Information & Ethics committee  Thanks for having me here today. Let me begin by noting that the topic of our conversation today, information sharing for national security purposes, is an essential one. Information sharing is essential to national security. That truth was recognized in the 9/11 commission repo

Information & Ethics committee  It's very difficult, because information moves and is very difficult to track and can accrue in different places and different databases. The accrual of information in the hands of different agencies is a perennial problem, so there are safeguards. The first safeguard is on col

Information & Ethics committee  Relevance is the broadest concept, in the sense that information can be relevant but at the end of the day prove not to be material or tremendously useful. It's a broad concept. It's roughly analogous to the disclosure standards we demand of the crown for purposes of criminal pro

Information & Ethics committee  Does Kent want to try that?

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  It becomes a question of definition. The problem with section 2 is that the definition is so sweeping that it encompasses things that aren't bona fide national security issues. Essentially, privacy then becomes superseded by more extraneous considerations.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely. We're a net beneficiary of intelligence sharing. At one point, the RCMP was saying that it was receiving 75 times more information from allied services than it was sending out. We have to be cognizant of our place in the international information-sharing infrastr

Information & Ethics committee  Only in the broadest sense. The privacy rules in different jurisdictions are quite variable. In relation to international information sharing, which was your prior question about Five Eyes, for the most part, there's relatively little law that I'm aware of within the Five Eyes

Information & Ethics committee  I would say, in part, as I've noted, there isn't specific statutory law that would govern that sort of arrangement, and the current act that is the subject matter of today's hearing doesn't deal with international information sharing on its face. As you may be aware, there are

Information & Ethics committee  I would describe the new law as an effort to wallpaper cracks in the roof. In other words, it superimposes a new legal regime on existing legal rules that are themselves an arcane patchwork and difficult to construe. Just to give you one example, CBSA, the Border Services Agenc

Information & Ethics committee  The only persuasive position I heard during the Bill C-51 debates was in relation, say, to weapons proliferation, weapons of mass destruction. Those sorts of matters could fall outside the scope of the threat to the security of Canada definition within the CSIS Act, so you would

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, and that, I believe, is the Privacy Commissioner's recommendation as well.

Information & Ethics committee  I would agree with that. The problem we have right now with our current review structure is that we have three specialized national security bodies that are stovepiped to three different agencies that are constrained in their ability to coordinate. Then we have the Privacy Commi

Information & Ethics committee  That's probably a question that's best asked of people within government. I haven't heard that in my travels. The relative volume also has a lot to do with the relative size and scope of the security intelligence community within Canada. That 75-times figure that I gave you earl

Information & Ethics committee  The story behind the Air India issue wasn't about inadequate law but about operational practices. As for the resistance to information sharing, first of all, the RCMP and CSIS are not really affected by the new act in terms of information sharing. Existing provisions that have