Public Safety committee  The inspector general certainly played a useful role. I have no particular opinion on the system—once again: one committee, several committees, how to divide oversight roles—other than to say that all the agencies working in the field should be monitored. If all the departments a

Public Safety committee  First of all, the necessity standard is used in Europe, for instance, and so it exists. It's also used in certain provincial legislation and in privacy legislation that is not national security centred, so that threshold exists.

Public Safety committee  I would have a different view of my level of involvement and engagement, I must say. I'm not involved greatly in the implementation of SCISA, or what was Bill C-51. What I'm involved in is conducting an independent review of how the executive branch and departments are using an

Public Safety committee  I don't have the facts surrounding what happened to Mr. Driver. What this suggests to me is that these assertions that SCISA, or Bill C-51, have helped or were necessary.... I'm open to a demonstration of that, but neither—

Public Safety committee  Yes. What I'm saying is that the then government.... You're saying that greater information sharing may have assisted in identifying Mr. Driver as a terrorist, and I'm open to a demonstration of that. I would encourage you strongly, as a committee, to ask government officials or

Public Safety committee  It is certainly a good first step, but I maintain that expert review will continue to be required to review the activities of, say, the Canada Border Services Agency, which did not have much jurisdiction in terms of national security pre-9/11, but is now a very important player i

Public Safety committee  Sure. The issue with the relevance test, in my view, is that it is such a low threshold that it ultimately creates risks for people who are not suspected of criminal or terrorist activity. To take a step back for a second, greater information sharing to detect national security

Public Safety committee  I don't think that raising the bar through necessity would paralyze departments. It is important that individual agencies within government be able to share information with a view to—

Public Safety committee  Bill C-22 is progress in that it would create a committee of parliamentarians. It is important that departments and agencies that work in the national security area be supervised, monitored, and reviewed by elected officials. The democratic legitimacy of that committee is extreme

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the committee for inviting me to appear before you today. In particular, I will be focusing my comments on the government’s Green Paper, which was recently released. We will present our formal response to Public Safety by December 1. In the mea

Public Safety committee  We don't understand the reason for it; we can't tell why it's there. Perhaps you could ask the bill's sponsor to explain it, but, no, I have no explanation for it.

Public Safety committee  Possibly, to the extent that the way the person responds, and their vocal rhythm, are helpful in assessing a person's alcohol level.

Public Safety committee  We didn't note any specific problems. What we're saying about the sharing of analysis results is that, given how serious the problem of drunk driving is, taking mandatory samples from people who are not suspected of drunk driving could well be justified. The social problem of dru

Public Safety committee  Many things are more invasive than that. The insertion of a needle into a human body, for example, would undoubtedly be more invasive. However, even if it isn't very invasive, the very fact of having to answer, and of being subjected to the procedure when one has not done anythi

Public Safety committee  That's correct. So it's not very invasive physically, but the fact of being subject to it—of having to comply when there is no suspicion that one has broken the law—is invasive in and of itself. It's easy to imagine more invasive things, but the procedure in question is invasive