Public Safety committee  Based on experience, sometimes you can over-legislate, and you're looking for too many exceptions. In my experience in dealing with CSIS over five years and subsequently with the Arar commission and as a special advocate, CSIS wants to protect two things at all costs. I think thi

Public Safety committee  One moment, please.

Public Safety committee  Okay.

Public Safety committee  SIRC, with its staff and its established history of some 25 to 30 years, is an experienced review body that goes into the detailed monitoring and investigation of particular operations after the fact. It's the sort of detailed work that members of a parliamentary committee, even

Public Safety committee  I believe that the Security Intelligence Review Committee would have continued in its function. I don't think there's going to be an overlap or a duplication. Again, I use the term the “committee of parliamentarians” as being parliamentarians having responsibilities other than ju

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I thank all of you for the invitation to appear to assist your study of Bill C-22. Like my friend Wesley Wark, I believe this represents a major and welcome change within our Canadian parliamentary system. I say this having bee

Public Safety committee  I might differ slightly from Professor Wark, who's a tough taskmaster. I wouldn't want to be his student. I think it's a good first step. It doesn't cover all the issues. It doesn't include, for example, national security adviser to the Prime Minister, which is an important role.

Public Safety committee  They will relate primarily to ministerial veto and powers of the Prime Minister to redact and withhold information. I read the parliamentary debates on Bill C-22 and most of them are within that framework. I don't think we should use the time today when I'm going to do it next we

Public Safety committee  Well, the legislation was amended by the last Parliament when the word “lawful” was removed, so the net of protest is broader. There's no easy answer to this. Canadians have to get used to the fact that we do allow protest, advocacy, dissent, and artistic expression in our soci

Public Safety committee  I think the no-fly list is here to stay. It's not something we invented in Canada. It's been around a lot longer in the United States, a lot longer under the United Nations auspices, under committee 1397, which had a no-fly list in 1997. The trick is to make it fair. It's easy to

Public Safety committee  That's a good point. There is power under the CSIS Act for SIRC to put in a special report and not to wait the 18 months. It does require the Minister of Public Safety to agree to table it and make it public. There may be a tussle as to what's redacted and what's not redacted, bu

Public Safety committee  —if it's an urgent matter. It would be a brave public safety minister who would sit on something that had been flagged by SIRC as being extraordinarily important to the security of Canada or to the human rights or individual rights of Canadian citizens.

Public Safety committee  Quite the contrary, I think in other parts of my remarks today I was saying there should be co-operation, sharing of information, and the removal of some of the stovepipes between organizations, and the review body should be able to exchange information. Similarly, Parliament—

Public Safety committee  Let me be very clear. I avoid the word “oversight” because I think it would be a mistake for the committee of parliamentarians to get involved in oversight, as I understand that, and I've spent some time with the intelligence oversight bodies in the U.S. Congress and the Senate.

Public Safety committee  Well, I think it's like the Auditor General—