Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Chair. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear here today. The terrible terrorist attacks last month confirmed Parliament's wisdom in 2013 in enacting four new terrorist offences that can apply to foreign terrorist fighters. Unfortunately h

Public Safety committee  As you've heard from Professor Forcese, and as we argued in our joint National Post piece, Parliament is being candid about the reality that some of these warrants may actually violate foreign law. It seems to me that one of the remedies for that really has to be more political a

Public Safety committee  Well, certainly not in the United Kingdom, where there's ministerial authorization, much as is available with CSEC. In the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court does grant warrants. I think there are some examples of a judicial warrant and there are some exam

Public Safety committee  Yes. The case-by-case privilege makes a lot of sense because, certainly, CSIS will tell you this enables us to give an ironclad guarantee to all our human sources, that there will never be any identifying information. That's not quite right in law, I must say, because the “innoce

Public Safety committee  That's right, and that is partly the story of Air India. However, the Air India commission also looked at the contemporary relationship between the RCMP and CSIS, and found that there were still some problems. Again, I'm not saying that this is a personal fault of either of tho

Public Safety committee  Exactly.

Public Safety committee  Yes, although I do go back to what I started with. I very much mean this and I've written this, not only for domestic but for international audiences. I think Parliament was ahead of the foreign terrorist fighter curve when they enacted the four new terrorism offences in 2013.

Public Safety committee  I actually have been reading up on the case law there, and I have to say that I'm a little less concerned than the Federation of Law Societies—I hope they don't take away my certificate to practise law. The Supreme Court jurisprudence on this actually does suggest that at the f

Public Safety committee  The issue of whether CSIS has extraterritorial powers is a matter that has actually been under litigation under the act before Bill C-44. Justice Blanchard said in a decision that it didn't have extraterritorial powers. Justice Mosley—and here my interpretation is a little bit di

Public Safety committee  Yes, I would.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  Sure. Well, with reference in clause 2 of the bill, I can understand why “a promise of confidentiality“ was chosen. That is used in the jurisprudence. But in the 2013 Supreme Court of Canada case called R. v. Named Person B, the Supreme Court said it could also be an implied pro

Public Safety committee  Just quickly, it goes back to the need for parliamentary oversight and parliamentary access to secret information. Certainly, the resolution of the Afghan detainee case shows that there are some problems there.

Public Safety committee  Bonsoir. I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me to appear. In over 200 pages of legal analysis, Professor Forcese and I have examined the effects, including unintended ones, of Bill C-51 on both security and rights. Security and rights go hand in hand both in our democ

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, I agree with that. I would just note that the established definition of threats to the security of Canada are used in some of the consequential amendments. It seems to me that should be adequate enough to have fairly robust sharing of information. I also worry a bit