Public Safety committee  I'll just add that the Australian security service's powers to detain are tied to its intelligence-gathering mandate. It is not a power to reduce threats; it is a power they have to interrogate for the purposes of gathering intelligence.

Public Safety committee  On the issue of a committee of parliamentarians, yes to your questions. There should be such a committee of parliamentarians. Yes, it should have access to secret information. It is in fact a rarity now in western democracies not to have such a thing. In relation to your question about oversight, I'm prepared to say that judicial warrants are a form of oversight, but it is a limited oversight, and once the warrant walks out the door, there is not a feedback mechanism.

Public Safety committee  Just to be clear, the Privacy Commissioner issued a report in 2014 that indicated that in the national security area, their function was largely ineffectual because of their inability to access secret information. In other words, they do not themselves believe they are an effective review mechanism for national security information.

Public Safety committee  Are we talking about the information sharing act or the CSIS Act?

Public Safety committee  No, I appreciate that, but—

Public Safety committee  Sure. There are circumstances where a protest could be on a national scale. It could, on a national scale, implicate, for example, critical infrastructure. On the presence of the word “lawful”, as was the issue in 2001, the justice ministry took the view on the word “lawful” that an unlawful act could include a wildcat strike.

Public Safety committee  Can I just respond to that?

Public Safety committee  Kent, do you want to—

Public Safety committee  “Bodily harm” is to be defined consistently with how the term is used in the Criminal Code. I spent some time looking at how the courts have interpreted “bodily harm” in the Criminal Code. It certainly reaches not just physical injury, but also psychological injury. However, there is no jurisprudence that I could find—perhaps not surprisingly, given that it was a domestic context—in which “bodily harm” was interpreted to reach a detention or the rendition circumstances that you were describing.

Public Safety committee  I would call it a national security act. In my view, in terms of the ground it covers, it certainly does give primacy to the covert over amplifying, say, the criminal side. I know it has some important criminal provisions, in terms of peace bonds and preventive detention, but to the extent that its renovation of CSIS in terms of its traditional functions is quite dramatic, it does seem to give primacy to that side of the national security agenda.

Public Safety committee  Yes, I mean the new disruption measures. There are four paragraphs about the threats to the security of Canada, only one of which is terrorism. The others are foreign influence activities, espionage and sabotage, and subversion. The new measures apply across the board.

Public Safety committee  Sure, on the issue of what I've been calling the double-trigger, the chapeau, and then the specific elements that are enumerated. I agree that's the preferable interpretation. I'm not sure it's crystal clear in the drafting of the statute. I'm pleased, if it were the view of this committee, that in fact you need not just to be listed in that long list of elements, but also meet the standards that you've articulated in the chapeau, as you put it.

Public Safety committee  Thanks very much, and thanks for inviting me here this evening. I come before you as someone who has regularly appeared before this committee over the last seven or eight years, generally supporting the government's security laws. Most recently, you'll recall, I appeared here in the fall in support of Bill C-44.

Public Safety committee  I guess I would just confine myself to the solutions to some of the omissions that I addressed to my presentation. That is, there is some clarifying language that might accommodate some of these concerns that I've raised, which you're pointing to. Again, indicating when the trigger point is for seeking these warrants, and then also engaging the Federal Court judge in supervision of overseas conduct that might be problematic....

Public Safety committee  That was entirely speculation on my part. I don't pretend to have ears inside the Department of Foreign Affairs.