OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)

House of Commons Debates VOLUME 147 NUMBER 041 2nd SESSION 41st PARLIAMENT Tuesday, February 4, 2014 Speaker: The Honourable Andrew Scheer HOUSE OF COMMONS CANADA (Table of Contents appears at back of this issue.) COMMONS DEBATES February 4, 2014 DEBATES Edited Hansard * Table of Contents * Number 041 (Official Version) Official Report * Table of Contents * Number 041 (Official Version) Compte rendu officiel * Table des matières * Numéro 041 (Version officielle) 147 041 04 02 2014 2014/02/04 10:05:00 House of Commons Débats de la Chambre des communes House of Commons Debates 41 2

The House met at 10 a.m. Prayers

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS Routine Proceedings (1005) [ English ] Canada Elections Act Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Minister of State (Democratic Reform), CPC) Bill C-23. Introduction and first reading moved for leave to introduce Bill C-23,

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts . (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Interparliamentary Delegations Mr. Gordon Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC) : Mr.

Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the following reports of the Canadian Delegation of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group respecting its participation in the following meetings: the Canadian/American Border Trade Alliance that was held in Ottawa from May 5 to 7, 2013; the 67th annual meeting of the Council of State Governments, Southern Legislative Conference, that was held in Mobile, Alabama, the United States of America, from July 27 to 31, 2013; the Canadian/American Border Trade Alliance conference that was held in Washington, D.C., United States of America, from October 6 to 8, 2013; and, finally, the 53rd Annual Meeting and Regional Policy Forum of the Council of State Governments, Eastern Regional Conference, that was held in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, the United States of America, from December 6 to 9, 2013.

Petitions Chemical Pesticides Ms. Lois Brown (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition on behalf of constituents in Newmarket—Aurora, who are concerned about a new class of pesticides and are asking the government to ban the use of these pesticides for the period of a year for study.

[ Translation ] 41st General Election Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be presenting two motions today. The first petition concerns the fraud committed during the last federal election. [ English ] The petitioners in this case are from the Vancouver area, and they are asking the House assembled to do everything possible to get to the bottom of the question of what took place in the misleading attempt for what are now called robocalls, some of which were live calls. Rouge National Park Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP) : Mr.

Speaker, the second petition is from residents throughout the GTA. I am very honoured to join with other MPs because yesterday was international wetlands protection day. This is a petition that calls specifically for action to ensure the ecological integrity of the Rouge National Park. I think all MPs are thrilled with the efforts of the current administration to create a national park in the Rouge. The petitioners want to ensure that the park includes the 100-square kilometres of sensitive area and particularly ensure that there is a corridor that protects the forests of the area.

Income Tax Deductions for Tradespeople Mr. Kennedy Stewart (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition about the enactment of Bill C-201 . The member for Hamilton Mountain has introduced Bill C-201, which would allow tradespersons and indentured apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable incomes, so they can secure and maintain employment at construction sites that are more than 80 kilometres from their homes. This is signed by many petitioners from my riding and local ridings, who are all in favour of this. Asbestos Mr.

Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present today a petition that has been signed by literally tens of thousands of Canadians, who call upon the House of Commons to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known. In fact, more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other industrial or occupational causes combined.

They call upon Canada to ban asbestos in all of its forms, and to end all government subsidies of asbestos, both in Canada and abroad, and to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

Questions on the Order Paper Mr. Tom Lukiwski (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand. The Speaker : Is that agreed? Some hon. members: Agreed.

GOVERNMENT ORDERS Business of Supply [ English ] Business of Supply Opposition Motion—Communications Security Establishment Canada Hon. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.) moved: Motion That the House express its deep concern over reports that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has been actively and illegally monitoring Canadians and call on the government to immediately order CSEC to cease all such activities and increase proper oversight of CSEC, through the establishment of a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians as laid out in Bill C-551,

An Act to establish the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians. He said: Mr. Speaker, I am most pleased to take lead off in this debate. I will not reread the motion, other than to say that the motion is critical of what we believe to be the illegal monitoring of Canadians by CSEC and that the House sees that issue as such. Secondly, it is to propose a solution, which is better oversight in Canada of our intelligence gathering agencies. We are the only country in the so-called Five Eyes that does not have an agency of parliamentarians that provides that oversight in a proactive way.

The purpose of this debate is twofold. The first is to draw attention to the very possible, at worst, illegal activities, and at best questionable activities, of the Communications Security Establishment, or CSEC, and the government's response to the obvious excessive behaviour of our intelligence services. Second, it is to outline for Canadians the proposal for the creation of a proactive oversight body of parliamentarians of our security and intelligence agencies and organizations.

I would like to put on the record that the structure of such an oversight body was developed by members of the House and the Senate. Among those who participated in the creation of this proposed oversight agency were the current Minister of Justice and the current Minister of State for Finance . At the time, they were members of the opposition, and along with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker of the House, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh , we were all a part of that committee that made that recommendation.

To be clear, what is proposed in the legislation, brought forward as Bill C-551 , is the result of a non-partisan initiative. It was neither a government nor an opposition party effort. We in this place were all involved, and I will come to that later in my remarks. However, allow me to come back to why the need for such oversight has become an urgent matter for Canadians.

According to media reports and Snowden documents, as has been reported in the media, CSEC has been, and apparently continues to be, actively intercepting and retaining information related to individuals, Canadians and otherwise, who are transiting through major Canadian airports. That is where that information has been gathered. We are led to believe that this activity was done without the co-operation of the airports involved. I think Wesley Wark, who is the visiting professor with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, at the University of Ottawa, summed it up best.

I will go to a document that he prepared and quote what he states in that document, the CSEC defence of its airport metadata project: CSEC issued a statement on January 30, 2014, immediately following the reporting of the Airport Wi-Fi project document by CBC. That statement noted, “CSEC is legally authorized to collect and analyze metadata”. That statement, according to Mr. Wark, may be misleading, insofar as there is no independent and external legal authorization for CSEC's metadata activities.

There is no special court similar to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that has authorized CSEC metadata. All one can say is that CSEC metadata activities are conducted under a secret ministerial directive and in accordance with secret Department of Justice

interpretations of the application of the provision of CSEC's legislative mandate. There is no internal legal

interpretation of whether CSEC is able to collect and analyze metadata that has ever been made public.

(1010) I think Mr. Wark lays out the issue and the concern. Yesterday in this House, and on Friday as well, several MPs from opposition parties raised questions with the Minister of National Defence on this particular issue. His answers, as all who listened know, were not very forthcoming. He fell back on the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner for cover, and basically said, in a number of different words, that CSEC operated within the law, using the words “continues to act lawfully”. In terms of what the commissioner said, I say to the minister, “Not so fast. Maybe. Maybe not”.

When we go to the last report of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, the report for 2012-13, presented to the minister in June of last year, the commissioner says, on page 20, under “Findings and Recommendations”: However, a small number of records suggested the possibility that some activities may have been directed at Canadians, contrary to law. A number of CSEC records relating to these activities were unclear or incomplete. After in-depth and lengthy review, I was unable to reach a definitive conclusion about compliance or non-compliance with the law. There is a concern.

The Communications Security Establishment Commissioner raises that concern in his report. It should be also noted that when Mr. Chuck Strahl, the former chair of SIRC, which is the oversight agency for CSIS, who has now stepped down—we will not to get into the reasons why he stepped down, but I will say that I do think he was a good chair for that committee—appeared before the national security and defence committee of the Senate, on December 9, 2013, this is what he had to say: What we're finding, increasingly is that CSIS is having to engage other partners in order to get the information they want.

We can examine anything that CSIS does. What we have highlighted and made note of is that we are increasingly nervous or wary of the fact that you come up to an imaginary wall, if you will, where we examine everything that CSIS does, but now it involves other departments. It might involve a no-fly list. It night involve CBSA or CSEC, and so on, but our authority extends only to CSIS in our review process.

So I think the committee is, and the government would be, wise to look at—and it's a modern reality—how we can make sure that we don't, when we're chasing a thread and trying to make sure that Canadians' rights are being protected, run up into the legislative wall of saying, “Well, yes, but you can only look at CSIS, even if the new thread continues on into CSEC,” as an example. That is one thing I would encourage you to think about. There was a worry there, on the part of Mr. Strahl.

Yesterday, because of the publicity around this issue and the concerns of Canadians, we had the Prime Minister 's security advisor, a man who many of us in this place did not even know, and the heads of CSIS and CSEC, called before the Senate committee over this very issue. Mr. Rigby spoke, and I listened to his remarks, as I was at the committee, of how broad and global security matters are now. We understand that. We understand that security is an important file.

(1015) However, we also have to understand the counterbalance: how important the privacy of Canadians is. In response to questions from the chair, Senator Lang, about the Wi-Fi airport metadata, Mr. Rigby said, “It is data about data”. He said that several times, “It is data about data”. Well what does that mean? Stating that it is data about data leaves the impression that there is not much to worry about. Anybody who reads history knows how those with power and authority can gain personal information and use it for ulterior motives. We do not want to see that happen in this country.

Let me turn to this metadata issue. Many of us do not understand what “It is data about data” means. The best information on that really comes from the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ms. Ann Cavoukian. She produced an

article for the Big Surveillance Demands Big Privacy conference that was held about a week ago. I will cite a fair bit of that article, published on July 17 of last year, because we need to understand that metadata is not just data about data. Metadata is much bigger and could be much more intrusive into Canadians' lives. Indeed, the BlackBerry or cellphone of some member on the other side may have been one of those surveyed, when going through the airport. Do people want to know where he or she went? Did they want to follow that thread? That is worrisome. Ms.

Cavoukian stated: Senior government officials have defended the seizure of our personal information on the basis that “it's only metadata.” They claim that gathering metadata is neither sensitive nor privacy-invasive since it does not access any of the content contained in associated phone calls or emails. She went on to say: Metadata is information associated with other information—generated by our smartphones, personal computers and tablets. This information can reveal the time and duration of your communications, the particular devices used, email addresses or numbers contacted, and at what locations.

Since virtually every device has a unique identifying number, all of your communications and Internet activities may be linked together and traced, with relative ease. The digital trail can reveal a great deal about you as an individual. Information about where you live, work, travel, what you purchase online, who you associate with, even what time you go to sleep, wake up and leave home. Government surveillance programs, however, gather and analyze our metadata for different purposes.

Armed with this data, the state has the power to instantaneously create a detailed digital profile of the life of anyone swept up in such a massive data seizure. Once this data is compiled and examined, detailed pictures of individuals begin to emerge. The data can reveal your political or religious affiliations, as well as your personal and intimate relationships. She goes on from there, but that is the important point. I have to ask a question for the government representatives. Is metadata really just data? Is it data about data?

What worries me is that maybe Big Brother is just sitting to the right of the Speaker. That is worrisome, if Big Brother with the current government gets out of hand.

(1020) In a press release, the Minister of Natural Resources said: Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade.... These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. Are they environmental radicals or are they just citizens who are protesting? In the early seventies, when there were blacklists created from some organizations in this country, I happened to be in one of those organizations. Those threats are real. In today's information age, we cannot let this get out of hand.

We have to worry that security is not used to cross the line into privacy matters. I want to make another point on the conference I attended, with respect to the statements by Andrew Clement, who is the co-founder of the Identity, Privacy and Security Institute. He said in his remarks that so much Canadian data passes through the United States in this day and age. He explained that if we were in a downtown Toronto office sending a packet of information across the street to another office, with the three major telecom companies, that information does not just cross the street.

Rather, it goes from Toronto, to New York, to Chicago, and back to Toronto; so other authorities can pick up that information, analyze it, and see what we are up to. There is a lot to worry about here. We do not want to scare people, but the reality is that something could be going on that should not be going on. Let me now turn to the proposed legislation. However, there is one other point I should make before I go there. Canadians have a right to expect that their government and government agencies act legally and that their right to privacy is respected.

In the case of CSEC, we are faced with an agency that has enormous powers to intrude upon the lives of all Canadians and those who are visiting the country. The appearance of three very powerful folks before the Senate committee yesterday is a case in point. Those faces are not known by Canadians, yet they could be involved in our everyday lives in many ways. However, we must not forget that they also do a great service for Canadians in protecting our security as a nation.

Therefore, I believe that we in this place have a duty to ensure that our intelligence-gathering agencies are acting within the law and that we also have the assurance from the government that there has been no abuse of the authority granted to the minister under the provisions of the National Defence Act. I see I am running out of time so I will make this last point. What is proposed here is an oversight agency made up of parliamentarians. We are the only country in the western world that does not have a proactive oversight agency.

The proposed legislation has come out of an all-party committee that travelled to London, Washington, and Australia to look at their oversight agencies. Parliamentarians would have to take the Privy Council oath, would have to maintain that secret, and would have access to classified information to ensure Canadians, in a proactive way, that our intelligence-gathering agencies are operating within the law and not above or around the law. It is important that we do that.

I call upon government members to take this opportunity to take action to ensure that our security agencies are operating as they should, not with a review after the fact but by holding parliamentarians responsible for doing their duty to ensure that intelligence-gathering agencies are abiding by the law. That bill is there right now. The government can pick it up and we can ensure that it is implemented.

(1025) Mr. James Bezan (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, it was interesting listening to our friend from Malpeque speak this morning. He was talking about needing parliamentary oversight, and we saw an example of parliamentary oversight last night in the Senate. The Senate committee pulled in three major people involved with security intelligence in this country, collecting signals and interpreting things that are taking place around the world and ensuring we are protected here in Canada.

The member is calling for more parliamentary oversight, yet Parliament has always had the ability to have these individuals appear before committee. I sit on the national defence committee, and CSEC is one of the agencies that is responsible under the Department of National Defence. Our committee has the power at any point in time to call on those people who are appointed either as the chief or commissioner of Communications Security Establishment Canada. We can call them in to talk about budget and activities. It is all there for Parliament to take on that role, so what the member is asking for already exists.

On top of that, we have a commissioner who is a supernumerary judge. We also had at one point a former Supreme Court justice who knows the law and has the ability to circumvent and look at all the data that is being collected. Last year, they looked at every single case where Canadians may have been accidentally brought into intelligence gathering and that was reviewed by the commissioner to ensure that their privacy rights were protected. In every single case last year they said that it was within the law. So it is rich that the Liberals are bringing forward this motion.

(1030) The Deputy Speaker : The member has now taken up two minutes of the ten-minute question and answer period. Could he pose a question rather than make a speech, please? He will have the opportunity to make a speech in a few minutes. Mr. James Bezan : Mr. Speaker, it is questions and comments, and so I can speak as well. I was just saying to my friend that, as he saw last night, Parliament has the full ability to pull in the chief heads of our security regulatory agencies. That exists right now.

On this side of the House we have the Standing Committee on National Defence and the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and we have independent oversight with commissioners who are experts. I would ask the member to comment on that. Hon. Wayne Easter : Mr. Speaker, I will try to be shorter than the two minutes. The independent oversight is clearly after the fact, and it is time parliamentarians accepted their responsibility. This legislation that is now a private member's bill was tabled by the government of the day in 2004-05. It was tabled by the then public security minister.

There was a recognition on the part of that public security minister that there indeed has to be parliamentary oversight. The current Minister of Justice sat on that committee, as did you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Whatever happened to that Minister of Justice ? Why did he get fearful of doing the right thing in terms of ensuring that we have proper oversight of these intelligence-gathering agencies? The parliamentary secretary can talk, but there were a lot of questions not answered at that Senate committee yesterday or at a parliamentary committee, because we cannot talk about classified information.

However, if we had a group of parliamentarians who swear the oath and have the responsibility to check out these things, we can in fact do that. Maybe the parliamentary secretary can answer this in his remarks when he gets up. Can he tell us the details of why the metadata was collected on Canadians going through Canadian airports? Were there any MPs involved, in terms of their data being collected? These are some of the questions we need answered, and we need to absolutely ensure the privacy of Canadians. The way to do that is to set up an oversight committee with responsibilities. Mr. Jack Harris (St.

John's East, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence certainly knows the difference between asking questions at a parliamentary hearing and true parliamentary oversight, particularly when it comes to national security concerns. They need insight and access to information, secret information sometimes, to do proper oversight. I want to ask a question to the proposer of the motion, because we are getting explanations from the government that, for example, there was no targeting of Canadians in this exercise at the airport and no Canadians were being tracked.

How is that meaningful when it seems that everyone who used a cellphone at that airport was actually having his or her data collected as to what it was and who it was? Everyone was being tracked, or rather, it was not them; just the cellphone was being tracked. It just happened to be in someone's pocket. How is it meaningful to get responses like that from the minister of the crown and from the person who is supposed to be exercising that oversight on behalf of Canadians?

(1035) Hon. Wayne Easter : Mr. Speaker, I personally cannot understand the answer from government members. In my explanation of how the Privacy Commissioner for Ontario explains metadata, it is information. It is not the text of the individuals. As she goes on to say: Once this data is compiled and examined, detailed pictures of individuals begin to emerge. The data can reveal your political or religious affiliations, as well as your personal and intimate relationships. I would say it goes beyond that. One of the worst decisions the government made was killing the long form census in terms of it being compulsory.

That is metadata, to a great extent. It provides information in a general sense. However, this data being collected can infringe on the privacy of Canadians. Hon. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa—Vanier, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, I have two questions. One is in reaction to what we heard from the government side. If having a committee in either House were sufficient, how would my colleague explain the fact that the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, and Great Britain all have committees to do the same thing but still have an oversight capacity for parliamentarians?

I am just a little baffled, because it is necessary to have parliamentarians in an oversight committee that has a particular mandate by law, given by Parliament, to indeed oversee. We are not there at all, even with the actions of the Senate committee or the House committee. Second, we have heard that the airport authorities where this was done were not aware that it was being done.

How do we know that other free Wi-Fi zones in the country are not also being tapped into, such as in hotels, restaurants, cafés, and so forth and that Canadians all over the place are providing their metadata to CSEC without them knowing about it? Hon. Wayne Easter : Mr. Speaker, to answer the second question first, how do we know? We do not. We might know if further Snowden releases come out. It may be provided in some of that information.

However, now that the government has admitted what the Snowden release said relative to the collection of data in at least one airport in the country, it tells us that it is time to worry. It is time, as a Parliament, to protect the private information of Canadians. On his first question, as I said in my remarks, the current Minister of Justice sat on that same committee as you and I, Mr. Speaker. He was probably the strongest member, gung ho. He said that we had to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of having an oversight agency made up of parliamentarians. What has happened since?

He became a minister of the crown. It makes no sense to me that other democracies—Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and the United States—have proper parliamentary oversight, and Canada, 10 years after that report was originally tabled as government legislation, still does not. It is time to act. Let us act now.

(1040) Mr. James Bezan (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety . I am pleased to speak on the unique history of the Communications Security Establishment Canada and the vital role it has played in working with its partners to help keep Canada safe. Over the course of its existence, CSEC has grown from a small unit to a vital organization at the heart of Canada's security and intelligence community.

To achieve the important work it undertakes, CSEC has a staff of approximately 2,100 employees. Let me say that again. It has 2,100 employees. They do not have the capability to sit there and listen to every phone call and every email that is going over the airwaves, through Wi-Fi, on broadband, and across cyberspace every single second. CSEC does have sophisticated computers and tools that it employs in doing its work. It also has a staff with specialized skill sets, including engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, and linguists.

However, as the House may know, Communications Security Establishment Canada's beginnings stretch back to World War II. Its forerunner, the Examination Unit, was Canada's first civilian office solely dedicated to the encryption and decryption of communication signals. Prior to 1941, signals intelligence, or SIGINT, as it was known then, was entirely within the purview of the military. At the beginning of the Second World War, the Canadian Armed Forces were already collecting ciphered signals from enemy military and foreign mission communications traffic.

Canadian military intercepts of enemy signals were used mostly to locate enemy positions and movements. Such information was shared with our British and American allies. It was with the Nazi occupation of France that Canada was encouraged by its allies to put together a civilian office that would decrypt signals traffic content, such as messages from the Vichy government and other military and diplomatic communications. On occasion, depending on the type of communications, some content would be analysed by specialized military SIGINT units.

However, it was the newly created civilian Examination Unit that would regularly decipher content and disseminate intelligence to Canadian Foreign Affairs as well as to the allies. By 1945 the disparate SIGINT collection units of the navy, army, and air force were co-located with the Examination Unit.

By the end of the war, these military and civilian units were able to coordinate signals intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination so efficiently that their success was a primary justification for the establishment of a new peacetime Canadian cryptologic agency, known as the Communications Branch of the National Research Council of Canada.

The creation of a peacetime civilian organization allowed for 180 individuals, with highly developed and virtually irreplaceable skills and expertise, to continue the work they were doing during the war, under the direction of the legendary Lieutenant Colonel Edward Drake. This was done with as little disruption as possible to the collaboration that had developed between Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom in sharing signals intelligence.

The CBNRC was renamed the Communications Security Establishment in 1975, and the organization was given its first legislative mandate in 2001, which was contained within the National Defence Act. Of course, in 2001 there was a Liberal government. The legislative mandate is threefold. First, CSEC collects foreign communication signals intelligence to support government decision-making for national security, defence, and foreign policy. Second, CSEC provides IT security advice, guidance, and services that help secure systems and networks of importance to the government and the information they contain.

Finally, it provides technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies under their respective mandates. Here CSEC acts under the legal authority of the requesting agency it is assisting, and it is subject to any restrictions on or conditions of that authority. That includes any applicable warrant issued by the court, and it needs a court warrant. It is important to note that all of CSEC's activities under this mandate are reviewed by the independent Communications Security Establishment Commissioner.

CSEC's place in government was changed in 2011 to that of a stand-alone agency within the National Defence portfolio. This was to reflect the fact that CSEC evolved into a full member of Canada's security and intelligence community with its security and intelligence role codified in legislation.

(1045) I note that prior to becoming a stand-alone agency, information regarding CSEC was included in broader reporting to Parliament through the Department of National Defence. Since becoming a stand-alone agency, CSEC now appears in the main and supplementary estimates as well as in the public accounts, making its financial information more available to parliamentary scrutiny then ever before. I have given a bit of a history lesson on CSEC. Now I would like to say a few words about how it works with its domestic and international partners.

I can assure my colleagues that despite the civilianization of Canada's cryptological capabilities following the Second World War and CSEC's change to a stand-alone agency, it has and continues to support Canada's armed forces and our troops on the ground. As mentioned, the Canadian Armed Forces has been involved with CSEC and its predecessors doing signals intelligence since 1941. This is a unique partnership based on a history of trust and mutually compatible objectives.

Operating under its foreign signals intelligence collection mandate, CSEC supported Canadian military operations throughout and long after the end of the Cold War. This was indeed the case when it came to supporting our troops during our mission in Afghanistan. CSEC has provided intelligence support for the Afghanistan mission to meet a broad array of Government of Canada and military requirements, ranging from force protection to governance. I note with pride that CSEC played a critical role in helping to protect the men and women of our armed forces against threats from insurgents.

CSEC has continued to support the forces in the post-2011 Canadian mission in Afghanistan. Following the November 2010 announcement of a continuing training mission in Afghanistan, CSEC's efforts have been directed to ensuring sustained intelligence support throughout the combat withdrawal period. Of course, CSEC has also provided support to military operations in regions other than Afghanistan, and it will continue to do so whenever our troops may be at risk in the performance of their duties.

Beyond its relationship with the military, as a member of Canada's security intelligence community, CSEC also works closely with a number of other domestic partners, such as the RCMP and CSIS, consistent with its legislative mandate to provide assistance to law enforcement and security agencies. These relationships are vital to CSEC's success and can take the form of intelligence sharing, technical advice, and where appropriate, lawful operational collaboration.

That being said, in all of its activities, CSEC is prohibited from targeting the communications of persons in Canada or of Canadians anywhere in the world under its foreign intelligence and cyberprotection mandates. Turning now to the international stage, CSEC's closest partnership is multilateral and is referred to as the Five Eyes. This partnership is rooted in our World War II alliance and includes the U.S. National Security Agency, the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters, the Australian Signals Directorate, and New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau.

CSEC receives and shares intelligence with the Five Eyes and when doing so must comply with Canadian law. CSEC cannot ask its international partners to act in a way that circumvents Canadian laws. In turn, its partners cannot ask CSEC to do anything on their behalf that they cannot do on their own under their legal frameworks. I am pleased to note that in his 2012-13 annual report, the CSEC Commissioner noted that CSEC does take measures to protect the privacy of Canadians in what it shares with our international partners.

In fact, the commissioner praised CSEC's chief: ...[they] have spared no effort to instill within CSEC a culture of respect for the law and for the privacy of Canadians.... I can say with pride and confidence that CSEC is truly being watched. CSEC provides valuable foreign intelligence that protects and promotes Canadian interests while also safeguarding the security of Canada from foreign threats and cyberattacks. Throughout its long history, CSEC has contributed significantly to Canada's own security and to that of our allies and has done so in accordance with Canadian laws, including the Privacy Act.

Again, protecting the privacy of Canadians is law, and CSEC follows the letter and the spirit of that law. It has helped to keep Canada safe from foreign threats, has provided lawful assistance to law enforcement and security agencies, and has helped to protect our troops, all the while making the protection and the privacy of Canadians a priority. Mr. Jack Harris (St. John's East, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, we all understand that signals intelligence is necessary and that it plays an important role in Canada's international activities and in the defence of our country, and we support that.

What we are concerned about, as the hon. member knows, is whether or not they are operating within their mandate, not only in terms of being within the law but also in terms of carrying out appropriate functions. I find it interesting that when the head of CSEC testified yesterday and was talking about airport surveillance, he said, “No data was collected through any monitoring of the operations of any airport — just part of our normal global collection.” What he is saying now is that they did not track anybody or follow anybody and that they do this all the time.

This is part of their normal global collection of data and information. Does the hon. member not find it disturbing that part of the normal collection of data by CSEC is information emanating from cellphones and iPads and computers within Canada? Does he think that is okay and that it is something Canadians should know and understand is happening all the time?

(1050) Mr. James Bezan : Mr. Speaker, as was noted , when the chiefs of CSEC and CSIS were before the standing committee yesterday, they answered all these allegations and provided assurances that CSEC was acting within its legal authority. I want to offer a quote. The CSEC commissioner, the Hon. Jean-Pierre Plouffe, a supernumerary judge, based upon that story, issued the following statement. He said: In June 2013, my predecessor issued a statement referring to CSEC metadata activities. Many reviews of CSEC activities conducted by the Commissioner's office include examination of CSEC's use of metadata.

For example, we verify how metadata is used by CSEC to target the communications of foreign entities located outside Canada, and we verify how metadata is used by CSEC to limit its assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies to what is authorized by a court order or warrant. The commissioner, of course, is very independent. He has looked at all these allegations and he is confident that CSEC continues to act within the law. Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.) : Mr.

Speaker, the of Ontario has published a letter regarding this issue and is basically calling the federal government to task for its silence on this issue. Meanwhile, in the United States, the President has announced reforms to the National Security Agency, demonstrating that a free and open society actually needs a proper discourse on the surveillance powers of their intelligence agencies. While that debate is happening in the United States, our government is maintaining what the Privacy Commissioner calls a “wall of silence”.

When clearly the experts are saying otherwise, I want to hear from the parliamentary secretary why the oversight of CSEC by a single commissioner who is appointed by the minister and reports only to the minister would be considered adequate. Why would we want to have a so much weaker oversight mechanism of this agency that reports to the Minister of National Defence than all of our allies have in their countries? Mr. James Bezan : Mr. Speaker, the CSEC commissioner is not just one person.

It is an office with people working full time with top-level security clearance, and as the commissioner said, “As Commissioner, I am independent of the government and of CSEC, and as such do not take direction from any minister of the crown or from CSEC.” I will not comment on the capabilities of CSEC or the capabilities of any of our international partners or their activities, but cyberprotection, protection of Canadians, and protection of our troops abroad are paramount to us.

They are our responsibilities as parliamentarians, so we need to take light of the fact that the commissioner, who is a supernumerary judge, is making sure that the laws of this land are respected by the security establishment, that it is acting and performing within the mandates it has and not stepping outside those mandates, and is doing the job and being provided proper oversight.

(1055) Ms. Roxanne James (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to discuss the important issue of national security and oversight to ensure that Canadian rights and freedoms are protected. I would like to specifically touch on the portion of the motion that deals with parliamentary oversight of national security agencies. Government has few responsibilities less integral than keeping its citizens safe from outside threats. In fact, our Conservative government takes this responsibility very seriously.

That is why we passed the Combating Terrorism Act, which, among other things, makes it illegal for individuals to travel overseas to become radicalized or receive terrorist training. It also gives important new tools to law enforcement. Shockingly, the opposition party, the NDP, voted against this important legislation. However, we are not here to talk about the past failings of the opposition. We are here to talk about the oversight of national security agencies and activities.

Responsibilities for oversight of CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, rest primarily with the Security Intelligence Review Committee, also known as SIRC for short, which provides an external review mechanism that is arm's length from the government.

In this capacity, SIRC has three key functions: SIRC prepares a certificate attesting to its satisfaction with the CSIS director's annual report; SIRC conducts self-initiated reviews of CSIS activities, reviewing them against legislation and ministerial direction; SIRC also investigates complaints in relation to any CSIS activity, as well as any denial or revocation of a security clearance. SIRC tables a report in Parliament each year summarizing the results of all of the work it has undertaken.

SIRC was created as an independent external review body to ensure that CSIS' extraordinary powers are used legally and appropriately and, therefore, to ensure that Canadian rights and freedoms are protected. This is our government's priority: ensuring Canadians are protected without stepping on civil liberties. The opposition has raised stories from the CBC as a smoking gun of sorts, purporting to show that there is a mass surveillance state. Nothing could be further from the truth. As one has come to expect from the CBC, the story is simply wrong.

Nothing in the documents the CBC has obtained showed that Canadians' communications were targeted, collected, or used, or that travellers' movements were being tracked. In fact, CSEC is prohibited by law from doing precisely what the story alleges. Let me reiterate that national security organizations, specifically CSIS and CSEC, are subject to independent review by the Security Intelligence Review Committee and the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner respectively. The review bodies have always found these agencies to work within their legal mandates.

That is why this government, our government, will be voting against this motion. While we are always open to new ideas that will create openness, accountability, and transparency without compromising national security or operational integrity, we are not open to creating duplication and waste. The current oversight and review bodies accomplish rigorous and thorough analysis. Creating a new level of review would either render this work useless or create an over-burdensome paper trail. I know the Liberals do not like this, because they like duplication. In fact, this is something that Liberals are quite famous for.

In the previous Liberal government, the member for Malpeque , who was serving as a Liberal member of Parliament, brought this bill forward. However, it was not actually brought forward for debate. The simple reality is that this type of body would not be as effective as what we currently have. What we need to do is continue to provide our law enforcement and national security agencies with the tools they need to do their jobs, and while we firmly believe that on this side of the House, the opposition continues to adamantly oppose and obstruct our government's efforts on these important files.

In fact, our government passed the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, which will send dangerous foreign nationals who often have ties to listed terrorist organizations back to where they came from. The opposition voted against this common sense measure. We created the “Wanted by the CBSA” list, the Canada Border Services Agency list, which helped remove over 40 criminals. Some of the worst criminals who are illegally in Canada we have removed from Canada. The opposition opposed this common sense measure.

We increased the number of front-line border guards by 26% in order to help protect our borders and keep Canadians safe, and both the NDP and the Liberals voted against this common sense measure. We also created Canada's first counterterrorism and cybersecurity strategies, and the NDP and Liberals both opposed these measures, which is not surprising, given the Liberals' lack of action on this file when they were in government.

(1100) We have invested nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in protecting Canadians from hacking and cyberespionage. The NDP and the Liberals voted against that too. There is virtually no common sense measure to keep Canadians safe that the parties opposite will not oppose. Therefore, when I hear the member for Malpeque talk about oversight of national security agencies, I cannot help but just shake my head. Really? Rather than working with us to keep Canadians safe and to ensure rights are protected, his party wants to throw up new roadblocks.

While I cannot say this is overly surprising from a member of the party whose leader said he would not rule out ending mandatory prison sentences for anyone, I still find it very disappointing. In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that CSIS and CSEC are already subject to robust oversight. These independent arm's-length agencies have consistently found that CSIS and CSEC abide by all relevant laws and have not violated the rights of Canadians. We will be opposing this motion, which would seek to create a wasteful and duplicative process for overseeing national security agencies.

Instead, our Conservative government will focus on real action to keep Canadians safe and secure in Canada. Mr. Jack Harris (St. John's East, NDP) : Mr.

Speaker, I wonder if the parliamentary secretary would comment on the fact that if we look even among the Five Eyes partners around the world, Australia has direct legislative oversight over security and intelligence, New Zealand has direct legislature oversight of security intelligence, the United Kingdom has direct legislative oversight of intelligence and security, and the United States has direct congressional oversight through both the House of Representatives and the Congress on intelligence and security. Canada does not.

If it is good enough for our partners we are sharing this information with to ensure that their citizens, through their parliaments, have assurance that what is going on is not only lawful but appropriate, why can we not? Ms. Roxanne James : Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the members of the House and Canadians at home that this government is steadfastly set on protecting the safety and security of all Canadians while respecting the privacy laws here in Canada.

That said, and I did mention it in my speech, the agencies we are discussing today, CSIS and CSEC, already have robust oversight boards, et cetera, in place. For example, as mentioned in my speech, CSIS oversight responsibilities rest primarily with the Security Intelligence Review Committee, also known as SIRC, which provides an external review mechanism that is at arm's length from the government. It is not my oversight. It is not oversight by the Minister of Public Safety or the Minister of National Defence . It is at arm's length. It is not linked to this government.

I wanted to reassure the member and all Canadians that this is actually already taking place and that in fact no issues of privacy concerns have been found. Hon. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, I was a little surprised at the partisan tone of the parliamentary secretary's remarks. This is not a partisan issue. I was also surprised by the attack on the CBC. Should the House be warning the reporter, who I believe was Greg Weston? Is he going to be targeted now? Public Safety is responsible for the RCMP, for CSIS, for the Canada Border Services Agency.

There are a lot of ways the government could target someone it has a concern with. This is what the 2012-13 annual report of SIRC said: The risk to CSIS, then, is the ability of a Five Eyes partner to act independently on CSIS-originated information. This, in turn, carries the possible risk of detention or harm of a target based on information that originated with CSIS. ... There are [also] clear hazards, including the lack of control over the intelligence once it has been shared. That comes from the SIRC report. There is clearly present danger in terms of information being misused.

That is what an oversight agency would be involved in. I would suggest that the metadata at airports and the information coming out at the moment are only the tip of the iceberg. Why can the Conservative government not see this and allow Parliament to do its job, accept its responsibility, and provide parliamentary oversight, as the rest of our Five Eyes partners do?

(1105) Ms. Roxanne James : Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the member once again that we already have that robust oversight mechanism in place. It is at arm's length from this government. We do not need another level of oversight. That is simply a duplication and a waste. If we were to implement another such level, then it would just diminish the work that SIRC currently does in establishing an oversight of CSIS and other security agencies. Mr. Jack Harris (St. John's East, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to speak to the resolution brought forward by the member for Malpeque .

It is very timely, as we all know, given the recent revelations by the reports in the news media over the last several days about the activities of CSEC, with respect to what is the newest word in Canadians’ lexicon “metadata”, so-called, but what we are really talking about is the collection of information about Canadians. I am old enough to have been in law school when legislation was brought in that allowed wiretapping, intercepting telephone conversations between two people by a third person. It is illegal, under the Criminal Code of Canada, unless one is a peace officer who has a warrant from a judge.

The judge would only give that warrant if the police could convince the judge they had tried other methods that failed and had reason to believe that the person whose communications they were going to intercept was involved in the commission of a criminal offence and this would provide evidence. That was the level of privacy and security intended by the Criminal Code then and now.

However, what we have today is this organization, which is not supposed to spy on Canadians, collecting information about where this cellphone is, what other cellphones it communicates with, where it travels, and whether it goes through this or that place. Every three seconds, this cellphone emits a signal that says where it is. Not only do we have the calls it makes, who they are made to, the length of those calls, and how often those calls take place, but all of this is being collected. It does not seem to be a one-off.

The director of CSEC said yesterday in the Senate committee that this was not anything special, that we were not targeting Canadians, that we were not targeting anybody, that we were just doing our normal collection of data, that there was no data collected through any monitoring of the operations of any airport, and that it was just a part of our normal global collection. That is what we are dealing with. We now have confirmation that it does this regularly. We did not know about that. We did not know it was legal. Most Canadians would not have thought it was legal.

In fact, we have privacy commissioners and other experts saying that it is not legal, so what do we do about that? Before I move on, Mr. Speaker, I will put on the record that I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan . That is the state of play right now. We have a situation in which Canadians do not know. Part of the reason they do not know is that they are, I think, being misled when the Minister of National Defence gets up in this House and says, “Oh, we're not targeting Canadians. We are just collecting all their data. We're not targeting particular Canadians.

We don't know whether they're Canadians or who they are. We're just collecting this information. We're not tracking Canadians. No, we're tracking the cellphones of anyone who happens to be moving around in airports or maybe anywhere else.” Is that the truth? As they say in the courts, is that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? No, it is not. In fact, it is anything but the truth. Going by Mr. Forrester's explanation, the truth of the matter seems to be that we are collecting this data as a matter of course, as part of our operations. This is not a Canadian issue, per se.

It is an issue in the United States and elsewhere. It is a political issue in the United States, this so-called “collection of metadata”. It is such an important issue that the President of the United States suggested, a week or 10 days ago, this information being collected is sometimes referred to as the “haystack”, the haystack of information, and that we might be looking for a needle in the haystack. Instead of looking for the needle, we are actually collecting, through our governments, the entire haystack.

(1110) What President Obama has said is that the haystack is not going to be controlled and in the possession of the National Security Agency. It is going to have to be kept separate and out of its control unless it has a reason to search that data for any particular information; then it has to go to a court and get a warrant. That is what America has done in response to the concerns raised by the public as a result of the recent revelations. That how seriously it is being taken there. This one-day debate is important.

Yesterday at the Senate there was a one-day event at which senators asked their questions in public about policy and practices. However, that is not true parliamentary oversight. We get true parliamentary oversight on behalf of the members of the public who elect people to this place if we have a system to do that. As I said in my question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety , Australia has it, New Zealand has it, the United Kingdom has it, and the United States has it, so why do we not have it?

The national security adviser to the Prime Minister , who also appeared before the Senate committee yesterday, said he was not sure all that was needed and that there would have to be caution. No one is suggesting we throw caution to the winds. These are some serious, sensitive matters. They should be non-partisan matters. They should be matters on which members of Parliament can exercise the obligation of oversight and do our duty as parliamentarians to hold the government to account in a special way. We do have a legislature and we have the executive. All this is in the hands of the executive.

CSEC reports to the Minister of National Defence —not even to the Department of National Defence, but directly to the Minister of National Defence. The commissioner reports to the Minister of National Defence and issues an annual report. The oversight mechanisms have been decried by privacy experts. Both the federal interim commissioner and the Ontario commissioner have spoken out quite strongly on this as not adequate, not strong enough, and not doing the job. We have to have a legislative role here. The motion calls for a particular committee. You, Mr. Speaker, were a part of that proposal in 2004.

We are not sure we need a committee of parliamentarians, as opposed to a committee of Parliament. We are not sure that this should report to the Prime Minister as opposed to Parliament. In fact, as New Democrats, we are not sure whether senators or even the Senate should be part of this at all, so we cannot wholeheartedly support the legislation as written in 2005. In fact, we have proposed a parliamentary committee to come up with the best method of parliamentary oversight. However, something needs to be done.

I cannot pass up talking about the small irony discovered in the last few hours about CSEC and the commissioner. We talk about the commission and how important the commissioner is. He is important and plays an important role, but I am not sure he has all the information he needs. In fact, the previous commissioner said that he did not have access to the information he needed, and he could not come up with the right kind of conclusion. There have been complaints by the Federal Court about how it is operating with other agencies and going beyond warrants in what information is being given.

However, the irony is this. People can complain to the commissioner of CSEC, but they can only do so by mail. The reason is that a complaint may contain sensitive information. Complaints are accepted only by mail addressed to the commissioner at a given address. It is only by mail because it is sensitive information that someone else might discover if we sent it by email. I wonder who. I am not normally paranoid, although I have been accused of it. Just for the sake of this great irony, can members guess what the CSEC commissioner's address is? It is Box 1984, as in 1984 .

If we want to complain to the commissioner of CSEC, we must send our information to Box 1984. We can be sure Big Brother will be watching.

(1115) Mr. James Bezan (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my paranoid friend from St. John's East . I just want to correct some things that the member put on the record. The commissioner for CSEC just this weekend released the following statement: As Commissioner, I am independent of the government and of CSEC, and as such do not take direction from any minister of the crown or from CSEC. He is truly independent. He reports to Parliament, and we get that report on an annual basis.

They have been looking at this for over 16 years and have never found CSEC to be acting unlawfully. CSEC has to respect the laws of the land, the Privacy Act, the Criminal Code, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All of that is taken into consideration by the commissioner, who is a supernumerary judge and always has the best wishes of Canadians in his thought process as well as the security of Canadians at home and abroad. On the comment the member made on the cellphone, I just want to point out that CSEC has to act within the law. First of all, CSEC cannot target Canadians at home or abroad.

Also, when it is working with its partners in security, whether the RCMP or CSIS, it has to follow the Criminal Code. As the member pointed out, it has to be done through a court order or through a warrant. Again, CSEC is not out there monitoring everything going on in cyberspace or what is happening on our BlackBerrys and cellphones. If it happens, it is done through a court order, within the law and the mandate it has, as well as when working with the RCMP and CSIS. Mr. Jack Harris : Mr. Speaker, the concern is that the line goes from the CSEC operations to the commissioner to the minister.

These are all extraparliamentary; they are part of the administration of government. However, we are talking about parliamentary oversight, the members of Parliament who are elected, and not just the minister. The minister is elected for a riding, but when he sits in cabinet, in our system of government, he is the government. The cabinet is the government. He is the executive and we are the legislature. Also, other parliaments have parliamentary oversight, but we do not. That is the problem.

I would also quote the former director of CSEC: There’s no question that CSEC is very, very biased towards the less the public knows the better…. He is proud of that fact, and it seems to have worked, because we very seldom see CSEC on the front page of the newspapers. Well, that has changed. I think Canadians, because they are aware of this situation, want to see more parliamentary oversight. Hon. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the member's remarks and the 1984 Big Brother reference. It almost seems that is what we have, across the way.

The key point here is that I really cannot understand the government's unwillingness to look at proper parliamentary oversight when two of its key cabinet ministers were in fact part of a report at one point in favour of such oversight. We know that with this particular government, if an organization that depends on government funding comes out against the government, its funding will probably be cut. The member went to great lengths explaining the Five Eyes and the other countries that are our allies in these issues.

Where does the government get the idea that Canadians are less at risk of invasion of privacy and do not need proper parliamentary oversight, when all our allies do?

(1120) Mr. Jack Harris : Mr. Speaker, I think that is one of the questions. What is it with this government, thinking that everything is okay? It is like the made-in-Canada solution. Everybody else in the world, the G7 countries, deliver mail by post office, et cetera, but we are not going to do that. We have a made-in-Canada solution, and we will not deliver the mail. In the case of oversight of secret operations, we have a made-in-Canada solution, and we will not have parliamentary oversight.

Well, I think that is just head-in-sand behaviour and a failure to face up to the responsibilities of government. [ Translation ] Ms. Rosane Doré Lefebvre (Alfred-Pellan, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion moved by the second opposition party.

The motion reads as follows: That the House express its deep concern over reports that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has been actively and illegally monitoring Canadians and call on the government to immediately order CSEC to cease all such activities and increase proper oversight of CSEC, through the establishment of a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians as laid out in Bill C-551,

An Act to establish the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians . How did we come to the point where we are debating such a motion in the House? It all started on June 10, 2013, when the previous minister of national defence approved a CSEC program to monitor the telephone and Internet activities of Canadians by collecting metadata. The program was first created by the Liberals in 2005, but was later suspended because of the concerns raised by the organization responsible for overseeing CSEC. The minister at the time denied that statement.

The law is very clear in that regard: CSEC does not have the right to spy on Canadians. The legislation that sets out its mandate explicitly states that its activities: 273.64(2)(

a) shall not be directed at Canadians or any person in Canada; and (

b) shall be subject to measures to protect the privacy...in the use and retention of intercepted information. There is only one exception to that provision. If the Minister of National Defence authorizes it, CSEC can get around that provision, which happened 78 times between 2002 and 2012. In June 2013, the minister said that he had authorized nothing of the sort. However, in August 2013, Justice Robert Décary indicated in his annual report that Canadians had been the target of some spying activities. Unfortunately, the saga does not end there.

In the months that followed, numerous documents revealed that CSEC had been spying illegally on Canadians. The latest revelations are probably the most troubling. On January 30, 2014, CBC uncovered information indicating that CSEC was able to track the movements of passengers at Canadian airports who used the free Wi-Fi networks on their mobile devices, including phones, tablets and computers. Not only did CSEC track them in the airport, but it continued spying on their devices for several weeks. Those kinds of discoveries about CSEC's actions are alarming.

What happened to abiding by the law and upholding the public trust in our intelligence systems? What happens when the system is broken and the public becomes distrustful? That is why the NDP will be supporting today's motion. We need to take action before this problem gets even worse. However, I must point out that there are some significant flaws in this motion, particularly in relation to some of the provisions in Bill C-551 .

Bill C-551 proposes to establish a committee made up of members of the House of Commons and senators who would be mandated to review national security activities of federal government departments and agencies. First, this committee would report to the Prime Minister , and he would be entitled to hide information from Parliament. It is crucial that the Prime Minister not be able to conceal national security information from parliamentarians under Bill C-551. Second, this bill would give unelected senators a seat on the review committee.

Honestly, I am not entirely sure where the Liberals stand, with their Liberal senators who are sitting outside of the caucus, or their independent Liberal senators, or their Liberal sympathizers who happen, by sheer coincidence, to be senators. It is all rather confusing. The NDP feels that only individuals duly elected by Canadians should be part of the committee. That is why, last October, my colleague from St. John's East moved a motion to that effect. The motion reads as follows: That (

a) a special committee on security and intelligence oversight be appointed to study and make recommendations with respect to the appropriate method of parliamentary oversight of Canadian government policies, regulations, and activities in the area of intelligence, including those of all departments, agencies, and review bodies, civilian and military, involved in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence for the purpose of Canada’s national security; (1125) (

b) in the course of its work the committee should consider the methods of oversight adopted by other countries and their experiences and make recommendations appropriate to Canada's unique circumstances; (

c) the Committee be composed of 12 members, 7 from the Conservative Party, 4 from the New Democratic Party, and 1 from the Liberal Party, to be named following the usual consultations with the Whips and filed with the Clerk of the House...; The committee's makeup would reflect that of the House. The motion also provided that: (

i) the special committee report its findings and recommendations to the House no later than May 30, 2014. Canada is not the only country to consider parliamentary oversight of national security issues. The United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand all have well-established systems that enable parliamentarians to ask the government for reports on national security issues. That is not the case in Canada. The only thing this Conservative Prime Minister has created is a cabinet committee on national security whose job is to supervise Canadian national security activities.

However, this is a cabinet committee, not a parliamentary one, so it is not accountable to anyone. If the Conservatives had really taken national security issues, protection of Canadians' privacy and problems related to CSEC disclosures seriously, they would have paid attention to this motion as soon as it was presented in the House, and we would already have a committee of elected representatives in place to deal with this kind of situation. Instead, the government is letting the problem persist and shows no interest in managing it.

Worse still, in a recent report, the Privacy Commissioner suggested that privacy protection was not a priority for this government. That is shameful. People have become distrustful. About 80% of Canadians are now connected to the Internet. People spend an average of 41 hours on the Internet a month. In terms of Internet use, we rank second in the world. In addition, the digital economy is growing fast. In 2012, Canadians spent $22.3 billion online. They already have serious doubts about how well their privacy is protected. Some 13% of people believe that their information is well protected on the Internet.

If people can no longer trust that their own government will not spy on them, what or who can they turn to? My colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville had also introduced an interesting bill on this, Bill C-475 on privacy protection. Canadian privacy laws have not kept pace with rapidly changing technologies, which is rather alarming. Those laws have not been updated since the first generation of iPods. The purpose of Bill C-475 was to correct the situation by updating these laws and taking personal information protection seriously.

We have the right to know when our personal information is gathered, used or communicated in any type of digital format. We have the right to feel safe. In that regard, this bill gave Canada's Privacy Commissioner increased law enforcement powers and made it mandatory to inform the persons concerned of any data leaks that might affect their privacy. Canadians should not have to worry about the confidentiality of their personal information online. We must enhance our protection measures for children, for seniors and for all Canadians. The NDP takes privacy protection and national security very seriously.

We must protect the integrity of our country and ensure that people are safe. It is a matter of maintaining a delicate balance between liberty and security. National security is a top priority. The government has a responsibility to make and apply policies to protect the country and its citizens, and not break its own laws and spy on the public. The fundamental problem with this government is the lack of openness and counterbalance. With our current institutional structure, we must make decisions for the common good and be more transparent to ensure that the right decisions are being made.

A number of the questions we have asked the Conservative government remain unanswered. Who authorized spying on Canadians through free Wi-Fi at a Canadian airport? Was the minister aware of this metadata collection program? Were these data saved? More worrisome yet, does this spying program still exist?

(1130) We sincerely hope that the Conservative government will go public with its legal reasoning and rationale behind CSEC's metadata collection operations. The Conservatives' vague answers will not do. We need clear answers. Hon. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa—Vanier, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, first I would like to share a comment and then I have a question. I hope that we will be able to debate the content of the bill introduced by my colleague from Malpeque one day here in Parliament. Either the government should take it and introduce it itself, or else the member should have the opportunity to do so.

I think that that will be the time to debate the content. We will have to take into account both sides: the right to privacy and our national security needs. As for the government's refusal to move forward right now, I would like to hear my NDP colleague's thoughts about the fact that this bill was the result of a non-partisan, all-party initiative that concluded in 2004 that parliamentary oversight was necessary. Since then, wireless technology has evolved a great deal and become increasingly present in the Canadian market.

As the member said, Canada is one of the first countries in the world to use this technology, which is why it is so easy for agencies like CSEC to collect information from the public. Does my colleague not think it is even more important to create a parliamentary oversight mechanism now than it was in 2004? Ms. Rosane Doré Lefebvre : Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ottawa—Vanier for his question.

He touched on a very important aspect of today's debate, which is the right to privacy and the fact that the Conservative government is dragging its feet in this debate and has not proposed anything meaningful for years. As I mentioned, my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville introduced Bill C-475 on privacy protection. I know that my colleague opposite voted in favour of this bill, which proposed greater structure and some privacy safeguards. We on this side of the House have noticed a flagrant lack of privacy regulations, and the fundamental rights of freedom and national security are being violated.

I find it sad to see that the Conservatives on the other side of the House do not want to create all-party structures and that they are trying to shut down the debate on the right to privacy. [ English ] Ms. Roxanne James (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, the motion today calls for a national security committee of parliamentarians. This committee would be made up of NDP, Liberal, and Conservative members of parliament. I am a Conservative member who has been here for about two and a half years.

I want to make sure that our bills are put forward and debated vigorously in the House. Some people like to say that we are non-partisan, but obviously we are all here to represent our parties and our own beliefs, ones that I stand firmly behind. When I think of the motion calling for a national security committee of parliamentarians to oversee our national security agencies, I get a bit concerned that there may be some partisanship involved in this committee. An hon. member: You think? Ms. Roxanne James: Yes, you think?

Currently we have robust arm's-length oversight committees in place to oversee our national security agencies, and they are doing a great job. They review things regularly and have come back indicating that there are no issues with regards to privacy concerns. Does the member believe that a committee to oversee our national security agencies would be better if it were bipartisan, or does she believe that it should be at arm's-length instead? (1135) [ Translation ] Ms. Rosane Doré Lefebvre : Mr. Speaker, I will try to be quick. It is too bad because I had a lot of things to say.

First of all, I would like to thank the parliamentary secretary for her comments. I am pleased to see that she is happy to debate the Conservatives' bills. It would be nice to see the Conservatives rise more often to talk about bills. I wanted to say that similar bills have been introduced before by Liberal and Conservative governments. She should perhaps look at her party's policies. Our allies have developed more solid parliamentary structures to look after national security. It is unfortunate that we have not done the same.

I also think it is unfortunate that we are not striving for a more engaging parliamentary debate on the issue. Mr. Marc Garneau (Westmount—Ville-Marie, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to talk about the extremely important motion on the privacy of Canadian citizens. I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra . Mr. Speaker, could you also give me a signal when I have only one minute left? I am particularly pleased to share the floor with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra and my colleague from Malpeque , who spoke earlier.

In December, all three of us were at a news conference when this issue came to light in Canada because of Edward Snowden's revelations. There was a possibility that Canada was spying on one of Brazil's ministries. At that time, we talked about the importance of exercising more effective control over our surveillance agencies to make sure that they stay within their mandates. [ English ] I would like to bring up the fundamental point of this debate and the motion we are talking about today. It has to do with something that is very dear to all Canadian citizens, their right to privacy.

Canadians care deeply about their privacy and they now have questions about whether it is being respected. I am delighted that the NDP will support our motion today. I know that the Conservatives claim to care about the privacy of Canadian citizens. I remember when they decided they were going to get rid of the long form questionnaire. I remember in particular a comment by the Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time that the government had no business knowing how many bathrooms someone might have in their house.

They claim to be very concerned and, in fact, got rid of the compulsory long form census because they say they respect the privacy of Canadian citizens. I share that belief. At this point, however, questions are being raised and Canadians, particularly in this age of Wi-Fi and the Internet, have reason to question whether or not their privacy is being respected. Many Canadians come from countries that were authoritarian and know very well what can happen when their privacy is not respected.

The Edward Snowden allegations that started a while back and touched on Brazil, the G8, and G20 summits, and more recently the possibility that Wi-Fi traffic is being monitored at a couple of Canadian airports to gather metadata have shaken the confidence of Canadians. From the outset, the work that CSEC does is critically important for Canada's security. Let there be no doubt about that. One of its roles is to protect us against the possibility of terrorism, especially after 9/11. As a result of that, we expect it to be monitoring certain things.

However, at the same time, we want to make sure that CSEC respects privacy and that it never monitors Canadian citizens. That is a very important point, the fact that we must ensure that while it carries out its very important and difficult task, CSEC stays within the bounds of its mandate. In the end, it all comes down to the issue of the

interpretation of this metadata. Many people are hearing for the first time about metadata and are wondering what it is. It sounds rather complicated and I am not exactly sure what it means. Yesterday, the national security advisor, along with the head of CSEC and CSIS, assured Canadians that their privacy was being respected and that there was no monitoring of Canadians. What they did say, however, very clearly, was that they are gathering metadata.

In fact, the purpose of the period during which they were looking at Wi-Fi traffic in the two airports was to try to obtain a picture of the kind of traffic that occurs in a busy public space where Wi-Fi exists, as this would help them perform their task.

(1140) What is metadata? Metadata, according to Mr. Rigby, the national security advisor, is "data about data". Some people may say it does not sound as if it is very intrusive of their private lives, but let me give the House an important example. If a person is being monitored and we discover that every weekday around 7 o'clock in the evening, he or she phones the same number, that information can be extremely useful in knowing something about that person. We know that every day around 7 o'clock he or she phones a particular number.

In addition to that, the identity of the person being called can also be worked out. Another very good example is where a person phones someone several times in a particular week, with the number happening to belong to an oncologist. So there is a very good possibility that in this particular case the person making the phone call has cancer. That is an extremely personal bit of information. I do not want people to know that I have cancer, if I have it, unless I choose to share that information. I do not want people to know where I am in Canada at any particular time, unless I choose to share that information.

I do not want people to know whom I am contacting on the Internet, unless I choose to share that information. Never mind whether or not the content of my messages or my cellphone calls is not known, the fact that people know that I am phoning or using the Internet to contact particular people at certain times is very private information, and Canadians share the belief that it is private information. So what do we do about this? We have come up with a very practical suggestion in the Liberal Party. We believe that having one retired judge, who I am sure is working very hard on this, does not cut it.

In this particular case, we are calling for the creation of a parliamentary oversight committee, which can proactively look at what is going on within CSEC to ensure that the organization is staying within its mandate. [ Translation ] This idea goes back to 2005. This is not the first time it has been brought up.

It was proposed in 2005 and it had the unanimous consent of all the parties, because we recognized the importance of keeping a closer watch over our surveillance agencies. [ English ] That unanimous support in fact came from people like the current Minister of Justice and the current Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance . It came from you, Mr. Speaker, at that time and from the NDP and the Bloc. It came from people who examined this and recognized its importance. We have tried, as Liberals, four times through private members' bills to bring this back.

Currently, we are hoping that the motion today will be supported by all parties and that the bill being proposed by my colleague from Malpeque will have an opportunity to go forward. Our partners in the Five Eyes have quite clearly signed up to this. We as a Parliament of Canada need to do the same thing. Let me conclude by quoting my colleague from Malpeque , who put out a press announcement recently to say that there was an urgent need for a parliamentary committee mandated to review the legislative regulatory policy and administrative framework for agencies responsible for national security in Canada.

He said: This proactive oversight of all aspects of national security handled by the federal government will fill a gap addressed by Canada’s major allies long ago—namely providing oversight and accountability for agencies that have functioned in nearly complete secrecy.

(1145) Ms. Roxanne James (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I am going to go back to a similar question that I asked the NDP member previously. This bill is calling for a parliamentary committee to oversee our national security agencies. The member himself in his speech indicated that it is what he would like to see. I guess he believes that a potentially partisan committee made up of parliamentarians is better than an independent arm's-length body to oversee our national security agencies.

Most Canadians would be a little bit concerned about that statement, but if that is in fact what he believes, I wonder what he is suggesting about SIRC, the intelligence review committee that is currently in place and oversees CSIS and the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner. If he believes that a group of parliamentarians from the House is better to oversee national security, is he saying that the work of these organizations lacks any merit? Mr. Marc Garneau : Mr. Speaker, I recommend that the parliamentary secretary read Bill C-551 .

We are not talking about a partisan parliamentary committee but a committee composed of members from all parties, both MPs and senators. If the bill goes forward, we are certainly open in committee to looking at what the optimal structure of this would be. This is not another standing committee; this is a special committee. These people would be very carefully chosen and held to secrecy for life. This is a very important and delicate undertaking they would be doing. I am sure the other countries in the Five Eyes are very proud and happy with the work being done by their respective agencies.

Nevertheless, they have felt the need to have additional oversight, and that is not calling into question any aspect of the competence of the organizations themselves. It is just to ensure on an ongoing, proactive basis that CSEC, CSIS, and the RCMP are sticking within their mandates so that we can be sure they are doing their job while also respecting the law. [ Translation ] Mr. Guy Caron (Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Westmount—Ville-Marie for his very interesting speech. I believe that this debate is being followed closely by many Canadians.

It shows the importance of the House of Commons as an institution responsible for overseeing very sensitive activities concerning information gathering and privacy. I would like to ask my colleague to comment on the fact that, in 2005, under the Liberal government, the defence minister at the time, Bill Graham, gave CSEC a very similar directive to that of the Conservative government, which allowed the collection of metadata.

I would also like to know whether the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie believes that adequate controls were put in place at that time and, in light of that experience, what mechanisms should be applied to the case before us today?

(1150) Mr. Marc Garneau : Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. I do not know the specifics of the decision made in 2005. However, the Liberal government was in power that year and the other parties all agreed to create that parliamentary committee. This parliamentary committee should be created in order to understand what metadata is and to determine whether this is really a breach of Canadians' privacy, among other things. In some circumstances, the minister has the authority to have Canadians closely monitored for security reasons.

Once again, it is important that we have a parliamentary committee, not just to monitor CSEC's activities, but also to be aware of the minister's decisions and determine whether he is acting responsibly when he authorizes an exception to the prescribed rules. [ English ] Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of our Liberal motion today. Canadians understand and appreciate that part of their government's responsibility is to defend the realm and protect Canadians and our interests against terrorism and cyberattack.

Part of the way we do this is through intelligence gathering. However, the way we gather intelligence has changed dramatically in recent years, and our structures for protecting privacy need to catch up. I have no doubt that the men and women of Canada's security and intelligence agencies carry out their duties honourably. I do not doubt their loyalty or their commitment to the safety of our citizens. However, their job is hard and the world has changed. The very nature of national security threats facing open and democratic nations like Canada have changed.

Gone are the days when our greatest security threats were adversarial states such as existed during the Cold War. Today, intelligence agencies operate in a rapidly evolved field of information gathering, where having and analyzing as much data as possible is essential. This need to collect data can potentially conflict with our fundamental right to privacy.

We have seen this several times recently, including with the Communications Security Establishment of Canada, an agency that is part of National Defence, which has been collecting the personal information of Canadian travellers who were transiting through Canadian airports. The member for Malpeque did a good job of explaining why this is a concern. This data was used to help conduct surveillance operations for weeks afterward and to track people's activities for the weeks before the data was collected through Wi-Fi users in the airport. That is seemingly a contradiction to CSEC's legal mandate.

This was done without a warrant. An analogy could be a government spy agency that begins to track individuals' mail, who is sending them mail, who they are sending mail to, where those letters are originating from, where they are sending their letters to, and where they are when they send those letters. It tracks people's mail, steams open the envelopes, but claims it is not reading the contents or opening it up and pulling out the letter. I do not think Canadians are comfortable with the idea of that kind of tracking.

That kind of intrusion on the liberty and privacy of citizens is counter to the principles of our fundamental democracy. Therefore, to balance the need to acquire data and respect people's privacy and liberty creates a pressing need for a robust oversight of CSEC. It also means we need to have a detailed discussion about how we balance those interests in our society.

That is the importance of our motion. (1155) [ Translation ] That the House express its deep concern over reports that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has been actively and illegally monitoring Canadians and call on the government to immediately order CSEC to cease all such activities and increase proper oversight of CSEC, through the establishment of a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians as laid out in Bill C-551,

An Act to establish the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians. [ English ] It is unfortunate that the government appears to want to block proper oversight, such as is being proposed in Bill C-551 , put forward by the member for Malpeque . What is happening in Canada is unique in the western world. Ann Cavoukian, the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, talked about the response by the United States president, which demonstrates the kind of free, open, and candid discourse that society is undertaking on the subject of surveillance powers of intelligence agencies.

However, while the U.S. is doing that, to quote the commissioner, “...our government is maintaining a wall of silence around the activities of the...(CSEC). This silence is putting our freedoms at risk”. I ask why the Minister of National Defence is not listening to those who are raising red flags and sounding alarms about this intrusion and this wall of secrecy. CSEC is an agency that is not being given proper direction by the government.

At the Senate committee hearing last night, the director of CSEC made it clear that, should instructions by the government come that there should be a proper oversight and review by some other mechanisms, it would accept that. He was not arguing against the need for that; he was saying there was no political direction to do that. So that is a failure on the part of the Prime Minister and his defence minister. Canadians need to have faith in their government that is elected to serve and represent them; so this is an issue of Canadians' trust in the government.

I believe Canadians want to be free of unwarranted intrusion into their personal affairs. Right now they cannot trust that this is the case. One of the senators at the committee hearing last night said that not only do Canadians need to trust but they need to be able to verify that the trust is warranted, and right now they are not able to verify and not able to have trust. The Conservative members of Parliament in this debate have again and again repeated the idea that there is robust oversight, but that is simply not the case, and a range of people with expertise in this matter have commented on that.

One of them is Dr. Wesley Wark, who is a professor at the University of Ottawa. I am going to read a few comments that he made with respect to our current oversight situation, which is the CSEC commissioner. According to Dr. Wark, who is an academic analyst on national security and cybersecurity issues, there has been no commitment on the part of the commissioner to conduct a specific investigation into the airport Wi-Fi project that is so concerning. The commissioner did not indicate the timeline for his “ongoing review of CSEC”.

It has taken three years for the CSEC commissioner to conduct his first full review of metadata activities. That is three years, and it is important to note that this was never discussed in the commissioner's public annual report. According to Dr.

Wark: The CSEC Commissioner's inability to bring any urgency to an investigation of metadata collection, his apparent unwillingness to engage in an targeted investigation of the Airport Wi-Fi project, alongside an abysmal prior failure to challenge CSEC's desire to keep even the term metadata secret, considerably (if not completely) undermines the value of that office as a watchdog.

This is not a robust watchdog. This is a starving, ineffective watchdog. That is why the B.C. Civil Liberties Association has filed a lawsuit, the first yet on this issue, because it is concerned that “...unrestrained government surveillance presents a grave threat to democratic freedoms”. It is filing this lawsuit to force the government to enact specific safeguards to protect the rights of Canadians. These are the very kinds of safeguards that our motion is proposing and that the member for Malpeque 's bill would provide. According to the B.C.

Civil Liberties Association, “There is no court or committee that monitors CSEC's interception of...private communications and metadata information, and there is no judicial oversight of its sweeping powers. CSEC's operations are shrouded in secrecy”. It is ironic, as the member for Mount Royal noted, that the government cancelled the long form census based on supposed privacy concerns, a critical tool for understanding the demographics of our country and yet is defending the secrecy of an organization that is affecting Canadians' privacy.

(1200) Most Canadians would be far more comfortable telling the government how many rooms they have in their house than having government tracking their smart phone data and location and following them for weeks. The government must listen to the concerns of the Canadians who want their agencies to respect the law and protect their privacy, and I call on all members to support this motion. Mr. James Bezan (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, CPC) : Mr.

Speaker, with all due to respect to my colleague from Vancouver Quadra , to suggest that the independent commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment is not qualified or not capable of carrying out his mandate is insulting. That individual is a supernumerary justice who has the skill, the ability, and the top-level security clearance to do the job of evaluating the activities of the Communications Security Establishment of Canada and to ensure that CSEC is operating within its mandate.

I also want to remind all members of the House that not only is the commissioner looking at the activities independently of CSEC but he is also ensuring that the laws of the land, like the Privacy Act, are respected. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has the capability to also do a study on the activities of CSEC and very well may be doing one. That is, again, part of the oversight we have here in Parliament with independent officers who report back to us here in Parliament. Ms. Joyce Murray : Mr. Speaker, once again, I did not hear much of a question in the member's comments. He likes the word “supernumerary”.

Perhaps he is so impressed with that word that he does not feel it necessary to have any actual mechanisms to ensure the independence of a commissioner who is appointed by a minister and responds to a minister—political people in the Conservative government—and has no report to Parliament that has not been abridged and condensed to the point where it says very little more than that it is operating within the law. That is not good enough for Canadians. They want to not just be able to trust these agencies; they want to be able to verify. There is no ability to do that.

The agency is being blocked by the current Conservative government and the Minister of National Defence . Mr. Murray Rankin (Victoria, NDP) : Mr.

Speaker, the member for Vancouver Quadra talks a lot about trust, and I understand that the model that has been proposed, which I support and the NDP supports, is that of a parliamentary oversight committee, such as the intelligence committee in the United States, made up of security-cleared parliamentarians; so people would trust that we would be able to hear the information that is often national-security sensitive and act accordingly and be better briefed than currently is the case. The Security Intelligence Review Committee is a model that presumably the current government has supported. It has appointed Mr.

Arthur Porter; that did not work out well. It appointed Mr. Strahl; he lobbies for energy companies and he is no longer there. Trust is indeed an important issue. Does the member believe that the failure of the current government to trust parliamentarians with security clearance is the reason why it is so adamantly opposed to doing what all of our allies do in this regard?

(1205) Ms. Joyce Murray : Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member reinforcing concerns about trust and the ability of Canadians to trust the government's agencies. My contention would be that this is part of an overall approach of the current government.

From the muzzling of scientists who produce research incompatible with the government's ideological goals, to spying on environmental groups that may disagree with the government's pet projects, to potentially removing some of Election Canada's oversight powers because the Chief Electoral Officer found the Conservatives guilty of election offences, the government has responded very consistently with a clear disregard for transparency, accountability, or respect for the rights of our citizens and the well-being of Canada's democracy. Mr. LaVar Payne (Medicine Hat, CPC) : Mr.

Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Northumberland—Quinte West . I am pleased to speak against the Liberal motion today. I would like to take a few moments to describe the many ways in which our Conservative government is working to protect Canada and Canadians against the very real threat of terrorism. In 2012, our government released Canada's first counterterrorism strategy called “Building Resilience Against Terrorism”.

This single comprehensive strategy guides the actions of more than 20 federal departments and agencies to better align them to prevent, detect, deny, and respond to terrorist threats. It speaks frankly about the terrorist threats that we face at home and abroad. In a resilient society, everyone, including governments, first responders, critical infrastructure operators, communities, and individuals, know what they need to do when faced with a terrorist attack, mitigating the impact and helping to facilitate a rapid return to ordinary life. First and foremost to the strategy's success is the element of prevention.

Preventing terrorist ideologies from taking hold of vulnerable individuals is the best scenario. The strategy also lays out how government organizations, including CSIS and CSEC, work every day to detect individuals and organizations who may pose a terrorist threat to deny terrorists the means and opportunities to carry out their attacks, and to respond to acts of terrorism in a manner that mitigates their efforts.

I am convinced that our strategy, successfully implemented by the exceptional men and women working in our national security departments and agencies, effectively addresses the threat of terrorism to Canada, its citizens, and its interests around the world. Without a doubt, Canada's success in remaining resilient in the face of terrorist threats depends on having an approach that is flexible, forward-looking, and adaptable to an evolving threat environment. However, one thing is clear: Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism.

That is why our government fulfilled its commitment to report annually on the evolving terrorist threat to Canadians and Canadian interests. The “2013 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada” examined the most critical developments in terrorism since the release of the counterterrorism strategy. It also identified some of the measures our government has taken to address these threats. The terrorist threats that Canadians face at home are most often connected with and inspired by developments that happen abroad.

As most Canadians already know, global violent extremist groups, such as al Qaeda, have been leading the terrorist threat to Canada for many years. This has not changed. Al Qaeda is weaker today than it once was, but it still poses a threat. It provides guidance to other terrorist groups, particularly its regional affiliates. These affiliates, including al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and Al Shabaab, all pose a threat to Canada. Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain interested in conducting international terrorist attacks.

Evolving conflicts abroad also continue to shape the nature of the terrorist threat to Canada. We continue to watch for developments abroad that may drive international and domestic terrorism. In Africa, for example, we have seen ongoing terrorist activities. Terrorists have attacked the Westgate Mall, in Nairobi. Growing terrorist violence threatens to spill across borders and undermine regional stability, prompting international efforts to counter local terrorist activities. We have seen recent terrorist bombings in Volgograd, Russia.

Syria has become both a major centre for terrorist activity and an emerging cause for global terrorist activity. Terrorist violence in Syria could spill across borders and lead to further regional instability. It is clear that Syria, as well as Iran, continue to provide state support for terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. While these developments take place far from Canadian shores, international events are often connected with terrorist threats here at home.

The successful Canadian arrest of individuals accused of terrorism offences demonstrates the effectiveness of the integrated national security enforcement teams, known as INSETs, working in major cities across the country. INSETs, led by the RCMP, are staffed by employees from CSIS, CBSA, and local law enforcement. Its ability to respond appropriately to threats to the security of Canada is informed, in part, by the work of CSIS and other members of the intelligence community.

(1210) This approach has greatly improved the ability of agencies to work together and has led to many successes. This includes the disruption of the plot to attack a VIA Rail passenger train in April, and the plot to attack the Victoria legislature on Canada Day. We must also deal with the reality that Canadians have travelled or attempted to travel abroad to become involved in conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere. In fact, the CSIS director spoke in the other place, just last evening, to discuss this issue. He pointed out that the number of Canadians fighting overseas is not insignificant.

This poses a risk to us at home because these radicalized individuals will eventually come back. This is why it is key to develop entry/exit information-sharing with allies, and why it was key to pass the Combating Terrorism Act. Both of these common-sense measures are, shockingly, opposed by the NDP. Let me be clear. The problems with citizens travelling overseas to fight is not unique to Canada. Other international allies each face similar challenges. It is clear that the global terrorist threat continues to shift and evolve and that international events can have a direct impact here at home.

While no government can prevent all terrorist activity from happening, we can take measures to counter the terrorist threat, whether it is a threat within Canada, support for violence abroad, or activities that undermine Canada's efforts to secure international peace and security. Canada is actively working to identify threats as early as possible, ensuring that robust and effective alerting systems are in place and sharing information appropriately and proactively within Canada with key allies and non-traditional partners.

While terrorist threats remain, we continue to see positive developments in our efforts to strengthen and build resilience to terrorist threats. Through successful domestic and international partnerships, strong legislative action, and with important work being conducted by the men and women in our national security departments and agencies, our government is taking the appropriate actions to protect Canadians and Canadian interests at home and abroad. Our counterterrorism strategy is working. We will continue to take action to keep the safety of Canadians as our top priority.

We will not undertake efforts to create duplicative processes to tie up front-line operators in red tape when they could be taking action to keep Canadians safe. [ Translation ] Mr. Raymond Côté (Beauport—Limoilou, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech, although we must admit, that approach contains some rather exaggerated elements. I would like to hear my colleague's response to the comments made by the former commissioner of Communications Security Establishment Canada, Justice Robert Décary.

Following a review presented in his 2012-13 annual report, he reached the following conclusion—which was very troubling considering his position: “After in-depth and lengthy review, I was unable to reach a definitive conclusion about compliance or non-compliance with the law.” Even the commissioner seems to have a very limited ability to determine what is happening, which is completely unacceptable. Would my colleague not agree that Communications Security Establishment Canada should at least be the subject of an independent review? (1215) [ English ] Mr. LaVar Payne : Mr.

Speaker, that being said, CSEC is prohibited from targeting the communications of persons in Canada, or Canadians anywhere, under this foreign intelligence and cyber protection act. The Privacy Act ensures that we do not get into individuals' information. That requires a court order. I believe the commissioner has already outlined that we are following the law, and that is important. Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, the member talked about not wanting to tie up the agencies in red tape.

I would suggest that the member and his government take note of a lawsuit that was filed in October, in the B.C. Supreme Court. It is the first one to challenge the legality of CSEC's spying activities against Canadians. It was filed by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and supported by OpenMedia.ca. This means that because there is such a vacuum of leadership by the Conservative government, the courts are going to be filling the gap, at public expense and with the red tape of fighting this out in court.

The lawyers on behalf of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association claim that unaccountable and unchecked government surveillance presents a grave threat to democratic freedoms. I think Canadians would agree that Canada is not a nation of secret laws. It is fundamental to the proper operation of our democracy that Canadians be able to access and understand the laws that impact their freedoms and their rights, and it is simply not enough for the government to ask Canadians to trust its spy agencies. We are not a society of blind faith.

We are a society of accountability, transparency, and free and open debate. My question is, why not engage in that debate to move forward in this complex terrain— The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin) : Order. The hon. member for Medicine Hat. Mr. LaVar Payne : Mr. Speaker, the member ought to know that we would not talk about cases that are before the courts. However, I can say that the commissioner has outlined specifically that no laws have been broken. We are following all the Canadian laws, particularly on privacy.

We understand that Canadians want to make sure their private matters are not interfered with by the government. Mr. Rick Norlock (Northumberland—Quinte West, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on this Liberal motion regarding the review of the Canadian national security and intelligence community. Keeping Canadian life and property safe from those who wish to harm us because of their hatred for our way of life is a key responsibility for any government. In this respect, our security and intelligence agencies perform a vital function. That is why agencies like CSIS were created.

However, we must have respect for core Canadian values such as privacy. That is why Parliament created the Security Intelligence Review Committee simultaneous to the creation of CSIS. The robust oversight mechanisms in place are an important part of safeguarding our freedoms. Let us look at the history of how this came about. Almost 30 years ago, Parliament passed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act on the basis of recommendations by the McDonald Commission. As an important part of this act, Parliament subjected CSIS to one of the most robust and comprehensive review regimes in the western world.

This was done because, even 30 years ago, the importance of independent review and maintaining Canadians' trust in our national security activities was well understood. There are many important checks and balances built into the system, including judicial authorization by a federal court, as well as by the Privacy Commissioner, Auditor General, and parliamentary committees. In fact, the director of CSIS appeared at the committee in the other place just last evening to discuss important issues. The CSIS act clearly outlines the requirement for judicial control of specific activities.

Even a cursory look at the relevant provisions reveals the level of rigour required for CSIS to seek or renew a warrant before the Federal Court. It should also be noted that CSIS activities can be, and frequently are, reviewed by the Privacy Commissioner, who can issue public recommendations. In addition to these measures, SIRC plays a critical role in the overall system of accountability. Specifically, SIRC independently reviews CSIS activities to ensure they are conducted legally, effectively, and appropriately. SIRC is also charged with examining complaints from the general public.

SIRC has access to everything it needs to thoroughly carry out its functions. As members will know, SIRC produces an annual report, which is tabled in Parliament. This report describes world trends and summarizes reviews by SIRC of specific CSIS activities. The fact that review topics are varied is a testament to SIRC's independent reviews that are launched at its discretion and have delved into issues related to CSIS' operational policies as well as its compliance with ministerial direction and Canadian law. SIRC's annual report also presents any findings or recommendations.

All combined, SIRC's report gives Parliament and the public valuable insight into the activities of CSIS and the environment in which it operates. Each year, the director of CSIS must submit a classified report on its operational activities to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness . This is not only an exercise in ministerial accountability, but also one of independent review, as a copy of CSIS' classified report is reviewed by SIRC, line by line. In fact, SIRC must submit a certificate to the minister to attest to the extent to which it is satisfied with a classified report.

This exercise has been a requirement of CSIS since its inception. Most recently, SIRC found that CSIS' classified report to the minister was a “useful and comprehensive review of the whole of CSIS operation”. Importantly, SIRC also found that the operational activities of CSIS, as they are described in the director's report, did not contravene the CSIS act or ministerial directives, nor did they involve the unreasonable or unnecessary use of the service's powers. Quite simply, SIRC, an independent committee with full access to relevant information, found that CSIS is operating within the rule of law.

All of these activities undertaken by CSIS in the pursuit of its mandate are consistent with Canadian laws and values.

(1220) In light of the recent controversy, it is also important to distinguish between the mandates and the laws governing intelligence activities in Canada and the United States. Many have been too quick to assume that the U.S. intelligence agencies' activities described in media reports are akin to those conducted by CSIS in Canada. This is simply not the case. CSIS warrants authorized by the Federal Court do not allow mass surveillance of Canadians, and CSIS does not engage in such activities. Importantly, SIRC did not suggest anything to the contrary in its recent annual report.

CSIS warrants are directed against specific individuals who pose a threat to the security of Canada, a threshold that is clearly articulated in the CSIS Act. Discussions surrounding review and process are important, but we need to keep these issues in context. CSIS exists to help protect Canada's national security and to advance our interests in a world where threats from abroad and at home are intertwined in very complex ways. I remind members that just this year, the RCMP, aided by CSIS intelligence, made arrests in two high-profile bomb plots.

One was to destroy rail lines in Niagara Falls, and the other was to cause mayhem and death at a Canada Day celebration in Victoria, British Columbia. These threats are real, and the men and women of CSIS work every day to ensure that they do not materialize. In any debate on review, I hope we would always keep in mind Canada's national security, as it remains the pre-eminent role of any country to keep its citizens safe and secure from threats and physical harm. However, that does not seem to be the case here today. Let us look at the facts.

The member for Malpeque , who brought forward today's motion, was the minister responsible for national security, and neither he nor his Liberal government brought this proposal for increased parliamentary oversight into force. That may be because it was, in fact, the first government to authorize the use of metadata, which it now conveniently opposes. In fact, his Liberal government introduced a similar proposal but never brought it forward for debate.

The NDP is so wrong on national security issues that it voted against the Combating Terrorism Act, which makes it an offence to go overseas to receive terrorist training. Our Conservative government will not support this motion, as it seeks to create needless duplication of efforts.

(1225) Hon. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, I have to laugh, because there seems to be, by some members on the government side, a bit of an attack on the member for Malpeque. That is fine. It does not bother me much. However, let us clear up the facts for the member for Northumberland—Quinte West .

The government that asked for an all-party committee, which was made up of all parties, and I have its report here, “Report of the Interim Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security”, and the minister of public security at the time did, in fact, introduce government legislation to have a proper oversight committee. I listened to the parliamentary secretary earlier, and I wondered whether the theme would continue. The Conservatives try to make this look like a partisan issue.

There was a time, and this was when this committee came into being, that parliamentarians worked in a non-partisan sense for the good of all Canadians. I would say to the member for Northumberland—Quinte West that this is not a partisan issue. This is not an issue to undermine our security agencies, which are doing a good job. The idea behind this motion is to have the government and Parliament act responsibly to ensure that Canadians' privacy is protected. What does the member see wrong with that? Mr. Rick Norlock : Mr.

Speaker, I will tell you some of the things I find wrong with a lot of the statements that come from across the way. Before this government came to power in 2006, the previous government said that it would do a lot of things. There was a plethora of things they would have or could have done and now, perhaps, should have done. The actual fact is that for the last 30-plus years, we have had in this country one of the most robust oversight systems in the western world.

To my knowledge, there has been no proven time when the oversight committees have found that CSIS, in any serious, significant way, has compromised Canadian citizens. It has followed the act. We have seen it time and time again. Last night, in the other place, as I just mentioned in my speech, the three people responsible for those entities appeared before a Senate committee. They answered every question honestly and with the greatest amount of detail possible, because we are dealing with matters of national security. Liberals said that they were going to do it or they should have done it.

Canadians know how long they were in office. They did not do it, and now they are trying to do it through the back door. There is no reason for that. Mr. Tyrone Benskin (Jeanne-Le Ber, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, throughout this whole debate, we have been hearing, basically, that it ain't broken, so what do we need to fix? We seem to be missing the overall question. The event that spurred this motion and debate happened just this January. We are hearing constant references to the commissioner and what the commissioner ruled last year, in 2012, and 16 years ago, and so forth. What I would like to know is this.

Based on the information that came out about activities this past January, what is the commissioner doing and what is the government doing in terms of verifying and regulating this situation with regard to spying on Canadians?

(1230) Mr. Rick N