operations are shrouded in secrecy”.

It is ironic, as the member for Mount Royal noted, that the government cancelled the long form census based on supposed privacy concerns, a critical tool for understanding the demographics of our country and yet is defending the secrecy of an organization that is affecting Canadians' privacy.

Most Canadians would be far more comfortable telling the government how many rooms they have in their house than having government tracking their smart phone data and location and following them for weeks.

The government must listen to the concerns of the Canadians who want their agencies to respect the law and protect their privacy, and I call on all members to support this motion.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, with all due to respect to my colleague from Vancouver Quadra, to suggest that the independent commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment is not qualified or not capable of carrying out his mandate is insulting. That individual is a supernumerary justice who has the skill, the ability, and the top-level security clearance to do the job of evaluating the activities of the Communications Security Establishment of Canada and to ensure that CSEC is operating within its mandate.

I also want to remind all members of the House that not only is the commissioner looking at the activities independently of CSEC but he is also ensuring that the laws of the land, like the Privacy Act, are respected. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has the capability to also do a study on the activities of CSEC and very well may be doing one. That is, again, part of the oversight we have here in Parliament with independent officers who report back to us here in Parliament.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I did not hear much of a question in the member's comments.

He likes the word “supernumerary”. Perhaps he is so impressed with that word that he does not feel it necessary to have any actual mechanisms to ensure the independence of a commissioner who is appointed by a minister and responds to a minister—political people in the Conservative government—and has no report to Parliament that has not been abridged and condensed to the point where it says very little more than that it is operating within the law.

That is not good enough for Canadians. They want to not just be able to trust these agencies; they want to be able to verify. There is no ability to do that. The agency is being blocked by the current Conservative government and the Minister of National Defence.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver Quadra talks a lot about trust, and I understand that the model that has been proposed, which I support and the NDP supports, is that of a parliamentary oversight committee, such as the intelligence committee in the United States, made up of security-cleared parliamentarians; so people would trust that we would be able to hear the information that is often national-security sensitive and act accordingly and be better briefed than currently is the case.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee is a model that presumably the current government has supported. It has appointed Mr. Arthur Porter; that did not work out well. It appointed Mr. Strahl; he lobbies for energy companies and he is no longer there. Trust is indeed an important issue.

Does the member believe that the failure of the current government to trust parliamentarians with security clearance is the reason why it is so adamantly opposed to doing what all of our allies do in this regard?