Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to discuss the important issue of national security and oversight to ensure that Canadian rights and freedoms are protected. I would like to specifically touch on the portion of the motion that deals with parliamentary oversight of national security agencies.
Government has few responsibilities less integral than keeping its citizens safe from outside threats. In fact, our Conservative government takes this responsibility very seriously. That is why we passed the Combating Terrorism Act, which, among other things, makes it illegal for individuals to travel overseas to become radicalized or receive terrorist training. It also gives important new tools to law enforcement.
Shockingly, the opposition party, the NDP, voted against this important legislation. However, we are not here to talk about the past failings of the opposition. We are here to talk about the oversight of national security agencies and activities.
Responsibilities for oversight of CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, rest primarily with the Security Intelligence Review Committee, also known as SIRC for short, which provides an external review mechanism that is arm's length from the government.
In this capacity, SIRC has three key functions: SIRC prepares a certificate attesting to its satisfaction with the CSIS director's annual report; SIRC conducts self-initiated reviews of CSIS activities, reviewing them against legislation and ministerial direction; SIRC also investigates complaints in relation to any CSIS activity, as well as any denial or revocation of a security clearance. SIRC tables a report in Parliament each year summarizing the results of all of the work it has undertaken.
SIRC was created as an independent external review body to ensure that CSIS' extraordinary powers are used legally and appropriately and, therefore, to ensure that Canadian rights and freedoms are protected. This is our government's priority: ensuring Canadians are protected without stepping on civil liberties.
The opposition has raised stories from the CBC as a smoking gun of sorts, purporting to show that there is a mass surveillance state. Nothing could be further from the truth. As one has come to expect from the CBC, the story is simply wrong. Nothing in the documents the CBC has obtained showed that Canadians' communications were targeted, collected, or used, or that travellers' movements were being tracked. In fact, CSEC is prohibited by law from doing precisely what the story alleges.
Let me reiterate that national security organizations, specifically CSIS and CSEC, are subject to independent review by the Security Intelligence Review Committee and the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner respectively. The review bodies have always found these agencies to work within their legal mandates. That is why this government, our government, will be voting against this motion.
While we are always open to new ideas that will create openness, accountability, and transparency without compromising national security or operational integrity, we are not open to creating duplication and waste. The current oversight and review bodies accomplish rigorous and thorough analysis. Creating a new level of review would either render this work useless or create an over-burdensome paper trail.
I know the Liberals do not like this, because they like duplication. In fact, this is something that Liberals are quite famous for. In the previous Liberal government, the member for Malpeque, who was serving as a Liberal member of Parliament, brought this bill forward. However, it was not actually brought forward for debate. The simple reality is that this type of body would not be as effective as what we currently have.
What we need to do is continue to provide our law enforcement and national security agencies with the tools they need to do their jobs, and while we firmly believe that on this side of the House, the opposition continues to adamantly oppose and obstruct our government's efforts on these important files. In fact, our government passed the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, which will send dangerous foreign nationals who often have ties to listed terrorist organizations back to where they came from. The opposition voted against this common sense measure.
We created the “Wanted by the CBSA” list, the Canada Border Services Agency list, which helped remove over 40 criminals. Some of the worst criminals who are illegally in Canada we have removed from Canada. The opposition opposed this common sense measure.
We increased the number of front-line border guards by 26% in order to help protect our borders and keep Canadians safe, and both the NDP and the Liberals voted against this common sense measure. We also created Canada's first counterterrorism and cybersecurity strategies, and the NDP and Liberals both opposed these measures, which is not surprising, given the Liberals' lack of action on this file when they were in government.
We have invested nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in protecting Canadians from hacking and cyberespionage. The NDP and the Liberals voted against that too. There is virtually no common sense measure to keep Canadians safe that the parties opposite will not oppose.
Therefore, when I hear the member for Malpeque talk about oversight of national security agencies, I cannot help but just shake my head. Really? Rather than working with us to keep Canadians safe and to ensure rights are protected, his party wants to throw up new roadblocks. While I cannot say this is overly surprising from a member of the party whose leader said he would not rule out ending mandatory prison sentences for anyone, I still find it very disappointing.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that CSIS and CSEC are already subject to robust oversight. These independent arm's-length agencies have consistently found that CSIS and CSEC abide by all relevant laws and have not violated the rights of Canadians. We will be opposing this motion, which would seek to create a wasteful and duplicative process for overseeing national security agencies. Instead, our Conservative government will focus on real action to keep Canadians safe and secure in Canada.