C-51 less scary than it seems, PM’s security head says
The prime minister’s national security adviser says the government’s proposed new anti-terror legislation “seems more frightening than it really is,” and argues that new powers for Canada’s spy agencies are needed to help keep the country safe.
Richard Fadden told the Senate national security committee Monday that Bill C-51 is “an important step forward” that will help Canada keep up with tech-savvy terrorist recruiters who have become “very adept” at operating within Canadian society.
“The nature of the threat has really changed,” Fadden said. “The powers CSIS had in 1984 were fine … but it’s not the same kettle of fish anymore.”
The controversial legislation would allow Canada’s various law enforcement and spy agencies to share information between themselves. It also gives new powers to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to directly intervene in situations that could pose a threat to national security.
Fadden, a former CSIS director, was appointed as the prime minister’s top adviser on national security in January.
Currently, CSIS is only allowed to intervene if it discovers someone doing something criminal, Fadden said. But if, for example, it appeared that a young Canadian was talking in social media chat rooms and being courted by an extremist group such as Islamic State, Canada’s spies would have to sit on their hands and do nothing until that person actually broke the law, he said.
“You can’t talk to someone’s parents. You can’t talk to their imam. You can’t talk to their friends,” Fadden said. The new powers would change that, he added.
“Simply making it clear to a 21-year-old that somebody is ‘beaming in on them’” might be enough to deter them from violent extremism, Fadden said.
If the situation escalated to the point of criminal activity, the RCMP would be called in, he said.
Many critics of the bill worry that it goes too far in giving Canada’s spies the freedom to collect and share Canadians’ data and that it doesn’t include enough oversight.
Last week, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien, testifying before the same committee, said the bill’s measures are “excessive” and it could allow for “profiling and Big Data analytics on all Canadians.”
Michael Doucet, the executive director of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), said his agency needs the power to share information with the Communications Security Establishment commissioner, in order that both watchdog groups can do a better job ensuring Canada’s spies obey the law.
Fadden said the Canadian parliamentary system is not set up to require the kind of direct oversight that the U.S. or Australian systems have. In Canada, that oversight comes from the spy agencies reporting to the minister responsible for them, he said.
“There is a fair bit of review being done already,” and whether more is needed is “somewhat above my pay grade,” he said.
He mentioned the $12-million budgetary bump for SIRC that was announced in last week’s federal budget and said that there already is some sharing of information between that office and the CSE.
He also said that, according to the act, any action CSIS takes that infringes Canadians’ rights requires a warrant and must be “reasonable” compared to the severity of the threat it’s meant to counter.
“You’ll probably end up with something that’s pretty reasonable in the end,” he said.