Public Safety committee  Sorry. That was a lengthy answer.

Public Safety committee  I apologize.

Public Safety committee  We have 30 recommendations in our written submissions. In terms of public safety itself—

Public Safety committee  I'll be very quick. In terms of the public safety mandate or aspect, I would say that the mandate of the NSIRA is something that ought to be clarified. Some of the things I talked about at the beginning, regarding the lack of clarity with respect to the definitions around national security, actually do undermine the overall functioning of the infrastructure.

Public Safety committee  Other than in my work in national security cases, no, I do not have training in risk assessment.

Public Safety committee  I recognize that there are multi-faceted risks from a number of different places.

Public Safety committee  Yes. I'll just leave it at that: yes.

Public Safety committee  There are two concerns around the issue with respect to privilege. One is with respect to the government documenting and seeking legal advice. The first step is, will the government seek legal advice and should the government get...? Usually when I give legal advice to a client, my legal advice is not, “This is, this isn't; this is the way it is, and this is the way it isn't.”

Public Safety committee  From a threat and security perspective, it depends on the departments you're talking about and the types of threats that you're.... Is the threat in North Korea, for example, of concern? Those are things that are obviously of concern to Canadians in terms of proliferation of nuclear weapons and things like that.

Public Safety committee  The case law provides a lot of room for discussion on what is publicly available. For example, in terms of public access to the courts, one principle upholds the public nature of the debates in court. It is called the “open court principle”. There is a lot of discussion on what that means.

Public Safety committee  With publicly accessible information, there are problems with private databases, for which an access fee must be paid. A little earlier, Ms. Szurlej spoke about the fact that a fee has to be paid for access to some databases, particularly abroad. In the United States, for example, huge databases are accessible to the public.

Public Safety committee  As I see it, there are two major differences between Google and Facebook and CSIS. First, and most important, those are private companies and they do not carry out the powers of the Canadian state or any other state, nor do they have police powers. Second, you say that everyone agrees to provide their personal information to Facebook or Google.

Public Safety committee  I recommend that you read the Supreme Court decision in R. v. Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton produced a CD containing instructions on ways to commit fraud, especially using credit cards. He had not counselled specific people to do so. For $30, he was selling online a CD explaining how to defraud the banks.

Public Safety committee  In my opinion, if you are looking to make it broader than the Hamilton decision, it is a problem. Actually, you would then be at the point where you might wonder whether it is even possible to discuss crimes or other subjects. Could you even talk about them, could you wonder whether when something or other could be done, could you discuss what constitutes a crime, or could you refer to other events?

Public Safety committee  Correct. In terms of looking at the definitions that are there already, we have the definition already in the CSIS Act. With NSIRA there may be some concerns as to whether the CSE's mandate is somewhat broader, and there are some aspects of what the CSE is doing that might be outside of that.