Debates of Sept. 28th, 2016

The House resumed from September 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

There are five and a half minutes remaining for questions and comments following the speech of the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

The hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed reading my colleague's speech in yesterday's Hansard, because due to exceptional circumstances, I was not in the House to hear the end of the debate.

My colleague will vividly recall the controversy that erupted during the 41st Parliament surrounding Bill C-51. I wonder if he could share his thoughts on the impact of the bill in the current context.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to recognize that Bill C-22 is as a direct result of Bill C-51. A major fundamental flaw when Bill C-51 was brought in was the fact that there was no parliamentary committee to oversee our security systems.

That is very important because Canadians have expectations that their government will have a balance when it comes to issues such as freedoms, our rights, and security. We believe Bill C-22 will deliver what Canadians want to see. In fact, it would be a fulfillment of a commitment made by the Prime Minister and the government that we would bring in a parliamentary oversight committee. Bill C-22 is all about that.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, last year in the House when the Liberals and Conservatives voted for Bill C-51, only the NDP caucus stood up for Canadians and voted against the impact that would have on the rights and freedoms of Canadians. At the same time, the New Democrats offered very solid suggestions, not taken up by the former Conservative government or by the current Liberal government, to enhance security while maintaining our rights and liberties.

We have a bill in front of us that contradicts how many of our allies proceed. All of our allies have oversight committees with an independent chair, a chair that is selected by the committee not by the government. As we have seen with our major allies as well, these oversight committees need to have full access to classified information. Of course another component that does not exist among our allies is the Prime Minister's Office's having the ability to censor any reports that are issued by the committee.

How does the Liberal government justify these three fundamental weaknesses when they are not in common with the practice of our major allies, and certainly not in common with the oversight committees that exist in other countries.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would have to agree to disagree on some of the points the member has brought forward.

One of them is that he suggests it is wrong for the Prime Minister to make the appointment. The critic for the official opposition, the Conservative Party, is one of the individuals who recommended to the minister that we should have the prime minister appointing the chair of the committee.

Other issues are in regard to just how this committee will be able to perform. If we do a comparison between what we have proposed and the other Five Eyes countries, which Canada is a part of, we will find that this legislation is far more aggressive and has the potential to be some of the best legislation going forward with respect to the other countries because of its very scope. Remember, this deals with more than just one department. We are talking about 17 departments that provide some form of security services, which is quite significant. This legislation is all-encompassing in that respect.

With regard to the Prime Minister, maybe I will get a chance to answer another question to provide—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Order, please. We have time for a short question and brief answer.

The hon. member for Sherbrooke.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a hard time hearing my colleague refer to this committee as a parliamentary committee.

The chair is appointed by the Prime Minister, who will also have a veto over the reports that will be tabled in Parliament. I find it hard to reconcile that with the definition of a true parliamentary committee, where there is no interference from the Prime Minister's office. That might be possible for the government when it comes to the appointments, but certainly not when it comes to drafting the reports or their content.

How can the hon. member call this a parliamentary committee when the Prime Minister's office interferes directly in the work of the committee?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the committee is made up of parliamentarians. It is important to note that the committee will consist of nine members, with seven members of the House and two senators. Up to four members will be from the governing party.

The Prime Minister will be required to consult with opposition party leaders before naming opposition members, and with the Senate before naming the senators.

It is also important that we recognize that the Prime Minister is not authorized to alter the findings or recommendations of the reports tabled. The Prime Minister's role is solely to review the report to ensure that it does not contain classified information.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and join in the debate on Bill C-22, which would establish a national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians.

I will be sharing my time today with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

National security has taken on even greater importance over the last number of years. Abroad, we have seen horrific jihadist attacks just months ago, in fact, month after month in countries like France, Belgium, and even the United States.

Right here in Canada, we saw a jihadi inspired attack in October 2014. Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was killed in Quebec, and Corporal Nathan Cirillo was killed while he was on guard at the National War Memorial, just steps away from where we are standing today. Many of us who served in the last Parliament will recall being locked down, and not knowing what was going on, and we remember that day.

It is important that our national security agencies have the tools they need to do their job, and keep us safe from terrorists. That is why the previous Conservative passed the Anti-terrorism Act in 2015, more commonly known as Bill C-51. Bill C-51 is good legislation that struck an appropriate balance between protecting national security and protecting the privacy of others.

In fact, the director of CSIS recently told the committee in the other place that CSIS agents have used the powers created under that legislation at least two dozen times. That record speaks volumes.

Today, I am not here to talk about that bill, but I am here to talk about Bill C-22, and how to ensure that the rights and liberties of Canadians are appropriately protected through extensive review and oversight of our national security agencies.

While our men and women in these agencies do excellent work each and every day to keep us safe, it is always important to have a third party watchdog. Currently, national security agencies have a substantial review mechanism. CSIS is reviewed by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which is composed of former parliamentarians and other prominent Canadians. The Communications Security Establishment is reviewed by the CSE Commissioner, and the RCMP is reviewed by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission.

However, we note that the Liberals, in their platform, promised that they would “create an all-party committee to monitor and oversee the operations of every government department and agency with national security responsibilities.” Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on how we look at it, that is not the bill that we have before us today.

First, the bill does not provide for any oversight of national security agencies, in fact, the word oversight is not even in the bill. It is nowhere in the description or in the body of the bill. What it provides is a review mechanism for after-the-fact assessment, but it does so with enormous caveats. In fact, there are seven large caveats contained in section 14 of the bill.

These caveats allow the cabinet to deny the committee, a committee of duly-elected parliamentarians sworn to secrecy, the access to any confidence of the Queen's Privy Council, any military operation information, any information on the Investment Canada Act, and any information that may lead in future to criminal charges, among other things.

That pretty well covers off all of the information in the possession of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. That is pretty well all of the information that this so-called committee would need to do the so-called oversight that it is created to do.

Unfortunately, what we have under this legislation is a committee that does not actually have any access to any relevant information. What is more, it is not actually a parliamentary committee. Right here in black and white in subsection 4(3), the bill states that this would not be a committee of Parliament, rather it would be a committee made up of parliamentarians.

What we have right now is a committee made up of parliamentarians with no ability to collect information. We will also learn it has absolutely no teeth to do anything because it cannot report anything outside of the committee, and we have the Prime Minister and ministers able to cleanse the report before it is brought to Parliament.

We kind of have a glorified parliamentary friendship group here, and really nothing more, because the committee cannot review any information. It cannot do anything with the information that it finds because if the Prime Minister deems it is not appropriate for a number of reasons, the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's Office can change it. Really, this is a pretty hollow shell and nothing more.

I want to speak a bit about the fact that in section 12 parliamentary privilege is eroded by making it clear that a whistleblower could be prosecuted for making any of the information public. Let us think about that for a minute.

The Liberals have said they want this committee to fix the situation where they felt it left the public uninformed and unrepresented on critical issues, but they have established, through this legislation, a system where it would be a crime for a whistleblower to disclose anything from the committee. So, how can there be any access to the information by regular Canadians?

The bill before us does not even come close to meeting the Liberal platform commitments. In fact, it is a bill that further serves to centralize power in the Prime Minister's Office.

Typically, like in the United States and Great Britain, committees of this nature would report directly to the legislative branch rather than to the executive. Yet, in this legislation, the Prime Minister gets to play middleman between the committee and Parliament.

Under this legislation, it says in subsection 21(1) the Prime Minister will receive all annual reports, special reports, and other findings of the committee, so the Prime Minister is going to get everything before Parliament does. He will then have the opportunity to edit and change any report to suit his liking, and subsection 21(5) says that the Prime Minister can refuse to release information at his discretion.

The Liberals have said that this is to protect serious national information and security information, but let us read the text of the bill:

If,...the Prime Minister is of the opinion that information in an annual or special report is...injurious to...international relations...the Prime Minister may direct the Committee to submit...a revised version of the annual or special report.

I want to remind my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, that the Prime Minister actually can direct the committee to submit a revised report. In this case, it would be if it contravened or hurt international relations.

What does that mean? That means that the Prime Minister and his office could delete or eliminate information that they thought might hurt international relations. From what we have seen recently, does that mean if this report said something that would show that the Chinese are doing something they should not be doing, that the Prime Minister would say not to say anything about the Chinese because we do not want to offend them? Maybe the Prime Minister would be concerned that his vanity project of getting a seat on the UN Security Council might be offended.

With the Prime Minister having the motivation, and the naïveté that he seems to be displaying, it is very concerning that this power would be in the Prime Minister's Office to vet this information, and eliminate information that he thinks would not be beneficial to international relations. This is not transparency in any way, shape, or form.

It is definitely not transparent that several months before this legislation was even tabled, we found out, through the media, that the member for Ottawa South was given the sweetheart deal as chair of this committee. That in and of itself is very disingenuous.

The government and the Liberals could have at least had respect for Parliament and for its own platform to have withheld that. I do not know why the Liberals felt they had to make that announcement, and do that so quickly unless it had to do with an inside deal that they were concocting.

How can someone become a chair of a committee that has not even been constituted by Parliament in legislation? With a partisan appointment like this, it is clear that the government is not taking the non-partisan goals of this committee seriously.

Let us look at the facts. The Minister of Public Safety and many of the Liberals who have spoken before me have touted that this proposed committee is modelled after the United Kingdom, but the Liberal partisan appointment of the chair is completely different from the U.K. model which allows its committee to elect its own chair.

Second, the committee reports to the Prime Minister, not to Parliament, and the Prime Minister has the ability to omit items and ask for revised reports.

There is more that I could say on this piece of legislation but at the end of the day we are seeing more and more that this is a hollow shell with no substance. This committee will be made up of parliamentarians with no power to do anything, with no power to get information, and with the Prime Minister vetting all of the information. It looks again like the Liberals want to look like they are fulfilling a campaign promise but they are actually not fulfilling it and they are disrespecting and being disingenuous by doing so.

Unless there are major changes to the bill I cannot support it.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member mentioned information access concerns. The minister can refuse to give access relating to matters that are injurious to national security. She mentioned concerns that whistleblowers would not be able to present the information to the public. Does the member have ideas that would improve the process, these two processes in particular?

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, when I was parliamentary secretary for public safety, we felt that the mechanisms in place for overseeing CSIS, for example, were sufficient. We know, as parliamentarians, that even though we are supposed to keep things quiet, sometimes things leak out. This is probably not a good idea on behalf of the Liberal government, but again, it wanted to fulfill its promise and in doing so realized that it may have created a problem it does not want to have, and that is that very sensitive information is going to be in the hands of parliamentarians.

The Liberals created this problem, and now they are creating more problems. There really is no easy solution to this. They cannot create a committee of parliamentarians that is going to have oversight and real teeth and the ability to oversee something without members having information, but the government is concerned about letting this information out and what is going to happen with it. It was not a well-thought-out campaign promise, and it is not a well-thought-out strategy to address that campaign promise.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Portage—Lisgar has taken on new responsibilities as the opposition House leader, and I certainly appreciate working with her. We disagree on some things, there is no doubt. We disagreed on Bill C-51. The Conservatives brought it forward. Liberals all voted in favour of it, despite the impact on civil rights and liberties.

Now we have a piece of legislation. I think all members of the House are surprised to learn that there is an oversight committee that is under double censorship; it censored in terms of information from the oversight committee the Liberal government is proposing and censored in terms of what the Prime Minister's Office will actually permit the committee to put out.

At the same time, as the member for Portage—Lisgar pointed out, we are talking about a partisan chair of the committee, something that none of our major allies have done, for the simple reason that it is inappropriate.

I would like the member to comment on whether she agrees with the NDP analysis that the committee would be handcuffed by the Liberal government.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his good wishes. It has been almost two weeks, and so far I have very much enjoyed working with my hon. colleague and look forward to continuing.

I would agree. It goes back to what I was saying to the previous question. The problem the government has is that it made a commitment to create this committee, but as it has gone on to create it, it has realized that it is probably not a good idea. I recognize that my hon. colleague in the NDP would support the idea of a committee to oversee CSIS, for example, but it is not workable.

Instead, the Liberals want to look like they have fulfilled their commitment, but then they have realized that they cannot, so they now would create a committee that would have no power to get information and the Prime Minister would have the ability to vet all information, because I am sure that the Prime Minister's advisers have said to him that we have to be watching over this to make sure that sensitive information cannot get out.

Instead of the Liberals saying that they made a mistake and that the committee is not going to work, they have come forward with legislation that is disingenuous. As we are seeing over and over with so much of the Liberal policy, it ends up creating more confusion and more chaos and more problems than fixing any problem that might exist.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Portage—Lisgar for her speech, which brings me to mine. I am very pleased to speak today to share my concerns over Bill C-22, an act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain acts.

The first thing I question, and I am not the only one to have raised this in the past two days, is the part of the title that says “committee of parliamentarians”. When we read Bill C-22 we quickly understand the type of committee that will truly be created. Let us look at this together.

Clause 3 of the bill reads:

3 The Governor in Council may designate a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada to be the Minister for the purposes of this Act.

It is therefore a committee of parliamentarians formed by the Governor in Council, the government, and therefore by the Prime Minister himself.

Along the same lines, subclause 5(1) stipulates that:

5(1) The members of the Committee are to be appointed by the Governor in Council, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, to hold office during pleasure until the dissolution of Parliament following their appointment.

The Prime Minister's approval is even required for the appointment of senators to the committee, as we see in subclause 5(2), which reads:

5(2) A member of the Senate may be appointed to the Committee only after the Prime Minister has consulted with one or more other members of the Senate.

The words “Prime Minister” come up quite frequently. Even when it comes time for committee members to resign from their duties, they must inform the Prime Minister, as required by subclause 5(5), which reads:

5(5) A member may resign by notifying the Prime Minister in writing

Since we have a Prime Minister who has the utmost respect for this institution and its elected representatives, what do you think he did? The Prime Minister also retained the right to control who will be appointed as committee chair. That is what it says in subclause 6(1), which reads:

6(1) The Governor in Council is to designate the Chair of the Committee from among the members of the Committee, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.

One quickly realizes from the way the bill is written that this is the Prime Minister's committee, not a committee of parliamentarians. He chooses who will sit on the committee and who will chair it. It is not a committee of parliamentarians. It is a committee for the Prime Minister so that he can show that the government is taking action on an issue that he has found it difficult to take a clear stand on.

The best response that the government was able to come up with was to create a fully sanitized committee over which the Prime Minister and his office will have complete control.

What is more, the so-called committee of parliamentarians will not report to Parliament as one would expect from its name. It will report, and I hope my colleagues are sitting down for this, to the Prime Minister himself. That is what it says in subclause 21(1), which reads:

21(1) Each year the Committee must submit to the Prime Minister a report of the reviews it conducted during the preceding year.

Subclause 21(2) also confirms that the committee can present a special report to the minister concerned and the Prime Minister.

The work done by the committee of parliamentarians will not be tabled in the House to inform the other members of Parliament, because everything clearly has to go through the central office that controls everything about this committee. Whose office is that? The Prime Minister's.

It is quite disconcerting to read this, but it was written by experts on consultation, transparency, openness, and good governance.

I would like to again quote Bill C-22, specifically subclause 21(5) on the information that is excluded from the report:

If, after consulting the Chair of the Committee, the Prime Minister is of the opinion that information in an annual or special report is information the disclosure of which would be injurious to national security, national defence or international relations or is information that is protected by litigation privilege or solicitor-client privilege or, in civil law,...or the professional secrecy of advocates and notaries, the Prime Minister may direct the Committee to submit to the Prime Minister a revised version of the annual or special report that does not contain that information.

Consequently, if the Prime Minister does not like the reports received from the committee, he can ask that changes be made to the various reports in order to table a report that suits the government.

Subclause 21(6) refers to the tabling of the report:

21(6) Subject to subsection (4), the Prime Minister must cause to be laid before each House of Parliament, on any of the first 45 days on which that House is sitting after a report is submitted under subsection (1) or (2), a copy of the report or, if the Committee was directed to submit a revised version, a copy of the revised version.

Only this sanitized report, which may be far from truthful, will be tabled in Parliament to inform Canadians. Even Maurice Duplessis could not have come up with anything better to hide the fact that the Prime Minister, and not the committee, has the final say.

Now that I have provided ample evidence that the government's proposed committee is not truly a committee of parliamentarians but a committee of parliamentarians who will do the Prime Minister's bidding, I would like to talk about another problematic aspect of Bill C-22.

In addition to selecting the members of the committee responsible for overseeing the activities of a number of agencies that play a significant role in keeping Canada and Canadians safe, the Liberal government is not giving the committee much latitude to do its work. In theory, the committee has access to all kinds of sensitive and classified national security information, but the government retains the right to refuse to provide some types of information the committee might request, as stated in subclause 16(1), which reads as follows:

Refusal of information

16(1) The appropriate Minister for a department may refuse to provide information to which the Committee would, but for this section, otherwise be entitled to have access and that is under the control of that department, but only if he or she is of the opinion that

(a) the information constitutes special operational information, as defined in subsection 8(1) of the Security of Information Act; and

(b) provision of the information would be injurious to national security.

Refusal of information is final and may not be appealed, as stated in subclause 31(1):

31(1) The appropriate Minister’s determination that a review referred to in paragraph 8(b) would be injurious to national security or the appropriate Minister’s decision to refuse to provide information under subsection 16(1) is final.

Bill C-22 therefore provides no meaningful mechanism by which the committee can appeal the decision, which might be questionable and put the government in an awkward position without necessarily being a threat to national security. Bill C-22 provides nothing, as indicated in subclause 31(2), which states:

31(2) If the Committee is dissatisfied with the determination or the decision, the Committee is not to bring the matter before the courts, but it may note its dissatisfaction in a report referred to in section 21.

The committee can note its dissatisfaction, but the government could choose to completely ignore the report, for the committee members will be inclined to say nothing, in order to continue sitting on the committee. On top of that, this protest report will never be tabled in the House.

From the way this was presented, the Liberals have a lot of work to do to get the unanimous support of the House. I strongly believe that something like this should have the unanimous support of all members of the House. We are talking about oversight of bodies that are responsible for ensuring the safety and security of Canadians. This is not about partisan politics. Unfortunately, from the way this bill was presented, it appears as though the top of the pyramid wants to make sure it can lead all of the work without any problems.

Let me be very clear: our intention is not to go public with any state secrets or any information that could compromise national security, far from it. We simply want to ensure that the committee is able to have the flexibility and independence needed to properly fulfill its mandate. If we are going to do something, we might as well do it right.

To sum up, what really matters to me is that a committee such as this be founded on trust. It must have the full confidence of all government members and all opposition members, across party lines. With this kind of committee on national security, we need to be working from a place of absolute trust. I will be the first to say it.

Let us listen to our colleagues in the governing party and let us all acknowledge these facts.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague said that what matters is that everyone co-operates. He is right; that is very important.

He said it is not a parliamentary committee, but a committee formed in another manner, as he said. Would he not agree that it is important that the members who sit on this committee not have the privilege to disclose sensitive information in the House without any consequences? Does he not think it is important to take this privilege away from the committee members, with respect to top secret government matters?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, my esteemed colleague asked a very good question. That is what makes Bill C-22 so complex, and that is why we are in this debate to talk about what we want to see.

As I said at the end of my speech, Bill C-22 would set up an all-party committee of parliamentarians to examine highly strategic and important public safety and national security issues.

However, because of the way Bill C-22 was written, the Prime Minister has complete control, which means that opposition members of the parliamentary committee will not be able to speak as freely as usual or even discuss things with their party leader because they will be sworn to secrecy.

The Prime Minister has given himself total control, and the parliamentarians who sit on the committee will not even be able to talk about it. If this is to be a truly parliamentary committee, the Prime Minister has to give up some of that power and give the committee its independence. That is the real problem here.

Yes, secrecy around national security matters is very important, but the opposition members who sit on the committee need some measure of control. If not, what is the point of the committee?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles for his remarks. I very much enjoy working with him on the defence committee.

I think the member said something really important, which I hope people on that side have written down. What we are trying to do is to create a committee that will have the confidence of the public so that the public will believe it is an independent committee, believe it is an effective committee, and believe that the government will have no ability to cover up any excesses or inefficiencies in national security. The member said the best way to do that was to have a bill that had the unanimous consent of all parties. That is really important and I hope the Liberals are listening to it.

The Conservatives have chosen to oppose the bill at second reading. We have chosen to give it conditional support, but I think there is a lot of common ground on this side.

I want to know if the member agrees with me that there are a few things, like having an independent chair, having unrestricted access to information, and having the committee report to the House of Commons and not the Prime Minister, that would make it easy to get all of us onside if some of those elements were present in the bill. Would the member agree with me on that?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague for making those points.

I also want to mention to the House that, on March 1, our public safety critic, the member for Durham, sent the Minister of Public Safety 18 recommendations relating to Bill C-22, all of which were designed to improve the bill and bring about consensus.

On April 15, having received no response, he sent another letter to the minister informing him that the official opposition, the Conservative Party, had worked hard to provide constructive suggestions designed to make the parliamentary committee work.

Once again, I am asking the government members to consider that and work with us.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Madam Speaker, the lack of consultation, the power of the Prime Minister, the way the chair was chosen, and this committee's lack of investigative capability are all huge problems that fly in the face of the openness and transparency the Liberals campaigned on.

The security and intelligence committee in the U.K. that the Liberals say they fashioned this committee after has nine members, and they are appointed after consultation with the opposition, and then by all members of both Houses.

Does the member agree that this bears no similarity to that Westminster tradition in the U.K.?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have nothing to add.

In closing, I just hope we can make this parliamentary committee work.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Before resuming debate, I want to advise the House that the question and comment period is now down to 10 minutes for speeches, and five minutes for questions and answers.

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-22. The bill would create a committee of parliamentarians to oversee Canada's security agencies. For the first time in history, a multi-party group of members of Parliament and senators would hold Canada's security apparatus to account.

Bill C-22 represents a Liberal initiative that dates back to 2005 in fulfillment of a key part of our campaign commitment to Canadians to reverse the legacy of the old Bill C-51. I am proud to stand in support of it and the important idea that Canadian security must never come at the expense of our rights and freedoms.

I will start by turning back the clock to early 2015 and the previous government's introduction of Bill C-51.

In my riding of Parkdale—High Park last year, I heard about Bill C-51 over and over again at the doors. Residents in my community in Toronto are smart. They are engaged, and when they sense injustice, they speak out. They told me that they expect better from their government, that ensuring public safety is the preeminent responsibility of any government, but that it is not acceptable to pursue security at any cost. My constituents, and indeed all Canadians, want a government that respects Canadians' rights and one that will put in place mechanisms to protect those rights.

As a human rights and constitutional lawyer, I listened to those residents as a candidate in the past election. I communicated those very valid concerns to my party, and the party responded. In 2015, we committed on the campaign trail that if we were fortunate enough to earn the respect of Canadians and to form government, we would significantly amend that flawed bill and put in place the mechanisms that Canadians want to protect their rights while simultaneously keeping them safe. That is what Bill C-22 would start to do.

However, we cannot take all the credit. The idea of ensuring that parliamentary representatives oversee security agencies, like the RCMP, CSIS, and CSE, did not come to us as some sort of epiphany. It is exactly what our allies have been doing for many years. Every single member of the Five Eyes alliance but Canada has some oversight mechanism in place. Those are Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States.

The Auditor General identified the need for parliamentary oversight in a seminal report in 2003. Our party initiated this in 2005 when then public safety minister Anne McLellan introduced Bill C-81. That bill died on the Order Paper when the opposition parties voted down the minority government of then prime minister Paul Martin, triggering the election that brought us Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

A similar oversight committee was attempted no less than four more times in private members' bills, as introduced by Liberal Derek Lee on two occasions, in 2007 and 2009; by the member for Malpeque in 2013; and by the member of Parliament who sits right next to me, the member for Vancouver Quadra, Joyce Murray. On each of those occasions, the private members' bills were not passed in the House.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order, please.

The member is not to mention anyone by name. I want to remind the member he can refer to the member by their riding, but not by their name.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Speaker, thank you.

I guess it is now six times lucky. Our majority government has introduced Bill C-22 at long last, after 11 years of attempts and continuously being stymied by the opposition, to entrench parliamentary oversight of Canada's security and intelligence agencies.

However, we are not just replicating what we have seen among our Five Eyes allies. We are going one better. None other than Craig Forcese, the renowned law professor from the University of Ottawa and one of the foremost critics of the old Bill C-51, has said:

...this will be a stronger body than the UK and Australian equivalents. And a dramatic change for Canadian national security accountability.... This is a good bill.... I would give it a high pass....

Let me turn to the bill itself and see what people like Professor Forcese are enthused about.

This oversight committee of parliamentarians will have a broad, government-wide mandate to review any national security matter relating to all government security departments and agencies. Committee members will have top security clearance and can demand unprecedented access to classified material.

The committee is required to report back to Parliament annually, but can do so even more frequently through special reports, if it finds that a special report is required to protect the public interest.

The committee members are independent. They have the authority to self-initiate reviews of the legislative, regulatory, policy, financial, and administrative framework for national security in Canada. The committee members have tenure. They are appointed until the dissolution of the House.

This committee will not be dominated by government members, because government members will not make up the majority of the committee. Bill C-22 specifies that the committee will comprise nine persons, only four of whom may be government members of Parliament. The other five must come from the opposition parties. This is not a rubber stamp; it is actual accountability and oversight of government departments and agencies by a majority of opposition parliamentarians.

Allow me to provide an example. Throughout the extensive debate on the old Bill C-51, residents of my riding of Parkdale—High Park were very vocal about information sharing among government departments and agencies. Rightly, Canadians said that widespread information sharing may compromise privacy rights. Information sharing is precisely the type of thing this new oversight committee will scrutinize, because it will have a broad government-wide mandate over all national security departments and agencies. This can ensure that when information is shared for intelligence gathering, the rights of Canadians are not being violated or jeopardized. If a violation is identified, the committee can report that to all Canadians through Parliament.

Of course, there may be those who feel this legislation does not go far enough. The important response to those individuals is to note that Bill C-22 contains a mandatory review provision. Every five years, according to law, a committee must study this bill and report back to Parliament on how to strengthen it. In this way, the conversation of Canadians in my riding of Parkdale—High Park and around the country about how to balance security with the protection of rights and freedoms will not stagnate. It will remain dynamic.

This brings me to my third point. We want to hear from Canadians, not just in five years but now. Our government has commenced a Canada-wide consultation on our national security framework. These consultations will allow us to discuss the other campaign commitments we made to remedy the defects of the old Bill C-51, including entrenching a sunset clause, ensuring that no judge can issue a warrant that violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guaranteeing the constitutional right to engage in advocacy and protest, and narrowing the overly broad definition of what constitutes “terrorist propaganda”.

This national consultation will allow us to hear from Canadians what else they want to see from their government. We do not just want to implement our campaign commitments, but to improve upon them. Throughout this, one thing will always be top of mind, that in seeking to balance security and the protection of rights and freedoms, we will work with Canadian communities, not against them.

Here, I address the House as a Muslim member of the Liberal caucus. The practice of our new government is not to vilify groups or to sow division, but to engage communities and to listen to their concerns. We have done this through our comprehensive efforts to counter Islamophobia. We have done this through our 2016 budgetary commitment of over $35 million over five years to create an office of community outreach and counter-radicalization. We have done this through our efforts to welcome, not shun, the victims of Daesh, which has translated into our accepting nearly 31,000 Syrian refugees to date. We have done this through our efforts today to improve the rights of those who inadvertently find themselves on no-fly lists, by creating a passenger protect inquiries office, and implementing a Canada-U.S. redress working group.

I know that Canadians prefer this approach. It is an approach they voted for in October 2015. It is an approach that seeks to address security concerns on multiple fronts, and one that engenders the confidence of all Canadians, including the very minority groups, like mine, that were disproportionally bearing the brunt of the previous government's surveillance.

I will end with this. It is a fine balance. Ensuring safety while simultaneously protecting rights and freedoms is not easy, but I am confident that Bill C-22 will help do just that. I am proud to support this legislation that has been 11 years in the making. At this time, I urge the members opposite to get behind it, rather than standing in our way.