Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my friend and hon. colleague, who is now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety. I certainly hope that his experience as parliamentary secretary for public safety will not be as frustrating as it was to be parliamentary secretary for democratic institutions. I highly doubt that the government plans to pull the plug on this legislation in the next 24 hours, so it is bound to be a bit more rewarding.

All levity aside, I support this bill. It is an important piece of legislation. It is absolutely the case that when Mr. Justice O’Connor and others testified in hearings on Bill C-51 in the 41st Parliament, the failure of Canadian governments over time to have parliamentary oversight of security operations and security entities was drawn to our attention numerous times. He quoted Craig Forcese, who is one of Canada’s leading experts, as is Kent Roach. They would prefer to see additional improvements to this bill, as would I, but I appreciate that important amendments were accepted at committee.

Would the parliamentary secretary be able to give us an update on what is being done to remedy the egregious multiple affronts to security and safety in Canada that came forward in Bill C-51? I opposed Bill C-51, not primarily because it offended Canadian civil liberties, although it does, but because it created silos in the views of people like Mr. Justice O’Connor, where CSIS would have information and have no obligation to share it with the RCMP and no obligation to share it with CSEC. Really, Bill C-51 makes us less safe, and the faster we can get rid of all of its various elements, potentially other than part 2, the better off we will all be.

Mark Holland – Ajax, ON

Mr. Speaker, I share my hon. colleague’s concerns. Before I address the concerns as they relate to Bill C-51, I will speak to the bill that is in front of us, Bill C-22. It is important to note that there would be a five-year mandatory review. While we are ahead of the Commonwealth and while we think, after the committee’s recommendations and the listening that we did across the country, that we have a very good bill, there is a mandatory review process to make sure we could look at how effective this committee is being and how we could improve it. We do not hold this out as perfection, but we do feel that this is the right place to start.

On the issue of changes and when we can expect them, the committee at this very moment is considering a report on the security and intelligence framework. We want to hear from that committee. It has done incredibly important work. It has heard from witnesses across the country. That committee report is going to be a very important input into the minister’s overall process on responding. We have very clear platform commitments on what we feel needs to be changed and improved to get right that simultaneous work that needs to be done to protect Canadians and also to ensure that their rights are also protected.

The committee report is coming out. I would expect action by the government very shortly thereafter, informed by that process.

The post Parliament: Question on C51, C22 and the Parliamentary Security Committee appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-22. I had not thought that we would see government amendments at report stage that undo a lot of the good work that has been done by the committee.

I approach this issue by first saying I support the creation of a national security committee of parliamentarians. I learned a great deal about the intelligence business, the security business, and where Canada stands within our Five Eyes partners, in the efforts to fight Bill C-51 in the last Parliament. I still hope that the review that is being undertaken right now by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Minister of Justice will lead to massive changes in the five different bills, and others, that were amended through that omnibus bill known as Bill C-51, which set up CSIS, for the first time since its creation, as a body that can “disrupt” thoughts, act as having a kinetic function, as the experts call it.

There is nothing right now within our security agencies that ensures that there is any oversight, unlike our other Five Eyes partners, as the hon. government House leader mentioned. We do not have any oversight for a number of the bodies at all. We have no oversight for CSIS. There had been oversight of CSIS up until the moment of omnibus Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012, which eliminated an adviser to the Minister of Public Safety to warn him or her if CSIS was going amok. That position was eliminated, so there is no oversight of CSIS; rather, there is review of CSIS. There is no oversight of the RCMP; rather, there is review of the RCMP. There is neither oversight nor review of the Canada Border Services Agency. For the Communications Security Establishment Canada, which is a very strange body that collects and downloads massive amounts of metadata, there is neither oversight nor review.

We have all of these different intelligence agencies, therefore, it is of critical importance that we do two things. We must rein in and undo the damage and the potential chaos created for security agencies by Bill C-51. I say this parenthetically. I want to get to Bill C-22. However, I need to say that my opposition to what was done in the 41st Parliament in what was known as Bill C-51 was not exclusively with respect to concerns about civil liberties. Those are concerns, but I have heard from security experts in the course of a review of that bill. It is clear to me that, failing to ensure coordination between and among all of these agencies, while giving CSIS the right to be active in kinetic operations, to be able to have CSIS offer people they are surveilling basically a get-out-of-jail-free card, a prospective guarantee that they will never be arrested or put into the judicial system, without any alert to the RCMP that this has happened, the one hand will not know what the other is doing. The creation of the national security committee of parliamentarians will not address that threat, although we will have to address this concern. It has been one that has been well known since the inquiry into the Air India disaster where if there had been coordination enforced between the different security agencies, that disaster, the single largest terrorist act on Canadian soil ever, could have been avoided. That was certainly the opinion of the Air India inquiry.

Coming back to Bill C-22, I support the creation of a committee of parliamentarians. However, I am baffled by the changes that have just taken place. I turn to the leading Canadian experts in this, Kent Roach and Craig Forcese, professors of law, both of whom played a role in the Air India inquiry. They are the authoritative experts to whom I turn. Certainly, Professor Craig Forcese is baffled by the limitation on what parliamentarians will be allowed to know. I mentioned in my question earlier to the government House leader that these restrictions do not apply to the people who serve on the Security Intelligence Review Committee, SIRC, to which civilian non-elected people are appointed. For the purpose of pointing out that the appointment process can have gaps with respect to security, let us not forget that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed the now late committed fraudster Arthur Porter as the chair of SIRC. Arthur Porter did not have the restrictions that Bill C-22 would now put on parliamentarians, who are elected, who take an oath, and who have an understanding of their responsibilities.

My amendment to the bill is to delete section 12, which is the section that limits the MPs’ access to parliamentary privilege. It is what Craig Forcese has called the triple lock on what MPs and senators are allowed to know.

Parliamentarians sitting on this committee have already sworn allegiance to Canada. They will go through security checks. The way the bill is currently written, it is not as though there is no check on their access to information or risk of their revealing information. The Canada Evidence Act would apply, section 38. Even as these government amendments are rolling forward, Professor Forcese has noted that it would be probably better to rely on court and the Canada Evidence Act than on these very restrictive moves in terms of what parliamentarians can know, an overly generous discretion on the point of what ministers can withhold, as well as getting rid of what was a very good amendment achieved in committee of giving the committee subpoena powers.

I have to say that it is just simply baffling that the government has taken such a restrictive view on what parliamentarians can be allowed to know. I will just note that this is from an article by Professor Forcese titled, “Stronger Bill C-22 Goes Back to the House”. This was before the government amendments came forward. He noted that, “C-22 committee members will be surrendering parliamentary privileges and will be permanently bound by secrecy under the Security of Information Act (and therefore subject to criminal sanction for violating secrecy rules).”

I think the government, with all due respect, has overreacted to very good amendments that were passed by the committee, and this is a larger point as well. We are often told in this place that we should rush legislation through second reading so that it can go to committee where the committee will do the good work. We now have a fair litany of times where the Liberal government, with its majority, has decided to ignore the good work of committees.

The first was, of course, the committee that dealt with medically assisted death. That advice was completely overlooked in the drafting of Bill C-14. We have the committee work, on the committee on which I served, the Special Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform, and that is a very sad story because we need to get back to that, but very good work was done.

For the first time since 1867, when the British North America Act said Canada will use the voting system from Westminster until such time as its Parliament chooses its own voting system, we had Parliament recommend a voting system and a way forward, and that was rejected. Now this committee’s work has been rejected and, I think, hastily.

There is a way forward here. There is an appropriate balance. I do believe that the parliamentary committee struck that balance, and it is really important to remember that what the committee is looking at is already protected in many ways.

The U.K. parliamentary committee has never had a problem with breaching secrecy. One of the experts who testified in Bill C-51, Joe Fogarty from U.K. MI5, testified that there just simply were not problems. Parliamentarians instructed with the duty to maintain confidentiality have done so.

I also point out the precedent that the New Zealand Parliament has a very similar committee, and the New Zealand members of Parliament who serve on that committee do not have to surrender parliamentary privilege. It is explicitly preserved under the New Zealand model.

It leaves one wondering why the government has chosen to undo the good work of committee, further undermining the proper role of legislated deliberation in committee coming back to this place at report stage, doing serious damage to the work that was done by the committee, leaving, I fear, greater uncertainty as to how the committee will function and still wondering why is it that in taking measures to restrict the information that parliamentarians have, the independent expert national security review bodies, SIRC and the CSE commissioner, are not given the same set of handcuffs.

I do not think it makes sense. I urge the government to reconsider and accept my amendment.

Kevin Lamoureux – Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words the leader of the Green Party has put on the record, and understand her concerns, but I would like to emphasize that this is important. As the government House leader has put on the record, Canada is now going to have this parliamentary oversight committee. The other countries associated with the Five Eyes, U.S.A., England, Australia, and New Zealand, already have a parliamentary oversight committee, so this is a very strong, positive step forward.

Within the legislation there is accommodation for us to review it. Would she not agree it is absolutely critical that as we move forward we get it right? There is always going to be room for improvement in the future. Even though there might be a sense of disappointment from some members of the House, there will be opportunities for us to review it. Would she not agree that the legislation being proposed through amendment is good legislation in its own right?

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset of my speech, I believe the creation of a national security committee of parliamentarians is a good step forward. I lament that what has been done today with government amendments at report stage undoing good work at the committee is both regrettable and unnecessary.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault – Sherbrooke, QC

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

With regard to the work that was done in committee, it is not unprecedented, but it is still rather rare for such changes to be made when a bill comes back to the House after being examined in committee.

We are talking about a committee with a majority of government members. I assume that they examined the bill in good faith. The committee proposed amendments to the bill to improve it. We expect the committees to improve bills when they examine them. I thought that that was what the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security did. However, when the bill came back to the House, the government undid most of the work that was done in committee.

Does the member think that government will show so little consideration for the work of committees going forward? What message does this send to all of the committees that examine government bills and that will be sending bills on other subjects back to the House?

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid it is a very bad signal.

I thank my colleague from Sherbrooke. I completely agree. Genetic discrimination is another example, and we are going to be voting on that soon.

It is very lamentable this pattern of changes to bills that have been reviewed by committee. As the member noted quite rightly, with the exception of the parliamentary committee on electoral reform, all of the committees I have already referenced had a majority of Liberals present. The Liberal members on the committee that studied Bill C-22 must be feeling as cut off at the knees as I was when the mandate letter for the minister of electoral reform was changed.

This is a place of deliberation, and preferably non-partisan, collegial deliberation. I am afraid the amendments to Bill C-22 put forward today at report stage at the larger level of abstraction on how we function as a parliament will be damaged.

The post Reflecting on C51, C22 and the Parliamentary Security Committee appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Ms. May submitted her response to Our Security, Our Rights: National security Green Paper, 2016 on Dec. 1. In it, Ms. May urges Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to make significant amendments to the controversial Act and repeal sections to protect the privacy of Canadians and curb secret police powers.

“With Bill C-51, the Harper administration converted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) from an intelligence-gathering agency into an active agency for ‘disruption of threats’ – creating a secret police agency,” Ms. May said. “There is no evidence that this seismic shift in intelligence services will improve the security of Canadians. In fact, legal experts have warned this Act will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

“C-51 also empowers CSIS to break laws in foreign countries with no review or warrant, and for CSIS agents to obtain secret warrants for Constitutional breaches within Canada. I urge the current administration to repeal the Anti-Terrorism Act and to renew its commitment to the hard-fought privacy rights of all Canadians,” Ms. May said.

The post Elizabeth May urges public to engage on Anti-Terrorism Act (C-51) changes appeared first on Elizabeth May.

The Liberals are pledging to get rid of any sections that are dangerous.  That’s pretty much the whole bill.  Here are its five parts and a rough sketch of what they do:

1) Information Sharing.  This is not about information sharing between spy agencies working together to stop criminal elements.  That would have been a good idea, but it’s not in C-51.  This ‘information sharing’ is about disclosing personal information about any Canadian to anyone who wants it.  This gives rise to the very scary deflection of those who seem to oppose civil liberties – “this does not worry me; I have nothing to hide.”  But you do have something to defend, and it’s called “your rights.”

2)  No Fly List Provisions. Pretty straightforward, but puts tremendous burdens on airlines to control the work of airport screening conducted by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) – a group they do not manage or control.  This could be put down to bad drafting, but the committee was in such a rush to pass the bill, they could not be bothered to fix this. It also does nothing to reduce the confusion and inconvenience suffered by people with names or dates of birth similar to suspected terrorists.

3) The Thought-Chill Section. This one purports to deal with the promotion of terrorism on websites.  It adopted the unheard of notion of promotion of “terrorism in general.”  No one knows what that means, but the descriptors are so over-broad they could catch up a single image – a raised fist, a Che Guevara poster – as promotion of terrorism in general.  The impact of the limitations on even personal communication exceed other similar laws such as those to deal with hate speech and pornography on the internet.  C-51 does not exclude private communication and as a result it could put a chill on speech intended to persuade someone not to engage in terrorism.  Anti-radicalization efforts would be compromised.

4) Part 4 is the most dangerous.  It transforms CSIS, an agency designed to collect intelligence and share it with those who can act, to an agency empowered to disrupt plots.  Worse it sets up a private hearing before a sole judge, with no public interest advocate present, to grant warrants for constitutional breach.  None of our 5-eyes partners and no democracy in the world has any such provision.

5) Then there’s the final section. It is so opaque and incomprehensible that it received virtually no attention in committee.  No witness spoke to it.  It changes the way information going to a judge in support of a Security Certificate is handled.  Only Prof Donald Galloway of University of Victoria Law School figured out what its purpose was – to allow the use of evidence obtained by torture to be submitted to a judge, without disclosing that fact.

While the previous government claimed that we needed the extreme measures of C-51 to keep us safe from terrorism, the truth is that C-51 makes us less safe.  The approach of C-51, empowering CSIS agents to take action to disrupt plots, allowing the various security agencies of Canada (RCMP, CSEC, CBSA and CSIS) to operate independently of each other runs directly contrary to the advice of public security experts and to the conclusions of the Air India Inquiry.  So too is the Arar Commission report ignored in setting up the “information sharing” provisions of Part 1 of the bill, allowing virtually any information about any Canadian to be shared between and among all federal agencies and departments, as well as with foreign governments.  None of this makes sense, and none of it makes us safer.

In fact, according to Joe Fogarty a security expert from the UK who testified at the Senate on C-51, the way the bill is structured makes Canada’s security law a “tragedy waiting to happen.”    Mr. Fogarty gave specific recent examples of times when CSIS knew the RCMP was tracking the wrong people, but opted not to tell them.  Or when CSIS discovered a terror group in formation and also decided not to tell the RCMP.  As former Supreme Court Justice John Major testified to the House committee on C-51, it is an absolute certainty that security agencies will not share intelligence.  Major put it down to “human nature.”  But when CSIS agents are also empowered to give out “Get out of Jail Free” cards to people they are tracking, without warning the RCMP, or when CSIS agents have the right to get an exemption from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in order to violate Canadian laws and/or Charter rights, the dangers of C-51 should be very clear.  The Liberals in opposition made a calculated political decision to vote for C-51.  Their most knowledgeable MPs, such as the Hon. Irwin Cotler, supported my opposition in the House and on the record.  They can leave in place and reform much of part 2; but the rest has to go.

Originally published in the Hill Times.

The post Repealing C-51 – an essential step in public safety and security appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“As I have said from the beginning, Bill C-51 will not make Canadians safer. Instead, it will confuse and confound law enforcement in the investigation of actual threats. This was also an opportunity for Senators to show their independence from the Prime Minister – they failed miserably.

“It is further deplorable that Stephen Harper rushed the bill through Parliament, using the politics of fear to ignore the legitimate criticisms of four former Prime Ministers, six former Supreme Court Justices, over 100 Canadian legal scholars, the AFN, and even from the National Firearms Association. He is trying to divide Canadians and silence opposition against his reckless economic policies.

“In the next election, Canadians will have an opportunity to express their feelings on the direction this country is heading. As the first Party to oppose this dangerous bill, the Green Party has been clear: We must build bridges of understanding with the Islamic community, improve mental health and addiction counselling, create reliable outreach programs to counter radicalization.”

“In the next Parliament, following the Conservative Party’s defeat at the polls, I am committed to repealing C51.”

The post Passage of Bill C-51 by Senate is Reckless appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“Tomorrow, Canadians will learn the details of the Auditor General’s report on Senate expenses. We will find that 30 Senators have filed inappropriate expense claims and nine have had their files referred to the RCMP. On the very same day, the Senate is also scheduled to vote on C-51 at third reading. The seconder of the bill in the Senate is under investigation by the RCMP and has resigned from the Conservative caucus. The eyes of Canadians will be on the Senate tomorrow. If, on the same day that we learn the details of the Senate’s culture of misusing public funds, the Senate votes for a bill as massive and controversial as C-51, the harm to the Senate’s reputation could be irreparable.

Our public institutions cannot function without public confidence. An institution that votes on a bill to violate the basic principles of our society on the same day that they are found to have routinely misused public funds is one that cares very little for its own credibility.

While I call on the Senate to reject C-51 in its entirety, the Senate must, at the very least, delay the vote on C-51 or risk falling further into a crisis of confidence.”

The post Elizabeth May calls on the Senate to Delay the Final Vote on C-51 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

It is ironic to revisit this question. Let me share with the House what transpired on February 6 in question period. I asked the hon. Minister of Justice about two aspects of Bill C-51. One aspect related to the use of the word “lawful” to qualify protests in describing those exclusions from activities that might be seen to threaten the security of Canada. The second dealt with the new powers given to CSIS agents.

I used the word “ironic” in referring to the first part, and it will become evident when I repeat my question of February 6 for the Minister of Justice relating to the use of the word “lawful”. I asked:

Will [the Minister of Justice] amend the act to ensure that non-violent civil disobedience is precluded from the ambit of the act?

To that part of my question, the Minister of Justice responded by saying:

…protections against lawful protest [are already] covered by the act. This would not pose a threat to individuals who engage in lawful assembly.

Of course, my question was very specifically about the question of non-violent civil disobedience and protest that was, by definition, not lawful.

Time has passed, and we are all aware that in the clause-by-clause study, it was the Conservative members of the committee who, anticipating that this was a simply untenable piece of legislation and that the language used in the section would not work, actually made the change that I was requesting. In a rare instance in this place, I can say that although the Minister of Justice on February 6 denied that there was any problem with the word “lawful”, in the end that word was removed to ensure, or at least to increase the likelihood, that people engaged in non-violent civil disobedience would not be caught up in the ambit of the act.

The second point remains quite relevant. The second question that I asked the Minister of Justice was:

…please explain to the House the purpose of part 4, clause 42, that in taking measures to reduce the threat to the security of Canada, CSIS shall not “violate the sexual integrity of an individual…”

I was cut off at the end of the question, but I was trying to ask him why such a section would be included. His response was to say that:

…the mandate of CSIS [is] not extending beyond its lawful authority and, of course, being subject to judicial oversight.

Let me pause for a moment on the Minister of Justice’s claim that Bill C-51 includes judicial oversight. It clearly does not. Many witnesses testified to this extent and to this point.

Judges are involved in the section that I related to the minister. Clearly, a judge is involved. A judge is allowed to grant a warrant to a CSIS agent to break domestic law or to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but that is not judicial oversight. It means there would be secret hearings at which only government would be represented. There would be no special advocates to ensure that the public interest is protected. Moreover, there would be no opportunity for the judge to ensure that the warrant that he or she would issue would be executed properly or appropriately. As well, there would be no ongoing oversight of any kind over CSIS’ activities, now that they have been empowered by the House but not yet by the Senate to engage in disruption activities, nor would there be any oversight over security operations, in particular between the RCMP, CSIS, CSEC, and Canada Border Services Agency.

This is where the risk lies. These different security agencies would operate without knowledge of what the others are doing, thereby making us less safe.

Colin Carrie: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak tonight and address some of the misinformation that is still being spread about this bill. There was a lot of unusual stuff in that question from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

The international jihadist movement has declared war on Canada. Canadians are being targeted by jihadi terrorists simply because these terrorists hate our society and the values that our society represents. Jihadi terrorism is not a human right; it is an act of war. That is why our government has put forward measures to protect Canadians against jihadi terrorists, who seek to destroy the very principles that make Canada the best country in the world in which to live.

That is also why Canada is not sitting on the sidelines, as some would have us do. Instead it is joining its allies in supporting the international coalition in the fight against ISIL.

The concept of a threat to the security of Canada is clearly defined in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act. That definition has been there since the legislation was originally passed, and the anti-terrorism act, 2015 does not change that definition at all.

In the CSIS act, threats to the security of Canada comprise terrorism, espionage, sabotage, and foreign influenced activities. They also include violent or unlawful covert acts to overthrow our constitutional system of government.

To further clarify misinformation being spread by the opposition continually, I want to remind members that CSIS is not permitted by law to investigate lawful advocacy, protest, and dissent. Under its new mandate, it would not be able to disrupt these activities either.

In fact, it is our police forces that work to protect our rights and freedoms and it is the jihadist terrorists who threaten our security and want to take away our freedoms.

While I am on my feet I will take this opportunity to ask the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands to do the right thing. Several days ago, that member made ridiculous comments about admitted terrorist Omar Ahmed Khadr. He pleaded guilty to heinous crimes, including the murder of American army medic, Sergeant Christopher Speer, and our Conservative government has vigorously defended against any attempt to lessen his punishment for these admitted crimes.

While the Liberal leader refused to rule out special consideration for this convicted terrorist and the NDP actively tried to force Canadian taxpayers to compensate him, we believe victims of crime, not the perpetrators, are the ones who deserve compensation.

That is why the member opposite must apologize to Tabitha Speer, who was left without a husband, and Tanner and Taryn Speer, who were left without a father at the hands of this cold-blooded terrorist.

Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has created the impression that the issues I raised about Bill C-51 are taken in ignorance or denial of the risk of jihadi terrorists. It is quite the contrary. My point, which he would have heard had he been listening, was that by creating disruption activities by CSIS agents without proper oversight and with no requirement for pinnacle control between CSIS and the RCMP, we are in fact leaving ourselves more vulnerable to such terrorist attacks.

The advice to the public safety committee from John Major, the former Supreme Court judge who oversaw the Air India inquiry, was very clear. He advocated for a national security adviser to operate in pinnacle control. However, witness after witness urged that we have some way to ensure that CSIS agents and RCMP officers connect with each other, that they know what each other is doing, and that someone provide oversight. That is what is missing in this bill. That is what makes it more dangerous.

Colin Carrie: Mr. Speaker, I would encourage the hon. opposition member to read Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism act, 2015. I find that reading the bill is the best way to find answers to these questions.

Once again, I will repeat that CSIS is forbidden from investigating or disrupting lawful advocacy, protest, and dissent.

This bill would also place firm limits on what CSIS could do to disrupt threats.

Canadians expect security and intelligence agencies to have the tools they need not just to gather information, but also to prevent threats from being carried out against Canadians and Canadian interests. They also expect politicians not to glorify terrorists.

The post Elizabeth May on Bill C-51 (Adjournment Proceedings) appeared first on Elizabeth May.

OTTAWA –The Green Party renews its call for legislation that will genuinely address Canada’s security needs, following a vote in favour of Bill C-51 at third reading by both Conservative and Liberal MPs.

“The fact is that this bill will not make Canadians safer – it will actually do the opposite and that’s the big lie being told to Canadians,” said Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada and MP (Saanich – Gulf Islands).

Ms. May continued, “We need outreach programs that counter radicalization of our youth, oversight over our intelligence agencies, and improved coordination between CSIS and the RCMP. If this bill becomes law before the federal election, we will ensure that it is an election issue that must be repealed by the next Parliament.”

Bruce Hyer, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Canada and MP (Thunder Bay – Superior North), added: “It is disappointing, but not surprising, that both the Conservative and Liberal leadership have decided to support this dangerous bill instead of considering legislation to make Canadians safer. Bill C-51 is a poorly drafted and risky bill disguised as effective security policy. Canadians are rejecting the politics of fear and asking for reasoned legislation. When will the Conservatives and Liberals listen to Canadians?”

The Green Party was the first federal party to oppose Bill C-51. Elizabeth May and Bruce Hyer proposed over 60 amendments based on expert testimony during committee hearings, more than either Opposition party sitting on the committee combined. Conservative MPs rejected every amendment proposed by the other parties and returned the bill to the House of Commons for report stage.

As Elizabeth May said in her speech at report stage on Bill C-51: “This is not an ordinary bill and this is not about politics anymore. This is about the soul of the country and a question of whether we understand what Canada stands for – for ourselves and what we represent around the world.”

The post Bill C-51 fails on both counts, making Canadians less safe and trampling on our rights appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Having participated in the debates on Bill C-51 from the very beginning, and having been the first member of Parliament to declare firm opposition to the bill, I am enormously concerned that we have made such little progress in addressing those concerns.

Let me acknowledge at the outset that one of the first concerns I had was the use of the word “lawful” as a modifier for protests and actions in civil society. That word “lawful” has been removed, and that is a small improvement, but it is insufficient to deal with the dangers that are embedded in this act.

Sitting here today through third reading, I heard a great number of propositions from Conservative members of Parliament. I have no doubt that they believe those propositions in their speaking notes to be true, but they are consistently repeating fallacies that I would like to try to explain and deconstruct so that Canadians will understand why these repeated bromides are just not true.

The three fallacies I want to address in the time I have are the following. One notion is that information-sharing, which is part one of the bill, is designed to ensure that our security services, which are the RCMP, CSIS, Canada Border Services Agency, and CSEC, the agencies of policing and intelligence, share information with each other. That was put forward earlier today several times, and that, indeed, is something that must be done, but this bill does not do it.

The second fallacy is that there is judicial oversight in this bill, because judges are involved in one section. I want to deal with that one as well.

The other fallacy is that the terrorism and propaganda sections in the amendments to the Criminal Code in this omnibus bill would actually make it more likely that we could stop youth from being radicalized.

There are some things that are not in this bill, and I want to mention those, because I do not understand why, if the Conservative Party and administration were serious about avoiding radicalization, they would not have followed the example of the United Kingdom. Not everything the U.K. is doing in this area do I endorse. However, in December of last year, the U.K. came up with a very specific anti-terrorism bill, with proactive programs to go into schools and prisons to find those people at risk of radicalization and stop them, prevent them, dissuade them. We know that the horrific attacks recently in Europe were by people who were allegedly radicalized in prison. Why do we have nothing in Canada to deal with that?

On the other hand, and I will get to this by starting with my last point first in terms of fallacies, the fallacy that the provisions in the act to take terrorist propaganda off the Internet will in fact stop radicalization needs to be understood in the context of a legal analysis of the words that are used. In the section of the bill that deals with the Criminal Code and what I now call the thought-chill section in part three of the act, what it says is that this bill would deal with something called promoting terrorism “in general”, which is not a defined term. Terrorism and general propaganda would include any visual image or general language.

Legal experts have looked at this and are concerned about a couple of things. This business of getting things off the Internet is not brand new to Canadians. We have hate speech laws that take things off the Internet, and we have child pornography laws that take things off the Internet. In what way have we constructed these provisions on terrorism in general that are fundamentally different from what we did about hate speech and child pornography, which I think we would all agree we take very seriously? Those kinds of laws have statutory defences, and more significantly, those laws specifically exclude private conversations. This one does not.

A person could be arrested and go to jail for a private conversation, for discussing things that, in general, and it is very vague, could be seen to promote terrorism or might be reckless as to whether they promoted terrorism or not. Legal experts are concerned that this chill provision would make it harder for a community to continue to converse with people who are at risk of radicalization to stop them, to argue with them, to say that their understanding of Quran is entirely wrong and that they need to talk about this.

By failing to exclude private conversations, we increase the likelihood that no one will reach out to that person, and we have no programs to deal with it.

The second fallacy, going backward, is the notion that we have judicial oversight. We have no judicial oversight in the bill. First, one needs to understand what oversight means. For this, I quote from a paper by the very dedicated law professors who took this bill on and have published hundreds of pages on it, Professor Craig Forcese and Kent Roach, who wrote the following:

“Review” and “oversight” are often confused. Oversight is a real-time (or close to real time) operational command and control strategy. Review is a retrospective performance audit….

We can say that SIRC provides review, although it has part-time employees and part-time members of the SIRC board and a very inadequate structure, but there is no oversight. We used to have an inspector general for CSIS. The inspector general for CSIS was done away with in omnibus Bill C-38 in spring of 2012.

The term “judicial oversight”, as used by members of the Conservative Party in this debate, is truly a perversion of reality. It is one of the most offensive sections of the whole bill. It is the notion in part 4 that CSIS agents with an operational role now, what Roach and Forcese describe as “kinetic” functions, would go from collecting the data in the information to taking up disruptive activities themselves. If they thought they were going to break a domestic law or violate the charter, they would go to a judge in a secret hearing and ask for permission to violate the charter. Do not take it from me. Every legal expert who testified before the committee said that this was outrageous and that no other government, and certainly none of our Five Eyes partners, allows their spy agencies to violate the Constitution through the simple expedient of going to a federal court judge in a secret hearing.

Earlier today, the parliamentary secretary for public safety ridiculed a speech from the official opposition when it pointed out that no one would be there. How could anyone be there, she asked.

That brings me to a brief from a group that was excluded from giving testimony to the committee, the special advocates. Special advocates are security cleared lawyers who operate in secret hearings, usually on security matters, to ensure that the public interest is protected. These experts who were not heard before committee did submit written evidence urging that the bill be changed to ensure that we do not have secret hearings with no one present other than the minister and CSIS.

This kind of secret hearing, by the way, is particularly egregious, because it is very unlikely to ever be subjected to judicial challenge. It would be hard to ever find out what happened in a secret hearing. It would not come before the Supreme Court of Canada and be struck down. Establishing standing, for instance, for a civil liberties organization to challenge this would be nearly impossible. That is why my position is so firm that the bill must be repealed if it should ever pass.

The last fallacy is the really large one. It is part 1, about information-sharing making us safer. First, another witness who was not allowed to testify was the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Daniel Therrien. He was very clear. He said that he was:

…concerned with the breadth of the new authorities to be conferred by the proposed new Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. This Act would seemingly allow departments and agencies to share the personal information of all individuals, including ordinary Canadians who may not be suspected of terrorist activities….

This is an important point. However, what the information-sharing section does not do, which is critical if we want safety, if we want to ensure that Air India does not happen again, is ensure that the spy agencies and the policing agencies are talking to each other so that they are not letting critical information be hoarded.

By the way, Joe Fogarty, a U.K. expert in security, testified before the Senate about recent examples, on the public record, where CSIS found out that the RCMP was tracking the wrong people and decided not to tell it, or where CSIS found out there was a training camp for terrorists and decided not to tell the RCMP. We need to ensure that these agencies share the information.

Part 1 of the bill would allow agencies of government to share information about individual Canadians, but there is no requirement and no pinnacle control to ensure that an RCMP operation tracking terrorists has information and the benefit of information from CSIS. As a structural matter, experts, from John Major, who was the chair of the Air India inquiry, to former heads of CSIS and former heads of SIRC, have all urged that the bill not be passed as is.

It is not too late. I ask my colleagues to vote no to Bill C-51.

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My question is related to Bill C-51 and the 94th application of time allocation. Earlier today, the government House leader made the absurd claim that I had not read Bill C-51, which I assure the House I have studied assiduously, and I doubt that the hon. member has.

I would like to know if the government House leader knows the difference between oversight, review, and issuing a warrant. They are three entirely different concepts. Bill C-51 does not contain any judicial oversight.

Peter Van Loan: Mr. Speaker, when we introduced this legislation and drafted it, we had a choice. We could ask politicians after the fact to examine the activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service with regard to its new powers, or we could give that power to judges to examine, in advance before acts were undertaken, whether they were appropriate, and if they thought so, to grant a warrant.

That is the choice we made. We chose to have judges review these matters rather than politicians.

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