Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 13 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, March 26, 2007
The Standing Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 10:05 a.m. to examine and report on the national security policy of Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: My name is Colin Kenny and I chair this committee. I would like to briefly introduce the members of the committee. Senator Atkins, from Ontario, is Deputy Chair of the committee. He came to the Senate with 27 years of experience in the field of communications. He served as senior adviser to former federal Conservative leader Robert Stanfield, to Premier William Davis of Ontario and to Prime Minister Mulroney.
Beside Senator Atkins is Senator Day of New Brunswick. He is the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. He is a member of the bar of New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec and a fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. He is also former President and CEO of the New Brunswick Forest Products Association.
Beside Senator Day is Senator Moore of Halifax. He is a lawyer with an extensive record of community involvement and has served for 10 years on the board of governors of St. Mary's University. He also sits on the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and on the Standing Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
On my left is Senator Banks from Alberta. He was called to the Senate following a 50-year career in the entertainment industry. He is the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
Beside Senator Banks is Senator Zimmer from Winnipeg. He has had a long and distinguished career in business and philanthropy and volunteered his services for countless charitable causes and organizations. He sits on the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and on the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.
Colleagues, we have before us today Margaret Bloodworth, National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Privy Council Office.
Ms. Bloodworth began her professional career in 1979 with the former Canadian Transport Commission. In 1989, she was appointed to the Privy Council Office as Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Legislation and House Planning, and Counsel. In 1994, she was promoted to Deputy Clerk, Security and Intelligence, and Counsel. She left the Privy Council in October 1996 and became Associate Deputy Minister of Transport. She was appointed Deputy Minister of Transport in January 1997 and Deputy Minister of National Defence in May of 2002.
When Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada was created on December 12, 2003, Ms. Bloodworth became the department's first deputy minister. In May 2006, she was appointed to the position of Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Privy Council Office, and in October 2006 she assumed responsibilities as the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister.
Ms. Bloodworth is accompanied by Rennie Marcoux, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Privy Council Office; she was recently appointed to this position having left the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service where she had responsibility for the management of the CSIS secretariat.
Margaret Bloodworth, National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Privy Council Office: Thank you for inviting me to join you this morning. I am joined today by my colleague Ms. Rennie Marcoux, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet for Security and Intelligence.
[Translation]
I am going to begin with some general opening remarks about my role and some of the issues the security and intelligence community is facing today. Before getting to heart of the matter, perhaps I will say a few words about my background.
[English]
The chairman has noted the various places that I have worked in the last number of years. Security and intelligence has been a major focus during a significant part of my career, whether in the Department of Transport, where I was on September 11, or the Department of National Defence during our early deployments to Afghanistan and, finally, as the first Deputy Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.
As you may know, the position of National Security Adviser was created in 2003. Prior to 2003, there was a coordinator for security and intelligence, who advised and represented the Prime Minister in the senior councils of the security and intelligence community and was the lead interdepartmental and inter-agency coordination. While these are still big parts of my job, the change to National Security Adviser reflected the changes that occurred in the security environment after September 11. Today I also spend time on issues such as emergency response, national security cases, priority setting and budget issues.
Generally, my work falls into three broad categories of first, fostering a coherent and integrated approach to intelligence and threat assessment; second, promoting effective coordination among departments and agencies involved in national security, the number of which has grown in recent years; and third, building and maintaining productive and strong relations with our intelligence allies.
Allow me to say a few words about each of those categories and then I will be pleased to answer further questions.
First, on the coherent approach to intelligence and threat assessment, collaboration among agencies within the security and intelligence community has improved significantly since 9/11. Priorities for the community as a whole are established and the agencies work collaboratively to address these priorities and reallocate resources as required. This enhanced cooperation has resulted in significant improvements in the use of our collection resources and the production of coordinated all-source assessments. For example, a key community resource for considering the threats that face Canada is the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre. The primary objective of ITAC is to produce comprehensive threat assessments with input from all agencies. These assessments are distributed within the intelligence community and to relevant first line responders such as law enforcement agencies.
ITAC is housed at CSIS and is staffed by personnel from across the community. It has been in operation since October 2004. While its role is indispensable in today's environment and represents a significant improvement over previous efforts to produce integrated threat assessments, there remains room for improvement. For example, ITAC can probably improve its ability to address key national issues such as threats to critical infrastructure and enhance dissemination of ITAC products to concerned parties, both in the private and public sector. Over the next year, we will be addressing some of these issues and we will take stock of how well ITAC is serving the community.
Another challenge we face in intelligence collection and assessment is recruitment and retention.
[Translation]
Like most areas of government, the S&I sector is facing significant demographic challenges in the coming years. The need to recruit and retain in these areas is as acute as it is for rest of government; however, the S&I sector has the added challenge of factoring in the time required for security clearances and for new recruits to build up the specialized expertise required for their work.
[English]
We recognize these community-wide challenges and we are addressing them.
Second is coordination among departments and agencies. Coordination is a large part of what we do in the Privy Council Office. While departments and agencies are focussed, and rightfully so, on their particular mandate, it is important for the Privy Council Office to ensure that the overall efforts of the federal government address the demands of the security environment while, at the same time, protecting Canadians' rights.
This coordination could take the form of chairing routine and ad hoc meetings of the security and intelligence community, as well as reviewing material coming forward for cabinet. That would occur at several levels, at my level, at Ms. Marcoux's level and, indeed, at the analyst's level, depending on the issue.
In terms of the operating environment, we recognize it is time to take stock of the legislative framework, the guidelines under which I work. The new legislation and revisions to existing legislation were introduced after September 11 and have now been in effect for five years. Obviously, we have work to do on the Anti-terrorism Act.
The report released last month by the Special Senate Committee on the Anti-terrorism Act provides several good recommendations on how this legislation could be improved, and I can assure you that we are studying that report very closely. We are also awaiting the final report on the Anti-terrorism Act from the House of Commons Subcommittee on Public Safety and National Security. At the same time, the Supreme Court was clear in its ruling on the constitutionality of the security certificate regime, and we have already begun examining options for putting in place the kind of measures that would address the concerns addressed by the court.
Meanwhile, we are also working to address Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor's recommendations regarding oversight and review of national security activities. In that, we want to be careful not to simply add new layers of review, which could overlap existing mechanisms. We want to ensure that the regime is effective and allows agencies to do their jobs while providing the necessary assurances to responsible ministers, Parliament and the public.
We are looking forward to the Air India report from Mr. Justice John Major. Part of his mandate is to provide recommendations on a workable relationship between the security and intelligence community and evidence that can be used in a criminal trial. His recommendations will also factor into our work.
In many respects, the timing of these decisions and reports will allow us to take a broad and holistic view in formulating recommendations and determining the best way to move forward five years after many of the mechanisms were put in place — although some predate that by quite a bit, such as the security certificates.
Finally, regarding relations with allies, we are not the only country asking itself these questions and seeking ways to balance what is doable within the resources we are given, as well as balance the responsibility of the government to help protect its citizens while upholding their rights and freedoms. In this regard, we can learn from the experience of our allies. In the case of security certificates, for example, the United Kingdom has a form of amicus curiae, so we will obviously look at that model as we adjust our own. Similarly, countries like Australia and the U.K. have done some interesting work with their intelligence assessment organizations and, since the London bombings, have also rethought their collection activities. We will consider the systems our allies have in place and lessons they have learned in recent years as we strive to improve our own system.
Canada's security and intelligence community maintains relationships with international partners and provides high-quality intelligence to those partners. We must contribute in order to receive, and this is all the more important given that we are a net importer of intelligence. If we were to try to replicate the benefits of these relationships within our own resources, it would cost tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
An example of how international cooperation with our partners benefits Canada is the lessons that have been shared regarding terrorist attacks on mass transit systems. As you are aware, in recent years, mass transit bombings in Madrid, Moscow, London and Mumbai have raised the profile of transit security. Mass transit operations provide an attractive target for terrorist attacks, given the nature of their operations and the inability to screen large numbers of passengers.
Canada is engaged with other G8 partners, through the Roma and Lyon committees, in developing frameworks for the exchange of best practices and the evaluation of security technology that may have applications in a mass transit environment. Ultimately, an internationally recognized list of standard practice is envisaged.
As you can see, and as you know from your own work, there is much going on in the security intelligence community. As I have always said, it is not an area where we can ever declare victory. The environment is not static and our work is never done; but we can, and do, continually seek ways to improve our efforts while being mindful there is a limit to the amount of change we can expect from people and institutions in a short period of time.
The ongoing discussions around the broad question of balancing people's freedoms and the tools we need to assure their protection are important debates for our democracy. Ultimately, they also should inform how we carry out our responsibilities.
That concludes my introductory remarks. Ms. Marcoux and I will be pleased to answer any questions you have and look forward to your suggestions and comments.
[Translation]
Senator Day: Let me first thank you for you presence at this committee, Ms. Bloodworth, but most of all thank you for your presentation.
[English]
That is where I would like to begin. Thank you for acknowledging the work and the recommendations of the Senate Special Committee on the Anti-terrorism Act.
Ms. Bloodworth, you noted the Supreme Court decision with respect to security certificates under the immigration and refugee appeal legislation. The guidelines provided by the Supreme Court on security certificates under that legislation are very similar to the recommendations of the Special Senate Committee and I hope that we will see some initiative in that regard from the executive. Although it might be premature to ask, do you anticipate seeing some of the recommendations of the Special Senate committee at this stage? If you are able to comment, it would be wonderful but the question might be premature at this time.
Ms. Bloodworth: It is premature for me to comment; however, the Supreme Court has been clear about the timeline so I think you can anticipate something will come forward sooner rather than later. We are actively involved in looking at the various options to meet the issues raised by the Supreme Court. The court recognized the rationale for security certificates whereby we can remove from Canada people who are not Canadians and whom we do not want in Canada. Senator, you are right in saying that court's determinations are not dissimilar to those of the Senate Special Committee but there are areas where we need to work to make improvements, and we are working on them.
Senator Day: I have one question, after which I will not ask further questions on what might be in respect of legislation and committee reports. Generally, is the concept of a security certificate important to maintain?
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, it is my view that in respect of immigration, when two ministers and a court review determine that a person is undesirable, then we need a mechanism to be able to remove such a person from the country, while recognizing that at times we will have information that we are not ready to make public. In fact, making such information public might not always be in the interest of Canada's national security. In many cases, the system has worked well, although difficulties have occurred when the country to which the person is to be sent back is not up to our standards. What do we do in that regard? That is the essence of the challenge that we have faced. I recognize that these are not easy issues. If there had been easy answer, someone before me would have found it. There are good ideas on the table that will be helpful as we go forward.
Senator Day: So that people viewing the proceedings this morning understand, a security certificate is an arrest without warrant and the holding of someone without charge.
Ms. Bloodworth: That is not the definition of security certificate. A security certificate is a detention under the Immigration Act. It occurs when we have information whereby we deem a person to be a risk to national security. Usually, the information is in the form of intelligence and is evidence that we can use in the criminal courts. Such people are not charged; rather, we want them removed from the country. A security certificate has been described as a "three-sided jail." In other words, people are detained in Canada but if they choose to leave, they can do so at any time. However, some of these people under security certificates might face significant risk when they return to their countries.
Senator Day: Thank you. I would like to have a clearer understanding of your role as National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister. The words "to the Prime Minister" might imply a more limited role than you have. Could you explain this role to the committee?
We are familiar with the role of the Director of National Intelligence in the United States but that is not the role that you have in Canada. Could you explain your intelligence role as it relates both to the Prime Minister and beyond the Prime Minister in the general intelligence community in Canada?
Ms. Bloodworth: The Director of National Intelligence is probably my closest counterpart in the U.S. on the intelligence side. He does not deal with some of the others. They are a much larger country so they parcel out the job to various people. The DNI has a much larger community to deal with than I have.
The words "to the Prime Minister" are used because it is in the Prime Minister's interest as the head of the country to ensure that the intelligence community works together and does not operate in silos. That is always a challenge when you are dealing with sensitive information that at times requires limited distribution, even within government. The role that I perform on behalf of the Prime Minister is to coordinate the overall operations of the intelligence community. "Operations" is a poor choice because I do not coordinate CSIS operations or CSE operations but rather I coordinate the operations of those agencies that are working together.
Government decides on priorities and I provide advice to the Prime Minister on what those priorities should be. Indeed, if we had an incident, I would provide advice to the Prime Minister. The advice would be broader than merely intelligence but certainly intelligence is a component of the advice as it relates to intelligence. I hope that I have answered your question.
Senator Day: I am not sure at this point. We are trying to explore the details of your role as National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister. Perhaps we could talk about your relationship with the Prime Minister. How frequently do you meet with the Prime Minister on intelligence matters?
Ms. Bloodworth: I make it a practice not to discuss the frequency with which I meet with ministers. I will say that I meet with the Prime Minister as often as is necessary, which happens to be fairly often. As associate secretary, I would meet with him at times on other issues as well and I frequently communicate in writing with him.
Senator Day: Who determines the necessity of your communication?
Ms. Bloodworth: On matters of intelligence, I make that determination. Certainly, the Prime Minister could say that he does not want me to make the decision, but I have never run into that situation. When I have something to say to him, I meet with him or talk to him on the telephone.
Senator Day: When you learn something through your contacts in government, you make the determination as to whether it should be communicated to the Prime Minister. Is that right?
Ms. Bloodworth: Are you speaking to matters of intelligence in particular?
Senator Day: Yes.
Ms. Bloodworth: At times, it is more than a matter of simply finding out from a contact because there can be a fair amount of written intelligence. Certainly, some of that is directed to the Prime Minister if I believe it to be of particular interest to him.
Senator Day: I am asking you to define the relationship. Do you send information up? Do you determine whether the information is important for the Prime Minister to know? Does the Prime Minister contact you to ask about what is happening?
Ms. Bloodworth: Its can happen both ways.
Senator Day: What is the usual pattern?
Ms. Bloodworth: I am not sure that there is a usual pattern. The relationship is not unlike those that I have had with many other ministers. In that role, you bring many things to a minister's attention. In some instances, the Prime Minister or the PMO might ask me to gather more information concerning an issue in which they are interested.
The Chairman: We ask this question because the testimony of your predecessor indicated that it was all "push up" and very little demand downward from the top. That is why we are pursuing this line of questioning.
Ms. Bloodworth: That has not been my experience. When you are the one who knows the most about the area, it is normal to take on the role, as part of the job, of identifying what the Prime Minister needs to know. It has been my experience to have questions or issues brought to me by the PMO or by the Prime Minister. I guess that is as much as I can say about it.
Senator Day: Can you tell us the nature of the information that you communicate to the Prime Minister in relation to intelligence? What kinds of things do you talk about?
Ms. Bloodworth: Sometimes it is specific intelligence and sometimes it can be about priorities in the intelligence community. It encompasses a wide variety of issues.
I am sorry, if I may go back to your comment. It is true, if I compare the interest, of parliamentarians and I would include ministers in that, in intelligence and security issues to when I was in the Privy Council in the mid-1990's, I do not think there is any question that the interest is higher.
Senator Day: The Prime Minister, to our knowledge, asked for a daily intelligence briefing and that developed for a period of time. Does that practice still exist?
Ms. Bloodworth: There is daily intelligence that goes to the Prime Minister, yes. It is a system, a piece of paper, if you like, as it was with Prime Minister Martin.
Senator Day: Do you know what is on that piece of paper.
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, I read it.
Senator Day: Do you prepare it?
Ms. Bloodworth: No.
Senator Day: Does someone under your authority prepare that communication?
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes.
Senator Day: Are you involved with a more thorough written brief that is prepared for the Prime Minister from time to time? I refer to intelligence issues.
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes.
Senator Day: In addition to the daily communication to the Prime Minister, how often do you brief the Prime Minister?
Ms. Bloodworth: It is not unlike the whole panoply of issues that government deals with. Notes go to the Prime Minister on many issues every day. Intelligence issues of the day are sent to the Prime Minister with some frequency. Ministers approve priorities once a year. At least once a year at a minimum there would be more detailed material on the intelligence. It is not hugely different than dealing with other issues of concern with the Prime Minister. There is information that goes on a regular basis depending on the how significant the issues are at that particular time.
Senator Day: There are a number of departments and agencies within the Government of Canada that develop significant intelligence in their area of responsibility. Does some of that information flow to the Prime Minister directly that you may or may not know about?
Ms. Bloodworth: All of the information comes through my office. Departments and agencies do not send material on any particular issue directly to the Prime Minister. They might do it through a minister. I cannot remember a case where it the information went directly to a Prime Minister. It comes from the agencies into either Ms. Marcoux's office or to the International Assessment Staff Secretariat and goes up that way.
Senator Day: Would some of that information be more than the Prime Minister needs to know about? Who determines the editing and what should be sent on to the Prime Minister?
Ms. Bloodworth: The Privy Council Office makes a determination on what is important for the briefing of the Prime Minister or any other minister.
If your question is about operations and there are significant parts of intelligence, it would be better that a wide group of people might not know. That would happen at an agency level. They would not send names of sources nor should they because they are more closely held. It depends on the issue.
Senator Day: My questions are not as precise as they might be because we are trying to understand how this flows and the full scope of your responsibilities. I suspect from what you have said thus far is that the scope of your responsibilities keeps growing as well.
Ms. Bloodworth: I am trying to be as fulsome as I can. I certainly understand that you are trying to understand how it works. I just hope I am meeting your requirements. I do not think I could say that the scope of my activities continues to grow. It clearly is a bigger job than it was in the mid-1990s when I did a similar type of job but that was more specifically intelligence focused. My activities today involve emergency management and a large range of other issues that were not typically thought of as national security in the mid-1990s, for the reasons of what has happened since. The job has grown in that sense but it is not growing now.
Senator Day: Explain how the second item you talked about as part of your responsibility, the coordination between departments and agencies and setting priorities, is important in terms of security intelligence. What is the process for doing that? Is this fed down from the Privy Council Office, you and your department in consultation with the Prime Minister, or do you develop this collectively on all the various departments and agencies that may have some role to play for their particular area in intelligence gathering?
Ms. Bloodworth: I hope I did not leave anyone with the impression that the Prime Minister would never see the heads of various agencies because that is not true. For example if terrorism became a major issue and certainly at some regular point, we would arrange a briefing by the head of CSIS. I meant that the head of CSIS would not go directly to the Prime Minister without having coming through the Privy Council Office. Certainly, the Prime Minister and other ministers would and should hear directly from the head of CSIS on occasions about various issues. Obviously his minister would hear a lot more but others would too. I wanted to make sure that was clear.
On the question of priorities, it is both a top down and a bottom up exercise. We are not more perfect than our allies but we are getting better at it. It would be foolish for me to develop priorities for intelligence without talking to others out collecting intelligence. As a first step, Ms. Marcoux and her staff bring together the various agencies. In particular, the collection agencies and some of the key consumers talk about setting the priorities and usually that produces a much longer list than what is possible. Priorities are not really priorities if you do not have a shortened list and therefore, there would be discussions back and forth. I chair meetings with my various deputy colleagues and we recommend a set of priorities. If we do not agree on the priorites, which has never been the case, I would tell the Prime Minister that even though I do not agree, my colleagues believe this issue should be considered a high priority. I would not ignore other opinions if there was a significant difference of views of the priorities. I think that is something ministers would have a right to know. We would have a debate. As a practical matter, we listen to the consumers such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade for example. That department has an interested in intelligence. Another example is Public Safety Canada which runs the operation centre. We listen to what they consider the top priorities. In fact, at the deputy level there was not much debate as to what the priorities should be. There was a lot of debate but in the end there was complete consensus. I would hope that would normally be the case. I do not seek consensus when there is a substance of disagreement. I am not one who believes that consensus is the ultimate goal. We should try and work out differences but if there are real differences then they should come to the surface for ministers to debate.
Senator Day: How frequently do you review priorities or determine whether they should stay the same or change?
Ms. Bloodworth: Generally, we do that type of review annually, although elections can affect that norm.
Senator Day: I would like to mention the Communications Security Establishment and your relationship with respect to that agency.
Senator Banks: Congratulations or condolences on your responsibilities, as I said earlier.
I will re-ask one of Senator Day's questions. You know the kids' game when I start with a message and whisper it in someone's ear and then that person whispers it in the chairman's ear, and by the time it gets to Senator Moore, it is a different message.
When the heads of the various agencies are doing the push-up part of information are you confident that the head of CSIS or RCMP intelligence or CSC, is satisfied that the message, which was important and needed attention, got to the ears that needed to hear it?
Ms. Bloodworth: I am satisfied, but you are right to raise the issue. It is something of which we must always be conscious. Intelligence is bits and pieces of information and it is important to be careful what you select to show any given decision-maker and the context of it, which is why we have intelligence assessment. Indeed, that particular issue is one on which the International Assessment Staff spends a lot of time.
The biggest check is a large part of what is provided. The biggest part is probably also available to the heads of the agencies, for example, assessments. It is an important check. People can make errors when they pick something out and put it in. I have not seen it happen in the six months I have been in this job, but we are vigilant about it. Indeed, Ms. Marcoux and Greg Fyffe, the Executive Director of the International Assessment Staff, are vigilant about it.
The Chairman: We hear from the heads of agencies that sometimes months go by before they have an opportunity to talk to sometimes even their own minister, let alone the Prime Minister.
Ms. Bloodworth: I have not heard that in the last few months. I am not saying that it has never happened, but I have not heard the complaint.
The Chairman: When we hear it next, we will tell them to talk to you.
Ms. Bloodworth: They should, by all means. None of them are shy. I can assure you that I am under no doubt that any one of them would make their views known to me quite vociferously.
The Chairman: Frankly, they are embarrassed to raise the issue.
Ms. Bloodworth: I have not found any of them to be embarrassed to raise any question with me, senator. I know all of them well, and have for a long time. That is probably saying more about the age of the public service than anything. There is one good side of that, which is that I cannot believe that Jim Judd or John Adams would have any hesitation to raise anything with me if they had a concern.
Senator Banks: It is the nature of people looking up the tree to not always be convinced that someone up there got the point that they were trying to make.
Ms. Bloodworth: Absolutely, and I am sure there were times in my career that I felt that someone up the tree did not get the point. Sometimes they did not get the point and sometimes they did not agree with me; sometimes they were right and sometimes I was right.
Senator Banks: You mentioned one of those situations to us, in fact.
You mentioned earlier in your response to Senator Day that the Prime Minister is the head of the country. The Prime Minister is the head of the government, but he is not the head of the country. The Governor General is the head of the country.
Ms. Bloodworth: I stand corrected on that, you are quite right.
The Chairman: I make that correction for all the schoolchildren who are watching.
Ms. Bloodworth: He is the head of government, not head of state, to be precise.
Senator Banks: We have to ensure that people know that we understand that. I know that you do.
You mentioned Justice O'Connor's review of intelligence oversight. Some of us were members of an all-party committee that travelled around the world to advise the previous government on the question of parliamentary oversight of security intelligence. At one point, a plan was put in place that there should be such oversight. As we pointed out and as the government knew, because they asked us to do this, Canada is one of the only countries, if not the only country, that does not have that level of parliamentary oversight of security intelligence.
You will have considered this matter. Will that be going ahead in some form or other so that there will be some parliamentary oversight of security intelligence?
Ms. Bloodworth: I believe the current government has committed to that in their platform and it is certainly part of the review we are conducting with Justice O'Connor. There have been no decisions made, so I cannot talk about the outcome. It will be discussed in our review.
Senator Banks: We hope that that is so, because that is a shortfall in this country.
The Chairman: Some of us hope that it is radically different from the proposal of the previous government, however.
Senator Banks: Yes, for the record.
Senator Day began a question about the Communications Security Establishment. CSE has a head, but you are responsible for it in some way that you are not responsible, for example, for CSIS or RCMP intelligence. Can you describe that responsibility?
Ms. Bloodworth: It is an unusual responsibility, as you said. The Communications Security Establishment is in the Defence portfolio and has been for many years. The head of that organization has the blessing of having two deputy ministers to report to.
Senator Banks: I am sure they are thrilled.
Ms. Bloodworth: I am sure they are. The deputy minister of defence, which I have been at one point, is responsible for the budget and operations of that organization. The National Security Advisor is the deputy minister responsible for operations and policy. That was an arrangement created 20-25 years ago to ensure that the Canadian Security Establishment responds overall to government policy and direction.
I held that role in the mid-1990s. In the mid-1990s, the head of that organization was an assistant deputy minister- level person who I think had always come up through the Communications Security Establishment. That was changed sometime in the last few years to an associate deputy minister appointed by Order-in-Council. We have had at least three appointments in that format. I think it would be fair to say that the level of day-to-day attention is probably less for me now than it was in the 1990s.
Senator Banks: It is in the nature of a deputy minister.
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, and it was more like a deputy minister and one of the assistant deputy ministers of a deputy minister. Now there is a deputy minister and an associate deputy minister, so there tends to be more scope of action. Accountability is still a responsibility.
Senator Banks: I think we understand that. We do not quite understand the duties and functions of the Intelligence and Security Secretariat and the International Assessment Staff in the Privy Council Office.
Does the Privy Council Office perform a complementary and supplementary role to other members of the security and intelligence community, like CSIS, for example?
Ms. Bloodworth: I will answer and then turn to Ms. Marcoux to give her perspective. I will start with the International Assessment Staff Secretariat, because that is a more easily definable job not unlike our that of our allies, the British, Australians and New Zealanders. There is a staff of 50, about 30 of whom are analysts, experts in various areas. They produce policy-neutral assessments. Their take on the current state of the Iranian government might be an issue that they would pick. That is not a particular issue, but it might be.
Senator Banks: I suspect it is a particular issue.
Ms. Bloodworth: I do not know that they are doing anything right at this moment. Let me distinguish. They operate at the national strategic level. They do not operate in tactical intelligence, for instance, about what troops should do in Afghanistan. They operate at a more national-level strategy. They might give an overall assessment, but they would not say what the government should do with that assessment. They would just say that this is our assessment of the various players in that government, what they are doing, and so on. They perform that function through much involvement with analysts from various parts of the community. They draw on that information as well. They produce regular assessments.
The Security and Intelligence Secretariat is closer to some of the other secretariats in the Privy Council Office. That is, they are there to ensure the Prime Minister is briefed on issues that are important to the government. They are part of the support for the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Security. They provide support to me in my role as deputy minister for operations and policy and they lead the policy development process. That is my Coles notes version.
Rennie Marcoux, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Privy Council Office: I have a staff of approximately 40 people. Two of those units, as Ms. Bloodworth said, are policy units. They do policy development in support of the Foreign Affairs National Security Committee. I also have a unit that looks after the physical security of the Privy Council Office, which works closely with the RCMP in its responsibilities for protecting the Prime Minister. The unit also performs background checks with the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service for Orders-in-Council appointments.
Senator Banks: When you say that they do policy work, is that policy advice to the government?
Ms. Marcoux: For example, they develope policy on legislative initiatives, some of the initiatives talked about by Ms. Bloodworth in terms of work on the Ant-terrorism Act and changes to the act and security certificates.
Ms. Bloodworth: I would make the comparison to other policy, for example, the Anti-terrorism Act. The responsible minister is the Minister of Justice. Much of the background work, for example the analysis of various options, would be done there as it should be. When it eventually comes to cabinet or the Prime Minister must be briefed, we would have had someone involved in the process either to express views or not, depending if they had views. In that case, we would use the deputy level in order to advise the chair of the cabinet committee and the Prime Minister on the package.
Senator Banks: In the 1950s, for example, Canada was a welcome member at the international intelligence table because we had an extraordinary expertise in the processing, assessment and synthesis of intelligence, as we have been told. You talked about the exchanges with our allies. Are we welcome members at that table now? What do we have to trade? If you are going to deal with tables of international intelligence, you have to ante up or else you will not get anything back. What do we contribute?
Ms. Bloodworth: I cannot compare today with the 1950s, but I can compare it with the 1990s. The short answer to your question is yes, we are very welcome. I have had various allies — and I am talking particularly about our closest allies — express appreciation about specific things that we have done. You are quite right to point out that we need to pay attention to that. That is part of my job. We have to do the things necessary for the protection of Canada. There are many things that are necessary to do in Canada that our allies may or may not be interested in, but there are specific things we can do that our allies are grateful for, provided they are in our interests as well. We make sure we continue to do that well because it is an important factor. I have also had allies give me the impression that they think we were doing better now than 10 years ago. That might be as a result of a significant injection of funds since 9/11 which means the agencies are able to do more and do it better. I have not had a chance to talk to some of the further away allies, but the close allies are very grateful for what we do.
Senator Banks: If we want to beef up our ante a bit, do we need to do more by way of foreign intelligence?
Ms. Bloodworth: We do a fair amount of what most people consider to be foreign intelligence. CSE is a foreign intelligence organization; that is what they do. CSIS does foreign intelligence as well. Those in the trade often use foreign intelligence in a different way from most people. They say there is security intelligence and foreign intelligence; that is, no security intelligence is part of foreign intelligence so it is largely political and economic.
Most of what we need on the foreign side is security. We do have the ability to get that now and do get some. Do we get enough? I am not sure I can ever say we get enough. Intelligence, by its nature, involves more that one can do, but we do reasonably well. The debate is about whether we do more, particularly on the political and economic intelligence. That is an issue this government has said they would look at, as have others, but no decisions have been made in that regard.
The Chairman: That requires amendment to the CSIS Act, though, does it not?
Ms. Bloodworth: If we want human intelligence on political and economic foreign intelligence collected abroad, it would require an amendment.
Senator Atkins: Do you have management responsibilities over the intelligence programs of all components of Canada's security and intelligence committee?
Ms. Bloodworth: No, I do not have management responsibility. The director of CSIS is responsible for the management of that organization. I would have some responsibility for the direction and management of CSE along the lines I described earlier. I have coordination responsibility and an ability to advise the Prime Minister, which tends to at least get me heard. When I say "heard" I would not purport to direct, in a management way — nor should I — all of those organizations.
Senator Atkins: Is there a direct communications line that you can use to advise the Prime Minister if there is a serious threat that came to your attention?
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, starting with picking up the phone and calling him if there is something urgent.
Senator Atkins: If he is on the road can you contact him?
Ms. Bloodworth: I have no doubt if there was a serious reason for me to talk to him, I would be able to do so.
Senator Atkins: Could you provide to the committee your appreciation for today's threat environment?
Ms. Bloodworth: I will give you my view. I will preface it by saying the person that I look to most, because he is the most responsible under legislation, is the director of CSIS. Much of what you will hear me say will sound similar to what he says because he is the primary person accountable for ensuring we can do that in this country.
There is no doubt that Canada is on various lists. I will start with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Canada is on the lists of that organization, although it is a much more diffuse organization than it once was. Someone described it as a franchise. Unfortunately, that may make it more difficult to track because of some of it is home-grown radicalization. We have seen that in the U.K. but we are not immune to it in this country. There are people affiliated in some way to the al Qaeda ideology that would do us harm if they saw an opportunity to do so.
I do not think we are the prime target; there are others who come ahead of us if they have a chance. There are various people within the country at any given point in time who would do harm to the country. For those who are "just talking about it," it all starts with just talking. They are at a stage where they have not done anything sufficient to make them susceptible to a criminal charge. That is the domain of CSIS and that is why we have a security agency. They have warrants and they have a process for targeting. That is what we are and they have enough to keep them busy.
Do you want to talk about counter-intelligence?
Senator Atkins: Yes.
Ms. Bloodworth: Despite the end of the Cold War, there are countries that would like to get various secrets from Canada, whether government or private sector secrets. While the counter-intelligence program with CSIS has been much reduced since the Cold War, there is still a counter-intelligence program.
The overall threat to national security is something that all Western countries face, in fact, probably all countries, but I will talk just about the Western countries and how the threat waxes and wanes. I do not think it is possible to envisage the threat being removed completely because there are people in any society who wish to undermine that society. It is a question of being able to keep the threat under control. I probably I will regret using the words. I do not mean there is a guarantee that nothing will happen, but that we are doing enough so that we have sufficient knowledge of the threat.
I believe we are doing as much as we can at the moment, but it is an area about which we should never be complacent. It is important to always ask the question: Are we spending our money on the right things or looking at the right things? That will change from time to time and should change, because circumstances will change.
Senator Atkins: Do we have sufficient human resources to deal with our security?
Ms. Bloodworth: I do not know anyone in government who would say, "I have sufficient resources to do everything I might need to do."
We have had a huge influx of resources in the last five years. I think CSE's budget has doubled. CSIS's budget has gone up 75 per cent in the last five years, and it received additional money in the latest budget. We probably have as much as we are able to absorb in the short term.
Senator Atkins: What about the RCMP?
Ms. Bloodworth: The RCMP budget has gone up a huge amount since 9/11. Again, can they point to places where they do not have people? Yes. Some of it is a training issue. Just physically being able to put people through training is an issue now. They have not yet absorbed all the money they have been given. That is not a criticism. In large organizations it takes time to train qualified people. I am not trying to be cute but I believe we have as much as is absorbable at the moment. However, I am not saying that I would not say a year or so from now, to whoever is the government at the time, maybe you should put more resources into X or Y. We have to continue to assess that as we assess everything else.
The Chairman: Ms. Bloodworth, everything has gone up since 9/11. Why not put it in context going back to 1990 and then talk about how much it has gone up since then?
Ms. Bloodworth: CSIS is not quite where they were in 1990, but they are getting close. Perhaps Ms. Marcoux can find the numbers for you.
CSE I suspect is even closer, having been doubled. CSE went through a huge change because during the Cold War their focus was almost exclusively on the Soviet Union and its allies. That situation has changed.
I do have the numbers but I can certainly get them.
The Chairman: Give us a comparison, if you would, for all of the intelligence agencies and the police, starting in 1990 and working through to now.
Ms. Bloodworth: I can do that.
The Chairman: While there have been increases since 9/11, nothing can compensate for the gutting of personnel that took place in the 1990s. There is a whole generation of mid-level managers we do not see any more and, sadly, they cannot be replaced with funding that increased several years ago.
Ms. Bloodworth: That is true across the government, so I do not disagree.
The Chairman: It is particularly true in agencies whose main stock in trade is personnel.
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, that is true of many parts of government. I am not disagreeing with you. I do not agree that intelligence is necessarily worse off than other areas of government.
The Chairman: We are asking how we are doing and your response was that they have gotten a lot of money since 9/ 11. We are saying that sounds to us like something political. That is what we hear from the government: Things are much better since 9/11; but it does not look at what happened prior to 9/11.
Ms. Bloodworth: I do not agree that it is political. It happens to be a fact. I also agree with you that it takes time to develop people, which is the point I was making a few moments ago, that just giving people money does not mean that the next day you have a trained police officer or a trained intelligence agency.
I would say that many of the people that left in the mid-1990s, and I speak more from the departments I know, were the same age group as myself whom we would still have to replace. However, there is no question that much experience was lost in the mid-1990s. That is a fact. Simply giving more money faster will not necessarily replace that experience. That was the only point I was making to Senator Atkins.
Senator Atkins: Along that line, do you think that the community resources have enough resources. I am referring to the local intelligence and security areas in cities such as in Toronto and Vancouver.
Ms. Bloodworth: Do you mean the police services in those areas?
Senator Atkins: Yes.
Ms. Bloodworth: I do not know the details of municipal policing. The largest cities, namely, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, are obviously interested in national security issues, particularly because of their locations. I can only say that in my dealings with them they certainly seemed well able to deal with me. I cannot express a view as to whether they have sufficient resources.
Senator Atkins: How would they connect with you?
Ms. Bloodworth: They connect through the RCMP, but there are also connections in some cases with CSIS as well, particularly regarding the largest police forces.
Senator Moore: The chairman was asking about the collection of foreign intelligence and the need to collect it outside of Canada. He discussed a need for a change in the statute. Is it not so that CSIS now collects foreign intelligence within Canada?
Ms. Bloodworth: CSIS has the ability to collect that information within Canada, yes.
Ms. Marcoux: It is at the request of either the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Minister of National Defence.
Senator Moore: We have heard from Great Britain that we need a foreign intelligence capacity. Do you have any comment on that?
Ms. Bloodworth: I will repeat what I said earlier. At the moment, we collect a lot of foreign intelligence. I think you are talking about human intelligence, not signals intelligence, because we have a foreign intelligence SIGINT organization. On the human side, we already have the ability to and do collect security intelligence from abroad, which in laymen's parlance is considered foreign intelligence. The issue is whether we should extend that to political and economic intelligence.
Personally, and you will not find this surprising because of my job, I put a priority on security and intelligence at all of those levels, whether domestic or international.
Ms. Marcoux: In many instances, the problem with political and economic intelligence is that it is not necessarily intelligence that you would want to share with allies. Even if we were to create that capacity, we would not necessarily want to share some intelligence that would benefit the Canadian government.
Senator Moore: You would not want to share that information.
Ms. Bloodworth: Ms. Marcoux is saying that when you think of collecting political or economic intelligence it is more likely of Canadian interest or indeed in the country.
Senator Moore: Do you mean because it may cause embarrassment?
Ms. Bloodworth: No, it just may not be in our interest to share it; not because it is embarrassing, but because it is for us. It is more likely political-economic information rather than security information.
Senator Moore: When you were responding to Senator Atkins' questions about today's threat environment, in terms of al Qaeda, and the countries that it targeted because of their international participation in armed responses, Canada is the only one of those countries that has yet to be attacked by that terrorist group.
Ms. Bloodworth: On the list of six, that is correct.
Senator Moore: What can you tell us about that situation? Is that a function to which our intelligence alerts us as to potential threats? Is a matter of more thorough tracking and ferreting out potential people who might take some action?
Ms. Bloodworth: I would be very hesitant to say that it is because we are better than our allies at finding people although our allies are very good.
I do not know why we have not been targeted. We have been targeted in the sense that Canadians were in the World Trade Center and there are Canadians abroad.
We do have charges pending, but they are all allegations. I do not know the thinking of al Qaeda people and why they have not attacked Canada. I do believe we should not be complacent about that threat.
Ms. Marcoux: If you think of the threat in a more global sense, our Canadian troops in Afghanistan have been attacked by al Qaeda elements.
Senator Moore: We were in Afghanistan and we are aware of the casualties there.
I would like to return to Senator Day's question about the information that is received and edited by your office. You said the editing is done by the PCO. If the head of CSIS provides a document and PCO edits it, does PCO then pass it to your desk?
Ms. Bloodworth: I am PCO. To be clear, we do not receive something from the head of CSIS and then just pick it apart. With respect to intelligence, people pick out what parts are of interest to the Prime Minister; it is not somebody editing a note that comes from the head of CSIS.
The head of CSIS may and does on occasion send notes to me saying this is an important issue; some may go to the Prime Minister, some may be just to let me know that something is happening or some can be a mixture of both. The intelligence I was talking about was the whole pool of intelligence, of which there is a great deal. A certain portion is picked out to inform the Prime Minister because no one person, including myself, could read all of it.
Senator Moore: You mentioned that the heads of CSIS and RCMP, et cetera would not meet regularly with the Prime Minister and only meet if cleared through PCO. Is that through you?
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, and it is not unusual for them to meet the Prime Minister although it does not happen weekly. It might be me or through the clerk, but I would be involved.
Senator Moore: You were talking about the International Assessment Staff Secretariat and the Security and Intelligence Secretariat, two separate entities both in your office under your bailiwick.
Who is in charge of the International Assessment Staff Secretariat?
Ms. Bloodworth: Greg Fyffe is the Executive Director.
Senator Moore: Is he a deputy assistant?
Ms. Bloodworth: He is an assistant deputy minister, the same as Ms. Marcoux.
Senator Moore: Ms. Marcoux, you are the person in charge of the Security and Intelligence Secretariat; is that correct?
Ms. Marcoux: Yes.
Senator Moore: I want to know about the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Security. How often does it meet, who attends and what are its responsibilities?
Ms. Bloodworth: There is a public release about cabinet committees and membership; a number of cabinet ministers attend. The committee meets weekly or bi-weekly, depending on the pending agenda, as with other cabinet committees.
Senator Moore: Does the Prime Minister ever attend that committee?
Ms. Bloodworth: The Prime Minister has a right to attend any cabinet meeting.
Senator Moore: I am asking if he attends.
Ms. Bloodworth: I am hesitating because I do not believe we ever release the membership of who attends cabinet meetings.
Senator Moore: You just release the list of who is eligible to attend.
Ms. Bloodworth: We release the list of the members.
Senator Moore: What other committees exist to review and intercept government intelligence requirements?
Ms. Bloodworth: There is an ad hoc committee on intelligence, which is chaired by the Prime Minister.
Senator Moore: Is it called an ad hoc committee on intelligence?
Ms. Bloodworth: I am not sure of the exact title.
Ms. Marcoux: It is probably called a meeting of ministers on security and intelligence.
Senator Moore: How often does it meet? Is it the call of the chair?
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, it is the call of the chair.
Senator Moore: The chair is the Prime Minister. What does this committee do? Do you attend those meetings?
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, I attend those committee meeting, where, among other things, it sets priorities.
Senator Moore: Are the priorities different than the priorities of the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Security?
Ms. Bloodworth: No, it is done by that committee. It is not done by the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Security.
Senator Moore: The Cabinet Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Security does not deal in the setting of priorities?
Ms. Bloodworth: Not in intelligence, no.
Senator Moore: Is its role just in security matters?
Ms. Bloodworth: No, it is in foreign affairs and national security.
Senator Moore: It does not, however, include intelligence. How do you do security without doing intelligence?
Ms. Bloodworth: I said that they did not set priorities for intelligence. If there is an issue related to CSIS, for example, asking for more money, it would go to that committee.
There are committees that deal with the details of it, but ultimately all decisions are ratified by cabinet.
Senator Zimmer: Thank you both for attending today.
Many years ago, in the 1970s, I had the opportunity of working with the minister of defence as a special assistant so I can appreciate your role and responsibilities. During my time with the minister I learned that all Canadians have a role in the responsibility for the defence and security of the country.
I want to follow up on the question that my colleagues Senator Atkins and Senator Moore raised in the area of threat assessment. The national security policy provides for the establishment of an Integrated Threat Assessment Centre. Could you describe the management and accountability structure that governs this centre and is the Privy Council Office represented at that centre?
Ms. Bloodworth: Yes, I believe we are. We have a couple of seats there; I was hesitating because sometimes they are rotating. We would normally have somebody in that centre, as would a number of other government parties.
It is a part of CSIS; I mentioned before that the head of CSIS is the person responsible for threat assessment. It has a particular relationship, where the funding of it is subject to an agreement between myself — actually my predecessor — and the head of CSIS. It is considered a community resource, one where various members of the community provide employees to work there to make sure that we can truly bring it all together. It is not unlike what has been done by a number of our allies in recent years.
Senator Zimmer: What other departments are represented?
Ms. Bloodworth: The Communications Security Establishment, CSIS, I believe the RCMP, Canadian Border Services, Transport Canada, Canadian Forces — I am not sure that is a complete list.
Ms. Marcoux: We can get back to you with the complete list of departments.
Senator Zimmer: Have all the other individuals working at ITAC received special training in this area?
Ms. Bloodworth: I cannot say for sure every single one there now has received it. However, there is special training. The Integrated Threat Assessment Centre has taken a lead in training on threat assessment in particular.
Are we where we want to be? No; much more needs to be done, partly because we have a new community of people coming in all the time. We are going to be taking stock of ITAC now that they have been in operation for two and one- half years.
Senator Zimmer: The national security policy identifies eight threats facing Canada, and I will list them: terrorism; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — I am sure we are familiar with that phrase over the last few years; failed and failing states; foreign espionage; natural disasters; critical infrastructure vulnerability; organized crime; and pandemics.
Does ITAC produce assessments in all those areas?
Ms. Bloodworth: No, it is focused on physical threats. For example, they do not have any particular expertise to assess pandemics. I am not saying they would not be aware of it, but they do not produce assessments on that threat. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is more of a Foreign Affairs issue. What ITAC has been focused on is physical threats to Canada, largely terrorism. Natural disaster intelligence does not provide anything on natural disasters, unfortunately, so I would be surprised if they have done anything on that type of threat. They are primarily focused, as are our allies, on terrorism.
Senator Zimmer: ITAC can probably improve its ability to address key national security issues. How much of ITAC's work is pushed up to government?
Ms. Bloodworth: What do you mean by that?
Senator Zimmer: How much of the work is pushed up, rather than down — how much is pressed up toward government?
Ms. Bloodworth: Do you mean to ministers?
Senator Zimmer: Improving its ability to address the security issues of the country.
Ms. Bloodworth: Their primary audience is not ministers. Their primary audience was at the "front line" to ensure they could respond. That was the gap we and our allies felt was the greatest; it does not really help if only I know there is a threat if they have not given it to the Toronto police department, if it happens to be there. That is an area on which we have work to do but they have made great strides compared to where we were prior to ITAC. That is their primary focus, not just for provinces and police forces, but it could be also border agents or the RCMP, people who have to deal with the threat at the front end.
Senator Zimmer: CSIS collects foreign human security intelligence from sources within Canada; we know that. Does CSIS operate in gathering human intelligence outside of Canada? Do we still have spies?
Ms. Bloodworth: CSIS has a number of liaison officers around the world, who liaison with other security services. In addition, they have had some fairly limited operations on the security side elsewhere in the world.
Senator Zimmer: In our new role in Afghanistan, not just peacekeeping, but the more proactive role we are playing now, in your opinion, has that placed our country in a deeper threat.
Ms. Bloodworth: Do you mean at home? It certainly placed our people in Afghanistan in a greater threat.
Senator Zimmer: No, here.
Ms. Bloodworth: I have not seen direct evidence of that. I have heard people say it, but I have not seen any myself; it is certainly something I watch for. There is nothing I can put my hands on as evidence to show that the fact we are in Afghanistan has meant somebody is plotting here in Canada. I am not saying it is impossible; I am saying I have not seen it myself.
There are people who get radicalized and use whatever happens to be around. It could be Iraq, even though we are not there, because they do not often make a distinction between Western countries. It could be Afghanistan, but I have not seen evidence myself and I have been watching. I can certainly see it may be possible.
Senator Zimmer: If you listen to some of the television reports, there is the thought that there might be retaliation to us taking a more active role. Maybe that is just the media playing it up. They give the impression that because we are there playing a more active role, there will be retaliation on our country.
Ms. Bloodworth: I am not saying it is not possible, but I have not seen proof of that retaliation. When you look at the targeting of our people in Afghanistan, it has been very focused on the people there because they want them out of there. I have not seen it make the leap to say they are directly connecting with people here to target here. Again, I do not say it is impossible and that is why I watch for it. However, I have not seen any evidence.
The Chairman: What about the reverse? Does breaking up training camps in Afghanistan lessen the likelihood of terrorists appearing in Canada?
Ms. Bloodworth: I think there is no question that it does. In the 1990s, terrorist camps trained terrorists. Not having those provides a safer environment here and in other countries as well. It is not perfectly safe; nothing is perfectly safe. However, there is no question in my mind that it has improved security here as well as elsewhere.
Senator Moore: Currently, in the United States, there is an issue dealing with alleged improper FBI surveillance of citizens. Are you aware of any such intelligence gathering by that agency of Canadian citizens or Americans living in Canada?
Ms. Bloodworth: No, I am not aware of any such surveillance.
Senator Moore: Would you be notified by that agency if they intended to do such surveillance?
Ms. Bloodworth: I would hope so. That said, I do not control the American agencies. They have very close relationships with our agencies, but I am not aware of any such surveillance.
Senator Moore: Do we have a working agreement or understanding that would require them to notify you in the event they intended to pursue that type of action?
Ms. Bloodworth: The FBI is a domestic security force so I would be surprised if they were doing that kind of thing abroad. That is not to say they do not want information from us; there are very established police arrangements for exchanging information. On the intelligence side, there are also understandings for exchanging information.
Senator Moore: I mention that agency because that is the agency most noted in the reports. Perhaps the CIA would look into the affairs of Americans living abroad, such as in Canada.
Ms. Bloodworth: I am not aware of any CIA surveillance of Canadians.
Senator Moore: Would you be aware? Is there any kind of arrangement, understanding or agreement between our security and intelligence agencies and the CIA?
Ms. Bloodworth: Certainly, we have relationships and the CIA has a station at the American embassy in Ottawa. We have relationships on exchanging information, et cetera. I cannot say that I am aware of everything that they do in Canada but I would not expect the CIA to conduct operations in Canada unless we were aware and in agreement. I am not aware of any such agreement or activity.
Senator Banks: Following up on Senator Zimmer's question about spies, I know that we do not use that term in polite company and I believe that you call them liaison officers.
Ms. Bloodworth: No, we call them agents. Liaison officers do not conduct covert operations, otherwise they would have trouble maintaining their diplomatic status.
Senator Banks: If you had your druthers, would CSIS or another other agency do more human intelligence gathering? Would we have more spies on security intelligence, not on political or economic intelligence? Would we do more of that kind of activity with either people who work for CSIS or with people who work for CSIS in other places?
Ms. Bloodworth: It will not surprise you that I believe that intelligence is a huge component of national security, but it is not perfect. It is like a sophisticated gossip system, in some ways.
Senator Banks: If we do not have intelligence, we will make mistakes.
Ms. Bloodworth: First, even if we have a great deal of it we will make mistakes because it is a human system. However, it is an important part of the national security of this country and other countries. Second, it is good that the country has put more money into CSIS in the last few years. Third, I will come back to my earlier point: In the end, more money more quickly does not necessarily produce better results because it takes time for a large organization to absorb. I talked about recruiting and training and you can only do so much at any given time. Currently, they have as much as they can absorb comfortably.
Senator Banks: If the government determined that it would beef up its capacity for intelligence outside Canada, would you advise them to set up a separate agency or should that be done by CSIS with a new mandate provided in legislation?
Ms. Bloodworth: I will not answer that question directly, senator, because I normally try to give my advice first to a minister and allow a minister to make that determination. However, I can talk about some of the factors. This government has indicated, as the previous government indicated, that it will look at that issue. There is no question that most, if not all, of our close allies have foreign intelligence organizations, and that has been part of the argument of some that have them.
Senator Banks: Do they expect us to have such organizations? Do they not wonder why we do not have them?
Ms. Bloodworth: The answer to that is not clear to me. I have not heard that as a widespread comment, although perhaps one or two have made that suggestion.
Senator Banks: Members of the committee have heard it.
Ms. Bloodworth: I have not heard that in the last six months. That is one factor. Another factor is that security intelligence is our highest priority, as it should be. Although there are limits to the resources of any country, our priority should be to put our resources in security intelligence.
There is a cost to creating new organizations. It takes time to set them up and you must weigh the cost against the benefit. That holds true for a foreign intelligence organization as well as any other organization. A government would have to conclude that the benefit to be received would outweigh the cost of the organization. Its organization takes time, in particular for intelligence, because intelligence on an unknown cannot be produced instantly. Even at CSIS, when they want intelligence on a specific, they cannot simply have it the next day. It takes time to train people and develop sources, et cetera.
Senator Banks: The same argument occurs in any order of government, for example with respect to the fire department, such that it will cost money to build a better-trained fire department. The cost-benefit analysis to building a better fire department is fairly clear to most people, so the money becomes unimportant.
Ms. Bloodworth: I was talking about the benefits of having a separate organization as opposed to doing it within CSIS. Even in the example of the fire department, there is a limit on the resources and how much cost can be absorbed at any given time.
In the area of intelligence, you have to consider the division that occurred between internal and external agencies as a fallout of the Cold War. There was a distinction between foreign and internal intelligence. That distinction has blurred over time and our allies say that as well. Many of the threats originate overseas but manifest themselves domestically. That factor needs to be considered as well.
Senator Banks: On that point, the change in thinking that used to occur when things changed likely applies to the intelligence community as well as it applies to the rest of us on every question. Speaking specifically of radical, religious-based threats, we used to think that such a threat was entirely external. However, we know now that it might not be so and that we might import that threat. Is that an argument for an integrated look at the question as opposed to a separate look at the question?
Ms. Bloodworth: I would not say that we have always imported it. One of the most disturbing things in the field is that some of it is growing, not only here but also in other countries. I do not think that any of us understands this factor fully.
Senator Banks: Is there more than one source?
Ms. Bloodworth: If your point is that the lines have blurred and we need to rethink the matter, then I agree with you. It is difficult for people who grow up in a certain era to change their way of thinking; it is not an easy thing to do. We have been in that process for a last few years, and we must remain in that process. The world is changing, which sounds trite but it is the reality in my field of expertise. We have to challenge ourselves always to not assume that simply because we have always done it a certain way, it is the right way for the future. We are not alone in that as we have learned from our allies and as they have learned from us.
Senator Day: I would like clarification with respect to oversight and your role within the Privy Council Office and as advisor to the Prime Minister. Senator Atkins asked a question about communities and first responders obtaining the information that they need to do their jobs. Most of the intelligence that might be gathered that could impact on something at the local level comes from a federal agency. We have interoperability issues and gaps in respect of governments at the federal, provincial and municipal levels on such matters. Do you provide oversight to ensure that those gaps are attended to? Is part of your role to provide oversight of the various agencies that share intelligence with foreign agencies?
This committee dealt with the Public Safety Act a couple of years ago and the importance of protocols between the different agencies and foreign agencies before they begin an exchange. Do you have an oversight role in ensuring the proper application by management or oversight of the manager to ensure that these things are done properly?
Ms. Bloodworth: Thank you for that question because it raises the issue that there are different kinds of oversight. Normally when it is used, it is in relation to a review agency or parliamentary organization that is looking at something in detail. There is indeed, an important role for ministers and for myself on behalf of the Prime Minister. I have to be careful. Obviously I am not replicating what the Security Intelligence Review Agency or the Inspector-General does for CSIS. They spend their days looking in detail at the operation in terms of the overall policies, yes. I will use a couple of examples. Information is given to provinces and then to municipalities as well. I always hesitate to speak for provinces and municipalities, but on this one they would probably say we are not doing it well enough yet and I would agree. We are doing it better through ITAC and the distribution network of the government operations centre, which is plugged into many of the places and provides distribution for ITAC.
We have to do a whole lot better. We have more work to do on that. It is not a question of simply passing on information because you could inundate a local police force, particularly the larger police forces with information and they would then have to find huge amounts of staff to deal with and sort out what it is. Our job has to be more than just passing on information. We should pull out what is actually of use to them. That is not an easy process. We are doing a lot better than we did previously. That is one of the issues when we take stock of ITAC. Are there more things that we can do in that regard?
On the sharing of intelligence with foreign agencies, there are agreements, and I would consider part of my job to make sure there are agreements in place. Then the question becomes whether they are always followed and that is where the more detailed review organizations would be able to go into the details. I would think also the Privacy Commissioner plays an important role here. My experience has been positive with the Privacy Commissioner. That does not mean we always agree. Ms. Stoddart has been quite willing to work with us as we develop systems. This is where you want to build in sharing, especially if we are doing it electronically. After the fact, is not effective. You need to do it there. We do not always agree but the Privacy Commissioner has been ready to engage on that issue and has provided useful assistance in making sure we do it in the least intrusive way possible.
Senator Day: When your intelligence starts to indicate a growing danger for homegrown terrorism, is it part of your role to ensure that proper resources are being put to that new and developing phenomenon and are you satisfied it is being done? Is that part of your follow-up?
Ms. Bloodworth: It is part of my role but I am not the only one. I am not convinced we know enough about it. Some of what we need to do is talk to others about it because I do not think we know the answer to that question. The cross- cultural round table has been useful for us in that we have gained a perspective of the implications of action that might be taken in various communities. Academics can be helpful and there is some research that has been done. I am not saying I know exactly where to spend resources.
Senator Day: Who leads the coordination? I agree with you that there are many resources.
Ms. Bloodworth: Overall it would be me, yes; however, there is much more done on a day-to-day basis. CSIS is doing some, RCMP has done a lot and Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness suppoort the cross-cultural round table. There are many people involved. Overall, yes, I would feel I have a responsibility if no one was doing something about it to say someone should be doing something about it.
Senator Banks: Would you be able to send to the clerk an indication of how many times the cross-cultural round table has met?
Ms. Bloodworth: I am sure we could. Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness would have that information.
The Chairman: You mentioned the Government Operations Centre. Your predecessors talked to us about when it was gearing up. Have you had occasion to meet in it and work in it yet in.
Ms. Bloodworth: I certainly have because it is part of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and I have spent considerable time there while I was in that job. I have met the head of it since then. I have not been there since taking this new position in the PCO.
The Chairman: He also extended an invitation for us to visit it. Does that invitation still stand?
Ms. Bloodworth: If he has invited you I am sure it still stands.
The Chairman: He did it in his capacity as National Security Advisor.
Ms. Bloodworth: Is it my predecessor you wish to meet? I thought you met the head of the organization. Sure, I see no reason why the committee could not visit the operations centre.
The Chairman: He said to call him and we could visit the next day.
Ms. Marcoux: I am meeting with him this week so I could pass that on.
The Chairman: I just want to confirm the visit.
Thank you for appearing before us. We appreciate you coming. We are grateful to you for the information you provided to the committee. We anticipate inviting you back before we complete our work, but I think this has been a good start.
We have before us now Mr. Reed Morden. Reed Morden & Associates provides advice and comment on intelligence, security and public policy issues.
Mr. Morden is a career public servant and has held a number of senior positions, including Director of the Canadian Intelligence Service, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and President and CEO of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Following these appointments, he spent four years in the private sector dealing mainly with business intelligence and the security and intelligence sector. He is currently on an exclusive assignment as the executive director of the independent inquiry committee into the United Nations oil-for-food program.
Mr. Morden, it is a privilege to have you before us today.
Reid Morden, Reid Morden & Associates: Professor Frank Harvey at Dalhousie University has written that no matter how much is spent on homeland defence, Canada will always be judged harshly, both at home and abroad, only on our failures. Such is the world of rising expectations. That is also why both the mandate and activity of your committee is so important to the country.
Obviously, this is a complex and dangerous world. Since the tragedy of 9/11, we have had terrorist attacks in Bali, Madrid, and London and a number of arrests in Asia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.A. There are tensions around the world, in Afghanistan, North Korea, the Sudan and the Middle East.
A poll last autumn suggested that Canadians are resigned to the inevitably of an eventual terrorist attack and moreover, put little credence in the pronouncements of politicians on this subject. I do not know whether this is better or worse than Canadians complacently believing it cannot happen here.
We have certainly been playing catch-up in both financial and personnel resources in the intelligence and security world since 9/11. Is it enough? Is it effectively targeted? Is it being spent responsibly for the purposes that it was located? In my judgment, the answers to these questions are quintessentially Canadian, which is to say maybe, probably, and yes, most of the time. Therefore, my judgment overall is that a reasonable start has been made in what will be a long, slow and expensive process of coming back from years of neglect.
Your committee has issued two important reports on airport and port security. I hope that both will receive careful consideration by the government. In particular, its recommendation to change the locus of responsibility from the transport department has shone much needed light in a troubled area which includes, among other things, the relationship between that department and what I call its captive Crown corporation, CATSA, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. Should your recommendation be adopted, that will then leave only one major intelligence player outside the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada portfolio and that would be the Communications Security Establishment that remains with DND.
Before 9/11, the Canadian security and intelligence community could be divided into foreign intelligence, security intelligence, military intelligence and criminal intelligence. They are all run by the usual suspects, namely, Foreign Affairs, CSIS, the CSE and the RCMP. After 9/11, structurally, it is much the same, except buttressed with some additional powers and resources. Also, it has added to a considerable number of additional departments and agencies which play greater or lesser roles in the intelligence world.
Ultimately, the Prime Minister remains accountable for the security of the country. Historically, the Prime Minister's direct involvement has been minimal. His department, the Privy Council Office, coordinates the activities of the security and intelligence community at the bureaucratic level. In a non-crisis driven environment, and before the pace of events began to accelerate, this worked reasonably well. Times have changed, however, and there is a need for someone to be in charge.
My comments are simply addressed to the construct and they are not in any sense a criticism of the two public servants that you have heard from earlier this morning. I know both of them. They are capable and competent officials.
In addition, the PCO remains too close to the political process. The times demand that arrangements for coordination and production of intelligence be made to ensure that the intelligence and security system is functioning against the known and generally agreed threats to the security of the country. That product comes from information gathered and the expert, not political, judgments applied to that information. There are many models around. In Britain, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee is normally the head of the U.K.'s intelligence structure. The U.S. has now the post of Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security. Both models have their advocates and detractors. I do not mean to minimize the complexities of the dramatic change but experience shows that imported structures do not necessarily thrive in different surroundings. If we make any structural change in our security intelligence community, it will be a homegrown solution. Whatever its form, it should be headed by someone senior and knowledgeable and respected throughout the intelligence and government world. To emphasize the centrality of its role, its head, wherever the actual locus is, must have unfettered access to the Prime Minister, to other ministers and to the Clerk of the Privy Council.
I have two final issues. First, the question of adding an offensive or foreign intelligence service to the Canadian security arsenal. The international nature of terrorism has raised questions as to whether countries active in the counterterrorism arena need to conduct their own foreign intelligence operations. Unlike countries with which Canada traditionally most closely associates, such as the U.S., U.K. and Australia, Canada has no offensive or foreign intelligence service. Does it need one? My answer until recently has been a definitive no. I remain of the view that an attempt to create one will ultimately prove to be a very expensive mistake.
In the first place, Canada is already in the foreign intelligence collection business, primarily through the information gathering and analysis activities abroad by both the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of National Defence, which of course includes the CSE. Second, those departments, plus CSIS and the RCMP, have extensive partnerships and contact points throughout the globe that collect essential data. Third, the CSIS Act has great flexibility in permitting collection of interest to Foreign Affairs and DND. Last, the combination of our own resources and our networks with allies and other international partners seems adequate in responding to terrorist threats to Canada, particularly those emanating from Sunni extremism. However, it may be time to review the issue.
In the first place, of course, the creation of a foreign intelligence service is a plank in the platform of the current government. Second, the former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or as is it colloquially known, MI-6, Sir Richard Dearlove, has rather provocatively and, in my view, inaccurately, chided Canada as an intelligence freeloader. Third, with our serious commitment of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan, that situation demands that they be provided with the best tactical intelligence available.
That said, the focus is unlikely to depart from identifying threats to and protecting Canadian security. In fact, since 9/11 and subsequent attacks, most intelligence organizations would concede that the line between security intelligence and foreign intelligence has become increasingly blurred, and a number of countries have responded by initiating what are called either hybrid or blended intelligence services.
You have to look at the value-added of a new agency in terms of what its collection and analysis would be doing. Two aspects seem particularly important. First, are the Canadian Forces getting adequate information in carrying out their operations from their own efforts and from their allies? Second, if the preponderance of military intelligence is received from others, is that information slanted deliberately or otherwise to serve the interests of the source nation?
Whatever the answer to these questions, they touch on broader concerns. First, of course, is the Dearlove comment: Are we making a reasonable intelligence contribution to the sharing arrangements we have in place with out allies? Second, will we enhance our value as an ally in any appreciable way by bringing Canadian collected foreign intelligence to the table?
Of course, a decision to create a foreign intelligence service will be contingent on satisfactorily answering a series of questions, such as quality, scope, utility versus risk tolerance, and cost, to start.
We have to assume that Canada would want to create a high quality foreign service and, despite the small bodies of expertise that there are in Foreign Affairs and the Privy Council Office, to do that will take a number of years of recruitment and training.
I would like to stress that any review should look at the quality and quantity of our analytic resources. Have we brought into government, whether it is in CSIS, the RCMP, CSE, PCO or DFAIT, the best and the brightest to carry out this vital function? Moreover, are our analysts making full use of the vast amounts of data that are now openly available? Why add to the bureaucratic tangle when much of what is needed to form considered judgments can be accessed on such facilities as the Internet or can be purchased as a tailored product from a variety of reliable open sources? Also, some say, to keep the cost down, Canada need not seek a global foreign intelligence service but should have one that occupies an appropriate niche according to our immediate interests. I think this is argument is unconvincing. As long as we pursue a global foreign policy; as long as the terrorist threat can come from any part of the world; as long as we maintain an open door to the truly oppressed; as long as we believe our Armed Forces can be agents of peace-building and stability, then it seems to me there is little scope to whittle down a Canadian foreign intelligence service to a regional focus, such as they have in Australia and Italy.
We come to the question of utility versus risk tolerance. Foreign intelligence operations bring a high degree of risk. It is questionable whether Canadians or their government would have the stomach for such a risk-fraught environment.
The options are straightforward. We have the option to stick with the status quo, which already brings in a vast amount of data and analysis or to create a stand-alone foreign intelligence service or one loosely housed in conjunction with, as in Great Britain, the foreign office. Third, we have the option to adapt an existing body, for example, CSIS in this case and incrementally move into the foreign intelligence arena.
If we are to go in that direction, I favour the last approach. A fairly simple model would be to establish a separate and self-contained branch within CSIS, which would be able to utilize its existing personnel training and administrative infrastructure and would then reap efficiency and cost benefits and speed the coming on stream of the responsibilities, while at the same time not foreclosing any ultimate options or independence of a dedicated foreign intelligence collection organism.
Last, any new body will require a legislative base. Section 16 of the CSIS Act permits that service to collect intelligence within Canada, specifically requested by the Ministers of National Defence and Foreign Affairs. CSIS officers have therefore developed over the past 20-plus years considerable expertise in foreign and defence-related intelligence. Simple removal of the words "within Canada" from section 16 of the CSIS Act would transform that mandate to one fully responding to Canada's foreign intelligence collection needs.
The last issue, briefly, is the operational re-entry of the RCMP into the world of security intelligence. Law enforcement is both a contributor and a big customer of intelligence. This very fact raises the issue of the degree to which there should be overlap or, at the very least, closer institutional links between intelligence and law enforcement.
In Canada, this essentially starts with the RCMP and CSIS. The essence of the problem rests with the difference between the objectives of security intelligence and law enforcement. Simply put, security intelligence equals prevention and law enforcement equals prosecution. Two royal commissions have told us that; yet, as the Arar commission and the court decision on the Juliet O'Neill affair shows, the RCMP are very much back in the game. Defining the saw-off between CSIS and the RCMP is a nettle that the government must grab before some other serious mistake is made.
To conclude, 9/11 provided a common focus within the federal government. There is a common objective in protecting the country and its citizens. There is an almost unparalleled need and opportunity to foster better cooperation and coordination with provinces and municipalities. To harness these potential synergies, our Canadian leadership on all sides of Parliament must be steadfast in understanding and communicating to the public that the threat is real. It is as real for Canada as it is for any other Western country. I do not think this is the time for the country or its governments to go back to sleep. The danger is real and the adversary, as we see from the daily press, is ruthless and patient.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Morden, for that interesting and provocative opening statement.
Senator Zimmer: Mr. Morden, your presentation is insightful and has much candour.
I would like to touch on your last paragraph where you say 9/11 has provided a common focus within the federal government. Its common objective is protecting the country and its citizens in peril and needs to foster better cooperation and coordination between provinces and municipalities.
Six months before 9/11, I had the privilege of spending three days at NORAD Headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain. At the conclusion, we did a debriefing with the generals. It became apparent after three days that if all the countries around the world wanted to release their machinery, there is nothing we could do about it. That is quite frightening. I asked the general a final question: Do we really know where everything is? He looked at the other general and he said, "We have no surprises," and then we had 9/11.
My anecdote relates to your testimony this morning in that the issues I want to talk about relate to your capacity as Director of CSIS and the issues that occurred from 9/11 and thereafter. How often did you meet with the Prime Minister or members of his cabinet on security and intelligence matters, in that capacity?
Mr. Morden: As I said in my statement, I was director some years before 9/11, when the focus of CSIS was directed at counter-intelligence and not counterterrorism.
We are not in such a kind of crisis-driven mode; it is a much more patient process. The day-to-day involvement or the historical involvement of prime ministers has been minimal up until 9/11.
I would meet with my own minister at least once a week, sometimes more frequently, and I remained on call from time to time to meet other members of the cabinet.
Senator Zimmer: Even though you were director prior to 9/11, did the Prime Minister receive daily intelligence briefings from CSIS?
Mr. Morden: I am glad you asked that question.
I think the short answer to that is no. The longer answer to that concerns my arrival at CSIS. It was apparent that we should bolster the analytic capacity of CSIS. We took steps to do that by sending out analytic products. I was rather surprised because I was not getting feedback from my colleagues around the deputy minister table. We found out that officials in various departments, who were responsible for security, felt that the information was sensitive so they locked it up. They were not sending it on to the people who might make use of it.
I believe, on the intelligence front, that the Prime Minister received regular briefings and updates through the Security and Intelligence Secretariat in the PCO. At that time, there would be no particular need, given again the emphasis on counter-intelligence, to be sending daily or even weekly reports to the Prime Minister. On the other side of the coin, whenever I felt it was necessary to talk to the Prime Minister about one issue or another, he always made himself available.
Senator Zimmer: What is the nature of advice or information you provided to the Prime Minister and what was the nature and advice that he requested from you?
Mr. Morden: At that time, I think the initiative was fundamentally left to our judgment as to when we would think it necessary to bring something before the Prime Minister. We came to those conclusions by discussing the issues and the relative importance directly with the minister, who was the Solicitor General at that time.
There was not much in the way of specific requests from the Prime Minister for foreign intelligence briefings. On the other hand, there were frequent round table consultations among the intelligence community at the official's level and that included the intelligence coordinator from the Privy Council Office. They would exercise judgment on what should go to the Prime Minister.
Senator Zimmer: Was that done orally or were they written reports?
Mr. Morden: Orally.
Senator Zimmer: When you were at CSIS, how were the government's intelligence requirements developed, approved and communicated to all departments and agencies involving the collection of the required information?
Mr. Morden: The information development was within a framework called the intelligence requirements. The requirements were developed in a sectoral, interdepartmental process for security intelligence. Given the CSIS mandate, an initial document would be prepared stating the priorities, in terms of threats to the security of the country, and how they should be dealt with. That would be sent out, discussed and ultimately approved by the cabinet committee responsible for security intelligence.
Senator Zimmer: What processes were in place to ensure that the reports were accurate? Did they try to ensure the veracity of the sources and information?
Mr. Morden: I am not sure about that. They were free to probe any of it at any time. I think, in the pre-bringing of issues to cabinet which may or may not be totally familiar to other parts of the community, people would probe and see that CSIS, in this case, had done its homework and was presenting material that was credible. That was the process.
Senator Zimmer: Were you satisfied with the lines of accountability? Were you of the opinion that more needed to be done or were you satisfied with the procedures?
Mr. Morden: At that time and in those circumstances, I think the process was adequate to the days' events. I would stress again that if something came up that was urgent or some case had come to a point where action had to be taken, I always found that my own minister, or any other minister involved, and the Prime Minister, would be available to discuss that and take the requisite decision.
Senator Zimmer: Can you provide the committee with an appreciation for today's threat environment? Do you think the resources allocated to the securities and intelligence community are sufficient to meet today's threats?
Mr. Morden: To answer that, you have to go back to the budget reductions that took place through the 1990s in wrestling the overall budget deficit to the ground. In that case, both the RCMP and CSIS lost about 25 per cent of both their human and financial resources. As I said in my opening remarks, we are in the process of a long and expensive road back. We have made some substantial progress, but other than trying to answer the impossible question of how much is enough, I do not think that we have really built back adequately and then moved forward sufficiently. There is still much work to be done. The reports of your committee last week clearly delineate some areas where more work is needed.
Senator Zimmer: With the emphasis on the threat from terrorism, are we doing enough to counter espionage and critical infrastructure threats from the other side?
Mr. Morden: We are going in the right direction. This is post-9/11. I know from some interaction with the emergency preparedness people in the Province of Ontario, for example, that they had found that in post-9/11 there had been a change in the attitude and the openness and desire to cooperate with their federal counterparts on the latter.
I was struck that there had been very substantial progress made on that item. It is obvious in a federal country where you are dealing with a number of levels of government; it is something that constantly needs to be looked as to whether people have done it adequately, whether more needs to be done in binding everyone together. What could be more important than seeing to the people who are the first responders, the municipal fire departments, police departments, hospitals? A terrorist event would be a broadly based disaster of some kind.
Is there enough? Again, I think we have made a start. However, at the time of 9/11, the federal government's emergency preparedness organization — which used to have some quite impossible acronym to remember — realized it did not have an inventory of the critical structures within the country, things such as large symbolic buildings that would be tempting targets for a making a "statement attack" by terrorists. Six years ago, we had to dust off many things that had not been done, for which there had been no funding, to begin putting various building blocks in place. We have made progress, but there is more to be done.
Senator Zimmer: Do you think that the security intelligence community is sufficiently ready and prepared to identify and respond to homegrown threats?
Mr. Morden: That capacity has many dimensions. In the first place, in dealing with threats to the security that come through spying, the system is pretty well versed. As terrorism became a more important issue, and as resources, with the end of the Cold War, were transferred over to counterterrorism, people began to understand that the threat was emanating from places whose communities were not well understood within the security and intelligence community in Canada, and in other places as well. People are working on that. They also are deliberately recruiting so they are reaching out to some of these communities to bring them into the government organizations.
In trying to understand this, there is the other side of it, which is that we have always had very strict limits on what could constitute harassment or unwanted intrusion into the various communities that make up our country. I think that is quite right. What is more, I would hope, even given the problems we are dealing with, that there would be no slackening of respect for the privacy of Canadian citizens of whatever origin. That said, there is probably a good deal more to be done in understanding the threats that are out there. Is it adequate at the moment? People would probably say no.
The Chairman: Mr. Morden, a prime minister once said, when he was being criticized about his cabinet, that making a cabinet is difficult because a prime minister does not get a chance to always choose his wood.
You have served under a number of ministers, both as a deputy minister in Foreign Affairs and as the head of CSIS. We all know that solicitors general — a post that no longer exists — were the sixteenth, eighteenth or twenty-third choice of a prime minister as he was making a cabinet. Could you comment, for the benefit of the committee, on whether you felt the solicitors general you were dealing with generally understood your work and whether they were equipped to adequately convey what you had to say to their colleagues?
Mr. Morden: In virtually no case was a new minister coming into that portfolio or, for the matter, into the Foreign Affairs portfolio particularly well equipped to deal with some of the intricacies and nuances that you find. Whenever there is a cabinet making or a cabinet shuffle, every bureaucratic organization puts a lot of time and effort into bringing their minister up to speed as quickly as possible. A great deal of effort goes into the briefings. Obviously, some ministers take to this more quickly than others.
The Chairman: When they take to it slowly, what devices are open to you as an agency head? Is it the clerk? How did you address the problem?
Mr. Morden: If I felt there was a serious problem, the avenue open is to the clerk. Without commenting on whether solicitors general are the first, second or 23rd third choice of prime ministers for the portfolio, it was not and is not a good news portfolio. I cannot think of any politician who welcomed the call saying the good news is you are in the cabinet and the bad news is you are solicitor general.
If you look at the tenure of solicitors general, you will find there is a fairly rapid turnover, for one reason or another. I think that means that anyone who is in the security and intelligence business certainly spends the time briefing, and hopefully deepening the understanding of the minister. Equally, you also talk to your colleagues. If there are serious problems, you go to the clerk. If there is a serious problem, which never happened in my tenure, you go to the prime minister.
Senator Banks: I am glad to hear that a serious problem never arose while you were there. There is a gag about that. My wife and I are together because on really important decisions, I make the decision and she deals with everything else; but we have never yet come up to a really important decision.
In your opening remarks, you referred to a blurring of the line between foreign intelligence and security intelligence. We are neophytes, so take us back before that blurring happened and tell us about the difference. How is the difference defined in the intelligence community?
Mr. Morden: There are a couple of things, one of which is embedded in the theology of how intelligence services are set up.
Senator Banks: That is precisely the question.
Mr. Morden: The security intelligence people, whether MI-5 or the internal service in France, are closely aligned with the law enforcement people because there is, at some point, a seamless handover from one to the other. On the other hand, the foreign intelligence services collects what amounts to political intelligence, which until terrorism became prominent, seemed to be a separate world. Of course, Britain's MI-5 is part of the Home Office and the secret intelligence service, and MI-6 is loosely associated with the Foreign Office.
It was also said that they recruited different kinds of people and that the foreign intelligence people were people with political flare and perhaps more adept at mixing with diplomats and government officials. Conversely, the security intelligence people worked in the shadows on detailed and boring but important analyses of linking one possible target with another.
As you know, for a long time the only combined service was the old Soviet KGB, but even there very important walls separated the security intelligence side and the offensive or the foreign intelligence side, each was a separate chief directorate of the KGB. Now, people are not as interested in the political aspects and an added dimension has surfaced. Most Western countries would say that countering terrorism is their number one priority and that sufficient resources should be dedicated to that activity, including the involvement of both foreign intelligence and security intelligence bodies.
This has led to the fact that some people have either initiated or have changed the way in which they organize themselves to have a kind of hybrid or blended service, which does both. Currently, there are just over 20 such countries, many of them small so you would think that perhaps there is a budgetary element in doing this, and some are very large, such as China. Among western intelligence services, the most notable to have a hybrid setup among our close allies are the Netherlands and New Zealand. It is recognized that there is a blending of the two services. That is the direction that history has taken us.
Senator Banks: Is the relatively small size of both the Netherlands and New Zealand a factor in that difference? I ask the question because domestically generated, gathered and processed intelligence is surely more complicated in a larger country such as Canada, is it not?
Mr. Morden: It is and is not more complicated because as the recent census shows, Canada's population is concentrated in a relatively small number of urban areas. You have to include a discount factor in terms of our geographic size whereby we would focus our resources in any event.
It is likely a valid comment to say that the small size of some countries might keep the activity less complicated. However, the Dutch have always been very active in the intelligence world. They have a vulnerable country that carries its own values but they also have a great deal of immigration and people passing through their ports. When I was Director of CSIS, I visited the Netherlands and found that the Dutch were heavily engaged in whatever was happening in Europe. They have decided to go into the hybrid business and I would think that they thought about it fairly carefully first.
Senator Banks: Do you think Canada should follow that route? If we are to go into the business of gathering human intelligence outside Canada, should it be done under the aegis of CSIS?
Mr. Morden: I put that forward as an option because if you want to do it, you want to become as effective as possible in the shortest possible time. CSIS experienced many growing pains when it was separated from the RCMP Security Service in 1984. I am oversimplifying this but people who had spent their whole lives as intelligence officers were suddenly expected to manage an organization that had always been dealt with by the main body of the RCMP. For example, when 20 radios were needed for an operation that same night, central stores would send only 20 radios. However, suddenly there were no radios because no one had ordered them. There is quite a learning curve to running a stand-alone organization. Some of the difficulties that it experienced became part of the reason that I was brought into the service. The first director had resigned, having taken responsibility for a flawed warrant, but there were many other issues bubbling around as well.
In a way you are forcing the words out of me but, basically, I would not create a foreign intelligence service. However, if we are to do it, the quickest way to get where we want to go would be to make it a separate branch within CSIS. Already, with a small amendment, there is the legislative cover to do that and, along with people on the analysis side from Foreign Affairs and Privy Council Office, there are a number of CSIS officers who have responded to section 16 requests over the last five to 10 years. As well, the infrastructure to develop that branch is already in place. As I said at the end of my remarks, that is the best way for us to proceed. It does not foreclose in any way what Canada might want to do ultimately in terms of the independence of a separate foreign intelligence service.
Senator Banks: You also said that in some respects you want different kinds of people to perform this work. Are such people compatible within one organization such as CSIS? You said that there were walls within KGB that separated carefully the two functions.
Mr. Morden: Yes, and separation is the same, whether in the United States, in the U.K. or in the countries of Canada's other allies.
Senator Banks: However, they have separate agencies.
Mr. Morden: Yes and one reason is that they have different kinds of people to perform those activities.
I also said that other people's solutions do not always transplant easily and that we should look for a homegrown solution. When I arrived at CSIS three years into its existence, about 95 per cent or more of the intelligence officers were former members of the RCMP Security Service. Their basic formation had been as policemen and then they moved into the security world at some time in their RCMP careers. We began and intensified the recruitment of civilians into the service. I would argue that in many ways we looked for people who might also be taking the foreign service exam. We looked for young people who had a political maturity in understanding the values and the structure of the country. I would argue that while historically there are different kinds of men and women, we had recruited people in the security intelligence world who likely could step across that line and do a competent job.
Senator Banks: You also said that you were not entirely in favour of creating a foreign intelligence capacity and that Canada can rely, to a degree, on the intelligence received from our allies in return for what we put on the table. I would like you to expand on that. Are we receiving skewed information?
If we get information from the United States, it is information that has a United States view in its generation. In fact it has been generated as the result of United States interests. Their job is to look after the interests of the United States. Those are not always precisely concomitant with our interests. Can we reasonably, safely always rely on Lithuanian intelligence we get from the United States?
Mr. Morden: That question relates to our capacity to analyze the information we receive. That is why in a couple of sentences I tried to suggest that the quality of our analytics is probably as important as anything else. There is a tremendous amount of information out there. There is a kind of cachet. When I was at CSIS, before the Cold War ended, the people in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union decided Canada was a high-tech country and maybe they should try to steal some of that technology to move their own economies ahead. They would go to inordinate lengths to get someone who was in a key position in an organization like Canadair to get some new fangled avionics technology. I thought it must be the cachet of sending it home and saying they obtained the information secretly. Most of the stuff was accessible in Popular Mechanics, which was available at the corner store. That was the case many years ago. It is amazing today, how much information you can find if you make the effort. The information explosion is amazing and the open sources are filled with valuable information.
One of the interesting developments in the last few years is that the United States and more specifically the CIA, has seen that open sources of information and information gained from disparate sources outside government may actually be valuable. They have put considerable money behind when they call the Global Future Forum, which sponsors a series of meetings and seminars. It brings practitioners, former practitioners, academics, corporate people, and senior executives together to talk about things in an open way. They have various themes. In this country a number of former practitioners including myself have been engaged in this as well as the Privy Council, the Department of National Defence, CSIS and the RCMP. If you look at the proceedings of these meetings you get just a glimmer of the amount of material that people outside government have access to and the expertise that is there. If you tap into that I think you would pretty well get what is adequate for the job. If your analysis is accurate and smart enough, you are dealing with 90 per cent open source information or intelligence and 10 per cent that comes confidentially or covertly.
I think that we are a net importer of intelligence, whether it is security intelligence or foreign intelligence. Through our foreign service and through the work we do on the security intelligence side we make a pretty respectable contribution. If that were to diminish I think you would find many of our allies knocking on your doors asking what happened.
The Chairman: The National Security Advisor referred to an ad hoc intelligence committee, a committee other than the regular cabinet committee that deals with routine CSIS matters. In your day was there in fact a smaller group of cabinet ministers that addressed intelligence questions and advised the Prime Minister or provided direction to you?
Mr. Morden: The short answer to that is no. It came through the annual exercise of putting together the so-called intelligence requirements for the year. That would be approved by the Security and Intelligence Cabinet Committee which was chaired by the Prime Minister.
The Chairman: Correct. Ms. Bloodworth described that process and then an additional process that has evidently been created that provides ongoing direction and presumably finer tuning to discussions throughout the course of the year.
Mr. Morden: That certainly did not exist when I was at CSIS. Its approximation, not at the political level, was that while the Cabinet Committee on Security and Intelligence did not meet very frequently, at the deputy minister level, a sort of shadow committee of the same membership met more frequently to take up things such as citizenship or immigration or other issues which people with particular responsibilities had a concern. Either they needed more from the intelligence community or they felt it was not going down the right path. There were many discussions like those but not another ad hoc cabinet-level group.
Senator Day: Mr. Morden, thank you very much for your comments. You have raised a good number of points that we will want to think about and maybe prod other witnesses along the way on some of your interesting suggestions that you have made.
Mr. Morden: I am going to lose the rest of my friends in Ottawa.
Senator Day: We will not tell them where the information came from.
Senator Day: Earlier we had a description of foreign intelligence, to be broken down into political and economic spheres. Are they both, and the way you are using that term, included as part of foreign intelligence?
Mr. Morden: Yes.
Senator Day: There is not a new grouping. Presumably security intelligence would be both national and foreign.
Mr. Morden: It certainly is. Everything would tell you that, in a country like ours where so much of the population at some point either comes from abroad or has come from abroad and has connections abroad. We have many people, family and friends going back and forth, and in these rather dangerous days you want to put the security barriers in place as far from your own shores as you possibly can. That is the whole purpose of security and intelligence. To do that, means probably moving as far offshore as you possibly can. There is certainly a foreign dimension. The terrorism business is one that does not really know any borders. Take al Qaeda as an example: It has any number of cells, which act with a greater or lesser degree of independence. This is quite different from organizations, which 20 years ago, we would have defined as terrorist groups. I think of organizations like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Habash's highly hierarchical group. It was highly hierarchical, with everything dictated from the top, whether it was a terrorist operation or raising money. It is a much more complex field today and trying to understand what is going on means two things: One, you have to alert to events elsewhere; and two, it becomes important to maintain close links with a variety of partners and cooperators.
There are 193 countries in the world, which is the membership of the United Nations. CSIS has relationships with over 200 related organizations in about 140 countries. Not all these countries are necessarily countries that we would look upon favourably, but you have to take a deep breath and realize that they have a particular vantage point on a particular problem of interest to us in our internal security. You have to hold your nose a bit and cooperate and talk with them. The numbers give you a sense of the coverage abroad which has been deemed both desirable and essential in trying to understand terrorism today.
Senator Day: You point out the virtual explosion of information that is available, not necessarily obtained in a covert manner but just tapping into the Internet, for example, and many publications and communications in that regard. You also talk about the traditional international role of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and National Defence in feeding information back. I would like to ask you to expand on the traditional roles of those established organizations.
Have we developed enough attention in relation to analyzing information to make it intelligence? With that explosion of information, it seems that we are overflowing with information that must be analyzed and put into a proper organized fashion to become intelligence.
Mr. Morden: That is as good a definition of what is supposed to happen. That is precisely right. In terms of bringing back to Canada economic intelligence of various kinds, which may have an impact on our own economic prosperity and well-being, I think we probably do. Traditionally, certainly in Department of Foreign Affairs, there has always been a small unit that deals with security-related issues, and another unit, which specifically wears away at deeper analytical analysis. More resources are probably needed in dealing with political intelligence that may have security implications.
Senator Day: Where should that analysis be done? Should it be done in the various departments? The Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of National Defence and the Citizenship and Immigration all have analysts. Should we try to bring all these people together?
Mr. Morden: Our current construct is to try to bring the information together in the PCO. I am certainly not advocating that we create a behemoth department like the Department of Homeland Security, because I am not sure that is an entirely successful experiment. I would favour a more prominent role by a body that would be under an influential head, which would try to draw the strings together and have the ability to set the kinds of priorities that they would ask people to do. There are all sorts of problems, obviously, with immigration refugee policy. It may be that people have different perspectives to bring. There may be a military perspective; there is certainly a political perspective. There may be other security items. It needs a more prescriptive organization to tell the various elements within the Canadian government what they should be focusing on and what their priority is. People respond to their own departmental priorities. The PCO coordinates it. Whatever else happens, any prime minister should have a senior adviser on security. That should go without saying.
We probably need something more in a stand-alone way. I worry quite a lot about the political tingeing of intelligence. That is why I favour standing it aside from the central agencies of government. We have all seen in both the U.K. and in the U.S. the fuss made over allegations, some founded some perhaps less so, of political massaging of intelligence. That is a major building block that we should try to avoid, whatever structure we decide choose, if we decide to go down that road.
Senator Day: I think that is the point I was getting to. We are all familiar with that political massaging to help the chief executive at the time make a point with respect to activity outside the country.
You suggest here that PCO is a little too close to the political process. It cannot help but be; it is the Prime Minister's department. We are not criticizing anyone in those positions; I make that point as you did. We are talking about the machinery of the government. I wonder about the term "national adviser to the Prime Minister." The Prime Minister may well need an adviser on security issues. That is fine, but it does not seem to create the impression that this is the person or this is the department that will coordinate intelligence for all government for all activities.
Mr. Morden: Senator, we are on the same page.
Senator Day: Let me go to another point in your presentation, your concern about the operational activity of the RCMP getting back into security.
We have debated the role and connection of organized crime in terrorism activities. Obviously, there are money laundering issues and gathering of money through the drug trade to help terrorist activities. There is clearly a relationship between the two. How do we avoid the problem that you point out, namely of the RCMP getting back into the security side?
Mr. Morden: At a certain point, they certainly should. The creation of CSIS arising out of the problems of the RCMP Security Service has been the subject of debate and two royal commissions. Yes, the RCMP certainly has a role to play, particularly in counterterrorism, for the very simple reason that it often involves what would be criminal acts. However, the system is set up and the CSIS Act is clear. On the one hand, you have this much lower bar that CSIS is able to intrude on their targets. They need only to have a reasonable cause to suspect that something is going on.
The police bar is reasonable cause to believe. That may sound like semantics, but there is a difference. The greater intrusiveness permitted to CSIS is countered or balanced by the fact that its oversight — whether through the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the inspector general or the minister — is far greater than in the RCMP.
What is supposed to be the operation is that at a lower level — and therefore, one would hope an earlier stage before things become serious — CSIS should be able to go in and look at things. Once CSIS suspects that there is activity going on which may lead to a criminal activity, then it has a responsibility to alert the RCMP.
The RCMP, whether it is money laundering or drug running, has a purely criminal intelligence and criminal process- driven activity, which is very important. In their own way, they have a responsibility to inform CSIS if they think there is a terrorist link in what they are pursuing as a purely criminal matter. Indeed, there has to be very close liaison, which I believe there is; I think they have officers in each other's kitchen, so to speak. Maybe that needs to be reinforced.
I do think that the world of the intelligence officer is not the world of the police officer. If we want to talk about differences, there is a different kind of mindset. Understanding a problem and preventing it is what your intelligence officer is about; making an arrest and prosecuting that problem is the law enforcement approach. There is a distinction to be made and it should continue to be made.
Senator Banks: Would not the police argue they also have a preventative role?
Mr. Morden: I guess they would. I am not really suggesting that they should be cut out of any kind of loop. I think the preventative role has to be because they are preventing a criminal act, which may or may not have a terrorist connotation. If it does, then they should be telling the other organization.
Senator Atkins: This committee has been to Washington on a number of occasions. One thing we sensed in the Department of Homeland Security is the disconnect between many of the agencies. Do you feel that the structure that has been put in place here has addressed that issue so that we do not encounter the same problem?
Mr. Morden: Let me make an editorial comment on the Department of Homeland Security. Some of the problems which Governor Ridge ran into as the initial head of it is that you have a number of mature, well-financed and very aggressive institutions, with histories and a good sense of their own worth and autonomy. Without having any kind of budgetary clout, Governor Ridge had to cobble together this huge 33-agency department and it was a little bit like herding cats. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not. We are much smaller; so I think things are more easily containable. Equally, the government is organized in a way which responds to central direction probably better than happens in the United States.
I think we should have a central organism to drive the intelligence effort; and I am not sure that the way we have it at the moment is optimum. If I go back to the some of the comments made by Senator Day, the Prime Minister's advisor is very good for a Prime Minister to have. Nevertheless, even the words are such that it is not somebody about which one says, "This is the person in charge of this." It may be understood within our own government, but you have to think outside our government as well. Even the nomenclature does not add to the sense that we have this thing organized and there is someone driving the effort.
Senator Atkins: We now have Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Is there any relationship between the National Security Advisor and that department, so that there is a coordination of intelligence that is important? Maybe the emphasis is more on homeland security.
Mr. Morden: I have absolutely no doubt that there is post-9/11, a much tighter degree of departments who have bits and pieces to contribute to the overall picture. They are providing that information centrally. I think the creation of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was a good step in this direction. What we are now saying is that there still remain some players who sit outside and you need firmer and more acknowledged direction to see that we get the best out of the way we have organized our resources.
Senator Atkins: This committee, as you know, has recommended that the security of airports be put under the umbrella of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. I am not so sure ports should not be, too. It all should come under one umbrella, do you agree?
Mr. Morden: Actually, I do agree. To take airports, we know from the publicly released Auditor General's report not so many years ago, that there are continuing problems. You highlighted them last week in your committee's report. My view is that it would make good sense to sever the security relationships from the Transport Canada and put them under Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
With respect to ports, I would say probably, but I do not feel quite as confident about that. The problem with ports is there are security things to be done, particularly with respect to the contents of containers. One would hope that as we get better sensing equipment and begin to screen more containers than the rather small percentage than we do at the moment, things would improve. Again, the real problem is organized crime, the criminal presence at the ports and issues associated with that problem. I am not sure that you necessarily want to put that in Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
Senator Atkins: How long does it take to train an intelligence officer? Do we have the right kind of system for such training?
Mr. Morden: The formal training takes one year to 18 months. Then, the officer has to get his or her feet wet in an operational environment to gain some experience before being given, as is often the case in the intelligence world, a certain amount of independence to operate and pursue.
Senator Atkins: Are we recruiting the right kind of people?
Mr. Morden: Yes, I think we are recruiting the right type of people. However, when I look at the places to which we would like to compare Canada, I am not sure that we have put the kinds of analytic resources to work compared to other countries. That applies to the U.S., Germany and France. It is conceivable that this committee could come to its own judgment as to whether those resources are adequate. If we had direct expenditure, it would expand both the quality and the quantity of the analysts.
Senator Atkins: They would be under CSIS and not Foreign Affairs and International Trade; is that correct?
Mr. Morden: You could make that decision depending on where you wanted to do it. There might be some advantage to having a body of analysts, an embryo in the Privy Council Office, in a central body that could take the contributions from various organisms and knit them together.
The Chairman: If the question entailed the definition of trained and effective, would your answer still be one year to 18 months?
Mr. Morden: It would be three to four years at minimum.
The Chairman: You would not have someone lead on an issue until they were in place for a decade or more?
Mr. Morden: That is probably a reasonable time frame. Even Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI-6, when pressed on the issue of what we should do to compensate for this lack of contribution, conceded that the establishment of a fully effective stand-alone agency is a 10-year proposition.
The Chairman: It has been a pleasure to have you before the committee, Mr. Morden. Your testimony has been clear and informative. On behalf of the committee, I express our appreciation. I sense that we would like to hear from you again, perhaps to help us to test some of the information that we hear during the course of this study.
Mr. Morden: Thank you for inviting me.
The Chairman: Colleagues, we have before us Mr. Al Hensler who served in the RCMP from 1963-84, primarily in the counter-intelligence area, first as investigator and ultimately as a manager with the rank of superintendent. He worked in the Ottawa division headquarters, but also served as a liaison officer in West Germany from 1974-77 and as a secondee to the Ministry of the Solicitor General from 1979-81. From 1984 until retirement in 1995, he served with CSIS in various management positions including director general of analysis and production, director general of counter-intelligence and assistant director for requirement, which included responsibility for counter-intelligence, counterterrorism and analysis. During his final year of service, Mr. Hensler was assigned to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and assisted in the drafting of a position paper on a foreign intelligence service for Canada.
Al Hensler, as an individual: First, I want to say that I have a tendency to let my voice drop because it is a characteristic you pick up after 35 years of working in classified information. If you cannot hear me, please shout. Second, I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to be here and appear before you. When I saw the list of prominent and knowledgeable people appearing today I felt quite honoured to be included.
I also feel somewhat inadequate, because I do not believe I can match these witnesses in terms of expertise, however, I do have 35 years of experience, much of it in the operations area, and will be pleased to impart what I have learned to you today.
I was invited here to discuss two primary issues: a foreign intelligence agency for Canada and an expanded role for CSIS in foreign intelligence collection.
Advocacy and recommendations for a foreign intelligence agency started in the post-World War II period when Sir William Stephenson, also known as Intrepid, attempted to convince the government of the merits of such an agency. For reasons I do not understand, the government opted instead for intelligence sharing agreements with wartime allies to meet its intelligence requirements. Those agreements seem to have served Canada well in the Cold War era. However, the McDonald commission of 1981 recognized Canada had separate and unique interests from our allies that would be better served by a foreign intelligence agency.
In the intervening years since then, we have heard that problems with two peacekeeping missions were attributed at least in part to the failure of allies to provide and share intelligence. We have come to realize that intelligence connected with economic, trade and commercial issues will not be shared if it benefits Canada to the disadvantage of allies. In all of these areas we are competitors not allies.
The McDonald commission would appear to have had some foresight as to what the future held. The issue of creating a foreign intelligence agency has surfaced from time to time, primarily as a result of academic exercises; however, in 2002 a Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence and the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs made a specific recommendation to create a separate foreign intelligence agency. I do not know whether that has happened or not, but I am pleased to see you are looking at this issue and it is still alive.
My views have been set out in an article in the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal and I will summarize them. First, we have to acknowledge and accept that Canada does now collect foreign intelligence through agencies such as the Communications Security Establishment, which does signals intelligence; the Department of Foreign Affairs, which collects open information and information through its embassies abroad; National Defence and Canadian Forces that work on the ground in the areas where they are deployed; and CSIS through section 16, which collects spin-off information or intelligence through its posts abroad and information on request. We are in the game, so to speak.
Second, we need to understand the difference between security intelligence and foreign intelligence. Security intelligence relates to threats to Canada, which are clearly defined in the CSIS Act. Foreign intelligence is much broader and includes information related to political, economic and commercial issues, which do not necessarily pose threats, in the traditional sense, but could benefit Canada.
The existing foreign collection capacity does not address these issues to the extent required to protect Canadian interests. We rely on our allies for intelligence, but we will not receive intelligence in the fields of economic and related fields if it serves their interests not to give it to us or unless there is a mutual benefit.
If we want our deployed troops to have full knowledge of their environment and if we want Canadian industries to enjoy a level playing field when vying for international markets, then we need to expand our foreign intelligence collection. How? The one missing element is the recruitment and use of human resources who are well placed in foreign governments, foreign industry and other foreign entities. Foreign human sources could also be directed to collect intelligence about other issues that confront Canada today. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational organized crime, illegal immigration and various conflicts around the world, create the added requirement to improve our analytic capability of that intelligence. This leads to the second issue which I have been asked to address. Why can CSIS, which has considerable expertise in developing and using human sources, not assume that expanded role?
The McDonald commission recognized certain concerns in combining the collection of foreign intelligence and security intelligence in one agency and those concerns are still valid today. CSIS must act within the laws of Canada. A foreign intelligence agency would potentially violate the laws of other countries. To avoid what McDonald referred to as the "dangers of contagion," the practice of foreign intelligence collecting spilling over into security intelligence practices, the two collection responsibilities must be separated. In an article written in 1994 John Harker, a senior fellow at the Centre for Political Studies at Dalhousie wrote:
The objectives of a foreign intelligence service are fundamentally different from those of a domestic security service. While the former seeks to learn the capabilities and intentions of former states, it must conduct its intelligence gathering on the territory of foreign states. The latter is more narrowly focused on domestic intelligence and counterterrorist objectives.
When addressing this question, you might ask other democratic governments and allies why they maintain separation between the two functions. All our allies do and many other countries maintain that separation. I expect the answer would be that different objectives require different procedures, services and controls. I also expect that combining the two functions centralizes too much power in one agency. The model suits dictatorships in communist regimes but not democracies. I would note that one of the early actions of democratic Russia was to separate the two responsibilities that had been assigned to the KGB.
CSIS is an effective and efficient intelligence organization, well respected by Canada's intelligence allies. The CSIS Act is a unique piece of legislation that finds the balance between the investigation of threats to the security of Canada and the protection of individual rights. I suggest you risk changing that balance for the worse if you tamper with the existing mandate. It is better to draw on the same ingenuity that you used to craft the unique CSIS Act to also create a separate effective Canadian foreign intelligence agency.
Senator Moore: Senator Day tells me you are from Dartmouth. It is nice to meet a fellow Nova Scotian.
Earlier today, Ms. Bloodworth advised us that there is an ad hoc intelligence committee chaired by the Prime Minister. She informed us that the committee is made up of certain cabinet ministers, which meets at the call of the chair.
In your time at CSIS, did such a committee exist?
Mr. Hensler: Over the years the intelligence community has changed quite a bit and I must admit in the last 10 years I cannot tell you if what exists now was similar and in place before. I know they did eliminate a committee, and I think it was the ICSI, the Interdepartmental Committee on Security and Intelligence. I believe they did away with the cabinet committee. This seems to be going back in that direction.
To be effective I think there has to be a very senior level involvement in knowledge and intelligence. One of the problems we have experienced over the years is that people do not know what to do with intelligence. They do not know how to use it effectively. An education process could start and it should start at the top.
Senator Moore: Some of these questions obviously deal with the time when you were assistant director at CSIS. What processes were in place to ensure the veracity of the intelligence assessment provided to government? What processes were in place to ensure the information being given to government was true and accurate?
Mr. Hensler: Within CSIS, we had our own vetting of the reports. Sometimes we shared. There was a committee, which looked at processed and assessed intelligence material. Within CSIS, we did our own vetting and if we produced something that had joint intelligence, we sent it to the Privy Council Office. It was very effective because questions were asked by people around the table who were knowledgeable about intelligence and you could be sure of your information.
Senator Moore: Even though you are no longer actively working at CSIS, I am sure you are probably keeping yourself abreast of what is going on in that discipline and what is happening in the world.
Tell me a bit more about the foreign intelligence agency that you think Canada should have. How would that work in consideration of this new committee that we heard about today? Everyone seems to think there has to be distinct lines between the operations of the security services, the intelligence service and the political sphere. Do you want to tell us a bit about that? How would you see this entity established and how it would function? Who would it respond to and what oversight would it have?
Mr. Hensler: In a 30-page article, I could summarize that, I suppose. My view on that has changed somewhat. Initially, I thought such an agency could be part of another department. My view on that has changed. I believe it should be a separate agency operating much like CSIS does, reporting to a minister. That minister could be within the same public security or any other department. Having it under the same ministry of CSIS at least would bring them together in terms of the information flow. That minister would have access to the Prime Minister and to any senior ad hoc ministerial committee that would be assigned to that committee to look at the intelligence. As I said before, we are already collecting foreign intelligence. I always imagined that the first step would be to pull all the groups together in one agency.
Senator Moore: Would that agency have foreign intelligence at its core?
Mr. Hensler: Yes, that would be the core of the agency and the beginning of a foreign intelligence agency. Then you add the ability to work overseas.
We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on foreign intelligence collection. If anyone has done an assessment of the money spent by CSE, DND and Foreign Affairs, I think they would find it is a significant amount. You take that along with these agencies and pull them together and you have the basis for a good foreign intelligence agency.
In terms of oversight, CSIS built a very effective review mechanism and one could have a similar oversight for a foreign agency. That is how I see it.
Senator Moore: The gathering of foreign intelligence seems to be a bit more delicate than gathering information on foreign issues in Canada. Do we have the personnel that could commence that kind of work, or would they be required to undergo some training with allies?
Mr. Hensler: I think overall, when you look at the military, CSIS and Foreign Affairs, we have very competent people that could step into those jobs. Training would be needed, there is no question, but I believe there is a core of people that could do that type of work.
The Chairman: Just to clarify your answer, Mr. Hensler, you had DND, CSE and DFAIT, but you did not mention the existing CSIS liaison officers overseas. Would CSIS still need it is own liaison officers to deal with immigration issues, or would you see the liaison officers being part of the foreign operation?
Mr. Hensler: I think you have to keep that separate. For the foreign intelligence agency with people abroad, most of them would be undercover; in some cases, they would not even be operating out of the embassies. That group would stay separate.
The Chairman: Would you transfer any overseas agents?
Mr. Hensler: If those agents are reporting on threats to the security of Canada, CSIS has every right to deal with them. That should not be interrupted. There are two different categories of agents.
If you are fortunate enough to have an agent who is a member of a terrorist group and is living in Switzerland and you can meet with him, that could and should be done by CSIS. If you are looking at recruiting and running an agent who is an employee of a foreign government to tell you what that government's position is in relation to economic matters, that is quite different.
The Chairman: You are drawing a line on the basis of whether it is a threat to the security of Canada. Would this new agency not be concerned with that threat?
Mr. Hensler: It would not necessarily. If CSIS could not get certain information abroad that it needed some help with, they could cooperate in that way.
The Chairman: The new agency would focus on political threats.
Mr. Hensler: Political, military, economic.
The Chairman: It would not focus on threats to Canada.
Mr. Hensler: That is the purview of CSIS.
The Chairman: You would have two different operations going on in the same city.
Mr. Hensler: Yes.
The Chairman: For example, for defence intelligence, how would the Department of National Defence be serviced? Right now, there is a major general in charge of military intelligence and he has a staff under him. If that staff were moved out, how would the military obtain the intelligence?
Mr. Hensler: I think the military needs two types of information. They need information on the ground when they are in a country such as Somalia, Rwanda, et cetera. They need to be able to do that kind of intelligence locally and I think that would continue. There would have to be a group that would continue in that capacity. There would also be a need to get the bigger picture, in terms of the political aspects of these countries, long before they land on the ground. That is where the new agency would focus its attention, on potential trouble spots.
The Chairman: The component of the Canadian Forces that currently deals with intelligence would now be split in two; part would stay with the military and part would go with the new agency; is that correct?
Mr. Hensler: Yes, and it is my suggestion to pull them into one agency. They still have to collect information in the area where the troops are deployed. However, the bigger picture and focus on politics, military strength and so forth, would be done by the new agency.
The Chairman: Do you mean that they would be taken out of the Department of Defence?
Mr. Hensler: Yes.
Senator Banks: This is the first time we ever heard anyone speak with such clarity about the distinction between the functions of foreign and foreign-based, if that is the word, security intelligence.
I am just imagining a situation that the chair described, where in Caracas you have an agent or an operative of the new agency doing foreign intelligence gathering — which we understand includes economic and political — and across the hall, there is a guy from CSIS who is dealing with a threat of some kind to Canada. There would be two people there. That would require a change to the CSIS Act, would it not? CSIS is not now authorized to send somebody to Caracas.
Mr. Hensler: CSIS can send someone for security intelligence purposes.
Senator Banks: Does section 16 say they can gather foreign intelligence from within Canada?
Mr. Hensler: They would be there for security intelligence, that is threats to the security of Canada. They might be there to exchange information with the government.
Senator Banks: I was trying to think of a place where we do not have a problem.
Mr. Hensler: There are not many of them. The allies have a representative from each of their services posted abroad. The person on the security side is primarily working with the embassy. The foreign intelligence officer, the CIA person or the MI-6 person, may or may not be included.
Senator Banks: He or she might be working in an import office company.
Mr. Hensler: Exactly, and his focus would be quite different. However, both of them still could be in the same embassy — that is possible too — but their focus would be quite different.
Senator Banks: The basis of your suggestion is that the nature of the work and the nature of the types of people that are required to do the work are so different that it would be unwise to have them both functioning within one agency. Do I understand that correctly?
Mr. Hensler: The nature of the work is similar but the targeting and the methods of collection are quite different. Whereas the foreign intelligence agency might bribe someone to be a source, a security intelligence person would not employ that methodology.
Senator Banks: Surely, there would be a crossover at times when circumstances arise that threaten the security of the country. There would be a crossover where one is operating and one might want to pay a bribe or act in a way that is not strictly above board according to the laws of that country.
Mr. Hensler: That could happen on the security intelligence side but, technically, agents are not supposed to break any laws.
Senator Banks: No one is supposed to break any laws.
Mr. Hensler: It could happen. For example, on the chairman's question about a foreign intelligence agent receiving information in respect of a threat to Canada, the agent would turn that information over to CSIS.
Senator Banks: We are concerned about that because, as this committee has often said, a big problem exists because of silos and people being proprietary about information. It is not uncommon and we have seen more than one example of that situation. Do you think it would not occur in this situation?
Mr. Hensler: That would be an argument for placing the two services under one minister; the information would flow and would be readily noticeable in those circumstances. That would ensure the passing over of such information. Keep in mind that the foreign intelligence agency's mandate would be specific to identified subjects, such as economic, commercial, trade, military and political. If it were to discover information outside that realm, it would be obliged to pass it on, as CSIS does. If a security intelligence agent picks up spin-off or incidental information, he or she can take it to someone in government for distribution. The same would apply on the other side.
Senator Banks: We have heard horror stories about the FBI and the CIA being proprietary with their information and not sharing it, resulting in disastrous consequences.
Mr. Hensler: I agree. If you have ever looked at a chart of the American intelligence community, you will wonder how they ever get anything done. There is a great deal of duplication. My colleagues and I, over the years, have received the same inquiry from two different agents. However, you must also keep in mind that their reporting relationships are different. They are still dealing with a police agency, the FBI. We got rid of that system years ago. They have not had the sense to do that.
Senator Banks: You are convinced that a minister to whom both of these functions would report would mean that there would be a synthesis of the information.
Mr. Hensler: I believe so, yes.
The Chairman: To clarify this, the examples that you gave us were from all of the free world where they have two agencies; one was for the collection of foreign intelligence and one for security. You talked about the FBI, the CIA, MI-6 and MI-5. Of the latter two, one reports to the Home Office and one reports to the Foreign Office. In the U.S, the CIA reports to the state, although they now have a director of national intelligence, DNI, which is federal, and the FBI reports to the Secretary of Homeland Security. In Australia, they report to two different ministers.
What do you think of the principle that the ambassador in the country know everything that is happening under his purview and that foreign intelligence should come through this minister and the department responsible for foreign intelligence? How can you square that with your proposal that you defeat the silos by having them report to the same minister?
Mr. Hensler: Coordination and synthesis are important and you deal with them by putting them under one minister. The American model has had its problems over the years, which have likely stemmed from the fact that they have not been under one leadership. The concern, I suppose, could be the same as having both agencies amalgamate, thereby creating a centralized power. If you are concerned about that, perhaps you would not want to put them under one minister. If there were a cabinet committee to oversee all of this, the minister would not get away with anything he should not get away with. To ensure that coordination, there needs to be a connection between the two bodies, and the best connection in my view is at the ministerial level.
The Chairman: You have had an enormous amount of experience in government. Have you ever counted how many solicitors general you reported to over the years?
Mr. Hensler: We went through them quickly for a while.
The Chairman: Were there about 15 solicitors general over your 35-year career?
Mr. Hensler: Perhaps there were 10 or 12, often because of minority governments.
The Chairman: How many of them had a good grip on the files? How many were you confident in knowing that they understood the files?
Mr. Hensler: We had some very good solicitors general. We could sit around the table with them and they knew what we were doing. As well, there were those who were less good but had very good staff. The ministry had excellent people who knew how to find information. They knew how to collect it and get it out of the service; they knew their way around. Changing ministers always meant a new education process. However, on average, we had good ministers who understood and learned quickly. We never — or very seldom, had difficulty getting operations approved because the learning curve was short.
The Chairman: That was a test of a good minister; if they understood and approved the operation.
Mr. Hensler: Yes, if they understood the operation, although approval was important.
Senator Atkins: Mr. Morden tell us that much information can be picked up generally on the Internet and can be purchased in a tailored product from a variety of reliable, open sources.
In your concept, who would deal with that kind of information and how would it be disseminated to the proper leadership?
Mr. Hensler: Open information is a very important aspect of intelligence analysis and in the model I described, the analysis aspect, in addition to the investigative aspect, would have to be built up. However, there is a core group of people who are very good analysts; the military and PCO have them. Dealing with the subjects a foreign intelligence agency is pursuing would fall into their purview and that, along with secret information you are collecting, has to come together so a good analyst can deal with it. Open information is used by CSIS and by any good intelligence agency.
You will not find what you are looking for in open information. You will not find what the president of country X will do to his neighbouring country in open information. You might be able to draw certain conclusions, but you need that inside information. Open information is very important. It plays an important role in the analysis of both security intelligence and foreign intelligence.
Senator Atkins: How do you train these people?
Mr. Hensler: There are courses one has to take to become an analyst. I know some countries have training and I believe there is academic training, but we have never had that in CSIS. They may have now, I do not know. We were often learning on the fly and if you fell into it naturally, then you were picked up to be an analyst. Most of our work was collection and we were not good at analysis initially; I think we became much better as time went on.
Senator Atkins: Do you think that the security and intelligence community is sufficiently ready and prepared to identify and respond to homegrown threats?
Mr. Hensler: Yes, I believe most definitely they are ready and I think they have proven that. CSIS is a very capable agency. The people they have added have only enhanced their capability. I would say yes, most definitely.
Senator Atkins: Do you think they have enough human resources?
Mr. Hensler: I could not comment on that. I do not know how they are at this time. You can always identify a need for more people, but it has been a while since I was there. I know we would have liked to have had more back in the early 1990s, but the world changed and priorities changed and I think we managed to cover our mandate very well.
Senator Atkins: We have the recent example in Toronto of the combined operation of the RCMP, CSIS and the local police dealing with that homegrown situation. Is there not a danger that they are spread thin in terms of what might be going on in other major cities in the country?
Mr. Hensler: I do not know the present strength of CSIS. I have not heard that resources are an issue. I would not want to venture a guess on that subject.
Senator Atkins: What do you think our major threat is?
Mr. Hensler: Looking at the other countries in the world, and from what we have seen here, the threats increasingly seem to be coming from within. These threats are driven by external philosophies. I guess that is a real concern: People feel they do not belong here, that the country has not treated them properly, or does not understand them. If you look at the terrorist attack in the United Kingdom, those people felt deprived and were more than willing to join societies or organizations so they could take revenge. That change in attitude is probably where the threat comes from.
Senator Zimmer: Senator Atkins touched on homegrown threats versus foreign threats. Do you see a shifting of threats whereby they used to come from abroad, but are now coming from within our country? If you do, is the threat attributed to immigration that is developing here? Is the threat a relationship between the outside threat and the homegrown threat?
Mr. Hensler: Senator Atkins' question touched on that issue. We used to be more concerned about the outside threat and it is still a concern. The concern now is not necessarily the people who immigrated but the people born here.
In one of the last incidents in Britain, the people involved were people born in the country; however, their ethnic background and philosophy was very much attached to a philosophy outside the country. That situation is a concern. You can screen people coming into the country, but people who are already here and whose philosophy advocates violence are difficult to investigate.
Senator Zimmer: Do the external groups feed resources into the country to establish cells?
Mr. Hensler: I could not answer that question with any degree of certainty. Going back to the British example, I believe that was the case. There was outside support for the people in the country. I do not know if that has occurred here in Canada. I could not say.
Senator Atkins: We now have the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, which is, in a sense, an umbrella organization. Are you impressed by the direction the government is going in terms of pulling these different elements together? Have they gone far enough?
Mr. Hensler: From what I have seen and read, it seems to be working very well. That is why I think one could add to that mix a foreign intelligence agency and I think that might be the proper place to put it. The different mix is working well now. It would probably work well with another agency added. It seems to be doing quite well.
Senator Day: Mr. Hensler, thank you for the background information. It is helpful to have someone who has been there and has seen it work. We are trying to draw out any areas where we could make some improvements.
If I have intelligence in an all-encompassing sense, if I have it right, then we have heard today there are a number of steps that have to be there, and they all have to work. One step is setting priorities of Canadian interest and then determining what the priorities are as to what we are looking for and what we should know. Then, there is the issue of collecting information and bringing all that information together and analyzing it to come up with intelligence. In the last step, we have to communicate that intelligence to the respective governmental departments. Do I have all of the different steps?
Mr. Hensler: The collection, analysis and then the dissemination, yes.
Senator Day: You indicated earlier, that when you were with CSIS, you were pretty good at the collection side but maybe a bit weak on the analysis side. You got better at the analysis, is that correct?
Mr. Hensler: Yes, we did. When CSIS was first formed, analysis was weak. It was developed after they created a branch specifically dedicated to analysis. They built that from 12 to about 50 very qualified people over a period of years. People came in from the military, from the Department of Foreign Affairs and helped out with that analysis. I do not know the status of it right now but from the occasional public report that comes out they look like they are doing a good job.
Senator Day: Are those individuals housed within CSIS?
Mr. Hensler: Yes.
Senator Day: There is a group of analysts, 40 to 60 or so we heard about today, who are in the Privy Council Office.
Mr. Hensler: Yes.
Senator Day: Is that a different group of analysts?
Mr. Hensler: They are probably looking at the bigger picture. I did not know it was that size. There have always been intelligence analysts there; they take the information from different departments and different allies and pull it together.
Senator Day: Do they take the information that has been already been analyzed by CSIS and put that into a bigger picture?
Mr. Hensler: That I would not know. I know CSIS produces its own reports but they would certainly see that and they could incorporate into their own reports.
Senator Day: We have asked many questions with respect to security intelligence versus foreign intelligence. We are surprised that you can easily differentiate between the two of them. It seems to me there must be a tremendous overlap. You addressed that by saying if you are out there doing foreign intelligence on economic or political matters and find out something that relates to security, you pass that information on to your colleague on the other side.
Mr. Hensler: Yes, there is a grey area in intelligence. It is not clear-cut. An economic issue could become a threat to the security of Canada I suppose. It is possible to maintain the distinction for the most part. There may be a small area in the centre that has opened up but that would be up to government to clarify. The government would decide who would do the investigation.
Senator Day: You talked about tactical and military intelligence. You referred to the information that a commander needs in order to protect his troops and win the battle. It is quite possible that in gathering the tactical intelligence there may be strategic information that could fit into the intelligence that would be of interest to Canada. Is that correct?
Mr. Hensler: Very much so.
Senator Day: Do you feel satisfied that there is that ability to trade information and the systems are in place to ensure the information gets to the right places?
Mr. Hensler: Are you asking about now?
Senator Day: Yes.
Mr. Hensler: It existed back in my day. It would have been there. From what I have heard that has been improved. There has always been the coordination and transfer of intelligence. It has always been an issue. Every time it became an issue, the system seemed to improve. Even between CSIS and RCMP, we have heard about the problem associated with passing information and so forth. In my view that was never as bad as it was made out to be. My understanding is that it improved considerably during my time there.
Generally, the flow of information has improved throughout government. The big issue is that senior public servants have to be educated. In a number of incidents, recipients of intelligence reports locked the information it in a safe and did not show them to anyone. That attitude has changed. You always have to ensure that the recipient of intelligence knows where it comes from, the value of it, and what to do with it.
Senator Day: Whose role is it to make sure that is happening?
Mr. Hensler: It is the government's role because it traverses all departments.
Senator Day: Would you expect that the intelligence advisor to the Prime Minister who is working out of the Privy Council Office would be interested in getting the information?
Mr. Hensler: Very much. It should be focused on deputy ministers to ensure they understand.
Senator Day: How do you define the word "security" in security and intelligence? Are we talking about the well- being of the person, potential injury and danger to individual Canadians, or are we talking about security to the way of life, the broader term of security?
Mr. Hensler: Good question. The broader term would apply.
Senator Day: Would that be to our political infrastructure as well as the physical infrastructure?
Mr. Hensler: Yes, economic, trade and political structure.
Senator Day: You would anticipate and expect that while CSIS in interpreting its legal mandate it would interpret it broadly. This would cover all the things we are talking about today.
Mr. Hensler: Yes.
Senator Day: Are you familiar with section 16, of the CSIS Act, where CSIS is asked to collect foreign intelligence by either the Department of Foreign affairs and International Trade or National Defence?
Mr. Hensler: Very much.
Senator Day: It says to collect foreign intelligence inside Canada.
Mr. Hensler: Yes.
Senator Day: What does "inside Canada" mean when you talk about CSIS officers outside Canada?
Mr. Hensler: I will give you an example. I will not mention particular countries.
If you had a delegation visiting Canada from country X, and that country was of interest to Canada because of some negotiations or something going on, the government might be interested in its view was on that particular issue. CSIS could not collect that; but the Department of Foreign Affairs could ask them to intercept any messages they get while they are in this country. In that way, they could find out the visiting country's view. That is an example of what you would encounter in that area.
Senator Day: That is within Canada.
Mr. Hensler: Only within Canada.
Senator Day: Can CSIS follow someone out of country? I refer to a person who is in Canada who is making telephone calls to someone outside of the country.
Mr. Hensler: CSIS could intercept the phone call of an individual in Canada, yes.
Senator Day: My understanding is that the communications establishment can go outside the country.
Mr. Hensler: Yes.
Senator Day: If there is some connection with Canada, they can go all around the world.
Mr. Hensler: That is my understanding.
Senator Day: Does CSIS interpret their mandate within Canada to be the same thing? If there is some connection with Canada, they can go anywhere they want, can they?
Mr. Hensler: If it poses a threat to Canada within the terms of the act — this is not section 16 — they could, yes.
Senator Day: It is with respect to section 16 that I am interested.
Mr. Hensler: No, they can only do that here in Canada.
Senator Banks: I have been confused by some answers concerning the CSIS Act. I guess we should have read it more carefully, I now understand two things. One is that CSIS agents can be sent to Caracas to collect information on a security intelligence matter if required. Do I understand that correctly? They can operate in a foreign country if the thing they are after is a piece of information that poses a threat to Canadian security; have I got that wrong?
Mr. Hensler: They would have to do the collection through the local authorities. In the circumstances where they may not go — but this would be very risky — they would have to do it with the permission of the local authorities. The situation where they may not be able to, and this would be highly risky, would be if you could not trust the local authorities. Then you would probably not go to that country because you put yourself at risk.
Senator Banks: Put most simply, we have zero capacity at the moment to do a CIA kind of operation. We have zero capacity to find out something from a country whose authorities we do not trust. We have zero capacity to get this information, which we think poses a threat to Canadian security, which security includes threats to Canadian economic security. The threat might have to do with a plan for a terrorist act on an airplane, let us say. The CSIS Act restricts us from sending a Canadian CSIS person to wherever to seek out that information. Do I understand that correctly? We are unable to send someone there to pose as the local representative of the ABC import-export company.
Mr. Hensler: No, not for that economic purpose.
The Chairman: The question was not economic; there is no economics involved in this scenario. The security of Canada is at risk and our understanding is that CSIS agents can go anywhere in the world; is that right?
Mr. Hensler: If it relates to the security of Canada, under the terms of section 12 they can investigate it, yes.
The Chairman: I believe that was the question.
Senator Banks: No, they are constrained to deal through the local authorities.
The Chairman: No, they are not.
Senator Banks: I thought Mr. Hensler said he thought they were.
The Chairman: I thought he was answering about an economic issue.
Mr. Hensler: When they go into a country, particularly an allied country, they should identify themselves. Whether they do — and that rule may have changed — my point is that it is risky. For example, if you have a source that belongs to a terrorist group that operates in Canada and abroad, that source travels to country X and you want to meet him there and debrief him because you could not do it in Canada, you could do that under the act.
Whether you could go out and try and recruit someone who had information, you could probably do that also as long as it fits within section 12.
The Chairman: I have a feeling you would like a legal interpretation of the act, Senator Banks.
Senator Banks: I will wait for another occasion.
Senator Day: I was looking for what happens on the ground, not a legal interpretation, and you have explained that nicely. We have talked about two different sections of the act — section 12 that deals with security intelligence and section 16 that deals with foreign intelligence. You have agreed with me that there is some overlap. Someone who wanted to do some interpretation has a fairly broad berth to do so.
The only other area I was going to ask about is if we really do need foreign intelligence, Canadians on the ground in a foreign nation, when we have such an expanded base of knowledge of information that needs to be analyzed — having in mind the Internet, which is a tremendous source of information. You have also pointed out the possibilities through the Department of Foreign Affairs and international trade, the military and through contacts with foreign nationals. All that information comes in. Do we not need to pour our efforts and money right now into the analysis of the information that is available?
Mr. Hensler: As I mentioned, it is a combination. You need to improve the collection but you have to improve the analysis also. Analysis goes on in Canada all the time; but you need to ensure that any information that is collected is properly analyzed. That does not mean you should not extend your capability to collect outside the country.
Senator Day: Because of the way the world has changed and because there is so much communication available now, if it is analyzed properly, it will tell you almost anything you need to know. What we really need is more analysis, rather than to build a team of Canadians to collect information on foreign soil.
Mr. Hensler: No, I would not say one is exclusive of the other. I think you need to build both of them. You need to ensure you have that analysis, but you need to improve the collection abroad too.
There are some foreign agencies that do not put people abroad; they operate from home base or, if they do put them abroad, they put them under cover of a business or some other thing. They go out for a short period and come back. That is another model. We do not have to have hundreds of people abroad.
First, you have to identify and focus on those interests and what countries they involve. You might be able to manage it without posting people abroad. That is the traditional model but there are other models as well. I am aware of at least one country that always works from home base.
Senator Day: I believe you said that you are satisfied that we are not analyzing the information that is readily available to us to the extent that we could, based on the priorities that we have set. Could you confirm that?
Mr. Hensler: That has always been an issue. I have been separated from this for some time but I did say that I believe it has improved significantly. There is a group of 40-50 people in the Privy Council Office. I do not know about the quality of the staff but whatever is set up, you need good analyses. If the staff can provide that, then it is fine but, again, they have to be fit and knowledgeable on the issues and targets that government wants to pursue.
Senator Day: Mr. Hensler, you have brought many more questions to mind and we will ask them of other witnesses throughout the study. We appreciate your appearing before the committee to assist us in our deliberations.
Mr. Hensler: I do not envy your job. The issues surrounding intelligence have been debated for many years and the answers seem to be different each time. I am glad that this committee is taking an interest in pursuing the issue. Do not become frustrated by overlapping answers and bear in mind that the field of intelligence is not black and white, unfortunately.
The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, I thank you for appearing today. We appreciate your testimony and willingness to assist the committee.
For the members of the public with questions or comments, please visit our website at www.sen-sec.ca, where we post witness testimony and confirm hearing schedules. Otherwise, you may contact the clerk of the committee by calling 1-800-267-7362 for further information or assistance in contacting the committee.
The committee adjourned.