Public Safety committee  It is absolutely the case that serving at the pleasure of a minister is troublesome for any head of a major policing or security organization. It's not necessarily that the commissioner lacks the integrity or the personal ability to stand up to their minister. It's simply on the point that they will tend, over time, to manage with one eye upwards, as they call it, in the sense that they have to anticipate the wants and desires of the minister, sometimes against the interests of their organization.

Public Safety committee  I would prefer perhaps a deeper process other than the one listed here. I'm not quite sure, other than a tripartite situation where there's some advisory body—as there are with police organizations for the naming of chiefs or commissioners, apart from the RCMP—and where they're not simply picked by a minister through a process along those lines.

Public Safety committee  To my mind, it would actually be impossible to legislate, for example, a precise list of how exactly CSIS is meant to share every form of intelligence on a scale of most-to-least reliable with every possible public, private and civil body that it now can. Rather, I would see it as falling within regulations, and they would be more in terms of guidance for CSIS rather than a prescriptive list.

Public Safety committee  I absolutely echo the point on the importance of the independence of that office. We could almost consider a type of tripartite governance structure for that body, similar to the direction the RCMP is very slowly moving in with the establishment of a management advisory body. It is not currently, formally, an oversight body, but it may become a civilian oversight mechanism for the RCMP.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  The point I would add on implementation capacity would be that, again, it is essential and important to clarify in the Criminal Code issues around, or create criminal offences around, foreign interference related to the protection of, for example, essential infrastructure and to update definitions of sabotage, etc.

Public Safety committee  I think the only reason has to do with capacity. If you were to establish a registrar's office that would be responsible for maintaining the database and some information on the activities of all those seeking to impact Canadian policy and outcomes and so forth in a legitimate fashion, the amount of information would simply be overwhelming, to the point that it would—as a senior colleague of mine, Wesley Wark, refers to it—have the potential to develop into a form of almost security theatre, where you have an office that exists and that by trying to watch agents from around the world simply cannot do so.

Public Safety committee  Yes, certainly. As we get to the CSIS Act review, a key question will be whether or not “threats to the security of Canada” can include economic disruption as a form of violence that could pose a threat to the security of Canada. Very briefly, there are two areas of concern that may tie our hands into the future.

Public Safety committee  No, I think I've covered it. On anything that would come up in questions, I'm sure we could elaborate.

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Chair McKinnon and members, for inviting me. I would just begin by saying that, overall, the very large bill, which touches on the constellation of laws that govern Canadian national security, is very complex and welcome. The amendments, I understand, are quite urgent.