Terrorism bill aims to help prosecutors

NATIONAL SECURITY

“We’ve made it more precise without affecting its efficacy, and I think made it more likely that charges can be laid and successfully prosecuted,” he said.

But it is unclear whether C-59 will do anything to make it easier to prosecute people who have returned from fighting overseas with terrorist groups such as ISIL.

Goodale said there have been charges laid against two returned fighters over the past two years (and none laid before that), despite the government’s public estimate that 60 people have returned from places where terrorist groups are operating.

The main obstacle to pursuing charges is that intelligence gathered about a suspect often can’t be used in a all national security operations across multiple agencies.

There has been controversy over the fact the bill still allows for widespread sharing of personal information between security agencies, and Goodale specifically mentioned that as one area the government is willing to hear advice on about amendments.

The bill also expands the mandate of Canada’s electronic spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment, to conduct active cyber operations against terrorist groups and other governments, and to partner with the military on foreign operations. (The CSE’s role is kept to collecting signals intelligence, defending against threats and assisting other agencies if requested.)

CSE chief Greta Bossenmaier appeared before the committee on Thursday, where she faced questions from the NDP’s Matthew Dubé on whether a section of the legislation on gathering and analyzing publiclyavailable information could allow for the profiling of Canadian citizens.

Bossenmaier responded by pointing out that all of the agency’s work had to be done in the furtherance of its mandate, which restricts it from targeting Canadians.

“It has to be in relation to our mandate, and we are a foreign signals intelligence organization; we focus on foreign targets and foreign threats to Canada. So we don’t have a mandate to focus on Canadians.”

Speaking to reporters after, Goodale said there is more news coming in the next few months on the government’s cyber-security agenda.

“You will see from the government through the course of this winter at least three specific initiatives to enhance our governance arrangement around how we deal with cyber, enhance the resources that are provided to deal with cyber-security, and to make our response mechanisms a lot more nimble,” he said.

The committee’s study of the bill will continue with testimony from outside groups and experts.