Fred Mifflin

[Supply, March 23rd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that question. It was not planted. It is a good question.

The last part of the special joint committee's report talked about the need for the Department of National Defence to reach out to Canadians more. There is a need for better communication. I think that is the word my hon. colleague used. It was a fair comment. The department is in the process of working on this. When do we know if communications are good? It is a judgmental thing. A better job can be done.

I enjoin every member of Parliament to take the Hansard of this debate and send it to each constituent serving in the Canadian forces. I have about 700 and every time there is a major debate I send them copies of the debate with some comments.

I thank the hon. member for his question. It gives me an opportunity to encourage all members of the House to participate in this communications and information exercise.

[Supply, March 23rd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased by the comments by colleague from Saanich-Gulf Islands. I know where he is coming from.

There is no intention to hide either the first letter in December from Colonel Oehring, whom he and I both met in the former Yugoslavia, or the rather thorough letter from General Jeffries.

We have close to 100 generals and admirals in the Canadian forces. We heard from one in a base that has been beset with problems for the last two years. That should not surprise anybody. If this is Canadian forces-wide, what is Vice-Admiral Murray saying about this kind of thing in the navy? What is Lieutenant-General Clements saying about this kind of thing in the air force? What is the chief of reserves saying about this kind of thing in the reserves?

I am not trying to be smart about this, but the hon. member is very much aware morale is the first and foremost issue of any military commander. If there is a smattering, if there is a smell, if there is any indication that morale is not the best they can make it, they are charged with the responsibility of doing something about it. These are the examples seen in the two cases mentioned.

I am trying to decry it. I am not trying to minimize it. I am not saying what they are saying is not right. They are military commanders. Clearly they know their system. One would have to accept what they say has meaning.

However, do two letters meant for internal consumption which were not leaked but given to the public set up cause for inquiry into the whole outfit? Do we want to look at the navy, the air force and other aspects of the army? I do not think so.

He asked me why the minister has not done it. I do not think there is enough evidence to indicate that we have a forces-wide problem. The hon. member has commanded units, as I have. If one commands more than ten units, one will have a difficult problem with at least one. In a force of this size with so many units, so many generals, so many operational tasks, while I am not trying to minimize it, some of the problems are already known. There are some difficulties in the areas that were discussed and we would expect the commanders to talk about this and try to rectify the difficulty.

The hon. member talked about another inquiry. There were complaints by the speakers this morning about bureaucratization and encumbrances of the Canadian forces. We must remember the purpose of the Canadian forces is to be prepared to fight for the country. If we load down generals, admirals and senior NCOs with inquiry after inquiry, what will they be doing when they are supposed to be doing what they were basically designed to do?

Let us do this inquiry. Let us find out what we get from this. Let us move on to where we need to go in the future.

[Supply, March 23rd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, as I said earlier in my question and comment, I am pleased to participate in this debate. It is an important debate and I welcome it.

In my presentation I am going to relate to the main purpose of the motion. It essentially addresses morale and leadership, and also concerns by its very nature the ambience of the times, the kind of times we are in and how they develop.

Since this is the 50th anniversary of the victory over in Europe by the allied forces, it is appropriate to go back to look at a 50-year parallel. I am not a military historian. I have not been around long enough to be able to give firsthand 50 years of military evolution. However I have studied the business and I have been part of it for a long time, as have other members in the House.

I would like to share with the House a parallel which I believe we are seeing now in this day and age. Again, if I could take some licence, I am more familiar with the naval aspect, but I think what I say for the navy could also apply to the army and the air force.

Let me take the House back to 1945, when we had the third largest allied force. How that developed is important as well. Let me take it from the navy perspective.

Canada started into World War II in 1939 with 10 ships and 2,000 people. By the end of the war, which for the sake of rough calculation was close to 2,000 days if we take the lead up to the beginning and the aftermath at the end, the navy finished up from those 10 ships and 2,000 people with 400 ships and 100,000 people. That is 50 people a day and one ship every five days. A tremendous expansion.

At the end of the war there was a demobilization. Those people who joined to serve their country in many cases had no intention of staying in and were quite happy to demobilize.

Another important aspect of this should not be lost. Between 1945 and the early 1950s history was in the making. The strategic planners had run amock. It was not their fault. There was no route; the hot war was over. Between the hot war in 1945 and the cold war in 1951, defence planners were in great difficulty in providing direction to people in uniform.

To use a navy example, in 1949 a series of undesirable incidents occurred on our capital ships of the day. This resulted in the three man Mainguy inquiry. The inquiry was designed, developed and commissioned purely to investigate the undesirable specific incidents. The findings of that inquiry led to a fundamental change in the way the navy went about its business in the late 1940s, the early 1950s and on.

The difficulty in planning and in providing direction led to some perturbations in the naval service and perhaps in the army and air force as well. It led to an inquiry, which led to better working conditions, better leadership and better direction. It also happened that in 1951 we had what was called the cold war.

Since that time Canadian forces have been reducing in size, reducing in mobility, and reducing in posturing in bases abroad. The funding has been reduced as well. Is that surprising? It may be undesirable for those who want to see more military expenditures, and I happen to be one of those from time to time. The whole world is reducing. We are now going from a cold war to what perhaps is developing into a hot peace.

With the exception of the interregnum in the Korean days from the early 1950s until about the mid-1950s, the forces continued to decrease. I have a certain amount of sympathy for the defence planners of those days, but we did have a recognized enemy. We did have a recognized capabilities and intentions method of defence planning.

In 1987 the government of the day provided a white paper which was hailed to be the be all and end all. It was lauded by those in the military, by defence planners and other defence organizations, both allied and the other side. It provided things like nuclear submarines for the navy, more aircraft for the air force, more soldiers for the army, a completely new command structure for the army, more reserves, and a further determination to make the total force concept, that is the amalgamation of the regulars and the reserves into one force.

That document lasted three years. We all know the cold war finished in 1990. We ran into the problem in the standing committee on defence. We ran into it in the joint committee. It is not as simple as perceiving an enemy, deciding what that enemy may do and then planning a force structure to counter it.

Who is the enemy today? I am not sure who my enemy is. What are its plans? If you do not know who the enemy is, it is very difficult to figure out what its plans are. What do you do? You do not stop planning. I disagree very strongly with my hon. colleague from Calgary Southeast who says there is no plan.

There was no plan from 1987. I cannot blame that on the government. It did not cause the cold war to stop. From 1990 until 1993 the Canadian forces were essentially without a white paper. That was very serious, considering the tremendous changes that had taken place in those years.

Every year there was an effort to reduce the budget and to reduce the people. This was even accentuated after 1990 when peace groups start asking Canada, where is your peace dividend? A lot of us would say that we had our peace dividend when we were paying 2 per cent of our gross national product for defence in the last 20 years of the cold war, 1970 to 1990, when most of our NATO allies were paying 5 per cent. I am not blaming that on anybody. We happen to be in a very unique geo-strategic position and perhaps we should not have been spending more than 2 per cent.

In the years 1987 to 1993, the cry was that we should have a good planning base. In that way deputy ministers, chiefs of defence staffs, commanders and senior planners would know what was in the budget and what was in the defence program, not next year but five years from now. How can you plan for a force when you do not know how much money is going to be there?

We are five years into this hot peace, as I like to call it. A little over two years ago we had 4,700 peacekeepers committed in a force that was shrinking. Since 1987 the Canadian forces have

gone through a reduction of $21 billion, in capital expenditure mostly, a reduction of 26,000 people in uniform and 16,500 civilians. The reserve force that had such grandiose plans in 1987 will be reduced to a lot less than was planned, to 23,000. In any organization you cannot have such a shrinking philosophy without it causing an effect on those people who serve.

I recognize there are difficulties. The minister recognizes there are difficulties. There are always going to be difficulties in an organization of 60,000 or 70,000 or 80,000 people. If you have 10 people you are bound to have a problem with one or two. That should not be surprising.

The Minister of National Defence announced the broadest inquiry, certainly since the Mainguy commission in 1949. I want to dwell on that for a few minutes. That commission was set out to look at specific incidents in the navy, but it resulted in a fundamental change in how the navy did its business.

While in no way, shape or form would I preclude what kind of findings the commission of inquiry into the Somalia affair will conclude, the calibre of the people and their backgrounds would lead me to believe that any of the recommendations and findings of the commission certainly would have application not just to the Somalia inquiry but to the downstream leadership, modus operandi and maybe even the structure of the Canadian forces.

There is not much we can do after the fact but we can learn lessons. I am not going to get specific about the inquiry, but having read the 19 specific subparagraphs, it is very clear to me that the whole range has been covered. It states in the preamble that notwithstanding what is said in the general sense and what is said in the specific sense, the inquiry has a pretty broad range of matters it can look at. I take some comfort from the fact that the problems are being addressed.

The hon. member for Saanich-Gulf Islands and I, with other members, addressed in the joint committee on defence the issue of morale. It was not an issue because members of the Canadian forces were not appreciated by their fellow Canadians. It was not an issue because members of the Canadian forces were dissatisfied with the military reaction to the way of life. That is in the report. More specifically, they were not dissatisfied and morale we felt was not an issue not because of poor leadership specifically. As the report went on to say, the excellence of the senior ranks was evident as we went from bases to stations to ships, operational forces, logistic forces and administrative forces. That conclusion was reached on October 31.

I have difficulty understanding what could have changed so drastically to lead one to conclude that we have command and control shortcomings, deteriorating morale, poor leadership and that kind of thing.

The chain of command is fundamental to any organization. We all agree on that. I can assure the House that from my knowledge of the hearings the last 10 months and my subsequent involvement with the Department of National Defence, the chain of command is there. However, it is like all chains, some links are stronger than others. We have had incidents and happenings in the last two months that indicate that.

On the business of leadership, I have talked about the shrinking force. It started in 1945 and is still going on. What kind of leadership does it take to keep the Canadian forces in a good state of morale with all the things that are happening that we have discussed here today: reduction in capital programs, reduction in the size of the force?

For the last 10 years the Canadian forces have acted in many ways like the social laboratory for some of the things that have been happening, for the good of the country, but it is the law of the land. I mentioned the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Privacy Act earlier in my comments. All these things have happened in less than a decade. If there was not good leadership what would have happened to the Canadian forces?

One of the things we discovered in our deliberations was that members of the Canadian forces were held in the highest respect. That was not yesterday, that is today, last year and the year before. Notwithstanding the shrinking size of the Canadian forces, notwithstanding the tremendous pressure on the senior and junior members of the Canadian forces, the unpredictability of budgets and not knowing from year to year what is really going to happen, and notwithstanding the tremendous complexity of equipment in the last decade, the Canadian forces continue to operate with the highest esteem of their allies and their compatriots in other countries. On top of all this, I do not know of any time in the history of the Canadian forces where the people who serve in uniform have been under such scrutiny from the media.

I wonder if I could be permitted perhaps a minute or so on this perspective. We recently had a program on our new Halifax class ships. It was an investigative type of presentation. The tenor of the program was to castigate in every way a ship that is considered to be one of the best in the world.

I will take a personal side. One of the questions that was asked of one of those who was castigating this class of ship and how it was being brought into service, was asked by one of the commentators: "Would you send you son to sea in one of these ships?" He said no. If I had been asked the same question I would have said yes.

I have a son who has served and is still serving in one of those ships. He left in August of last year and spent five months in the Adriatic in HMCS Toronto as the combat systems engineer in an organization that was enforcing the arms embargo in a 21-ship organization representing 15 countries.

One of the commanders of that group, the commander of the standing naval force, Rear Admiral Jim Stark, U.S. Navy, spent a lot of time in HMCS Toronto , not just to visit but as his command ship. The facilities of that ship allowed him an ease in command and control that is a matter of public record for the navy. In the five months that Toronto was in the Adriatic Sea she was involved in 370 hailings of ships and 56 boardings. We have seen what sort of traumatic experience is involved in boardings in the recent capture and arrest of the Spanish vessel Estai on the ninth of this month. They had one of those every three days as well as other sightings and deflections.

I use this example to add to the kind of scrutiny that members of the Canadian forces are under. I hope they are in the process of being addressed. I am not going to repeat what I said about the inquiry. I take comfort from knowing that the inquiry is under way, who is serving on it and its terms of reference. I take comfort from the fact that after six years of not knowing what is happening for members in the Canadian forces, there is now a bottom up study, that has been referred to many times here this morning, in the standing joint committee and a white paper which gives in output terms what the Canadian forces are expected to do.

We have to look at this debate in the context of our own society, in the changing times. We have been living too rich for our own good. We are all cutting back. The Canadian forces are no different. All government departments are cutting back.

We have gone from a hot war to a cold war, from a cold war to a hot peace. We have more Canadian people, young men and women, in the line of fire than we have had any time since the Korean war and World War II, yet our young Canadian men and women continue to provide the very best. They honour us every day by their actions as peacekeepers. So do their regimental sergeant-majors and their commanders and their admirals and generals by their leadership.

It should not be surprising that a senior officer in a base that has been targeted with the kind of scrutiny and difficulties that they have had would comment on morale. He would be expected to do that but twice in his internal letter, which was meant essentially for the chief of the army, he said morale was good. That is a reflection of his leadership and the leadership of others.

There is need to look at morale. These issues are being addressed and debates of this nature will lead to the resolution of some of the difficulties we recognized in the report and which the minister recognizes. Hopefully when these things are put together everybody will be better off as a result.

[Supply, March 23rd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I thank both members who contributed to the debate.

I mention one point by way of a comment to which the minister's presentation alluded. We are talking about bureaucratisation. I remind the House that in the last 10 years the Canadian forces have been subjected to a number of very dramatic changes that have been fundamental to their organization. I believe the hon. member for Saanich-Gulf Islands will agree because he and I both went through it.

First there was the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. There was the Privacy Act and there was the Canadian Human Rights Act. They are all great acts, but they are legislation which required a fundamental change in the way the Canadian forces did things. That caused a tremendous amount of bureaucratisation and reporting by military and civilian people up the chain of command about how changes were to be made to the Canadian forces and how they responded to these items. I underscore the sometimes traumatic experience this caused people whose main job was to be prepared to fight for Canada.

I say this by way of comment. Perhaps I will include more of it in a general sense in my presentation later this morning.

[Supply, March 23rd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his contribution to this important debate. I have a question which really is for clarification.

A few moments before his conclusion the hon. member talked about the civilianization and bureaucratization of the Canadian forces. It is on this issue that I want clarification. I think the hon. member used the expression of people working from nine to five and asked whether they were really members of the Canadian forces or whether they were really in the army. I am not sure what he meant by that.

I am not sure this is what he meant, but if his suggestion is that there are soldiers, sailors and airmen who punch clocks from nine to five, I want to tell him that is not the case. I think he knows it is not the case. He and I shared a tent in Bosnia. It is very much a 24-hour a day operation, weekends and evenings. I know very few members of the Canadian forces, those in uniform and indeed many civilians in the civil service of the Department of National Defence, who operate on a nine to five

basis. It is very much a 24-hour a day operation, particularly for those in uniform.

Therefore, I really am quite insistent on seeking clarification for that aspect of his presentation. Otherwise I think it was generally positive.

[Supply, March 23rd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Saanich-Gulf Islands if not commend him for the motion and the debate on defence today. I always welcome a debate on defence, as I think all members of the House do. He raised a number of questions. He gave some credit and I thank him for it. He also raised some areas that are worthy of discussion and debate somewhat later on.

I want to bring forward two matters in the question and comment period. I will try to do it as quickly as possible. I have to remind the hon. member that things have changed since 1990. He alluded to it at the end of his presentation. He recognizes it.

In the less than 18 months since the government has come to power we have had more debates in the House of Commons than took place in the preceding five years and in the four years before that. We have done more in 18 months than the previous government had done in nine years. I do not think that is a big issue because we should be debating defence. Defence is more of an issue today than it has been in the past.

For the first time in recent history the government undertook to have a standing joint committee of the House of Commons and the other place look at, from the bottom up, the requirements of defence and what Canadians wanted their Canadian forces and their young men and women in uniform to do.

I consider that was a successful debate. It was a successful report. The hon. member knows that as he was a very valuable part of it. His expertise and distinguished career in the Canadian forces allowed him to have an input and a credibility that were most valuable to the report.

The fact that the report took place and the discussion took place at a very conscious level in Canada and with our allies is something that cannot be forgotten and cannot be minimized in the House. The fact that less than two months later it resulted in the white paper on defence is also something that should be noted.

On my first point I find it very difficult to understand why the hon. member is complaining that the Minister of National Defence has not come forward with an annual report on defence when we have just actually come out with a white paper. Perhaps next year his criticism will strike home a bit more.

On the second and more substantive point I am almost incredulous that the motion today condemns the government for failing to commission a broad and public inquiry. The Minister of National Defence tabled on Tuesday, two days ago, a report into the Somalia business, the Somalia inquiry. It is the broadest commission ever commissioned in the last 50 years. To my knowledge the last similar commission was the Mainguy commission which I believe goes back to 1949.

The opposition complains that we are not having a broad and public inquiry. It could not be broader and it could not be more public. The three commissioners are outstanding Canadians. Not one of them is a serving member of the Canadian forces. They have 19 points which allows them basically the broadest of the broad. I find it inconsistent, untimely and somewhat confusing that the main motion is what is sparking the debate today. We will be voting on it later, I understand.

Why did the hon. member not address this aspect in his presentation?

[Communications Security Establishment, March 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the hon. member for Prince George-Bulkley Valley on behalf of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

The hon. member has inquired whether the department has advanced funds to the Six Nations for a legal action against the province of Ontario and the federal government. Our hon. colleague from Haldimand-Norfolk has also expressed a real interest in this issue.

I would like to first of all answer the very specific question posed by the hon. member. No funds have been provided to the Six Nations by the federal government for this legal action. I would now like to provide some clarification.

The Six Nations Band served Canada with a notice of intention to commence an action against Canada and Ontario in December 1994. No statement of claim had been formally filed against Canada as of March 20, 1995, yesterday.

Based on the notice of intended action the litigation deals with alleged breaches of fiduciary duty on the part of Ontario and Canada. These alleged breaches are in relation to land transactions dating from the Haldimand land grant to the Six Nations in 1784, as the hon. member said, and extending to the present day.

The matters now in litigation have been the subject of approximately 24 specific claims which the Six Nations have been pursuing with Canada. No dollar amounts for damages are cited in the notice of intended action and no information has been provided to substantiate the estimated $400 billion quoted by the hon. member.

The Six Nations have apparently chosen to pursue litigation rather than negotiate the outstanding specific claims. Under the specific claims policy, claims cannot be pursued in court and considered under the claims policy at the same time. The board has been informed that all Six Nations claims had to be held in abeyance and that the files would be closed.

Since 1982 Canada has funded the Six Nations Band under the native claims contribution program. The program provides research funding to bands to allow them to pursue claims under the specific claims policy. Until the filing of the notice of intended action in December 1994 there was no indication that the band did not intend to proceed under the specific claims policy to resolve its grievances.

[Communications Security Establishment, March 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to stress that Canadian Forces have always recruited French-speaking personnel and that they continue to do so. Our latest statistics show that about 27 per cent of members of the Canadian Forces are French speaking compared to 15.8 per cent in 1966. This is a substantial improvement. Also, about 24 per cent of commissioned officers are French speaking.

As the Minister of National Defence was saying in this House a few days ago, recruitment for the training program of regular armed forces officers is lower everywhere in Canada and not just in Quebec. In the case of Quebec, the uncertainty surrounding the closure of the Royal Military College in Saint-Jean, uncertainty created by the refusal of the Government of Quebec to accept the umbrella agreement of July 19, 1994, has certainly played a role in the fact that we did not meet our recruitment objectives.

The new institution, which will be born when this agreement between the federal government and the Saint-Jean region is signed, will offer preparatory courses to about 100 officer cadets, French speaking and English speaking. In order to meet its objectives regarding the proportion of French speaking officers, the Department of National Defence has extended the recruitment period for the training program until the end of April. We believe that it is still possible to attract the required number of recruits and that we will meet our objectives.

I would like to stress that the recruitment campaign is not over yet and that it is still too early to draw final conclusions. I would also like to say that future French-speaking officer cadets will receive a very high level of education, in the language of their choice, at the Canadian Military College in Kingston.

[Communications Security Establishment, March 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in response to my hon. colleague, the timely approval of a new drug treatment is a concern we all share. In this context I wish to emphasize that the drug he talks about, betaseron, has not yet been approved for the Canadian market.

The drugs director of Health Canada is currently reviewing this drug on a priority or fast track basis. The manufacturer did not submit betaseron for approval in Canada at the same time as it did in the United States where the drug has already been approved. However under special circumstances, the Department of Health authorizes the sale of drugs that are currently marketed in other countries but have not yet received a notice of compliance in Canada.

When a medical emergency exists and standard therapy is ineffective in treating the condition, some drugs, including betaseron, can be made available through the Health Canada emergency drug release program.

While safety is the primary concern for Health Canada, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board is responsible for regulating the prices of patented drugs. The board's jurisdiction applies not only to patented drugs sold under a notice of compliance, but also to those drugs sold under the emergency drug release program.

Betaseron is a patented medicine. Therefore, the price of this product is being reviewed by the board.

In conclusion and in response to my hon. colleague, I wish to assure him that Health Canada's drug approval process is aimed at ensuring that safe and effective medicines are made available to all Canadians in the most efficient and quick manner possible. Every effort has been made to expedite the review of betaseron without jeopardizing the health and safety of Canadians suffering from multiple sclerosis.

[Communications Security Establishment, March 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak on this subject.

I am aware that my colleague is going to prepare an amendment to the motion, which I am very pleased to see. Without actually mentioning the amendment I believe he will pose it by a point of order perhaps after I finish speaking.

I want to make three definitions. I will be using them quite frequently. CSE is the Communications Security Establishment. CSIS is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. SIRC is the Security and Intelligence Review Committee.

I am very pleased about the amended wording. It puts the intent of what the hon. member wants to do in better perspective. It is important at this stage because it is really essential to the understanding of why the amendment to the motion was put forward.

I want to define foreign intelligence. Foreign intelligence refers to information or activities concerning the capabilities, intentions or activities of foreign states, corporations or persons in relation to the defence of Canada or the conduct of international affairs of Canada.

It may include information of a political, economic, military, security or scientific nature. Canada, unlike most of our allies, does not have an offensive foreign intelligence service.

However, like most countries Canada has established modest means to collect and analyze foreign intelligence. Since World War II the main departments of the Government of Canada that have been major actors in the foreign intelligence sectors have

been the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the Department of National Defence.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service was established in 1984 under the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act. It has a specific mandate as our domestic intelligence agency. It is charged with protecting Canada's security and is to provide security intelligence respecting potential or actual threats to Canada or to Canadian citizens.

There are two principle threats to national security that CSIS was established to investigate under the authority of the CSIS act. These threats are espionage directed against Canada by foreign states and seriously politically motivated violence that can take the form of terrorism.

The CSIS act establishes a strict regime for CSIS investigations to ensure that the rights and freedoms of Canadians are preserved while protecting Canadians from these threats to their safety and security. It is evident there will be problems with the Security Intelligence Review Committee's looking at the Communications Security Establishment.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee was established specifically to review the Canadian Security Intelligence Service which, unlike the CSE, does not have a direct role in the foreign intelligence sector.

The CSIS act spells out exactly what SIRC is meant to do. The CSE mandate under its SIGINT program is the collection, analysis and reporting of foreign intelligence in the context of the government's foreign intelligence policy.

Therefore it would not be appropriate at this time to amend the CSIS act which falls under the responsibility of the Solicitor General to incorporate within SIRC's mandate an institution like CSE which after all falls under the responsibility of the Minister of National Defence, whose accountability is established through other means.

Moreover, SIRC already has a variety of investigative duties. It deals with complaints and acts as an appeal board with respect to security assessments and security influenced decisions under the Citizenship and Immigration Act.

The sensitive intelligence responsibility of both organizations needs separate and distinct oversight mechanisms. CSIS therefore is Canada's domestic intelligence agency, with SIRC which has a mandate and the expertise to oversee such activities.

CSE is a foreign intelligence organization and the skills and knowledge base required to review foreign intelligence activity is totally different.

CSE has two programs. First, it provides technical advice, guidance and service on the means of federal government telecommunications security, including aspects of electronic data processing. The elements of this program are referred to in the business as INFOSEC, information security.

The other aspect is signal intelligence, SIGINT as it is known in the business. There has been concern raised in some quarters that CSE operates without adequate accountability. It may be useful to outline in more detail what I understand to be the accountability stature of CSE in place right now.

The Minister of National Defence is accountable to Parliament for CSE. The minister approves CSE's capital expenditure, its annual multiyear operational program and, with appropriate deputy minister level consultations, approves major CSE initiatives with significant policy or legal implications.

The chief of CSE is responsible to the deputy minister of national defence for financial and administrative arrangements and to the deputy clerk, security and intelligence and counsel in the Privy Council Office for policy and operational matters. Both of these deputy ministers report directly to the Minister of National Defence for these CSE matters.

In addition, arrangements have been put in place that CSE responds to the government's foreign intelligence requirements in a manner that is lawful, effective and sensitive to changes in international relations. That is very important and it includes the following provisions.

It has an in house legal counsel from the Department of Justice and consults with senior justice officials on legal issues. It submits strategic plans and all new policy proposals for review by the interdepartmental committee on security and intelligence. It is subject to Department of National Defence administrative review mechanisms.

CSE operates within all Canadian laws, including the Criminal Code, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act. Furthermore, it is fully subject to review by the offices of the Privacy Commissioner, the Official Languages Commissioner, the Auditor General and the Canadian Human Rights Commission. A broad accountability system for CSE is thus in place.

The special committee on the CSIS act, while recommending that SIRC oversee CSE, also stated it had found no evidence of abuses by CSE. Obviously the government would consider appropriate means to strengthen oversight for the CSE if a clear need were demonstrated.

CSE is an integral part of the foreign intelligence sector I have described and plays a crucial role in that sector. What it does not do, as the Minister of National Defence and the Prime Minister have already assured the House, is target Canadians. We must take care that whatever course of action we decide does not

weaken CSE's ability to support our national interest. That is the decision which faces us now.

We want to create an efficient, economical and appropriate form of oversight for this agency, one that enhances current accountability mechanisms without impeding the intended and mandated function of CSE or SIRC.

The proposed amendment by my colleague will lead us in the right direction. I look forward to the support of my colleagues in the House which I hope and believe is forthcoming.