Senators urged to OK security review body
Creating committee was a key promise in Trudeau campaign
After more than a decade of delay and second thoughts, Canada is on the verge of getting a committee of MPs and senators that can review sensitive intelligence and national security operations — but the enabling legislation still has one final hurdle to clear.
A Senate committee has been holding lengthy hearings to get Bill C-22 passed into law before the summer recess, despite lingering concerns the legislation gives too much influence to the Prime Minister’s Office over the reviews and puts too many restrictions on information disclosure.
But although the Senate is increasingly willing to amend government bills, the prevailing mood in the room on Monday was to simply get the committee established, even if it needs strengthening down the road.
Creating the review committee was a key promise made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the election, as part of a response to the expansion of national security powers under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government known as Bill C- 51. Another package of security reforms is expected to be announced in the coming days.
Legislation to create a parliamentary review of national security agencies had first been tabled in the final days of Paul Martin’s Liberal government, but it didn’t get passed before its election defeat in 2006. Harper’s government then declined to create the committee, in part because it didn’t trust MPs to keep national security information secret.
Conservative MP Tony Clement, a cabinet minister under Harper who now serves as public safety critic, appeared before senators on Monday to say he no longer doubts the proposed committee can find “good, honest, capable individuals in both chambers who can deal with information appropriately and provide that value-added review.”
The legislation, in fact, binds the committee’s members to permanent secrecy around classified information, and removes their claim to immunity based on parliamentary privilege in the case they’re prosecuted for leaking.
But Clement said Conservative MPs still voted against the bill on its final reading because of provisions that allow the prime minister to appoint the chair and to redact sections of the committee’s reports deemed “injurious to national security, national defence or international relations.”
The government also retains the right to veto a committee review if “the activity is an ongoing operation and the appropriate Minister determines that the review would be injurious to national security.”
Senators are mulling s ome amendments, particularly around the proposed committee structure of eight MPs and three senators, rather than equal representation between the chambers. Some would also prefer to see the committee elect its own chair.
Professors Craig Forcese and Kent Roach, who have authored papers on Canadian national security reform, urged senators to change a clause that bars the committee from getting information on an active police investigation.
Unless some discretion is added in, the committee wouldn’t be able to get information on, for example, the 1985 Air India bombing, which RCMP still considers an ongoing investigation.
But despite reservations, Forcese urged the committee to pass the bill, saying it was a “glass half full” bill when it was first proposed, and with amendments it becomes a “glass three-quarters full.”
That sentiment was echoed by former Liberal MP Derek Lee, who led the process in 2004 to develop parliamentary review of national security agencies — and then watched it fail to become law for 13 years.
“Given my history, I’m thinking ‘ get this thing up and running,’ ” he told senators. “I lean in favour of adopting a bill as soon as practical, a bill that works and doesn’t have any glaring omissions.”