Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Defence and Security

Issue 3

OTTAWA, Monday, October 1, 2001

The Standing Senate Committee on Defence and Security met this day at 6:00 p.m. to conduct an introductory survey of the major security and defence issues facing Canada with a view to preparing a detailed work plan for future comprehensive studies.

Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on Defence and Security, whether you are here in the room, watching on television or following us on the Internet. This evening we continue our study of major security and defence issues. My name is Colin Kenny. I am a senator from Ontario, and the Chair.

To my immediate right is Senator Forrestall, a senator from Nova Scotia who is the Deputy Chair of the committee. With us today is Senator Atkins, who will be joining us shortly, and Senator Banks from Alberta. Senator LaPierre is from Ontario. Senator Meighen is from Ontario.

Two members of the House of Commons Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs are with us. Their Chair, David Pratt, is the member for Nepean-Carleton in Ontario. David Price is the member from Stanstead in Quebec. I expect that some other members of the committee will join us as we move forward.

This committee is the first permanent Senate Committee with a mandate to examine the subjects of security and defence. Today, we continue our survey of major issues facing Canada, and we will be reporting back to the Senate by the end of February.

Recent events have focused attention on the importance of intelligence, particularly how that intelligence is gathered, analyzed and used. This evening's meeting will bring together a group of highly qualified experts who will offer informed opinions on how intelligence is collected, different ways it is analyzed, and how this information is distributed to those who need it.

Our witnesses have been asked to comment on how the current system works and what steps can be taken to improve it.

This evening, we will start with two panels. There will be a discussion with all panellists following the presentations.

I would like to introduce to you our first panel. Mr. Norman Inkster has extensive knowledge and experience in security and intelligence matters. He is a former Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and currently President of KPMG Investigation and Security. Krysta Davies, an intelligence analyst with KPMG, who is a specialist in counter-terrorism issues including Iranian backed Islamic fundamentalists, accompanies Mr. Inkster.

Welcome to you both.

Also on the panel is Mr. James Corcoran, former Deputy Director of CSIS. He was Assistant Deputy Minister responsible for overall operational direction. He has over 30 years experience with intelligence and security activities in the RCMP and in CSIS.

We will begin with Mr. Inkster.

Mr. Norman D. Inkster, President, KPMG Investigation and Security Inc.; Former Commissioner, RCMP: Let me say that it is a pleasure to be here. It has been a long time since I have sat in a room like this before such an august body. It is a pleasure to revisit the Senate. Thank you for the invitation.

Before I begin I would like to say that I am somewhat embarrassed in that this is a topic that requires a lot of study and very, very careful consideration. I have not had the time to put the kind of thought into it that I would like to have, but nonetheless I have prepared some comments that I would like to share with you. I hope that as we discuss the issues before us, more information will be extracted through the question period.

Before we talk about what changes need to be made to the Canadian intelligence community, it will be valuable to look at what we already have in place.

There is not an intelligence void in Canada. As the events of September 11 are analyzed, we will learn a number of very valuable lessons that will be helpful to us all.

We need to talk about what organizations collect information, the way in which they collect that information, and the way that they share it. In short, we must observe what they do with the information.

We can only get some useful measure of how things might be improved if we have a handle on what we now do and how well we gather information and turn that into intelligence. The distinction between the two is one worth making. I am sure that my colleague, Mr. Corcoran, will spend some time discussing that.

Information is nothing more than information. Intelligence is something that will perhaps provide us with some indications of what might occur in the future.

I am not saying that we should look to the United States as a model of how to organize and equip our intelligence community. There are some things in the United States that have obviously gone wrong. They do a number of things well, and they do a number of things right. We need to pick out the lessons learned, and we need to apply them to Canada. We need to decide what level of technology needs to be used in terms of intelligence gathering.

There have been some early indications of lessons learned from the United States. One is that perhaps there was an over reliance on technology.

Technology has a very important role to play in the gathering of information. However, in my experience as a peace officer investigating crime, there is nothing magical about it. It is people telling you what is going on and helping you with your work. You run a very grave risk if you abandon the street and do not have people sharing information with you. Likewise, if you are not available to share information, you also run a very grave risk.

We need a database. One of the problems in collecting raw intelligence is that it is raw. It only becomes helpful once we process it and apply analytical skills to it. Only then can we understand what the information means and how it can be helpful to the authorities. What is missing in this country, just as was missing in the United States, is a database to which all of that information is contributed, so that with can make most use of it.

Equally important is the need to allow the appropriate and approved agencies access to that database. At that point, information can be compiled, analyzed and distributed with clear recommendations for relevant action and follow-up to ensure that action has actually been taken. While it will be a touchy matter, we also need to consider how, private sector access can be allowed to access intelligence that has been gathered. Here, I make specific reference to the airline industry. We have all seen reports in the press that the names of a couple of the hijackers were known and their photographs taken. I argue that none of that information was available to the airline industry, as it would have been inappropriate to have shared it at that time. If the airline industry, in light of the horrors that have occurred, are to play a more aggressive and effective role in protecting themselves, we have to ask ourselves if we should be sharing more information with them. The answer may be that we cannot share this information with them, but we need to give that some consideration.

Currently we have at least six agencies dealing with intelligence collection, or maybe we should say "information collection" because it is not intelligence as mentioned until the information is analyzed and disseminated to the relevant players. Current agencies involved in the process are the Department of Customs and Immigration, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP, CISIS and XCSE. Clearly, CSIS is by far the biggest player in the area that we are discussing.

In light of the events of September 11, I think we need to take a closer look at all of these organizations. That is not to suggest that anything has been done wrong, but rather to address the issue of how we can be done better. Once it is decided what their particular responsibilities should entail in this process, we can start looking at how to give them the proper tools to accomplish the tasks that they have been given.

In the final analysis I strongly believe the events in the U.S.A. on September 11 will be characterized as an intelligence failure. There are important lessons to be learned and important improvements to be made. The balance between technology and human sources to emphasize the point, just once again, needs to be an important part of that discussion.

It is interesting that, when the activities unfolded in the United States, within 24 to 36 hours arrests were being made. How could they make those arrests if they did not have the names, the addresses and the suspicions about some of those people? The question will be that because some of the information was there, why was not something done about it? What happened? How did the information fall between the cracks, if indeed that is what occurred?

First, a word about Canada and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and what they need. We have 9,000 kilometres of shared border with the United States of America. What do they need? Clearly, they need the tools and the training to properly protect our borders. That needs to be balanced against the current legislation to determine whether more work needs to be done in that area.

Customs agents are made up of a large percentage of university students. Over the summertime most of these have only two weeks of basic training before they are on the job. The question we need to ask ourselves then, in light of protecting Canada's border, should this be a summer job for students? If the answer is yes, and it may well be yes, then extensive and proper training needs to be provided to ensure that these young people are equipped with all of the tools that they need to do their jobs properly. Approximately 2,200 students were hired to work at the borders this summer.

If a customs agent sees someone they suspect is armed and dangerous, they are currently told to take note of the vehicle, to not intercept the suspects, and to call the RCMP for follow-up action. Clearly, that is necessary given that they are not currently armed with weapons and there is the potential for danger to the customs agent. In that case, it is quite appropriate to call the RCMP. The questions that will obviously be asked are: how many such cases does the RCMP have an opportunity to follow up on? Do the resources of the RCMP at border points need to be increased?

New computers are being installed at the borders to provide inspectors with the information they need to screen people, but these computers are not connected to RCMP data banks on criminals. Information they have is often outdated and no computers have access to information on any federal databank on potential terrorists or other suspected threats to our national security. If that is true, and we are looking at bringing all of these resources together to be more effective, then again, we need to ask the question: is it appropriate in the context of Canada for that to occur and under what terms and conditions?

The issues of how these restrictions should be changed or altered needs to be discussed. Is a link to the U.S. border computers appropriate? That question is interesting because in my days in the RCMP, we had information on everyone who had a Canadian driver's licence. The issue then was, whether we should share information with the Americans when they requested us to identify the driver of a Canadian vehicle in the United States. Could we share that information with them? At that time, and of course I am somewhat dated, there had to be a human interface between the two systems.

In light of today's circumstances, we have to ask ourselves whether the concern about sovereignty is important. Is that concern about the sovereignty issues appropriate? Technology is a prime example. New technology is available and needs to be had, but we will have to spend some money to take advantage of it.

It is true that our economy will suffer with longer waits at the border, which is why each agent should be given training on terrorist profiling and how and what to look for. It is unrealistic to think that every vehicle and suitcase entering the country can or should be checked. The issue is whether these agents need law enforcement training and authority needs to be revisited. In my view, a review of the responsibilities, authorities and response will be of inestimable value.

The real protection for Canada, from an immigration point of view, is from abroad. The screens that are available abroad need to be examined, not to suggest that there is a void, but it is far easier to stop people from coming into the country than it is to deport them after they have been here for a while. The screens offshore need to be effective. They clearly have the ability, following due process, to deny entry, to revoke citizenship and to deport people, but it does take a long time.

We have known terrorists and international gang leaders living in Canada. Even if there is action to get them deported, the court cases can take years, during which time they are free to continue their activities within our country.

There are several examples. I will not discuss all of them with you now, but one that comes to mind from my tenure as the Commissioner of the RCMP is of a gentleman by the name of Mohammed Issa Mohammed. There was a deportation order issued, and we tried to have him removed from the country. To my knowledge, he still lives in Ontario. We were all shocked and amazed by the Ahmed Ressam issue. Ressam arrived in Canada in 1992 with a criminal record and a forged passport. He changed his identity, received welfare cheques, obtained a Canadian passport and obviously, was trained in terrorist activities at one of Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. He was caught at the U.S. border, after leaving Canada, with a trunk load of explosives and a plan to bomb the Los Angeles airport.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is a very effective information gatherer. However, it is not involved in any kind of covert intelligence gathering. They do some analysis of global issues and the resulting implications for Canada. All of those could have implications from a protecting-Canada point of view and need to be filled into the mix that I have described earlier on. They also, of course, have a liaison officer with the RCMP and that presents an excellent opportunity for the exchange of information.

We would not traditionally have seen the Canadian Armed Forces as an information gathering or intelligence gathering capability but clearly they are, and they are effective. We need to ensure that sure their contributions to issues of intelligence gathering and security are brought into the fold. They have a long history of effectiveness in the areas of intelligence gathering over two World Wars and many other situations. We need to ensure that they are part of the solution.

Clearly the RCMP has a significant role to play but, we must remember that the RCMP are peace officers who have a mandate only in Canada and that they investigate criminal matters. However, they do gather criminal intelligence and that criminal intelligence can have to do with terrorist activities. As everyone in the room would know, there is no crime in the Criminal Code called "terrorism." There are crimes of murder, extortion, and kidnapping, but there is no crime of terrorism. Therefore, they must investigate the substantive offence; the murder, the kidnapping or the extortion. That can take time and a great deal of work, and of course, the courts in Canada are often overburdened with cases to hear.

Fortunately within Canada we do have a combined intelligence gathering service that involves all law enforcement agencies and that is Criminal Intelligence Service Canada. All of the major police departments in Canada have cooperated with this service in terms of gathering information relative to organized crime, biker gangs and other things, which they share in an appropriate fashion one with the other. The question will now need to be asked whether that information is appropriately shared with such agencies as CSIS and other departments.

One of the difficulties that we have had in the RCMP, like everyone else you will hear before this panel, is a shortage of resources. During my tenure as Commissioner of the RCMP, I estimate that our budget was cut somewhere between $4 million and $500 million over the seven years of my tenure. It concerned me that the cuts were across-the-board. Every department was cut, whether it was 2 per cent or 5 per cent or 7 per cent without thought of what should be cut or what should be done or whether some departments should be cut more than others. Simply because the RCMP, like other federal organizations, still had the job to do, the budget cuts came and the resources dried up, but the job did not change. The RCMP was still obliged to carry on all the work they had to do. They simply had to do it with fewer people and less money.

During my day, there were about 21,000 people working in the RCMP. It dropped down to 20,000 and it is now back up to 21,000. The budget is larger than when I was there and that is certainly good news.

I will not talk much about the Canadian Security Intelligence Service because to my right we have a real expert in the field, but it is important to understand the substantive differences between the RCMP and CSIS. The CSIS people are not peace officers and they do not have the power of arrest.

There are substantive differences between how an intelligence agency is run and how a law enforcement agency is run. If law enforcement agencies do their work well, then virtually everything they do and the information that they gather is presented in public at a court of law, and innocence or guilt is determined. If the security service does its job well nothing ever becomes public. They are effective in keeping the information that is appropriate and by being effective in doing their job without making things public. My colleague will either support or deny those conclusions of mine but that is the fundamental difference between the two. The security service is separate from the RCMP because of those fundamental differences, and I believe the decision at that time was the right one.

The other issue is whether or not, in the light of these circumstances, need to have some capacity for CSIS to act abroad. We have to discuss whether we should now have agents working in foreign countries gathering intelligence, as opposed to simply having liaison officers in place. There has never been a time in our history when it has been more important to debate that issue.

There will be discussions at all levels of government about the creation of another bureaucracy to meet this challenge. I have not seen bureaucracies solve many problems during the 36 or so years that I was in the RCMP. Creating another bureaucracy is probably not the answer. However, wiser heads will prevail, and I am certain that it will be considered as an option.

At the very least, it strikes me that the CSIS Act will now need to be reviewed in the light of the events of September 11. I am not suggesting that it is out of date but it is dated 1984, and clearly, terrorism has changed. We have seen terrorism move from the hijacking of airplanes to the killing of people in buildings and on the streets. It has changed from the bombing of airplanes and the killing of innocent people to making the airplane itself a bomb to fly into buildings that contain thousands of innocent people. Clearly, we need to examine the legislation to see whether there are changes needed to make it more effective in light of the new age of terrorism that we have all witnessed.

The mandate is to maintain vigilance towards groups that are known both nationally and internationally that use or threaten violence in the pursuit of political objectives. They have a mandate to identify individuals and groups in Canada suspected of working with terrorists. But is this role too passive? What happens then? What should happen as a consequence of that? The Kelly Committee found Canada to be a primary venue of opportunity to support, plan and mount terrorist attacks. We have all had some experience with that now, from one perspective or another.

Our intelligence community was created in this format in 1984. It was meant to portray the same peaceful but vigilant image that we wanted to portray globally. Any change to this agency is going to cause a lot of people to say we are copying the U.S.A., compromising personal liberties and handing over freedom to big brother.

The people in this room and all of our parliamentarians now have an obligation to consider the issue in the light of these events to make sure that CSIS has the legislative authority and tools to do what they have to do and that the RCMP has the legislative authority and tools to do what they need to do. It must be assured that both those agencies, as well as others, have the financial resources to carry out the jobs that have been given to them.

My biggest fear in all of this is complacency. We all witnessed the hijackings and the bombings in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I can remember the large numbers of members of the RCMP at international and some domestic airports. I recall that officers of the RCMP were present as we checked through with our carry-on luggage.

Over time, the problem went away, memories faded and we became complacent. We find ourselves now having to gear up again.

I argue that we must decide, based on the threat, the level of security that ought to be put in place. Having decided what that level of security and intelligence needs to be, then let us make sure that the agencies responsible are properly equipped and funded to carry out that job. We should then check once in awhile to make sure that it is actually working.

Canada has identified 50 terrorist groups and 350 known terrorists who live, work and raise money in our country. Why do we allow them to raise that money? The Minister of Justice has mentioned that she is examining that issue. We can expect to see legislative amendments to deal with the problem.

It is extremely important that we do so and that we not lose sight of the fact that Canada is one of the finest countries in the world. We pride ourselves on our immigration policy, as we should. We just need to make sure that those who we allow into the country are people we want here.

We must assure that we tell those who get through the screens that this is not a place for them, and we are allowed to remove them expeditiously after due process. We must look at harmonizing, to the extent that it is reasonable to do so, some of our practices with those of our neighbours to ensure that we are protecting North America in a way that is both acceptable and effective.

The Chairman: You provided a very interesting overview and a good start to the hearing this evening. Now we will turn to Mr. James Corcoran.

Mr. James Corcoran, Former Deputy Director, Operations, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS): It is a pleasure to be here to talk to you and Canadians, as this is a public hearing. I will talk a little bit about the world of intelligence services. Mr. Inkster has covered a lot of areas upon which I could comment. I will comment on several of the things he said, but I will try to restrict my comments to those areas involving CSIS and intelligence services.

As the Chairman pointed out at the beginning, I have spent many years in security and intelligence work. I have managed operations at CSIS for about the last six years prior to my retirement in April. You can appreciate that I am bound by the Official Secrets Act, and I cannot get into a lot of classified issues here tonight. I will try to be helpful to the committee in responding to their questions. I will also try to give you a bit of an overview of how CSIS does its work. You can question and comment after that.

Clearly, the events of September 11 will forever change the way intelligence services investigate terrorism. However, we should remember that in Canada, in 1985, we had one of the most horrific terrorist incidents involving an airline up until the recent events of September 11. That was the Air India bombing.

You will recall that 329 people lost their lives in a bomb that was planted aboard an Air India flight. You are aware that it is Canadians who stand accused of that offence and are awaiting trial.

It was that 1985 Air India bombing that caused CSIS to rethink its investigative methodology in dealing with terrorist organizations. The methodology that we employed worked well in preventing terrorist attacks in Canada, and also in assisting other countries in preventing certain terrorist attacks in their lands.

During my tenure, we did collect a lot of intelligence, some of it directly involving issues and incidents within Canada. We also collected intelligence of Canadians involved in fostering or planning acts terrorism in other countries. We were able to use that information, with the help of partner services, to prevent some of those acts of terrorism from occurring.

Although I have left the organization, I am confident that the events of September 11 will cause a rethinking of CSIS methodology and its investigation of terrorism today. The September 11 attack was a simple, yet unthinkable act. The tradecraft in itself was simple, but again it was an unthinkable act.

I would like to point out that the investigators at CSIS, the men and women who investigate on a daily basis, are the terrorist experts in this country. Mr. Inkster has indicated this point also.

I recognize that police and others have an important role to play in fighting terrorism. However, it is CSIS, the intelligence organization, that has a mandate to investigate on suspicion of an activity, not on reasonable grounds but on suspicion of an activity. That is the CSIS legislation.

The people at CSIS live and breathe the methodology of terrorist organizations. They look at the intricacies of how terrorist organizations operate. They do this 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You might ask, "How do they go about doing this?" They conduct focused investigations in Canada and, to a lesser extent, abroad. That is the response to the global nature of terrorism today.

Mr. Inkster talked about giving CSIS a mandate abroad. As the person responsible for CSIS, there was nothing in the CSIS legislation that prevented me from sending investigators or sources abroad to investigate a terrorist act. I could not collect foreign intelligence, which has a different connotation in the CSIS Act. However, for acts of terrorism that are threats to the security of Canada, CSIS can investigate in any country of the world. CSIS can send investigators or whomever to conduct those investigations.

We do it abroad to a lesser extent because of the resource and training issues. We must have the right people to operate abroad. It is not an easy task to operate in hostile countries.

CSIS also conducts joint operations with partner services around the world. They also rely on their excellent liaison relationships around the globe that allows for the sharing of both tactical and strategic intelligence relating to terrorism. Terrorism information is even shared with countries and intelligence services that CSIS might be investigating because of other activities within Canada. Due to the nature of terrorism, everyone recognizes the need to share information on terrorists and terrorist organizations.

It is important also to highlight the CSIS-RCMP relationship. The relationship over the last number of years has been getting better and better. The RCMP and CSIS exchange liaison officers in their regional offices and at headquarters across the country. The RCMP liaison person has access to all the CSIS reporting on counterterrorism.

Prior to my departure, we had worked out an arrangement with the RCMP to begin switching investigative resources between our two organizations. From my perspective as the person responsible at CSIS, I wanted members of the RCMP to know the methodology that we use in investigating terrorists, and I wanted the people at CSIS to be aware of the police concerns in the investigation of terrorists and terrorist organizations. We will see this working together increase as time goes by.

I would like to highlight that in addition to working with the RCMP, CSIS also works very closely with other police forces across this country. We exchange information with the intelligence units of police forces. That is done on a regular, ongoing basis.

I would like to comment on some American politicians' and news reporters' views that Canada is a haven for terrorists. The events of September 11 demonstrate that no matter what laws one has, all acts of terrorism cannot be prevented, particularly if someone is prepared to commit suicide in carrying out that act.

In a democracy, governments can never give intelligence and police organizations enough resources to put a complete end to acts of terrorism. However, I do strongly believe that CSIS, the RCMP and other departments involved in the front line fight against terrorism require additional resources.

Prior to my departure, Solicitor General MacAulay indicated his support for increased resources for CSIS. That was before September 11. I am sure that CSIS is rethinking those numbers in light of what has happened and the new methodologies that they will have to employ in investigating this new terrorist phenomenon.

What about legislative changes? Clearly, as Mr. Inkster has said, we need to look at all our legislation to determine what we as a country need to change in the fight against terrorism.

Changes to the Immigration Act that are currently before the Senate will go a long way in helping in terms of the refugee and immigration processing. I could not put a percentage on it, but a large number of the individuals that we were investigating when I was at CSIS, were people who came in through the refugee stream. Many of the refugees were associated with terrorist organizations in this country and around the world.The new legislation will assist in tightening up the pre-screening of refugees and go a fair distance in helping us keep out people that we do not want.

There has also been talk in the newspapers about a minister of homeland security. Like my colleague, I am not sure another bureaucracy is the answer.

Coordination is important within the police and intelligence organization. Coordination depends on cooperation. I saw that cooperation improving on a daily basis during my tenure in the intelligence function.

We are getting better every day, as I said. Is it perfect? No. I cannot say that every CSIS officer and every RCMP officer is going to agree on every issue. However, they work closely together to prevent terrorism.

I would like to conclude by saying that if we are going to prevent terrorism in this country it is going to depend on each and every one of us. If we live in a democracy, we cannot make rules that prevent us from expressing our democratic rights. As Canadians, we have to be vigilant about what is going on around us. If we are vigilant, we will see things. We will see events. We will see people. We will see things that trigger a thought to report something to the police or to CSIS. We will consider that perhaps someone should review a certain activity.

That is the way we should attack terrorism. We need additional resources. There are other things that will be looked at as current laws are reviewed.

I will close and be pleased to answer any questions.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Corcoran. It was very helpful testimony.

Senator Wiebe: Mr. Corcoran, you may have answered my question with your closing comments, but I will pose it to both of you. It is one that certainly created a lot of anxiety in my mind.

There's no doubt that September 11 was a wake-up call for all free democracies throughout the world. Every government now is scrambling to find ways and means to improve their security through legislation and other means.

The event that occurred on September 11 was perpetrated by 19 individuals who entered the United States from a country other than Canada. Their training manual was just revealed over the weekend. These were young, well-educated, well-groomed and polite individuals who resided in the U.S. for a fairly lengthy period of time. How do we pass legislation, or how do we deal with a situation that would have prevented what happened?

This is a question that I have certainly been struggling with since the September 11. How do we go about preventing what happened?

Mr. Inkster: I do not think that there is any legislative solution to preventing terrorism in all of its many forms because if that were the case, we would have that legislation. It would be in place. It would certainly be in place in countries that have experienced terrorist activities for longer than we have here in Canada.

I am inclined to support Mr. Corcoran's position that vigilance is an issue. We do not know the information that intelligence gathering agencies in the United States had in hand prior to this horrific event. We do not know whether they could have acted sooner. Over time there will be an examination of that information to see if something has fallen through the cracks.

Law enforcement agencies need the ability to challenge people about their "bona fides" and the things that they are doing in the country where suspicions have been appropriately aroused. The difficulty for law enforcement is that there is not much that they can do until there is a conspiracy to commit a criminal act and/or a criminal act has in fact occurred whereupon the burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. The challenges to presenting proof in a court of law that result in a conviction is becoming increasingly onerous. I am not saying that is inappropriate, but it is increasingly onerous.

An examination of the point at which the law enforcement people in this country are allowed to act based on suspicions. Perhaps that should only be where there is a suspicion of terrorism.

We could look at Britain. I am sure that parliamentarians have started, if not already completed that review. Britain has dealt with terrorism for years, and have become reasonably affective in dealing with it. They have crafted some legislation to fit the needs and the requirements in the U.K. as they have fought against the IRA. We must ask ourselves whether there are any lessons learned there that would be applicable in a country such as Canada.

Second, we should ask ourselves whether there is anything in their legislation that might fit our model here and help us in what it is that we wish to achieve. There is no clear-cut answer.

Senator Wiebe: My second question then leads from what you mentioned in reference to the United Kingdom. Could we implement laws, rules and regulations regarding our security that would still protect the current human rights that now exist in this country, or will we need to make some changes in that regard?

Mr. Inkster: My suspicions, senator, is that the events of September 11 have changed that balance somewhat. It has changed it in a way that perhaps Canadians might be more inclined to contemplate such changes. The changes will need to be very careful and very measured.

One of the many things that make this is country the great place that it is, is our human rights and our ability to do all the things that we do while living in a free democracy. None of us want to give that away.

Are we prepared to put up with some added inconvenience? Are we prepared for some questions being asked of us from time to time in the interests of keeping the country safe? My suspicion is that we probably are, but we want to be very careful because terrorism by definition is to create terror and upset all of the agencies in the countries that are affected by it. To the extent that we start to overly constrain our human rights, we are doing exactly what the terrorists want us to do.

It should be carefully measured, in my estimation. It is a question that needs to be examined. We must see what we might be able to do in the light of these events to keep Canada as safe as it has been for its history.

Mr. Corcoran: To be able to enforce and utilize the laws we have on our books in a more fulsome way will help us as a country to rid ourselves of some of the individuals that we as an intelligence service were investigating.

I agree with your first premise. To prevent the act in the U.S. based on what we know right now would be very difficult. We work and share information every day with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We work together hand in hand on preventing terrorism. Our methodology is basically the same methodology that they use. They did not see this coming. I am sure that we did not see this coming in the manner in which it came.

Those of us in the intelligence business felt that terrorists would, as they have in the past, hijack airplanes and perhaps crash them or put a bomb on an airplane as they have in the past. As a professional in the business for the years I have been in it, I could never imagine anyone hijacking four airplanes and crashing them in the manner in which they did. It was done in such a simple way.

Senator Wiebe: I do not want to put either of you on the spot. You could refuse to answer if you wish.

What kind of freedoms or human rights that we have now should we look at compromising to accomplish the task?

Mr. Inkster: The word "compromise," senator, is too strong a word in this context. We all recognize that one of the marvellous things about this country is that except for Canada's Aboriginal people, we are all immigrants. It is only that some of us have been here longer than others. Therefore, we would not want to do anything to deny access to Canada to people who would come and make the country grow.

How do we determine who those people are that should not be here? That level of due process must occur, in my estimation, someplace offshore. As questions are asked by the experts in immigration whether an individual should be allowed to come to Canada, my inclination in terms of shifting the pendulum, is that decision should be made in the best interests of Canada, not in the best interests of that individual and his or her wish to come to Canada. If there is a hint that they have been involved in terrorist activities and there is some reasonable proof of that, then we want to make that determination in the best interests of Canada. The pendulum could shift in that direction.

On those rare occasions when people slip through the screen and end up in Canada, they must be entitled to due process. There must be a determination of the facts. That must happen in a way that is fair to all. Once the decision is made that the individual should not be here, then they should be immediately deported from Canada.

No one in Canada would want to deny anyone access to due process. It frustrates this Canadian is that after the determination has been made and a deportation order issued, the person remains in this country years later. We lose track of them.

Many of us will have forgotten the young Toronto police officer who was killed by someone against whom a deportation order had been issued a long time prior to the crime. The department did not have the resources to track the individual, to arrest him and to deport him. It is difficult to rationalize and accept that kind of a situation.

We should have due process, but once the decision is made, let us move them out of the country.

Senator Wiebe: Thank you for tackling that. I have a number of questions here, Mr. Chairman, but I will ask one more and then allow my colleagues to ask a few others.

From some of hearings that we have had to date, I feel very strongly that we have rather a fragmented security system in this country. We have one group looking after ports; we have another group looking after airports; we have another group looking after international and so on and so forth.

My feeling is that because of that we are probably not getting the greatest bang for our buck, nor are we getting the best kind of security that we need. I am a strong believer of only two agencies, one being the RCMP and the other being CSIS. What is your view on that?

Both of you have come from those organizations, I think that I know your answer. I am concerned that perhaps we are spreading ourselves too thin and should be concentrating on just the two areas for security.

Mr. Corcoran: I am happy that we are not in the same situation as that of the U.S. with their number of overlapping responsibilities. There is duplication in Canada, but in the U.S. there are hundreds of agencies that have overlapping responsibilities.

I do not support going to only two organizations in this country because police forces and those with federal responsibilities do a fine job. I am not saying that we could not have better coordination and work better together.

September 11 is a wake-up call to anyone in those organizations to acknowledge that they must do a better job at coordination and cooperation. They must make certain to pass information to others. We all recognize now that that information must be passed along.

Mr. Inkster: I am inclined to support my colleagues' view. The responsibilities of the people who protect our ports and the responsibilities of the people who protect our airports are highly specialized pieces of work. It takes training, experience and knowledge to do it effectively.They have it.

The challenge will be as Mr. Corcoran has said. The challenge is to work more cooperatively together and to make sure that we all recognize that we have a responsibility for protecting Canada's perimeter. To do that, we need to make a contribution in terms of information.

For years to come, the discussion will be around airport security, which is an important issue. However, there are people who cross our borders by car, trucks and buses. There are people who come as passengers on liners to the ports of Halifax and Vancouver. Any of them could pose a risk to us.

I think that the answer is that we must all recognize that the several agencies have a shared role to keep Canada safe. We must contribute to it effectively.

Senator Meighen: I want to pursue the last line of questions from Senator Wiebe about coordination. With the greatest respect, if everyone just says we really must do better, I am not sure I am totally convinced that we will do a lot better. By the same token, I cannot figure how we can ensure that a member of one of the six agencies who believes or has a suspicion that someone is about to commit or an illegal act or an act of terrorism, shares information with those who require that information.

What can we do now that we have not done to ensure that they pass that information on, and that it moves up the chain as quickly as possible?

I will slip in another question. As I understand it, if the information does go up the chain, then the decision as to what should be done all converges in the Privy Council Office, does it not? Tell me where it converges.

Mr. Inkster: Every day agencies across this country, police and all government agencies in the federal government, are sharing information and intelligence.

Senator Meighen: You both said that you were not doing it as well as you would like to see.

Mr. Corcoran: I think that we can do better.

Senator Meighen: How could you do better?

Mr. Corcoran: This is a wake-up call to all of us. Perhaps previously, a person would think that something was innocuous. The events of September 11 demonstrate that even the most innocuous issue or event may be something that is a prelude to something bigger. I know investigators in a variety of departments that have enforcement or collection responsibilities are saying the same thing. They recognize that they need to get better contacts with colleagues on ports police or in immigration. If the bureaucracy is too big, it becomes unclear as to who is running the ship.

You commented about the Privy Council Office. The Privy Council Office does not control investigations at CSIS or the RCMP. They play a coordinating role in the intelligence community, and chair one of the committees in the security field.

Mr. Inkster: My contribution, if I may senator, to your question is that there are all of these different agencies. We rather coexist in the same geography. If there is a solution to it, it is more training and more sensitivity to the shared issues that are important to all of us.

We do our own thing in the area for which we are responsible. The exception being that the RCMP, CSIS and major law enforcement agencies work quite closely together. Once you get outside of what I would characterize as traditional law enforcement, such as ports and immigration officers, there is not that same connection, that same sense of collegiality.

We can overcome that and deal with that. I think training is going to be the issue. It should not be training once, but training forever to assure that we work more closely together.

I have trouble thinking about combining it all. It would become a massive nightmare and less effective than it is today.

I agree with my colleague. Training goes to the issue. What does a terrorist look like? What are the things that should make me suspicious?

If we were to canvass the people in airports and ports, people who have these responsibilities, the first thing that they would say is needed is more training to know for what to look. There is something that can be done there.

Senator Meighen: That is at the gathering level. Let us assume that we are all more sensitized now since September 11 and we pass on every bit of innocuous information that comes our way and that it all funnels up. Mr. Corcoran said that the Privy Council Office does have a role in analyzing the information and deciding what to do with it all. Please comment on that.

Also, my understanding is that the cabinet committee on security and intelligence was disbanded some time ago. That to me sounds that at one point we, as Canadians, decided that this was not an area of paramount importance, and the cabinet did not need a committee to deal with it.

Do you think that swift action and coordination would be enhanced if the cabinet committee on security and intelligence were re-established?

Mr. Corcoran: First, there has always been a cabinet committee on security and intelligence. It changed its name. It went from the Cabinet Committee on Security and Intelligence to the Ministerial Meeting on Security and Intelligence. That committee is chaired by the Prime Minister. It deals with the intelligence priorities of federal government agencies at large.

Senator Meighen: That group meets regularly today?

Mr. Corcoran: I do not know how regularly it meets, but I know it meets. That committee approves the intelligence estimates, for lack of a better term, for each agency of the federal government; CSIS, the RCMP, the military, on a yearly basis. Those intelligence priorities are approved by the government process.

I would like to return to your point on information that is collected. At CSIS, we had a fairly large analytical unit. All of the information that we produced from the intelligence collection was analyzed. The information that we got from around the world was analyzed. We produced an ongoing basis an intelligence product that went out to other federal departments on a regular basis. There is a large production of intelligence material on terrorism, on proliferation and on many issues.

There is a smaller analytical unit attached to the Privy Council Office that responds to PCO, Department of Foreign Affairs and others. There is a close working relationship between those analytical units, as well, within the existing structure.

Senator Meighen: Just a point of information, on which I will conclude, and we should all be interested in this. You obviously know the CSIS Act inside and out. I heard you say that CSIS could only collect or seek out intelligence abroad on an after-the-fact basis.

Mr. Corcoran: No, that is not correct. Section 12 of the CSIS Act states that CSIS can investigate threats to the security of Canada and the act defines those threats. There is no territorial limitation on where that investigation can be done. Most of the investigation is done in Canada. However, the CSIS Act was a very creative piece of legislation, in the sense that it gave CSIS, in some way, part of the powers of what would normally be considered a foreign intelligence service, because it is not territorially limited. It is territorially limited in the collection of foreign intelligence that relates to issues that the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Minister of National Defence is interested in.

I will give you a clear example to try to highlight it. If I want to investigate a terrorist individual, terrorist organization or terrorist act, I could send my people anywhere around the world to do that, or I could send sources of the service. If the Minister of Foreign Affairs said, I would like to know what country X is prepared to pay Canada for a bushel of wheat this year, that is considered foreign intelligence because it is something that the minister deals with in the affairs of Canada. It is not a threat to the security of Canada, but it is dealing with the affairs of Canada. Therefore, I can only collect that information within Canada. I cannot send my agents abroad to find out what country X is prepared to pay for the price of wheat. I can send them abroad to do anything that is considered a threat to the security of Canada.

Now, if we, as a country, deemed that in the case of no one buying our wheat posed a threat to the security of Canada, then I could send my agents abroad to find out what country X was prepared to pay for that wheat.

The CSIS Act is a bit of foreign intelligence, but predominantly it has a domestic mandate. In respect of threats to the security of Canada, it is not territorially defined. Canadians have a difficult time understanding that concept. The reason that we did not send a large number of people abroad is that we have liaison people around the world to work with host services. We do not have people there under cover of First Secretary of the Canadian embassy. We could send people covert in some other manner, but it is a resource issue, and it is a sensitive issue when you do that. Many times in Canada there has been that debate about whether Canada should be doing this.

Senator Meighen: Thank you. I am sure we will return to that.

The Chairman: I would like to inform the audience that the committee has been joined by Mr. Larry Bagnell, Member of Parliament, the Yukon. Next, we will have questions from Senator LaPierre, Senator Banks, Senator Forrestall and then Mr. Pratt.

Senator LaPierre: This is astonishingly depressing. You will never see it coming. It is the nature of terrorism that you are not meant to see it coming and consequently, you will always be surprised, regardless of what you do. That is an axiom that is not questionable.

Mr. Corcoran: I would not disagree with that.

Senator LaPierre: Information and intelligence are not the same things. Information is information and intelligence is what you do with the information, how you analyze it and what it means. You share information. Do you share intelligence?

Mr. Corcoran: Yes, we share intelligence.

Senator LaPierre: Therefore, you share the intelligence with all these various groups. You are informing them about what your wisdom and your expertise tell you it means in the short and the long run?

Mr. Corcoran: Definitely. We do that on a daily basis.

Senator LaPierre: I have noticed in my long life, and the things that I used to do in the perverted part of my life, that every one of these associations and every one of these countries has an agenda. Does not the assumption that the intelligence is shared and is usable depend on the agenda of the country that gives it and that receives it, as well as the various intelligence agencies and police forces that receive it? Bureaucracies are essentially inimical to one another. Turf empire building is the story of bureaucracies. You may have built a bureaucracy, and it could be conceivable that you exchange only the information that you saw fit to enhance the glory in the opinion of your organization.

The same thing can be said about the RCMP. Is it possible that intelligence can be shared in a follow-up proceeding the responsibility of the intelligence sharing organism and the intelligence receiving organisms? Is that possible?

Mr. Corcoran: Yes, I think that is possible.

Senator LaPierre: Is it not done? I am told that the Mossad informed the Americans that this was coming. I was told that they had heard rumours, but I read, I think in the New York Times, that the Mossad is not really taken seriously by the American intelligence industry, largely because they tend to be hysterical. That is what I read. Is that possible?

Mr. Corcoran: I would rather not comment on that.

Senator LaPierre: You have to comment at some point or another, because if vigilance is the price of liberty, taking risk in the name of freedom is the price of democracy. Consequently, we are being asked at this moment to take our laws, our experiences and our values and put them all upside down, because on September 11, a horrendous thing happened that makes us question even the breadth and the wisdom of our liberty and of our freedom. We are about, are we not, sir, to throw the baby out with the bath water?

I will give you an example. You want us to have, in our immigration laws, the capacity to do a check on prospective immigrants. You want this to be done without due process. In my country, this would not be allowed. Why should the agents of my country have the right to do that in the name of my security? That is question number one.

Question number two: Have you asked us to become a nation of informers? That disturbs me very much, sir. Hypothetically speaking, I do not like Senator Meighen's face or his political creed. Therefore, I can find a conservative. We know that is happening. How many times do the investigative authorities receive a great deal of information and have proceeded to ruin people's lives, because they have not gotten enough information?

Sir, the people that will be targeted are not the American terrorists. The people who are now being targeted are the people of Muslim and Arab countries. Because of the racism inherent in my country at this moment, a boy was almost killed the other day on his way to school, because he is a Muslim, an Arab and he looks like one.

I am telling you, sir, that you will have to come up with a much better idea than my having to forego my liberty and values in order to protect myself.

Mr. Corcoran: That is not what was said.

Senator LaPierre: Yes, you have said that.

[Translation]

I am sorry, but they did in a way tell this committee that individual freedoms had to be suppressed and reduced in the interest of our collective safety. Yes or no? If I misunderstood this, I will apologize.

[English]

Mr. Inkster: If you are addressing the question to me, my comment is that we need to look at the balance. In fact, I was adamant in saying we must not abandon our human rights. I also said that, in terms of deciding who should come to this country, there must absolutely be due process. That is absolutely unquestionable.

Senator LaPierre: Will we not have due process if we bring them here? A refugee who wants to leave his country because of torment and other circumstances takes immense risks with his family so that they can take refuge in this historical land of refuge. What are we about to give him? We will send him through a tremendous investigative process.

Mr. Corcoran: I share all of the views of the members of this committee in terms of our individual rights as Canadians, but I think that in society there are trade-offs. We have to look at the rights of an individual who is not a Canadian versus the rights of those of us who are Canadians. We must look at what we expect of prospective migrants coming to this country before they arrive.

If I follow your theory, then we do not make any changes to the system; we allow people to come in; and we do things the same way as always. We are looking at trying to streamline the process a little more. For the most part, the majority of people who come in on the refugee stream are legitimate refugees. However, there is that small percentage that will want to engage in terrorist acts. Somehow we have to figure out a way, as a country, to bring the legitimate refugees into our system and give them the protections they need, while we keep out those that want to use our country as a base for conducting terrorist operations.

Senator LaPierre: Did you say there were many refugees who were terrorist sympathizers?

Mr. Corcoran: No, there are not. I said that when I was in charge of operations at CSIS, a good percentage of our counterterrorism targets' in Canada were people who came in through the refugee stream. That was a small percentage of the total number of refugees we take in each year in this country. It is a very small fraction.

A couple of years ago, CSIS was investigating about 350 terrorist targets. I do not know what the number is now, but that is a very small number when you look at the total number of refugees that we brought into this country over the last two or three years.

Senator LaPierre: I am told that all of the 19 people who committed this atrocity were all legally landed immigrants in the United States of America. Is that correct?

Mr. Corcoran: I do not know that. In the newspaper reports, there are some suggestions of that, but I do not think that the investigation is clear on that at this time.

Senator LaPierre: Thank you. Obviously, I am a knee-jerk liberal, as Trudeau would say. However, I think it is better and more secure in the long run to defend the liberty and the freedom of the Canadian people.

Mr. Corcoran: That is not the question.

Senator LaPierre: It is the question, Senator Atkins. With all due respect, it is not a question of having the floor, it is a question, essentially, of understanding that you have to pay a price for the collective security that they are counting on. The price of that collective security, is the price of liberty, which has been described as an inconvenience. I suggest to you, sir, that the Canadian people will not accept that, and you will never be re-elected.

Senator Stollery: On a point of information, this number, 350, has been thrown around. Is it 350 groups or 350 targets? I would just like to know what that number 350 means.

Senator Cochrane: It was about two years ago that the director had indicated before a committee that, at that time, CSIS was investigating 350 individuals who had connections to about 50 terrorist organizations that have some form of structure in this country.

Senator Stollery: Thank you. I only say that because the rumour has gone around that there are 350 terrorist organizations in Canada, and I thought that should be clarified because that sounded like an exaggerated figure to me. Now you have explained that it is basically 350 individuals with some 50 organizations. Thank you.

Senator Banks: Regardless of whether Senator LaPierre was right when he said that those 19 people were legal landed immigrants, the fact is that the odious comparison, which is being made by most of us in one way or another every day between the American security system and ours, is not applicable in this case. However they got there, those 19 people were certainly living incognito, and that was part of their success. Many of them were under no suspicion at all, with a family and kids living in suburban America. It appears that it was all part of the plan.

You are quite right that we have to obviously strike a balance between our rights and our sovereignty on the one hand, and being assiduous in respect of our security on the other. I have two questions of you. I know that you are both still concerned, notwithstanding the fact that you are no longer with those offices. Ought we to be prepared in Canada, in your personal views, to subsume a degree of our "Canadian-ness" in the interests of a continent-wide perimeter, in which we would be included, as opposed to a United States perimeter, from which we would be excluded, with all of the difficulties that we might obtain from that?

It seems to me that the intelligence system in the United States and, I suspect, our intelligence system, has been moved towards an almost entirely technological base. As was illustrated by those 19 people, technology does not catch someone who is doing something very simple that is way under the radar screen and that does not send up huge profiles in one area or another. That seems to be what we are facing.

Does not that mean that whatever we do in respect of immigration, we have to return to an intelligence gathering system. I know this sounds corny, and I hate to put it this way, but do we not have to get back to spying? Do we not have to return to infiltrating?

The current system did not send up a red flag on either enough of or any of those 19 people. The system did not work. Maybe it is possible that infiltration offshore, however it was done, or inshore, if it was required, in the old cloak and dagger style or the Mossad style, might have netted something. Do we not have to take a huge step back and make a change in the kind of intelligence gathering that we do?

Mr. Corcoran: In terms of harmonization with American laws, the Prime Minister has stated that Canadian laws will be made in Canadian Parliament.

Having said that, we have trade worth $1 billion with the U.S. that depends on quick cross-border access on a daily basis. We have to be realistic and ask ourselves, based on the changes that the Americans will make in their country, what we will do to facilitate us to continue with the activities that we need to continue?

I do not agree that we should automatically adopt every law that the United States adopts for the sake of fighting terrorism. Some of the things they are coming up with make sense, in terms of the way in which they are tackling some of the issues. We must develop an effective Canadian model. If legislation is required, it will have to allow us to function as a nation, and at the same time, we must ensure that the Americans have confidence in the way that we are doing our business.

They must be confident that Canadian agencies and organizations are doing their part to prevent acts of terrorism, particularly those in the U.S. or against American interests. That is my response to your first question.

The second question has to do with the technology issue. I know there have been articles in the paper, about intelligence organizations relying too much on technology. I do not share that view. I have a close association with the Americans, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI. I know what the RCMP are doing. I know what CSIS is doing in Canada and elsewhere. I can tell you that there is not an intelligence organization in the world that is not trying to infiltrate those terrorist organizations.

The bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organizations are very successful because they operate in very small cell structures, with their friends and relatives. Penetration of those organizations is very difficult. I am not saying it is impossible. All I am saying is, it is difficult. It is not that organizations are not trying.

Senator Banks: Is that not one of the things at which we must get better?

Mr. Corcoran: I agree, we need to get better at it, but it is a tough, tough target. Intelligence organizations are coming up with new methodologies all the time in the field to try to respond to some of those infiltration issues. There is nothing like having a source in a terrorist organization.

Just to digress, a few years ago the Americans had technical coverage on bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization in regard to the use of Iridium telephones. That information got leaked through a staff member in the U.S. political system and the next day the Americans lost that source. That is why intelligence services do not like to talk a whole lot about methodology and what they are doing.

I also read in the paper, as I am sure as you did, and I do not know whether it is true or not, that after the bombing there were some phone calls that were intercepted. Someone in the government bureaucracy in the U.S. made that public. If that is true, obviously the terrorists who were using the phone that was intercepted were not using it the next day.

That is the difficulty. We want to be open as a society, and I believe in openness as well. Now I am a citizen. I am not part of the process any longer. However, having been in it, I recognize the need for secrecy and the need to be able to have our intelligence organization function effectively.

Mr. Inkster: Getting to the question of perimeter security, I am not one who believes that harmonization of our processes necessarily means that we have to have the same legislation or that we need to abandon our own sovereign interests in respect to such things as immigration and customs. All we are talking about, and I think Mr. Corcoran is saying the same thing, is that we need to harmonize the processes.

As a very simplistic example, during my tenure as commissioner, there were times when the President of the United States wanted to visit Canada. There was natural concern about his security and the arrival of the Secret Service with weapons. The way we addressed that situation was to say, You need to have confidence that we in Canada have the capacity to protect your President. The way we managed that was to take courses with them and get to know them, so that they were just as happy and comfortable with our approach as they were with their own. That problem, for the time being, went away.

I think there is room to harmonize processes. I would not for one instance suggest we abandon our own right to create our own legislation on matters of immigration and so on.

I have to my right here a former spy, so he would know better than I. I am wondering, though, whether, in the organizations that we are talking about, the balance is just right between the use of technology and human sources. Human sources are very, very expensive, time-consuming and difficult to manage. Where technology could replace a human source, one would be inclined to rely on technology. I am not sure that the balance is just right.

However, having said that, I do not have enough information to tell you whether or not I am right in my concerns.

Senator Banks: I have one final question. Everyone these days is talking about the cost of this security. Obviously, there will be an increased cost for our national security and everyone else's.

If the agencies that are involved had had more money at the time, would we have caught Mr. Ressam?

Mr. Corcoran: That is a difficult question. If you saw the program that CBC did the other night, CSIS made it public that we were investigating Ressam.

Senator Banks: You just did not know where he was?

Mr. Corcoran: We knew that he left for a training camp in Afghanistan. That was shared with our allied colleagues and a watch was put out for him around the world. He was on the deportation list. Once he left Canada, we were hoping that he had left for good.

What really threw us was that he came back under the name "Benny Norris," with a legitimate Canadian passport.

Senator Banks: It was not a legitimate Canadian passport. It was not his Canadian passport.

Mr. Corcoran: It was not one that was manufactured, but it was issued with a birth certificate, et cetera, and it was a real Canadian passport.

When he came back in the country, he was not associating with the same people that he had been prior to leaving, which again made it difficult.

Quite clearly, more resources always make it easier to cover more targets. To do surveillance on one target around the clock, without being detected, is a very resource-intense process.

Senator Forrestall: We have a large number of questions. I have gotten far away from where I wanted to start, because the discussion seems to get more interesting.

Apropos of what you have just said, Mr. Corcoran, I think we all appreciate that difficulty. I am wondering if it would be fair to suggest that Western intelligence services will have to place a far greater stress on the human intelligence aspect of their work. I speak of the simplicity of six questions from the admitting officer, the examining officer, while he is doing something other than paying much attention to the answers. In other words, he is trying to read the answer, read the nuance of its delivery, to detect whether there is nervousness and so forth.

Do we train our people sufficiently in the human intelligence interpretive sense and role?

Mr. Corcoran: I believe we do at CSIS. We spend a lot of time on training.

Senator Forrestall: You do not stand at the border, do you?

Mr. Corcoran: We are called very often by the Department of Immigration. Whenever they have someone at the border who raises concerns from a security point of view, if they think it is related to our mandate, security intelligence, they will call one of our officers. We have a system worked out where they call us and we send one of our experienced officers out to the border point to help immigration conduct an interview based on our methodology, our knowledge of terrorism and other issues that are of concern to Canadians. Those people are well-trained. They are experienced officers. I was always comfortable and confident that they would do a very good job.

Senator Forrestall: How far away is this expert you are sending to the border point? How far away is he?

Mr. Corcoran: If Immigration has a concern, they will not let the person come through. They will detain the person until our officer does a security interview. They will just hold that person at that point or bring him or her to another location until that interview is done.

The majority of these cases is at the major airports. Often the cases are at the major border crossings in Southwestern Ontario. It is normally the major airports that we get called to. In many other parts of the country it happens on an infrequent basis, but not to the extent it does in the major traffic areas.

Senator Forrestall: Does Immigration Canada have an intelligence service of its own?

Mr. Corcoran: They have an intelligence unit within their department, yes.

Senator Forrestall: Are they active toilers in the yard, so to speak, or are they simply receivers and interpreters of advice from organizations such as CSIS?

Mr. Corcoran: Looking at the terrorism issue, I think they are very dependent on information from us. We develop terrorist profiles for our immigration posts around the world. We send those out to assist immigration in their interviewing of people in foreign countries. Again, if they have concerns, based on those profiles, we have liaison people around the world. Part of their responsibility is to go to those locations and conduct further follow-up interviews from a security point of view.

Senator Banks: If I go to the Canadian embassy in Moscow to apply for landed immigrant status, am I interviewed by a Canadian?

Mr. Corcoran: Yes, you are interviewed by a Canadian immigration officer. Depending on the results of that interview, you may be interviewed by a CSIS officer.

Senator Banks: In any case, both of those people would be Canadians?

Mr. Corcoran: Yes.

Senator Banks: They would not be Russians?

Mr. Corcoran: They would not be Russians.

Senator Forrestall: Now that you both are free citizens, how in your experience do we maintain transparency? How do we find that balance between legislative authority to do something and empowering the appropriate minister or committee of government to take immediate decisions?

I am always disturbed about the length of time it takes to legislate a process, no matter how fine the act it produces, unless it is specific in the instructions it gives, to achieve the end it is intended to serve.

Is the balance that we have now good enough? Is it enough to report to the appropriate two ministers to whom you both reported, the Prime Minister and the Solicitor General?

Mr. Corcoran: I think it is enough. I have never had any problem or seen any problems that were created by the system. That was not my experience in terms of the political process. The director of CSIS is accountable to the minister. We met, the minister, the director and I, during my tenure, on a very regular basis. We had discussions with him on matters of national security in weekly or biweekly sessions.

Senator Forrestall: In your day-to-day activities, did you have cause from time to time to call the Solicitor General's office and say, Can we do this?

Mr. Corcoran: You should know that certain things that CSIS does in terms of its operations require the direct approval of the minister. For instance, the minister must personally sign all the warrants for intercept. Certain other types of operations that I will not get into here also require the minister's approval. We dealt with the minister on a very frequent basis in terms of getting his approval to do certain things.

Senator Forrestall: You did not find that was an impediment to executing or prosecuting a course of action that you thought was necessary?

Mr. Corcoran: In my career, I never found that a problem because, as a matter of fact, the minister put provisions in place where, in exceptional urgency, he gave the director certain delegated powers that were very seldom used and he was to advise the minister at the most convenient opportunity. However, by and large, every minister that I dealt with over the years always made themselves available, knowing the political sensitivity involved and the fact that with the intrusive mandate that CSIS has, that accountability was in place and exercised by ministers.

Senator Forrestall: How do we achieve that form of transparency that returns to Canadians some sense of well-being in their country? Is there sufficient transparency now? Why is it that three or four weeks after the tragic event different people with questions telephone me several times a day? People are afraid. Their lives have changed. Today a colleague told me that the crossings at this time of the year through the mountains between Quebec and the New England states should be a steady stream. The golden countryside by itself should attract. Numbers are down by perhaps 50 or 70 per cent. Is that not right, Mr. Price?

Mr. Price: They are down by 600 per cent.

Senator Forrestall: That is because people are afraid to travel. People need to know what is being done is being done right. People need to know that you people are satisfied with what is in place. If you are not satisfied with what is in place, then tell us because we are pretty lay people. I have no great contribution to make.

Can you give this committee the titles of books that we might put by our bedsides or take with us on aircraft, those of us who still fly, so that we might better understand not just the nature of the difficulty we have with bin Laden and al-Qaeda, but also the other side of the coin, that is, who is dealing with the people? How do we restore that kind of confidence?

You cannot always stand up and say, Buy more. Travel more. Fly more. Little things have to click in the back of people's minds, and that is largely as a result of work that you do. Do you have a couple of books you might recommend? Have you written one yourself yet?

Mr. Corcoran: No, I have not and I do not intend to. I am sure we can come up with some books that would be helpful.

Senator Forrestall: Would you pass them along to the committee? We do not mind crass commercialism here at all.

Ms Krysta M. Davies, Intelligence Analyst Specialist, KPMG Investigation and Security Inc.: You will be hearing later from Wesley Wark who has done extensive writing on the subject. He would probably recommend his own work.

Mr. Pratt: Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to be here today and to ask a few questions. I also appreciate the indulgence of your fellow senators in terms of giving me some time before the committee. I would also like to thank the witnesses for some very informative presentations that they clearly know very well.

I would like to read just a very brief quote from the McDonald commission report that goes back to August of 1981. A lot of interesting comments were made in the course of that report. One of them states:

Canada is unique among its major allies in not deploying a foreign intelligence service. While we are in no position to carry out a comprehensive review of Canada's foreign intelligence needs, a general look at the question of a secret foreign intelligence service is a natural outgrowth of our consideration of the policies and procedures governing a secret intelligence service. We have already shown how the lack of a foreign intelligence agency limits the effectiveness of a security intelligence organization.

Again, that was written back in 1981. We have yet to really engage in this country in a comprehensive debate on the issue of a foreign intelligence service. In fact, from my limited knowledge of the subject, the only significant review we have had of intelligence has been the CSIS review that was done, I believe from 1989 to 1991. We have gone through a period of 10 years without any significant review of our intelligence capabilities, priorities and the sorts of technology that might be employed, as well as the existing structures. We have seen from your earlier comments that we have a number of agencies out there engaged in intelligence work. They include the RCMP, CSIS, DND and Foreign Affairs.

Because I am a little unclear with respect to where you sit, I would like your comments on whether, first, we need a discussion on the issue; and, second, whether we should contemplate going the route of a separate foreign intelligence agency as other democracies, such as the U.K., the U.S. and Australia, have done.

In the past, for instance, Canada, through its communications security establishment, has done a fair bit of work and I understand has been very good at the issue of gathering information through signals intelligence and communication intercepts. Because of the level of sophistication of encryption technology it seems that in some quarters some of the stuff we are producing these days might not be as valuable as it was 10 or 15 years ago. As a result, we do not have nearly as much to trade in terms of intelligence product with our allies. I am thinking here principally of the U.K. and the U.S. From that standpoint, obviously, the U.S. and the U.K. seem to have their open intelligence agreements. We are not party to some of the information, some of the intelligence product that is being generated through their agencies.

Do you believe that is a factor? It is important to raise the whole issue of sovereignty as well because it seems to me if we are relying on a significant amount of foreign intelligence that is not produced by Canadian sources, there is a sovereignty issue. As a result, we could be making important national decisions, whether it is the deployment of troops overseas or economic information that we are getting from our allies, on information that may not be completely accurate and which may be subject, as Senator LaPierre said, to someone else's agenda. Is that a consideration?

Could you address my questions about the issue of debate and restructuring?

Mr. Corcoran: There are a handful of issues there, sir. In terms of a separate foreign intelligence service, you quoted from the McDonald commission. However, I think the McDonald commission, the legislation and the follow-up government response in terms of the CSIS Act tried to do both. On threats to the security of Canada, it tried to create a CSIS that could do whatever it wanted, wherever it wanted, in terms of threats to Canada. It was that other portion of foreign intelligence, which I term nice-to-know stuff in some cases, some of which is very important, which could only be collected by CSIS in Canada. In terms of the CSIS Act defining threats, that can be done anywhere as I have said.

Whether we should have a foreign intelligence service separate or otherwise is not an issue for me to decide. If I have a personal opinion, I would say in Section 16 of the CSIS Act, where it talks about foreign intelligence "within Canada," I would take out the words "within Canada," which would then make CSIS both a domestic and a foreign intelligence service. This would then deal with all areas, not only threats to the security of Canada but in anything else that you might want your foreign intelligence service to do.

I personally have always had a model in my mind of a foreign intelligence service that could operate within CSIS. It would consist of a separate unit set up with very experienced personnel; trained intelligence officers who come through on-the-street investigations and source recruitments within Canada. That group would operate in a foreign capacity within the CSIS framework with the Security Intelligence Review Committee and the inspector general as the review process.

With regard to your point on trading information, I can only speak from the CSIS perspective. I know the military will have a different perspective. In my experience, we always had very good information to share with our colleagues around the world. We were always willing to share what we collected and what we were able to do in joint operations and some of the niches that our organization has become very good at.

You have thrown national interest into the mix. Quite clearly, every country has its own national interest, Canada included, and there are certain things that we would not pass to our allies around the world, as I am certain there are things that our allies would not pass to Canada under any circumstances. We would be naive to think otherwise.

However, in terms of investigation of threats and issues that we are involved in collectively around the world such as peacekeeping, for example, there is no reason not to share intelligence under those circumstances. It is more in the areas of free trade agreements and other political processes where countries might not want to share their bottom line secrets.

Mr. Inkster: I am inclined to share Mr. Corcoran's point of view with regard to a separate agency of some sort. If parliamentarians, in their wisdom, decide that is something we need, clearly the place for it to be is within CSIS, albeit with a slightly different reporting structure.

I would not recommend creating yet another bureaucracy separate from those that now function reasonably well. We have the examples of separate agencies in the U.K. and in the United States that have not worked particularly well. There is a lesson for us there in all circumstances.

We probably need to remove the words "within Canada" from the CSIS Act. Should that decision be made, I believe that having it function within CSIS is the way to go.

Mr. Pratt: Do you not believe that the reason the U.K. and the U.S. decided to have separate agencies had to do with concern about what has been described as contamination, that is, the methods of operation of one agency being very different from those of another agency. I am speaking of the domestic and foreign agencies in this instance.

Clearly, when CSIS operates in Canada it must be subject to the Charter and the legislation within Canada that affects it. Covert operations conducted overseas are obviously not subject to the Charter. If many of the same personnel are involved, there is a danger that methods that might be acceptable overseas could infect, if that is the proper word, domestic operations.

Do you believe there is a role for Parliament in this? I get the impression that the underlying message is that the agencies had a wake-up call on September 11 and that we should leave it with them. Do you believe that Parliament has a role to play in this in terms of examining new structures, or might the best route be a special commission such as the McDonald Commission of the 1980s?

Mr. Inkster: I do not believe that there is no role for Parliament to play. My belief is absolutely to the contrary. We all rely on parliamentarians to examine the legislation that supports the agencies that are responsible for security in Canada, however you might define that, to ensure that in the light of this new experience in terrorism the legislation allows them to make the contribution that parliamentarians decide Canada must make.

My belief is quite to the contrary. In fact, in my opening remarks I said that now is certainly the time for us to look at all the legislative underpinnings of those agencies. Having revisited the legislative underpinnings, let us ensure that they have the tools to function, by way of regulation, and that they have the resources to carry out the work they must do. Oversight by Parliament in some form is absolutely essential.

Mr. Corcoran: I do not disagree with that. I think there is an important role for Parliament. You are the elected representatives of the Canadian public and their window into the bureaucracy. The Canadian public must be assured that parliamentarians are comfortable with what federal bodies are involved in.

The Chairman: Could you comment on the question of contamination that was brought up?

Mr. Corcoran: I would not see that as a concern. The review mechanisms in place and the tight controls that operate within the agency and that would operate within a foreign intelligence service can easily be managed in terms of what is permissible and what is not permissible.

I like the CSIS model because the intelligence business is a difficult one. Many businesses are difficult, but recruiting sources, particularly in a foreign country, is very difficult. You need people with a lot of training, experience, understanding and a thorough knowledge of methodology. I believe that creating it under the one umbrella of CSIS and allowing them to do both, with separation of information in terms of foreign intelligence and security intelligence, can be managed without difficulty.

Senator Stollery: I have two questions. My first one relates to this very troubling attitude that seems to be abroad in Canada that somehow we should abandon our sovereignty, in some undefined way, and join with the United States because of this dreadful and spectacular attack on New York. I find some of the comments that I have read in the press rather troubling.

When they talk of North American security, I am always reminded of information that we acquired when I was Chairman of the Manpower and Immigration Committee in the 1970s. There are 6 million illegal immigrants in the United States and, while it is impossible to walk to Canada, you can walk to the United States. I do not understand how that works.

The U.S. has had a notoriously corrupt immigration system with the green card system, which has a very bad past. There is an important agricultural lobby in California that does not want an effective immigration policy in the United States because it in fact thrives on illegal immigration. I do not see how we got into this when Canada is not an easy country to get to, except from the United States.

What do you think about that? They are talking about a continental defence against terrorism. However, the weakest link in all of this is on the southern borders of the United States. How would they control that? These conflicting intelligence agencies have spectacularly failed in their duty, and the U.S. taxpayer pays $30 billion U.S. dollars every year for these agencies. Would you like to comment on some of the articles that we have been reading in the newspapers?

Mr. Inkster: I do not think the panel would suggest that we would abandon our sovereignty in the interests of some common secure perimeter. The panel suggestion is quite the contrary. Canada has many lessons to teach and to learn to make the country grow and thrive in relative peace and harmony. Where there is opportunity, the opportunity lies in process and how we might better mesh the processes around common interests that relate to border security.

You are right, senator, the United States of America, in respect of the issues we have been talking about tonight is less than perfect. I do not think we in Canada and the United States can do it alone. The process will need to involve Mexico. I suspect that is what the President is working at in terms of the relationship that he has with Mr. Fox. There will be an absolute need to involve Mexico and it will be a huge challenge.

Senator Stollery: Ms Davies, I am told you are a specialist in the field of Islamic terrorism. I spent my youth in Algeria during the civil war and I am somewhat familiar with terrorism and such matters. I am not surprised by it, because terrorists always work by surprise; that is the whole idea.

As an expert on the subject, what do you think of the thesis that behind all this terrorism is oil? We who knew Algeria in the 1950s discuss terrorism in relation to oil; the money that comes from it; the individuals that profit from it and the injustices that arise from it. Those are the prime feeders of what is being popularly termed "Islamic terrorism." What do you think about that?

Ms Davies: It is important that we call it "Islamic fundamentalist terrorism." However, that is a triviality.

I have heard that opinion often. I do not think anybody can dispute that if oil were not an issue, then America would not be in the Middle East. Islamic fundamentalism makes it sound as if terrorism is religion based. If you ask any of these people their fundamental reason for not liking the United States, it is because they feel the Americans are where they do not belong.

It is possible then, that if the United States was not in the Middle East, and if there were no oil there, then there would not be a terrorism issue.

Senator Stollery: The argument is put that these organizations are very complicated, with many aspects, and certainly many people think that oil money is the main item.

What about the question of the West Bank and the Palestine issue, or the enormous casualties in the Gulf War? My experience has always been that you must put yourself in the other fellow's shoes. It is all well for me to sit here and think what Peter Stollery from downtown Toronto might think about something, but what does the other fellow think when he thinks about the Palestine question and the enormous casualties? I do not believe the figures have ever been released on the Gulf War. Do issues such as these have an effect on all of this? There is the argument that the American troops are guarding the oil wells in Saudi Arabia. However, that is not the only thing, is it?

Ms Davies: That was a primary thing. It would be key if we could put the shoe on the other foot and think for a second what these people think of us, this great white Satan. That is difficult to do.

When people talk our intelligence services infiltrating the area, the difficulty is enormous. You were right in saying earlier that a number of the people involved in the attack of September 11 had been living in the United States for four years. They were living quite comfortably and did fit in because in the U.S. there is a huge multiculturalism factor where immigrants can easily do that.

I read an interview with the President of Iran. In the interview he said that the people of Iran were watching our soap operas and television commercials and listening to our rock and roll. He commented that the people might not necessarily like what they are watching but they were watching and listening nevertheless. As a result of watching television and reading Western books they have come to understand our language and have learned how to fit in here.

Try, as an intellectual exercise, to imagine moving your family to the Middle East. Then try and imagine that you can fit in there for four years. I do not believe that you can even imagine it. On the other hand this is something that they can do, because we have given away that kind of information about ourselves. That is a powerful weapon that they have that we do not.

Senator Stollery: When I was a young man I did not have any trouble fitting in there, but people seem to have that problem today.

Mr. Price: As a clarification, you spoke about Islamic fundamentalists. You mentioned Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. This phrase is used often, particularly in the media. I should like some clarification. There are many people claiming they are Islamic fundamentalists, but they are not terrorists. Could you clear that up, please?

Ms Davies: It is vague. Islamic fundamentalists have taken the Islamic religion and applied it to politics as well. That is the most basic general differentiation.

Mr. Price: Are they isolated more to a certain area?

Ms Davies: Islamic fundamentalists rule several governments in the Middle East. Somebody will correct me if I am wrong, I am sure. However, that is the general rule of thumb.

Mr. Corcoran: Not all Islamic fundamentalists are terrorists.

Mr. Price: That is what I am trying to get at.

Ms Davies: However, their politics and religion are the same.

The Chairman: This brings to a conclusion a most interesting and instructive panel, so interesting that we have run over our time period. I thank the witnesses for their testimony. The committee has benefited from your appearance. We look forward to having you before us again.

Welcome to the continuation of the committee's review on how intelligence is gathered, analyzed and used. We have completed a panel with the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and with the retired Deputy Director of CSIS. We now have our second panel appearing before us.

I would like to introduce Brigadier General, retired, David Jurkowski, former Chief of Staff, Joint Operations, Canadian Armed Forces. From July 1997 to August 2000, he was the officer responsible for overseeing approximately 70 offshore and domestic missions carried out by Canadian forces. To put this in context, there had been approximately 108 offshore and domestic missions carried on since the Korean War and he has managed 70 of them. He will speak to us from the perspective of a user of intelligence.

We also have Professor Wesley Wark of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. He is an expert on Canadian and international intelligence and security issues, and has published numerous books and articles on the subject. He is co-editor of the London-based journal Intelligence and National Security, and is the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming Oxford University Press encyclopaedia, The Companion to Modern Espionage.

Brigadier General (ret'd) David Jurkowski, Former Chief of Staff, Joint Operations, Canadian Armed Forces: Honourable senators, I have been asked to appear before this committee on the important subject of intelligence in Canada and the Canadian Forces. It is laudable that this honourable and distinguished national body is taking an active interest in one of the most critical aspects of Canadian security. I thank you for the opportunity to at least try and help in your deliberations.

As everyone has said, September 11 is particularly poignant in our minds. What happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania is a manifestation of what those people in uniform and their colleagues serving Canada have been aware of and concerned about for many years. I refer to the asymmetric threat. The asymmetric threat of terrorism has taken a somewhat predictable turn for the first time on this continent.

As was mentioned, my experience is in the intelligence domain as an operator, not as an intelligence expert. I have worked closely with the Canadian Forces and Allied intelligence community but mainly used its product. As well, I am a little more than one year away from having retired; therefore, some changes in the Canadian Forces have very likely occurred.As was said by previous speakers, I am still bound by the Canadian Secrets Act, and I have no intention of talking about anything that would jeopardize security.

Let me touch on a few basic intelligence principles. First, an accurate, responsive intelligence capability is a fundamental cornerstone of Canada's sovereignty. It provides what I like to term as a national situational awareness of what is going on in and around Canada in direct support of Canada's citizens. Its stewardship is dynamic. It is often difficult. It is certainly sensitive. Its subject matter is necessarily held closely by those with a genuine and legal need to know.

The intelligence function is a continuous operation and cannot be treated bureaucratically. It relies on capturing essential elements of information that seek to establish fact, the reliable distilled product of which must be made immediately available and kept up to date before any meaningful decisions can be taken and actions contemplated. I believe that it is easier to establish physical intelligence, and by physical I mean force size, disposition, infrastructure and that kind of thing, but the personal dimension, that is, the intent of what those who have those particular forces will do, is much more difficult. That is where human intelligence comes into play.

As a consequence, I believe that it is essential to appropriate sufficient resources to be able to take care of all aspects of intelligence, both technical and human. As you have already heard, there are large volumes of information processed by all security elements of the Government of Canada according to their specialized needs. Finally, beyond having the ability to collect, to assess, and to corroborate, that is important, and disseminate good intelligence, it is equally important to have the framework to facilitate correct decisions and then to have the capacity to act. It is not just intelligence; it is part of a whole system.

The Canadian Forces shares intelligence in a number of relationships: first, internally to the country and nationally with RCMP and CSIS and other government departments, but mostly internationally with NATO, with NORAD, and other allies.

I can tell you the Canadian Forces community is respected for its capabilities. Having worked personally with the intelligence community of the Canadian Forces, I have been satisfied with their analytical talents, the evolution of their responsiveness, their impressive dedication and most importantly their product. On that note, I can attest that the independent analyses of our own Canadian intelligence analysts have always provided a balance to the overall allied military picture and in fact have often tipped the scales towards correctly concluding what is actually happening on the ground in a military situation.

I am going to turn to four observations. They are areas that you may choose to consider. They should not be surprising.

Like all Canadians, in some form or another, national institutions vital to the maintenance of Canada's security have also contributed necessarily to Canada's very real national debt crisis. This has happened over the past decade. My sense is that the CF, RCMP, CSIS and some other key institutions have been looked upon as just another government department. In fact, they are special institutions, and I do not mean this in the pejorative sense to any other government department. These are special operational institutions that provide fundamental human security to Canadians. I firmly believe, that a national complacency in this truly wonderful free country, although often naive, and an often misplaced fiscal evangelism has left the leaders of these institutions with insufficient resources to preserve even some of the most critical functions of their operations. Security is a matter of balancing risk, and I think that the Government of Canada will be looking at that balance of risk, especially in view of the emerging multifarious, asymmetric as well as conventional threats we are going to be faced with in the future. My first observation relates to resources.

Second, I am aware of such programs as the Critical Infrastructure Protection Program recently put in place within the Department of National Defence, but I do not know if it has the requisite horsepower and authority to expeditiously accomplish its mandate. A number of central government bodies meet periodically to deal with various aspects of intelligence in Canada, but I am unaware of any nationalized, centralized executive intelligence authority that sets priorities for national collection and analysis, has the means and ability to coordinate the efforts of all Canadian security organizations and champions their resource needs. I am also unaware of the existence of a readily available, centralized repository of certain national intelligence information that focuses on all aspects of Canadian security. National leadership structure and authority is my second point.

In my third point, I am not taking any shots here at anybody. I mean this in the purest constructive sense. In my experience, I have been concerned that many elected officials and non-elected officials, indeed many Canadians, do not have an adequate understanding of the threats out there for Canada's sovereignty or against Canada's sovereignty and security. We are the second largest country in the world. There are many things happening, such as expanding populations and increases in mass migration borne of regional strife. We have a lot of real estate and good things going for us here. I would like to see everyone be more mindful of what national sovereignty means. I would also like to see elected and non-elected officials have a certain accountability to the people they represent. What I am talking here about education, and there are ways to improve that education.

Lastly, and with great respect, treating this subject in any kind of meaningful depth in the public domain may satisfy those who believe they have the right to know everything, and I know I am hitting some buttons here, but everyone needs to remember that a fundamental human right is human security. Therefore, frankly, going too deeply into what we are talking about would not be in Canada's interest.

In my opinion, there are four areas to which you may wish to turn your attention. First, the leaders of our security institutions know what they need to accomplish their mandate. To provide them with less resources than they need for the steady state and surge capacity would be less than responsible.

The second and third points meld into one. If required, resources to move expeditiously forward such initiatives as the Critical Infrastructure Protection Program and any other centralized intelligence capability needs to be made readily available. Equally important, it would be appropriate to focus on the need for a multi-departmental, national level intelligence situation centre. I also believe there is a need to establish credible, centralized, accountable leadership on intelligence matters with executive powers and appropriate resources.

There may be deficiencies in the way in which the United States goes about intelligence work. We must put those deficiencies in context. The United States, Great Britain, our European allies, Australia and New Zealand take intelligence and security matters far more seriously than we do historically in this country. We have a long way to go to make up for past deficiencies and meet future challenges the scale of which we cannot imagine.

What is happening in the United States took me by surprise. I anticipated that in the aftermath of September 11 there would be an enormous hew and cry to the find out what went wrong. There has been no hew and cry in the United States. No recriminations, nothing even similar to what happened after Pearl Harbour in 1941 when Congress got into the act and questioned why President Roosevelt failed the country.

The United States has drawn a veil of silence over the issue of intelligence failure. The United States Congress has adopted an approach of bi-partisanship on this issue.

It might behoove us in this country to follow that example for some practical and pragmatic reasons. The task ahead is not to look back on past failures, but to address the challenges of the future.

The United States is ramping up its intelligence community. This is remarkable. The United States spends $30 billion a year on intelligence collection and intelligence analysis. We spend a laughable fragment of that sum in this country on these matters.

They think that they need even more. What do we think? I think that we need more. I will talk about that.

Allies are also ramping up, the British most publicly. American commentators are using phrases such as "a new golden age for intelligence." The last time the phrase golden age of intelligence was used was in 1950 when the CIA went through an enormous expansion and began to engage in its first covert operations.

There has been no talk in this country of a golden age for intelligence. Maybe we do not want to have a golden age of intelligence in Canada, but we better look squarely in the face the question of Canadian capabilities, as they currently exist, and broader public attitudes to this matter.

If we were to have a golden age in Canada, it would be unprecedented in terms of expansion, public understanding, resources and political will. How would this occur? We would have to build on the existing foundation of Canadian capabilities in collection analysis and the dissemination systems. We would have an enormous number of changes to make at the same time. If we are going to be serious about the business of having appropriate levels of intelligence capabilities in this country, we face a top to bottom systemic reform.

To engage in a serious public debate about changes to that scale is going to be difficult in this country because there is little public knowledge about intelligence issues. Members of the intelligence community have the task of speaking truth to power but not necessarily speaking truth to Parliament. Parliament does not have any standing committees that deal with this issue. With all respect, I would suggest that Parliament itself has turned a blind eye in the past to security and intelligence matters. It will be difficult for us all. It will be very difficult for us to get up to speed.

I will turn to some of the reforms that I think might be necessary, reflecting on current capabilities weaknesses. I will go top to bottom through this set of organic steps from dissemination to analysis to collection.

At the dissemination stage, we heard Mr. Corcoran say that there might be not be a standing committee on security and intelligence in the cabinet, but there is a cabinet meeting of ministers on security and intelligence. It would be wise to determine the implications of this.

The Standing Committee on Security and Intelligence was abandoned in 1993. I do not think that it had been very active at that time. Prime Minister Lester Pearson originally instituted it in 1960 under the encouragement of the Privy Council secretary to the cabinet at the time. Its job has been to set intelligence priorities. Whether it is able to do that effectively is a question that needs examination. It does not meet regularly.

Whatever form it takes currently, I do not think it means that the cabinet is well informed on intelligence issues. If we are going to get well informed on security and intelligence issues, we are going to have to look seriously at the creation of a Cabinet level ministerial position responsible for national security and intelligence.

This portfolio could be given to the deputy prime minister, in the simplest and most pragmatic way to do it. We need some focal point for understanding of intelligence in cabinet, some focal point for intelligence reporting getting to cabinet and being debated in cabinet. We need some focal point for the explanation in defence of government initiatives in this area in Parliament. We need a focal point for more broad public education in this country. The best way to do that would be to give serious consideration to a new cabinet minister.

This is not to imitate the American practice in any sense. It is a made in Canada solution that meets Canadian needs.

There has been some talk about the coordination role of the Privy Council Office. We need to look at that more closely. There is a position known as the Security and Intelligence Coordinator in the Privy Council Office. That position is sometimes held solely by the incumbent as coordinator of security and intelligence, as was the case for Margaret Purdy, who is now the Deputy Minister in the Department of National Defence responsible for critical infrastructure protection.

The general practice has been for the coordinator in the Privy Council Office responsible for security and intelligence and responsible for coordinating the activities of the community to share another job description, which is legal counsel to the cabinet. In past practice, that has meant that more than 50 per cent of that person's time has been spent on legal issues and far less than 50 per cent was spent or security and intelligence matters. We need to think about the entire coordination function in government. The existing structures are inadequate.

Our adoption of a coordinator of security and intelligence position in Canada was a watered down imitation of a British practice. They have a security and intelligence coordinator in the cabinet in Great Britain.

I suggest to you that we face enormous deficiencies in terms of the way in which intelligence gets to cabinet level for decision-making and that comes to the attention and understanding of cabinet members and the Prime Minister. That needs to be fixed. We have problems in terms of a central coordination at the PCO because the PCO has the power of suasion. It does not have any other powers to enforce coordination. It has no budgetary power, nor powers to allocate personnel or resources.

Canada is seriously weak in terms of its analytical capabilities. We have small units spread across a number of government departments, each of which are responsible for analytical issues in the security and intelligence field to their own departmental briefs and their own ministers. There is a small office in the PCO known as the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat that is responsible for some strategic analysis and reporting, but its product does not go to cabinet level for reading or for comprehension and digestion. It is far too small to do a good job properly.

We need to do a wholesale reform of how we do intelligence analysis. If you do not have an analytical capacity, the rest of the system is useless. All the collection in the world will do no good if there is not an analytical capacity. We do not have anything to tell decision makers.

The system we currently have may have been satisfactory, though I am doubtful for the kind of world we lived in pre-September 11, when security and intelligence issue were not taken all that seriously. I would argue that the system in Ottawa is not sufficient for the unknown environment that we face post-September 11.

There have been many studies of this problem in the past. There have been hosts of internal suggestions for reforms, some of them excellent, all of them faced sooner or later with enormous bureaucratic obstruction.

The only reason we have any central analytical body in the Privy Council Office was because the Department of Foreign Affairs office decided to get rid of its strategic intelligence analysis unit in 1993. The rump of that unit was shipped to PCO.

The issue has been raised as to whether we need a foreign secret service. It is important to cut through some of the obscurity and avoidance of clarity that surrounds this issue.

We do not have a foreign secret service capacity. CSIS in the CSIS Act has a mandate, in certain restricted ways, to collect foreign intelligence, as Mr. Corcoran made clear, but that is not the same thing as having a foreign secret service capacity. If we were to create such a thing, we would have to think very seriously about how we wanted to do it. It would be a long-term creation. It would cost a lot of money. It would require a great deal of skill, a great deal of political will, and a great deal of public education.

We need such a capacity for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to allow Canada to continue to play a role as an independent actor in the global intelligence business and, to allow Canada to maintain its place at the allied intelligence table, which has historically been so vital to any of the successes it has had in that field.

We also have a communications security establishment that is the most secretive of our intelligence collection agencies. The communications security establishment is part of an intelligence alliance that links it with, in particular, British counterparts. In comparison to its U.K. counterparts, it is miniscule in size. That is not to say it is not proficient at what it does, but it is miniscule in size, and I would suggest it is just hanging on by the skin of its teeth in terms of technological advances in the communications revolution since the 1990s.

If we are going to take the requirement for foreign gathering of communications intelligence seriously, then I am sure CSE will need many more resources and much more political attention. Their problem from within is that they find it very difficult to make their case. It would be very difficult for the government to explain why it was pouring money into this agency, again part of the need for a greater public education and awareness on this matter.

We need to rethink the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs in the intelligence business. As I said, in 1993 DFAIT axed its foreign intelligence analysis unit. Perhaps even more importantly, the Department of Foreign Affairs has been seriously downsized over the past years. Its glory days are long behind it. One of the things in particular that it has axed in very significant measure has been its foreign political reporting.

One of the best investments we might make might simply be to retool the Department of Foreign Affairs so that we have a proper political reporting system from overseas. That is the foundation for many of our other allies' intelligence reporting systems. I am in favour of an investment in the foreign secret service capacity, wherever it is run from and I am not afraid of new bureaucracies in this regard.

Although this is treading on Brigadier General Jurkowski's territory, we need to have a serious look at the Department of National Defence's intelligence capabilities.Here I am talking about the J2 component of the Department of National Defence, not the operation staff, of which General Jurkowski was the manager and chief of staff. I think we might find, if we investigated the operation seriously and in depth, that there were many deficiencies, or certainly that many more resources and much more analytical capacity was required there.

That will give you a little bit of a waterfront sketch of some of the ways in which we need to boost our intelligence collection capabilities. I should add that I think CSIS will also require more resources and more talent in order to do its job. People in the intelligence community will tell you: Do not just throw money at us. I think they are so worn down they will not ask for money, because they have not been used to getting money in the past. They do not know how to make the argument. Let me make it for them.

They need more money. However, money is not enough. They also need talent and expertise, and, above all, highly trained analysts to make sense of the information that is going to be collected by Canadian operatives and be passed to Canada, if we stay in the alliance game, by our allies.

Let me conclude by asking and trying to answer the question of why we should do any of these things, which seem perhaps as a complete package distinctly un-Canadian and would certainly have very little in the way of historical precedent.

We have to face the fact that we are operating now in a different, unpredictable international environment. The United States has declared a global war on terrorism and it behooves us to take this declaration very seriously. It is not a rhetorical matter. Canada has committed itself to engaging alongside the United States, its NATO allies and through the United Nations in that global war on terrorism. We do not have the capacity to fulfill that pledge in the security and intelligence side, in my view.

Why should we make these changes? First, they will enhance domestic security. I think the public is far out in front of the government on this issue. The public is looking for an enhancement of domestic security.

Second, to engage in serious measures of public education followed by reform will provide for a degree of public reassurance, which is needed in an era when people are concerned about crop-dusting planes on the prairies, are buying World War II vintage gas masks in Toronto stores, and are lining up in Manhattan for drugs that might be antidotes to anthrax. Public reassurance is necessary, and public reassurance is not a matter of soft soap and political candy floss. It is a matter of serious public education.

Why should we engage in serious changes to the security and intelligence community? If we do not, we will fail in a critical task. We will fail as an ally. We will not be regarded as ally-worthy by Great Britain and the United States, by Europe, or even by Australia, who is another of our partners. We are just holding on to ally-worthiness at the moment. If we do not make changes, if we cannot swing the security and intelligence community by way of expanding its abilities and resources to meet the challenges of the war on terrorism, we will sooner or later lose our place at the allied table. We will be deemed unworthy as an ally.

What would be the costs of being deemed unworthy as an ally? You might say we can afford those costs; we can live in isolation and live in a bubble in this country; we can live blind in the international world; but if you say that, I will lose my faith in Canadian politicians altogether.

Historically, Canada has depended on its intelligent alliance connections to be able to function effectively in terms of understanding both domestic problems and, more importantly, understanding the international environment in which we live. Our membership in this intelligence alliance was gained or earned as a result of our work in the Second World War and our ongoing work during the Cold War.

We have ceased to work hard to keep our place at this alliance table. We have allowed that alliance connectivity to atrophy. We need to do something serious about that. The whole business of how the alliance functions, and to the degree that it can, needs to be subject to some political scrutiny.

Finally, I will say that if Canada is serious about making a contribution to a global war on terrorism, and is serious about eradicating terrorism in this country we can only do so if we understand the first line of defence against terrorism. Senator Kenny suggested, in what I thought, without any intention of flattery at all, was a wonderful editorial in the National Post. It greatly surprised me to hear a senator say such things. My heart was warmed to hear that the senator was talking about this need to pay attention to intelligence as a matter of Canadian statecraft.

The first line of defence against terrorism is intelligence. One of the best contributions that Canada could make, given the kind of society we are and the kinds of capabilities we might have to a global war on terrorism, will not come in the military field; it will not come in the diplomatic or economic fields; but it could come in what I would describe as the broad field of knowledge, or, in essence, in the field of intelligence. We can make an intelligence contribution to the global war on terrorism that might make a difference.

By that, I do not mean just chasing the bad guys, but also using a made-in-Canada understanding of what will be a very difficult and protracted war, to try to influence the way our allies prosecute that war, and influence the way in which it is understood internationally.

This has traditionally been the role of intelligence. We use intelligence in order to try not only to shape political decisions in this country but to influence the decisions of our allies. That was the traditional understanding. That is why we had an intelligence community in the Second World War and the Cold War, but we have forgotten that that was the essential equation. We do not have the capacities at the moment to maintain that equation.

With that, I hope I have stirred the pot a little bit. I am not sorry that Senator LaPierre is not here, but that brings my remarks to a close.

Senator Meighen: General, you certainly have stirred the pot; you set it from bubbling to boiling. There was a fair degree of commonality in what you said. One hears the message that the intelligence community is starved for resources, leadership and education. Senators, as General Jurkowski said, we have a right to security in this country.

After listening to these and other witnesses, I have questions about these six or seven agencies that are involved in the gathering stage. Where does the information go from there? We heard a previous witness say that we are more aware of threats now, therefore we will share the information more readily. Do you have any comments on that? Do you know whether there is anything that can be done to ensure that there is a greater sharing of information?

I heard Professor Wark say that we should have a cabinet position relevant to security and intelligence. I am not sure whether there is such a cabinet position among our allies. I would like to know that. As the next best step, and I understand that the deputy ministers have been meeting under the direction of Mr. Cappe, I believe that Mr. Manley may be chairing a group of ministers responsible for security and intelligence. I would like to know whether you think that might help.

Finally, we have to be educated, as a committee. We are parliamentarians and, like anybody else we are citizens. I suspect that most, if not all, of us do not enjoy a high level of security clearance right now. In either of your views, will the information that comes to us be limited, unless and until we have security clearance? I understand that that is the case with parliamentarians in the United Kingdom. I am not certain about other countries.

Mr. Wesley K. Wark, Associate Professor, Department of History, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto: I will respond quickly, because I have taken too much time and I apologize for that academic failing.

The system at the moment is often described from within the security and intelligence community as in effect, to be understood as a set of intelligence silos. Each agency sends its information up through a dedicated process in the hierarchy to inform, ultimately, the deputy minister or the cabinet minister on a particular issue. The coordination exists from the Privy Council Office and it takes two forms; the powers suasion of the coordinator of the PCO and the form of two or three committees that are chaired by PCO Officers. It brings elements of the security intelligence community together from time to time to discuss common intelligence issues.

The loose, decentralized silo-like system is adequate in the circumstances that we now face. We need a more centralized body. Certainly, for intelligence analysis purposes, we will need to create a new organization, which will merge these different units into one. This may be equivalent to the office of National Assessments in Australia or to the Cabinet Office System in the United Kingdom.

We have other parliamentary systems that we can look to as models. We have to understand about sharing that we have a loose and decentralized system at the moment. That is not to say that sharing does not happen in that system, but we will need to change the structures to ensure there are no bureaucratic obstacles.

In respect to a cabinet position, I suggest a dedicated cabinet minister responsible for national security and intelligence. If that position is not in place, you will not be able to fully seize on the issues and to fully make the changes necessary. Minister Manley has many other tasks in his portfolio other than security and intelligence matters. I cannot see how he could effectively add this to those tasks or how any other cabinet minister with other responsibilities could add what should be regarded as a complex, difficult and politically sensitive duty to their portfolios. My compromise position would be the deputy prime minister. The deputy prime minister would be our intelligence "Czar," if you like.

Senator Atkins: I have been sitting here for three hours and have heard one panel mention the Solicitor General only once. As I understand our system, CSIS and the RCMP report through the Solicitor General. He has a mandate, through his position of security, and he has a responsibility just as the Minister of Justice has, to act in the interests of the country before any other interests. Why is he not considered in the process as being important in the coordinating function for intelligence and security?

Mr. Wark: The Solicitor General is responsible, as minister, for only a portion of the intelligence community, more broadly understood.

The Solicitor General's post is responsible for CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the prison system divided across those three mandates. The Solicitor General cannot give full-scale attention to security and intelligence issues and is not the focal point in cabinet for discussions on broader security and intelligence issues and certainly not on foreign intelligence issues at all.

It has to be understood that CSIS is not the only player in this game and the RCMP do not have an intelligence function. It is a law enforcement agency. There are other important players and, if you are to a cabinet-level focus to bring together the security and intelligence community, it has to be somewhere other than in Solicitor General's department.

Senator Meighen: As individual committee members, will we hear enough to make an informed decision without having security clearance?

Mr. Jurkowski: My colleagues in uniform and I have been in a situation many times where we were asked to brief politicians. Most of them were interested in what was happening, but we were always mindful of the lack of security clearance. There are certain pieces of information that we would have liked them to be aware of, but we could not divulge.

In a crisis, for example, would that be overridden? It would depend on the nature and sensitivity of that intelligence information, but sensitive information would have to be dealt with through security clearance. I am not an expert in that area, but it is a factor that has to be considered.

The second point I would like to make, to add to Professor Wark's comments, is about various organizations across Canada with specialized intelligence requirements and repositories of information for their own needs.

In my mind, we are talking about asymmetric threats, which transcend any one area. They cover many areas; military; external to the country; policing work; and they cover CSIS-style work. The single point that comes to the fore in my mind is whether the decision maker in cabinet, or the Prime Minister, or another, such as the municipal mayor, will have be able to obtain the requisite information quickly enough from the system that exists now? The temporal dimension is critical, and a centralized organization would help to mitigate the effects of the silos.

Senator Meighen: General Jurkowski would know this better than any of us. In the military we have, for better or for worse, had to specialize. We have decided, in the navy, for instance, that we would concentrate on anti-submarine warfare. In the air force, certain choices have been made. We no longer have much heavy lift capacity. We can send fellows in fighter aircraft here and there, but only a very small number. It is hard for us to move large numbers of troops quickly on our own due to that lack of lift capacity.

Is it realistic to think, given our limited resources, that we could usefully specialize in the intelligence and security community, or must we have a foot in every security intelligence camp?

Mr. Jurkowski: I think to specialize would be folly. I think you must cover all angles. You cannot ignore one part of asymmetric threats, or even conventional threats, and still retain your own sovereignty.

Senator Meighen: Even if you had an agreement with an ally to cover off that part?

Mr. Jurkowski: That ally would, with the best of intentions, actually be taking part of your sovereignty. That could be acceptable, but to me it is anathema. You have to put the resources in place to cover all angles to preserve the human security in your country.

Senator Meighen: It is not an analogy with the military?

Mr. Jurkowski: It might be necessary to do things in the military that way too.

Mr. Wark: In the world of intelligence, given the complexity of issues that must be examined, no country, not even the United States, is an island. All countries rely on intelligence sharing arrangements and, to a degree, on specialization. Canada has, in the past, specialized in certain key areas, particularly in signals intelligence, and we will go on specializing. The trick is to maintain the balance between deciding on certain specialized tasks that keep us at the intelligence alliance table and having the capacity to have a general watch on domestic security and international developments with the resources that we can have. We must balance these things.

It is critical to stay at the allied table because this is a partnership of more than 50 years. It has its own dynamics and chemistry. If we were to let it go, we would never be able to recreate it. We could never knock on the door of the CIA, SIS or GCHQ in Britain and ask them to give us the stuff they used to give us. They would laugh us out of court.

Mr. Jurkowski: In my experience, we do share a lot of military and intelligence information with our allies, in particular the United States. I was a member of an organization called the Permanent Joint Board on Defence that was created in Ogdensberg on August 18, 1940 between Prime Minister Mackenzie King and President Roosevelt. I believe that they are having their two hundred and eighth meeting this month.

I participated in many of those meetings as a member, but I often had the feeling that I was considered the Canadian freeloader. They would never say that, but I felt like a freeloader.

Senator Forrestall: I, too, have been asked to leave a meeting because I had nothing to contribute.

I have some sympathy for Professor Wark's position. Where do we find the resource? Who trains the resource? Are universities dragging their feet a bit? You are there because of your personal interest in this subject matter. Are universities doing enough to help us identify resources? I doubt very much that you could find enough well educated people prepared to dedicate themselves at a variety of levels.

Mr. Wark: That is a good question. I have lost track of the number of unemployed or badly employed former Ph.D. students that I have had. The truth is that there is a range of resources in this country from which analytical talent could be drawn. We are just not good at drawing from those resources, of which the universities are an obvious one. The private sector is an obvious one. Organizations like KPMG are another resource. In the commercial sector, the banks all maintain extensive risk analysis and threat assessment units and can bring people into those units to do economic intelligence.

We are a very rich country in terms of these resources, but there is a real disconnect between the security intelligence community and all the resources that exist, and that is because, in my personal view, the security intelligence community has never come up with a realistic, long-term strategy of recruitment of the people they need. This is one of the many things we need to look at.

Senator Forrestall: Do you suggest it should be done from the outside, that you do not want to do it but that it must be done?

Mr. Wark: No, I am saying that there are rich resources in this country -

Senator Forrestall: Why have the existing resources not taken the initiative themselves.

Mr. Wark: I think the universities have in all kinds of ways. We train people in all kinds of areas, including intelligence studies. That is not to say that the people trained in these areas find it easy, even when they are interested, to develop a career in the security and intelligence community. That community recruits largely from within. It feeds off the government bureaucracy. It likes doing business that way because it can assess the nature of the people it is hiring. They do not have a systematic program of recruitment from the much richer bed of public talent beyond their walls.

That has never been a problem in the past because they have not had to recruit very much. In fact, the problem has been the opposite. They have had no opportunities to recruit; no money and no mandate. However, if they are going to expand, they will have to come up with a recruitment strategy and look to new pools of talent, which do exist.

Senator Forrestall: A current theme that I have heard is that Canada would have about a 20-year warning prior to involvement in a major war. Now we see that it can happen overnight. We saw it happen live on CNN. War can happen tomorrow morning. We may very well be at war, a kind of war we do not yet understand.

Why the 20-year strategy? Why would we want to tell Canadians that we would have 20 years warning, that we would see it building? Somebody obviously feared that an event such as this could happen, with no conscious awareness of where or when. It may be years before we know the full story. That was war, and that happened in the blink of an eye, intelligence services notwithstanding.

Why did we tell Canadians we had 20-year cushion?

Mr. Jurkowski: I am not trying to beg out here, but I have not looked at that document for some time. I recall it as having been a forward-looking document. I am not sure 20 years was what was written in there, but whatever it was in terms of years, it is more or less an agreed time frame amongst allies, intelligence organizations with the known resources that they have would be able to reasonably look ahead and see if some sort of conventional war would be looming on the horizon along the lines of a Second World War or the Korean War. That is what they were focussing on. I do not believe it refers to anything but that. I doubt it refers to asymmetric threats because that is an unknown at this stage. We are trying to come to grips with those kinds of threats. In my recollection, it is a conventional kind of large world scale conflagration that they are looking at.

Senator Forrestall: Given our partnerships in the world, we have been seconded to war in that part of the world for quite some time now. That could happen again shortly.

People call me at home and ask what is going on. They ask if the Prime Minister knows what is going on, if anybody is telling him or Mr. Manley what is going on. The public are more afraid today of that than they are of other things. Who is looking after the air space 100 kilometres in any direction from this Peace Tower? Who is looking at that? Who will give us that 20 years?

Mr. Jurkowski: If it is 20 years, whatever it is.

Senator Forrestall: What is the difference between 48 hours' knowledge of what will happen wherever you happen to be at nine o'clock in the morning? Who is looking after our air space tonight?

Mr. Jurkowski: Canada.

Senator Forrestall: Where is there an aircraft that could do that?

Mr. Jurkowski: It depends on the threat, but right now there is no threat.

Senator Forrestall: There was no threat when we went to bed on the night of September 10.

Mr. Jurkowski:You are absolutely right, sir.

Senator Forrestall: If there was and you knew there was and you did not tell the world, then we are guilty of something.

Mr. Jurkowski: That is a question you may wish to ask of officials in the Department of National Defence. Coming from a fighter background, I can assure you that there is a heightened level of alert in this country and throughout NORAD.

Senator Forrestall: Bin Laden cannot get his hands on the type of missiles that he would like to have. What does he do? He creates missiles manned, in the case of September 11, or unmanned, remote controlled. That capacity is well within their grasp and it is not terribly expensive. How do we cope with a missile? How do we cope with a jet?

Mr. Wark: If, over decades, you reduce the Canadian Armed Forces to a combat force of roughly 2,000-strong, as one of my colleagues said, you could put all the combat soldiers in the Canadian Armed Forces in a moderately-sized football stadium. If you reduce the fighter force and the navy, you have to expect odd thinking to emerge from the Department of National Defence about its future.

We all share a collective responsibility for having decided that we do not need military forces in the defence of Canadian national sovereignty or a whole variety of international roles. We have reduced it so much that now we face a terrible problem in terms of deciding how to rebuild it.

The American military and the British military are thinking imaginatively about the problems of asymmetric warfare and how to use military means to respond to a terrorist threat are simply impossible in this country because of the tiny core to which we have reduced our armed forces. We bear the responsibility for this, not the Department of National Defence.

Senator Forrestall: That is my point. We have a responsibility to tell the people that it is not safe yet and we do not know how to make it safe; we are trying.

Senator Banks: Professor, you mentioned early on that there is no standing committee in Parliament on defence or security; you appear before one now.

Mr. Wark: We were speaking of an intelligence committee.

Senator Banks: We regard intelligence as being within the purview of security.

Coming directly from what the professor said, general, the Prime Minister made an undertaking yesterday that we would, if called upon, supply military forces. Are we in a position to do that?

Mr. Jurkowski: Yes, we can. I can tell you that from my own experience, early into the aftermath of that accident, the operational staff at National Defence Headquarters would have been quickly developing options and they would have been approved for the CDS to brief the Prime Minister.

You will not find uniformed individuals talking about what those options are. There are military options and they are viable. I will not get into details, but the policy of the Canadian forces is to not talk about those options, but there are possibilities.

I take you back to Kosovo, a place with which I am familiar. The CF-18 operation that occurred over Kosovo was well received by our allies. You may not recall, but I gave facts something along the lines of 50 per cent of the missions that Canadian fighter pilots flew were led by Canadian fighter pilots. That means big operations and coordinated attacks were led by our CF-18 pilots as a result of the aircraft and capabilities that were resident therein and because of the training that they have.

Although it is a small force, that capability is roughly the same as it was just a few years ago. They are capable. That is an example of the kind of force that could conceivably be sent into military action if it was warranted, and I do not have any preconceived notions about what is warranted in Afghanistan. However, that kind of military force, both in the air, on the ground and at sea, would be small but effective.

Senator Banks: Professor, you must surely have thought about the financial bill in order to do what you have suggested we ought to do. Can you give us a ballpark figure? You said the Americans spend $30 billion, and are about to spend more. Do we need to spend $3 billion a year? Do we now spend $3 billion a year?

You heard us speaking earlier about the balance that is necessary to find in any civil society between security, on the one hand, and individual rights on the other. Individual rights are important in this country and always have been. We have been prepared in this country, so far at least, to submerge other considerations to those rights or to rise above those other considerations in order to protect those rights.

Would you give us a ballpark figure, if you have any idea of what the additional cost would be, and where do you see that balance?

Mr. Wark: To be honest, I have not tried to work out a bill. I do not think anybody has ever asked me to work out a bill.

Off the top of my head, we probably need to double the existing budget of the security and intelligence community right away.

Senator Banks: What is it now?

Mr. Wark: Some of the figures in the existing budget are classified. It is hard to put them together as an aggregate. No one is responsible for putting together a security and intelligence community budget, so it is hard for me to say. I would estimate that it is probably in the order of $500 million. We are not talking about a large figure in the overall scheme of things. We might need a doubling to ensure that we are able to draft in the kind of analytical expertise that we require, and partly to bring us up to speed technologically, particularly for agencies like the Communications Security Establishment. If we were serious about engaging in overseas foreign intelligence collections operations, the bill would be sizeable. As a first principle, to improve CSE's capabilities to expand the analytical capabilities of the government, I would say doubling the budget would be a reasonable thing to do.

Senator Banks: You said that we had at one time a recognized specialty having to do with signals and electronic surveillance, intercontinental transmissions included. Canada has been at the forefront of certain of those kinds of electronic technologies, and it still is in some respects. Could we regain that?

Mr. Wark: We could. I think it is on the public record that in the Cold War, Canada had a special Russian Soviet intelligence collection mission in terms of signals intelligence and had a focus and expertise that had developed particularly in the Soviet north and in the Arctic, which is an important strategic zone in terms of Soviet strategic weapons.

I would not overemphasize or get too romantic about the degree of Canadian capabilities. Our capabilities were largely in the form of collection as opposed to analysis, but it nevertheless was an important Allied contribution. It was a technologically sophisticated contribution. It was one that I think inevitably dissipated at the end of the Cold War. I am not sure that we have come to think again about specialized intelligence contributions in quite that light.

As for the issue of security versus individual rights, let me make two comments. We are not sure yet what kind of international environment we are living in. War has been declared on terrorism in the past: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and national emergencies. The country's attitude towards individual rights and government measures taken in response change in the circumstances of war. I do not think we are in the circumstances of those kinds of previous wars, but we may be facing changes to the balance.

That said, much of the concern about where individual rights and civil liberties fit in an expanded security and intelligence capacity is simply misplaced. Nothing that I am advocating in terms of an increase in the capabilities in the security and intelligence fields has any implications for a civil liberties regime in this country, and if it did I would not advocate it. We are talking about increasing capabilities and knowledge and drawing on the resources of this country as a knowledge-rich country to improve our ability to understand our own society and threats to it and to make a global contribution. This is not about Orwell or Big Brother. It is not about listening in on the communications of innocent citizens in this country or impeding the lives of innocent citizens in this country.

Senator Banks: Is that not going to happen as a matter of course if we do what you say we have to do? If we increase the level of surveillance among people who we now know are going to infiltrate themselves into a society in such a way as to be invisible or have no profile, in order to get at that, will we not have to intrude? Are we not going to have to catch some innocent conversations in our net in order to find the guilty ones?

Mr. Wark: Perhaps, but people do not understand that this is not a new problem, and we have not changed our ways in the past in order to deal with it. People are using the language of "sleeper agents." That is how they are describing the group in the United States that hijacked the planes and crashed them into those buildings. Sleeper agents are a classic problem for counter- intelligence and security and intelligence organizations. How do you identify people who are trying to live invisibly in your society? There are methodologies for that. Most of them relate to the ability to understand a plan or conspiracy at its root before it develops and before the sleeper agent gets to your country and begins to operate there. If you do not have that capacity to reach out and understand the thing at its origin, you will probably not get many of these people, and it certainly would not be worth any price in terms of raising the bar of civil liberties.

When I am talking about security and intelligence capabilities, I am talking about the ability to get at the root of those kinds of operations, not some kind of blanket operation whereby you would throw a huge net of surveillance over all Canadian citizens in the hope that this or that tidbit might come to your attention. That is a futile way to proceed.

Senator Wiebe: Most of us who sit on this committee realized a year and a half ago that there was a definite need for more resources for our military, our security and intelligence, and our police forces. It was for that reason that we worked hard over a period of years to get this committee re-established within the Senate.We agree on the principle that more resources are needed within Canada.

The Brigadier General commented that our Armed Forces are highly thought of worldwide. That is true. Unfortunately, they are not thought of that highly here in Canada. May I suggest as well that our intelligence and security services worldwide are thought of very highly. For some reason, and this has certainly been amplified since September 11, we seem to feel that our intelligence and security service here in Canada is useless. From listening to your comments, I would have gathered, Professor Wark, that that is your feeling.

I think that the CSIS, our RCMP and all forces have done a tremendous job in regards to security and intelligence. It may not be perfect, but just because a nation that spends $30 billion a year on security and intelligence fails, does that automatically mean that our system has failed? Does that mean that everything we have done up to that point has been a disaster? I suggest that it has not. The people within those departments have done an outstanding job to keep our country as secure and as safe as it has until now. That kind of remark that because the U.S. system has failed, it automatically means that ours is no good has caused a lot of anxiety. Those are the people making those phone calls.

During your comments, you mentioned that there should be a public debate of security and intelligence issues, and I agree with that. There should be. You also made the statement that reform cannot be made from within. If it cannot, who should make those changes?

Mr. Wark: On the record, and with all seriousness, I never for a moment uttered the word "useless" or meant to imply that I thought the security and intelligence community was useless. I wanted to point out that I believe its capacities are inadequate to face the challenges it now faces since September 11. Prior to September 11, we as a country and society did not tend to pay much attention to these areas, and they were under-resourced before that time.

I feel no less patriotic than you about the work of our security and intelligence community. I am not denigrating the work of that community. I am arguing something that is unusual for an academic to argue, and that is that they should be able to do more. In the past in our debate on these issues, generally the academic community said: The security and intelligence community is a threat to civil liberties. Let us put it in a box and forget about it. That is not my point. I am talking about capabilities to allow Canada to defend itself in terms of domestic security and to play a role internationally.

Senator Wiebe: Thank you. You said that there should be public debate of security and intelligence issues in Canada, and I agree with you on that. You mentioned that reform cannot be made from within, and my question is, who should make that reform and those changes?

Mr. Wark: I apologize. In my passion of the moment, I forgot your other question. In saying I did not think the community could reform itself from within, I meant that we have to look at a multi-faceted process. We need ideas for reform from within the community. We need some kind of external process of review, whether it is done by Parliament, whether it is done through a white paper that the government would issue, whether it is even done more spectacularly in the form of a royal commission, we need some external process to open up this question to debate and understanding. We need a combination of the internal and the external. At the top of all this, we need a Prime Minster and a cabinet that are prepared to invest time and energy in thinking about these issues, because if there is not a sustained political will to make changes, all the reviews in the world, external and internal, would be a waste of public money.

The Chairman: Gentlemen, you made our evening interesting and productive. You have seen how the committee animated with your comments, and that is why we are here. We appreciate you coming on short notice and sharing information with us.

This Senate committee meeting has been part of our survey of major security and defence matters facing Canada. This evening, we have focussed on how intelligence is collected, analyzed and disseminated. The people who have been helping us with this have been a knowledgeable group of specialists with their own views about how this could happen.

The committee's work will continue in Ottawa on October 22, when we shall hear from a number of government officials about intelligence. Those of you at home following our work can visit our web site at www.senate/senat.ca/defence.asp. We post witness testimony as well as confirmed hearing schedules. Otherwise, you may contact the clerk of the committee by calling 1-800-267-7362 for further information and assistance in contacting members of the committee.

Before I adjourn this meeting, I remind members of this committee that Senator Meighen will be chairing a brief meeting of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs in the room just adjacent to us, and members of the committee and staff are invited to attend.

The committee adjourned.