Bill expands powers of electronic spy agency
SECURITY BILL AIMS TO EXPAND ROLE OF CSE, CREATE SINGLE REVIEW BODY
Amammoth national security bill introduced by the Liberals on Tuesday greatly expands the powers of Canada’s electronic spy agency and creates a new “super agency” to conduct government-wide national security reviews.
Far from simply rolling back some aspects of the controversial Bill C-51 passed by Stephen Harper’s government, which the Liberals promised in their platform (and which critics say they haven’t gone far enough in doing), the new legislation is being described as the largest reform to national security law since the early 1980s, when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was created.
Under the bill, the Communications Security Establishment would be allowed for the first time to conduct active cyber operations against terrorist groups and other governments, and to partner with the military on foreign operations. Currently, the CSE’s role is kept to collecting signals intelligence, defending against threats and assisting other agencies if requested to.
The legislation also sets out a new regime to authorize how CSIS can use and retain data.
Citing the recent terrorism attacks in Manchester and London, along with ransomware and hacking attacks, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said it was unacceptable that Canada’s intelligence legislation still largely dates to when “the fax machine was cutting-edge.”
“Compounding this is rapidly evolving technology, an unstable international political environment, and emboldened adversaries who are more creative than ever before in the plots,” Goodale told reporters. “We need the legal and constitutional framework to deal with them successfully.”
Bill C-51, passed by the Harper government in 2015, gave CSIS new authority to disrupt terrorism threats, but was heavily criticized as going too far in violating civil liberties. The Liberals had supported it on the condition they would roll back the “problematic” elements if they formed government.
The new legislation, Bill C-59, restricts the ability of CSIS to conduct disruption operations that could violate Charter rights, now specifying a process to obtain a judicial warrant ahead of time and a list of actions it can conduct under the warrant. Critics had argued C-51 was far too open-ended in what it authorized CSIS to do to disrupt terrorism threats, and some wanted that power scrapped altogether.
But the new bill does relatively little to roll back the extensive informationsharing powers C-51 gave security agencies, leading the NDP’s Matthew Dubé to describe that aspect as a “cosmetic change.”
The Conservatives, meanwhile, argue the bill is “a dangerous step back” from C-51.
MP Erin O’Toole said it makes it harder to preventively arrest someone (it would now have to be “necessary” to prevent an attack, instead of “likely”), and it narrows the description of what counts as criminal speech around terrorism (it would now have to be speech counselling terrorism, rather than just promoting it).
“They are watering down Canadian security measures all to maintain their election promise with respect to C-51,” O’Toole said. “These two specific changes make it harder for law enforcement to deal with the rapidly evolving security risk environment.”
But O’Toole was supportive of the bill’s sweeping reforms to how national security activities are reviewed, a change that had long been called for by security experts.
The bill creates the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, a government-wide watchdog that replaces existing review bodies that focus only on one agency. It can also review the security activities of 14 agencies that weren’t covered before — including the Canadian Border Services Agency and the Department of National Defence.
The new agency will “be able to follow the thread wherever it may go to undertake reviews,” a public safety official said, rather than the current model where watchdogs are stymied trying to get information outside their narrow mandate.
It will complement the work of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, a new committee of MPs and senators who have been cleared to review security operations. The legislation to create that committee passed in the Senate on Tuesday and awaits royal assent.
The Liberal legislation also creates an intelligence commissioner who will oversee the authorizations granted to CSIS and CSE to conduct operations and collect data.
Goodale said the government has set aside about $97 million over five years for the new review agency and intelligence commissioner, including $30 million that will be reallocated from the budgets of existing review bodies that will be folded into the new agency.