Proceedings of the Special Senate Committee on
Anti-terrorism
Issue 2 - Evidence - Meeting of June 7, 2010
OTTAWA, Monday, June 7, 2010
The Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism met this day at 1:03 p.m. to examine matters relating to anti- terrorism (topic: current status of terrorism: the Canadian threat environment).
Senator Hugh Segal (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, this is the third meeting of the Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism of the Third Session of the Fortieth Parliament.
As we await either Bill S-7 from the Senate or Bill C-17 from the House of Commons, we continue our inquiry into the changing nature of the terrorist threat in Canada. Honourable senators will recall that when we met last week, we heard from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Department of National Defence Intelligence Production.
Today, we are fortunate to have three experts on terrorist matters that have agreed to share their insights. Speaking on behalf of the Mackenzie Institute is John Thompson who, prior to his time with the institute, was involved with the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies and was a former officer of the Canadian Forces involved in the intelligence service.
Mr. Thompson will be followed by Wesley Wark, who is a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. He is past president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies. He is a past member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on National Security, having served under two different administrations. Mr. Wark continues to serve on the Canada Border Services Advisory Committee. He is widely published on security and terrorist issues.
A third witness has yet to arrive. If he arrives, I will introduce him formally to honourable senators. Without further delay, I will call upon Mr. Thompson. Our guests have agreed to make 10-minute opening statements and then we will open the meeting for questions.
John Thompson, President, Mackenzie Institute: Good afternoon, honourable senators. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about terrorism. I studied issues related to organized violence all my adult life. I have had a special interest in terrorism since 1985. I realize that the more I learn, the less I know. Every time I answer one question, two more pop up.
There is no satisfactory definition of terrorism for me. The best I can say is that terrorism is a realm with hazy borders that intersects other activities such as protest, warfare, organized crime and, sometimes, governance.
There are two absolute truths about terrorism. First, Mahatma Gandhi, Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela demonstrate that when dealing with a Western nation, even one as repressive as Warsaw Pact Poland or apartheid South Africa, violence is unnecessary in a just cause and moral suasion yields better results. Second, there is always a personal choice involved. Yasser Arafat, Osama bin Laden, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez and Ayman al-Zawahiri — to name but a few examples — were all well educated with well-off fathers. All of them chose terrorism over what could have been highly successful careers. The ideologies that these men represented did not drive them to commit violence. They chose to embrace an ideology that sanctioned violence for them. I ask that you please remember these two points in your work over the coming months.
I was asked to speak to three questions that can be summarized as: what is new; how are we doing; and what can we do better?
In Canada, some things do not change much. We still have extremists of the radical left and right. When terrorism emerges from the first camp, these extremists seldom engage in deadly violence and normally take months to work up to that stage of violence through escalating acts of vandalism. The second camp was shattered into incoherent fragments almost 20 years ago. When violence occurs — and it is rare — it tends to be individual and impulsive.
I am not too worried about idiots like those who firebombed a bank in the Glebe neighbourhood of Ottawa last month. Their technique was amateurish; an attempt to pose as figures of menace was droll. Given their past history, they will likely be caught in a year or two, hopefully, before they manage to kill anyone. They will face tougher penalties than their forbearers. Unfortunately, they will consume a lot of police resources and may cause a lot of property damage before they are caught.
Canada has experienced the impact of other people's war or violence imported from elsewhere. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was shot only a block from here in 1868. Until the 1985 Air India bombing, terrorism arising from immigrant communities was easily handled. However, both the Babbar Khalsa and Tamil Tigers subsequently proved to be difficult. They are a long way from being wrestled into a manageable situation.
Our real challenge lies with the activists and terrorists within the jihad movement that work toward a humbled western world in a triumphalist Islam. Al Qaeda and the challenge it presented in 2001 was only one aspect of a larger, more complex threat.
There are three points to consider. First, complex 9/11-style terror attacks or attacks with weapons of mass destruction remain a potential threat to Canada and to Canadians overseas. Because we have not seen al Qaeda outside of the Middle East since March 2003 does not mean their threat has receded.
Second, attacks by homegrown terrorists, people who live in Canada and were often raised here, are becoming more numerous. In Western Europe, North America and Australia, almost 200 attacks have been attempted since 9/11. Only two have succeeded: the London subway and Madrid bombings. Approximately 10 per cent to 25 per cent of arrested plotters have been connected to Islam. Radical Islam is the new power ideology, often attracting people who used to be drawn to other creeds.
Third, plots are increasingly uncovered later in the planning cycle, often only a few days before an attack is delivered. Moreover, some attacks have been delivered, but bombs fail to detonate because of inadequate training. The world was lucky with the attempted suicide bombings two weeks after the 7/7 attacks outside a crowded nightclub in London two years ago, the Christmas Day 2009 bombing attempt on a Northwest Airlines flight and at Times Square in New York a few months ago.
How long can our luck hold out? Lone attackers using firearms, knives or cars are becoming more common. News media and police often describe the attackers as psychotic or disturbed individuals, as was the case in the attack in Fort Hood, Texas, last October. Media and police overlook the enabling role radical Islam played in their attacks. We usually have little warning about lone attackers. No terrorist operates independently of an ideology, but not all proponents of radical ideology are terrorists.
By concentrating on the defence against terrorism, almost all Western nations are completely ignoring the political threat posed by the activists in the front organizations for such groups as Wahhabi Da'wa, Tablighi Jamaat, the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas. Because we do not like to think of subversion and political infiltration does not mean we can ignore them. Wishful thinking is no more helpful than relying on luck.
There is a terrible dilemma in counterterrorism. Success means complacency, which equals vulnerability. Right now, we are becoming far too complacent. The resources Canada devotes to counterterrorism are overstrained and the urgency we saw in the months after 9/11 has faded away.
Canada is an under-policed nation. For every 100,000 residents, the French have 366 police officers, the Italians 358, the Germans 305, the British 254 and the Americans 244. Japan and South Korea alike have 197 while Canada has 194 police officers for every 100,000 people. Japan and South Korea are homogeneous societies with a strong habit of social conformity, something not true of Canada.
Most Canadian police forces are strained for resources. Our joint counter task forces are competing for manpower and budgets with other task forces focused on other priorities. An Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, INSET, might be collocated with an Integrated Market Enforcement Team, IMET, and an Integrated Border Enforcement Team, IBET, as well as with counter-organized crime and counter-gang joint task forces. Often, one overworked inspector might wear several hats at once.
When sudden priorities emerge, counter-terror officers are often the first to be drawn off to other functions. Between the Olympics and the G8/G20 summits, many counter-terrorism officers have not been tending their normal tasks for months. In Toronto, police intelligence officers often augment security for visiting dignitaries. The work is important but it is not their counter-terror work. CSIS and the CBSA often face similar problems.
Attempts in the OPP and CBSA to provide counter training for all front-line officers have both run into the same brick wall: not enough money or time.
New intelligence organizations tend to draw mavericks and innovators who love challenges and creative problem solving. While these people can result in early records of success and bring cachet to the group, the organization sometimes then attracts more pedestrian managers and careerists. The second generation tends to be risk averse, and the spirit of innovation and resourcefulness is often slowly choked off.
As Richard Fadden pointed out, there is an accidental cabal of "single-issue NGOs, advocacy journalists and lawyers" that has succeeded in inhibiting our counter terror effectiveness. Some may consciously undermine our defences. More do so unconsciously, and some genuinely believe they are doing good. Regardless, affairs such as the Arar inquiry, which never asked the questions it should have, and the debate over our national security certificate detainees, have severely inhibited the ability of police to react proactively or cooperate internationally.
It is true that the Babbar Khalsa and the Tamil Tigers are less of a problem in Canada than they were earlier, but we can claim little credit for this situation. The defeat of their homeland insurgencies and an aging generation of founders are more significant reasons. Moreover, most terrorist groups that finance themselves through organized crime tend to evolve into new organized criminal societies. This is true for the Babbar Khalsa and looks to be true for the Tamil Tigers, as well. Canadian Sikhs and Tamils will continue to be victimized, and our response continues to be inadequate.
How are we doing? As a society, we are not doing well enough and inevitably, there will be a price to pay for that. There is an almost universal belief among front-line police officers and security agents that they might finally receive the resources they need only after Canada experiences a severe attack on our own soil.
The need for more money, training and manpower is obvious. The real challenge for legislators is finding ways to balance our rights and laws with effective means of fighting terrorist groups and their ideology. There must be fast and efficient ways of sharing information between agencies and forces again. Unfortunately, the advantages of the task force system we set up in 2002-04 were almost completely undone by the Arar inquiry. With our shortages of manpower and resources, these efficiencies are desperately needed.
Counterterrorism does not depend only upon intelligence-gathering but also on the proactive use of intelligence to disrupt terrorist activities. This use is particularly true for groups that seek to control entire ethnic communities or those actively recruiting young Canadians. Anything that disrupts them or embarrasses them is community policing; it breaks the militants' hold over a larger community and encourages ordinary people to come forward with information. The Muslim Brotherhood, the Wahhabi Da'wa and other ideological fronts for the jihadist movement are severe threats to our institutions and traditional freedoms, even without terrorist violence.
We must urgently seek methods and techniques to restrict their influence and presence here. I realize this issue is largely, although not completely, outside the mandate of this committee.
Whenever I learn an answer in my research on terrorism, I usually find two more questions. Here, you have work to do and, when finished, even more work lies in front of you. That is the nature of counterterrorism.
Wesley Wark, Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, as an individual: Thank you for the invitation to appear. I will read a prepared statement. It is an excerpt from the larger statement I sent to your clerk and which I hope will be available to the committee.
The Chair: It has not been distributed because it arrived in only one language. The interpreters have it, so they will be able to translate on a temporary basis.
Mr. Wark: I should add that it arrived only this morning.
I have called this talk "Terrorism: Understanding the Threat and the Response." Elements will inevitably overlap with Mr. Thompson's remarks, but I think we come at these issues from a different perspective.
Terrorism remains a principal national security threat to Canada and will continue to persist as a threat for the foreseeable future. Terrorism poses a demonstrable threat to Canada at home, to Canada's allies both near and far, and to Canada's conception of a stable and peaceful global system. No single vector of this threat must be allowed to obscure the reality that terrorism represents a global challenge to peace, order and good government.
However, Canadians perhaps understandably are inclined to measure the threat as it manifests in our own society. The terrorist threat continues to evolve in our 21st century world. There are currently three principal manifestations of that threat. One comes from the al Qaeda organization's operational core in Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan. While the United States is engaged in a nine-year-long war with al Qaeda using increasingly sophisticated tools of intelligence, warfare and law enforcement, and while al Qaeda has been seriously damaged in this conflict, it remains alive and dangerous, particularly so long as it enjoys an operational safe haven of sorts and so long as its key leadership, including bin Laden himself and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain alive.
The United States, under the Obama administration, has committed itself to a renewed and focused campaign to destroy al Qaeda. The president's counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, stated in a recent speech: "The United States will disrupt, dismantle and ensure a lasting defeat of al Qaeda and its violent, extremist affiliates."
In my view, achieving that lasting defeat will require the United States to kill or capture al Qaeda's top leadership, maintain consistent kinetic pressure on their fighters, engage in Pakistan and Afghanistan to squeeze out the main al Qaeda safe haven, continue to battle their ideology and message, and help other states and societies acquire the means to do the same.
Canada's contribution to this fight against the al Qaeda core has been twofold: One involves our military commitment in Afghanistan since late 2001, and the other involves our efforts to be a good international citizen by subscribing to United Nations and other international anti-terrorism initiatives in such areas as security, efforts to impede terrorist financing and the establishment of strong and effective anti-terrorism laws.
In my view, the Canadian public is not attuned to the idea that Canada itself is at war with al Qaeda. It might have been attuned to the idea briefly, after the shock of the 9/11 attacks. If it was attuned to this idea then, it is no longer. Canada's withdrawal from combat operations in Afghanistan in 2011 will leave the fight against al Qaeda's operational core to others.
I apologize for an op-ed comment at this point, but I cannot resist it. I believe this is a profound strategic mistake and a matter of national shame. Over the coming year, I hope we will seriously rethink our position.
A second manifestation of the threat posed by international terrorism derives from the creation of al Qaeda affiliates. These affiliates are regionally based terrorist groups with sworn links to al Qaeda such that they can be understood as parts of a "bin Laden network," as our Canadian Security Intelligence Service describes it. The creation and evolution of al Qaeda affiliates has been inadequately understood and studied. The affiliates represent an effort by the al Qaeda leadership to use one of the oldest forms of statecraft — alliance building — to its benefit as a force multiplier, as a form of burden-sharing and as a powerful instrument of propaganda and ideological messaging.
Among the current al Qaeda affiliates of greatest concern are al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the organization behind the Christmas Day "underwear bomber" plot; al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the organization that kidnapped and held for ransom two senior Canadian diplomats, Robert Fowler and Louis Guay; al Qaeda in Iraq, which continues a murderous campaign to damage the fragile security of the Iraq Republic; and the Al-Shabaab movement in Somalia, about which both Canadian and U.S. authorities have expressed alarm over recruitment practices that seek to build a foreign-fighter cadre from expatriate communities in our two countries. The global campaign against al Qaeda thus has to target both the al Qaeda core and the affiliates. Defeat of one without the other, despite their links, will not suffice.
Canada's contribution to this effort against the affiliates will continue to be largely behind the scenes in terms of international intelligence sharing, law enforcement efforts, monitoring of financial flows and the like. Some of these behind the scenes activities were, no doubt, part Canada's efforts to secure the release of Messrs. Fowler and Guay. However, we should not rule out the prospect that in some future circumstances, Canada might find itself needing to call on some more blunt-force instruments to deal with hostage-taking situations or other threats to Canadian persons and interests. This was, after all, why we created the military Joint Task Force 2 in the first place and must be, I assume, one operational justification for its continued expansion and increased levels of financing.
The third dimension of the contemporary terrorism threat is linked only loosely to al Qaeda and its affiliate organizations. This threat is posed by the phenomenon of home-grown terrorism. This phenomenon is one whereby individuals or small cells are radicalized and perceive themselves as adherents of the al Qaeda cause while setting out to engage in terrorist attacks against their own societies or against Western targets more generally. The threat is acknowledged in the most recent CSIS annual report for 2008-09.
Canada has experienced this phenomenon directly in such cases as those of Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, who was transferred and is currently detained in the United States; Momin Khawaja, who was tried and convicted in Canada and sentenced to 14.5 years in 2009; and the so-called Toronto 18 cell. The radicalization phenomenon is transnational and has given rise to concern in a host of Western countries.
U.S. authorities sense a new danger in radicalization leading to homegrown terrorism in their country. Since January 2009, more than 20 individuals have been arrested and charged with terrorism crimes in the United States, most notably Najibullah Zazi, who planned to attack the New York subway system and received training in Pakistan.
Canada has seen no similar uptick in home-grown terrorism, but we must be alive to this potential threat and come to our own determination of its significance. This determination will require our counterterrorism officials and senior policymakers to decide whether they agree with the current American assessment that, in the words of John Brennan, "it is clear that we are now facing a new phase of a terrorist threat."
Judging from recent U.S. official pronouncements, it appears that the United States believes that al Qaeda and its affiliates are adapting their strategy and tactics to suit the current operational and security environment by encouraging pinprick attacks by individuals with little training and whose operational techniques may be less than sophisticated. In part, this change in strategic effort away from carefully planned and heavily invested assaults designed to create mass casualties may be a product of the more difficult targets presented by post-9/11 Western states after all their investments in security. In part, it may reflect a belief that al Qaeda, its affiliates and like-minded individuals and groups can inflict great cumulative damage through a succession of small-scale attacks and attempted attacks.
Countries such as Canada must make their investment, while never forgetting their role as allies and as contributors to international security. The elements of good counterterrorism strategy are many and diverse, and my list has seven key features: good intelligence; good law enforcement; good laws; a good legal system; good governance; good policy; and good public education.
I cannot speak about all of these points but I will touch on highlights, from my perspective. We have been required to forge or adapt our institutions and policies in all these areas to meet a post-9/11 security environment. The best news, I believe, emerges out of our efforts to frame national security laws and to test their validity in a democratic setting.
Despite the angst that surrounded the passage of Canada's first antiterrorism legislation in December 2001, in my view, the Anti-terrorism Act has proved workable in complex legal cases such as those involving the prosecution of Momin Khawaja and the Toronto 11, as it now is. The same good news banner, however, cannot be stretched over the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and, in particular, the working of the security certificate proceedings, which I believe remain troubled and problematic.
The worst news with regard to Canada's domestic counterterrorism strategy and our efforts to adapt to the new security environment comes in the realm of public education. In this realm, Canada is a notable laggard compared to our close allies, and has failed to develop appropriate public education investments and policies to ensure that Canadians are adequately and routinely informed about national security dangers and the role of the government in meeting these dangers.
In my view, successive Canadian governments continue to evince a paternalistic and negative outlook on national security education, shaped by partisan concerns about political fallout, by mistaken assumptions about the alarmist tendencies of the Canadian public, by exaggerative sensitivities regarding national security confidentiality, and by a failure to appreciate the value of strategic thinking.
In between the relative highs of a new legal system and the relative lows of public education stands a terrain of mixed accomplishments, with much work still to be done. We have invested heavily in intelligence capabilities and come to embrace a view that intelligence must be regarded as Canada's first line of defence, thus reversing long- established budgetary and policy outlooks. However, we continue to work, for the most part, with old institutional settings that may not be fully adaptable to current and future requirements.
In my view, we have failed to address adequately two long-standing problems in national security policy in Canada. One is the overinvestment in intelligence collection relative to intelligence assessment. While a number of new intelligence assessment units have sprung up since 9/11, notably the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, ITAC, and while we have a better-resourced international assessment staff at the Privy Council Office, the question of the overall analytical quality of the Canadian security and intelligence community remains in dispute.
The second problem is the persistence of a policy-making system in which intelligence is not routinely integrated. Intelligence should not be viewed as an exotic and peripheral factor in decision making, but as a central element of knowledgeable policy. That view has to be so for the middle ranks of the bureaucracy, for our senior officials and at the cabinet table.
The reality of a multi-tier terrorist threat environment calls for a distinctive Canadian strategy to address our understanding of the threat in each of its manifestations — al Qaeda core, al Qaeda affiliates and home-grown terrorists — and a policy response geared to each. Our Afghanistan commitment provided an opportunity to enunciate an understanding in policy, which we have not seized upon. The same can be said of the actions of al Qaeda affiliates as they have impacted on Canadian persons and interests, notably in the hostage-taking of Robert Fowler and Louis Guay.
As for the evolution of the threat posed by home-grown terrorism, the Canadian government has remained remarkable silent, leaving its citizens to guess — should they care to do so — as to whether our government shares the view of its American counterpart that we are entering a new phase of terrorism.
No government wishes to be seen as negligent in its national security responsibilities, perhaps the core mandate of any government. No Canadian government since 9/11 can be reasonably accused of negligence. The issue is the subtler one of the quality of the work — of how well and how fast we have adapted to the new realities of a post-9/11 security environment.
I believe the main charge against Canada has been that it has been reactive, as opposed to proactive. To move from one to the other will require a new respect of strategic thinking done not only behind closed doors, if it is done there, but also out loud.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Wark. We are also fortunate to hear now from Jez Littlewood, Director, Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, Carleton University. Mr. Littlewood's research focuses on counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and homeland security. He brings to this research, experience as an adviser to the counter-proliferation department of the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as work at the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies at the University of Southampton and the Department of War Studies at King's College, London.
Jez Littlewood, Director, Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, Carleton University, as an individual: Thank you. I apologize to members of committee and fellow witnesses for my late arrival. It is a great honour for me to speak to you this afternoon. Thank you for the invitation. I have offered to the clerk a brief synopsis of my general remarks. I will follow up on Professor Wark's and Mr. Thompson's remarks, most of which would agree, and paint the complexity of the picture.
Terrorism is a complex issue, which makes any anti-terrorism effort equally complex. It is important to recognize that there are different types of terrorism in existence — classic left-wing, right-wing, ethno-nationalist, religiously inspired, and single-issue terrorism — taking place across the globe. The predominance of one or two in each state, or in various regions, can alter our perceptions over time. For example, this month we will see the twenty-fifth anniversary of the bombing of the Air India flight. Islamic-inspired or Islamic-influenced terrorism was not a significant factor in Canadian security terms in 1985. It is today, whereas Sikh- or Khalistani-inspired terrorism is not contemporaneously a significant issue for Canada in security terms, although there are worrying portents in that region.
In considering antiterrorism measures in Canada and among Canada's allies, and those that Canada has or indeed must cooperate with to counter this threat, we must be cognizant of the fact that terrorism is only one of a number of security issues on the agenda of our security and intelligence community.
Other issues, whether the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or related technology, espionage, foreign political influence, cyber attacks or even economic, demographic or political developments and trends, have to be addressed, countered, monitored and managed by the community as a whole.
I will speak briefly to three general questions raised and provided to me by the committee, bearing in mind that I am not an expert in all of those areas.
The temptation, in terms of how we judge an organization and what has changed over the last ten years, is to seek a single defining method or look for the archetype organization from which Canada faces a threat. Different groups operate in different ways. It is important to consider the level of skill that the group or the members have and make a distinction in the training to which they have had access. This distinction might be the best one between the wannabe terrorists, who are relatively amateurish in their approach, and the trained and experienced terrorists, whom, to date, Canada has been fortunate enough to thwart or suffer direct attacks from, vis-à-vis Islamic-inspired activities. Equally, the motivation might differ by cell or by group. If we assume that general level research in the academic community on terrorism is correct, then taking Louise Richardson's approach, we can look at three general drivers: revenge, renown and seeking of reaction from the community or the government that it attacks.
Terrorism is, of course, a political act. It is situated on a spectrum of political activity and within a spectrum of different types of political violence. Its perpetrators seek political change, even if that change is hidden or unarticulated. One of our problems is working out what that change is. Given the profile of law enforcement and criminal prosecutions, to which my colleagues referred, groups will be, or we can expect them to be, secretive, operate often in a cell structure and deliberately limit their exposure. We should presume that adept groups will aim to operate and plan under the radar and seek to counter any surveillance, whether real or perceived.
We know from past practice that public or large groups can be infiltrated, so secrecy and protection may drive some groups. This secrecy and protection make security and public safety aspects of countering terrorism much more difficult. Whether self-identifying individuals and self-forming groups are trained, as well as how and where they are trained, or whether they are experienced or amateurs constitutes part of the spectrum of activities that we must consider.
In terms of whether the police and the community have changed the way they have acted over the last decade or so, countering terrorism is a dynamic process. We know of successes from prosecutions and convictions, as well as failures abroad from the occurrence of acts of terrorism. The assumption is that acting for the safety of society involves a shift from awareness and monitoring to gathering evidence that is admissible in court for prosecution. This assumption might be the case in an ideal world. However, we are no longer willing to wait for the bomb. Instead, we seek early intervention of suspected terrorist activity or cells, which, because of the early intervention, results in less evidence available for admissibility in court. In that sense, disruption of terrorist activity might be a sufficient undertaking for elements of our intelligence or security community.
Equally, if we were involved in international links to terrorist groups, it might require the development of different arrangements between Canada and its allies. Sometimes that arrangement might lead to prosecution, the Khawaja case being a case in point. In the case of preventive arrests by law enforcement, gathering the necessary admissible evidence might take more time than in normal criminal cases. This point has to be borne in mind. Evidence might not be so clear-cut. Some procedures have been developed as a result of lack of other alternatives available to the community, not necessarily because they are well suited to the task but because they are there and can be turned to deal with an issue. One might say that security certificates are a case in point in this area.
Finally, I turn briefly to other things that Canadian society and others can do. I subscribe to the views of my colleague, Professor Wark. Transparency and knowledge are key issues for me as we move forward to the next decade of activity. Canada as a whole, whether it is the public, the community or parliamentarians, need much greater awareness and knowledge, as well as recognition of the limits and tensions inherent to counterterrorism strategies. I will give a case in point: On April 7 in the Netherlands, the Minister of Justice and the State Secretary for the Interior and Kingdom Relations sent a presentation to the Lower House that outlined a public summary terrorist threat assessment to the Netherlands as of early 2010. There is no comparable document in existence in Canada. Yet, I believe it would be helpful, not only for parliamentarians and the community as a whole but also for the Canadian public, to see a measured, thoughtful public document that states where we believe the threat exists at this time.
We know, for example, that some people have the view that the threat of terrorism has been hyped. For others, the problem is ignorance of the scope and scale of different types of terrorism activity, whether it involves planning a physical attack or financing activities in other countries. As my colleague said, for most Canadians terrorism does not appear to be an issue until it actually happens. Yet, to prevent terrorism and have a successful counterterrorism strategy requires constant effort, which requires resources. The fact of few terrorist incidents in Canada is a positive indicator, but it does not mean that we should necessarily reduce the resources devoted to counterterrorism efforts across the board.
Senator Joyal: Mr. Thompson, Professor Wark and Mr. Littlewood, each of you raised the issue of security certificates. Can you tell us in which aspect you think the procedure, as it stands following the court decision, has jeopardized the tool that security certificates represent?
Mr. Thompson: Do you want any one in particular to answer the question?
Senator Joyal: The three of you seem to be concerned about it so each of you may comment.
Mr. Thompson: The point is that the debate was one-sided, for the most part. We heard from the lawyers and the activist community. We heard all the protests but no one can speak to the other side. We found this in other cases as well. The police and CSIS have to stay quiet. In the debate, only one side funnels the information. As well, people are not generally aware of some aspects of the other cases in other countries.
There is, for example, the al Qaeda Internet manual, which has been through several incarnations, in which all members are directed to deceive, lie and misuse information deliberately. Jihaddists also subscribe to the principle of takiyya, which is deliberate misinformation, especially in debates on security.
Therefore, when we have these debates they are often one-sided; only one real perspective is coming out. The public only hears information coming from one source, and they start to develop a bias which, as we know, can affect things later on.
Mr. Wark: I will preface my response to this important question by explaining my interest in these matters. For the benefit of the committee, I have been retained as an expert witness and have given testimony in one of the cases currently before the Federal Court, that being the Mohammed Harkat case. I have been retained as a witness in two of the remaining certificate cases. Therefore, I have been able to view this process from close perspective.
My remarks will differ greatly from John Thompson's. I call these proceedings problematic both in terms of the way the system currently operates and, to be honest, its ultimate objective. In terms of how the system operates, although following the Supreme Court's decision on Charter grounds that the previous system was not adequate to allow for fair defence, Parliament came up with a revised security certificate process.
From my perspective, two difficult things remain at issue, and probably will be tested again before the Supreme Court. One is the adequacy of the special advocate process. To what extent can special advocates facilitate a fair defence on the part of the named person in the current configuration in which special advocates are allowed to operate. The other issue that has emerged, for me certainly, is the public security intelligence report, which is the version that is prepared by CSIS and provided to defence counsel.
There are two questions in my mind stemming from the experience I have had with security certificate proceedings. One is whether the public summary of the classified intelligence case against a named person does a sufficient job to defend the interests of the named person. The second issue goes to another remark I made in my report, which is the quality of the analytical work that goes into these important pieces of intelligence reporting.
The strategic objective of a security certificate proceeding is, of course, to remove from Canada a person who is suspected, on reasonable grounds, of being a terrorist or of forming a threat to the national security of their country of origin. If you think about this objective for a minute, it raises troubling questions. Is that approach a way to deal with terrorist and other threats? Are we satisfied simply by removing the person from our own borders and our own political domain? Does that solve the problem that we believe these persons represent? That is one aspect of the issue.
The other aspect, as we have already seen in the security certificate proceedings, is that many of the countries to which we might wish to return these individuals, if it is affirmed by a Federal Court judge that it is reasonable to do so, are countries to which we cannot return them because of concerns that they may be tortured, face abuses, or might indeed face the death penalty.
There are two outcomes to security certificate proceedings, even if successful, that I think are problematic. One is returning a potential terrorist to a pool over which we have no control with regard to their future movements. The second is that we are inevitably creating a circumstance in which we are responsible for individuals in some kind of legal limbo remaining within the country.
Mr. Littlewood: I have sympathy and support for what both my colleagues have said. Clearly, in the security certificate cases, there is a dominance of one side of this discussion over the other for understandable reasons, given the classified information. However, that situation is a fact of life that the intelligence community and the security community more broadly will have to come to embrace and learn to live with, in one sense. How that will be done remains to be seen, but it must happen because the legal issues involved in concerns about involvement in terrorist activity and accusations will be brought increasingly before, and addressed in, a legal setting. The community as a whole has no option but to face that coming reality. Security certificate cases and the difficulties involved there are a harbinger of that.
The other side of the issue is, as Professor Wark has said, that there are no easy options here, which means there are no easy choices to be made. There can be a tendency, which I can understand, that we will pass difficulties up through the legal structures for a legal answer. Yet, some things fundamentally require a political discussion and a political outcome that will at least try to underpin that process or explain the rationale for why something like security certificates exist. That takes us back to a core issue of having a community, whether it is parliamentarians or the public at large, who are knowledgeable of, and involved in, the complexities of these issues. That is what has been lacking. Security certificates, in their original manifestation, clearly were not necessarily designed to deal with hard terrorism cases. In their re-manifestation following the Supreme Court's decision, they have, to an extent, been found wanting when they have been tested in the legal cases so far. We face difficult political as well as legal discussions in the future, and it is important for us not to dodge those difficult political questions.
Senator Joyal: Professor Wark, you touched on an element that I think has been one of the perceptions that has been created through the use of security certificates and decisions of the court. When reading the decision of the court and the testimony that has been given to the court, one has the impression, as you said, that quality analytical work is missing. The court has raised suspicions that the information on which certificates were based was not proper. That impression damages public opinion. As you said, the public is not sufficiently aware of the reality that lies behind the certificate.
The fact that the Iraq war was not launched for the reasons given, which was proof of weapons of mass destruction, created a greater risk of terrorism by pooling a large number of terrorists in Iraq. That fact damaged the credibility of the United States and its ability to face terrorism head on. There are various reasons that people have the perception that the situation is not that dangerous or the information is not reliable.
You all reflected on how we can make the Canadian public better aware of what they have to do, and we must recognize that situation as part of the equation that we must solve.
Mr. Wark: To the extent that this comment is of any value to senators in this committee, I have concluded that it behooves the government to choose carefully when it decides to pursue security certificate cases. It must also be recognized that the job of CSIS in crafting a public security summary of the case against individuals is difficult, but my experience with the cases that CSIS has put forward in the public domain is that they have been inadequate, from anyone's expert analytical perspective. Federal Court judges have found the same, and in addition, they have been worried about various forms of abuse of process that have occurred in the mounting of these cases.
As Professor Littlewood said, the security certificate proceedings were not originally designed to deal with complex terrorism cases, and we may not have adapted well to the need to use this instrument against such cases. I fear the outcome will be that, as useful as this tool may be, because of the mistakes that have been made and the inadequate analytical work that has been put into it, we may have removed this instrument from the policy tools available to us.
The Chair: Are you saying that the inadequacy of the analytical work that may have been presented relative to these security certificates is an inadequacy that comes from insufficiently deep and competent analytical capacity, or a decision on the part of security services not to reveal what they feel they cannot because they have a primary obligation to the protection of national security, which may be greater than their obligation to win a particular court case?
Mr. Wark: That is an excellent question, and I do not have an answer for you. One can imagine it could be either one or the other, or some combination.
The difficulty posed by an inadequately analyzed public intelligence summary presented in a security certificate case is that it sustains the distinction between the public case, which the named person can know, and the secret case which the named person cannot know. To the extent that there is a gap between that secret case and the public case, it raises again the question of whether security certificate proceedings meet the required test of fairness for the named person. Therefore, the secret case has to come close to the public case. My experience is that for whatever reason, whether protecting sources, bad analytical work or some combination of the two, they have failed to bring those two things sufficiently close together and that gap therefore raises large legal questions about the fairness issue.
Senator Nolin: In your opening remarks, Mr. Thompson, in a short sentence, you talked about the Arar inquiry, and you said the inquiry never asked the questions it should have. What are those questions?
Mr. Thompson: If you are looking for more detail, some of the best treatment about the Arar case is in the books by Paul Palango on the RCMP. The books talk about Arar at great length; some of the questions that were never asked and some of the details that never came up.
One thing that particularly struck me was that we automatically accepted his allegation of torture. He never testified to the committee except by video disposition. Also, everything hinged on the whole point about torture. When was there an independent medical examination? The things he described originally were that in Syria he had been whipped and beaten across the hands with two-inch telephone cables. I have seen the scars from people who are in Iraq who were treated that way under Saddam Hussein's regime. The scars are permanent. The fingers are all broken. If someone alleges terrorism and we take it so seriously, should there not have been someone who said: I am a medical doctor, recognized by the court. Can we see the evidence that you were actually tortured?
That was one thing that never came up.
Senator Nolin: Dr. Wark, we heard from Gilles Michaud, Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP. He said:
. . . I believe that the only way to protect our rights and freedoms without sacrificing security is through the criminalization of the terrorist threat to Canadians.
Do you agree with that?
Mr. Wark: That is an excellent question. Assistant Commissioner Michaud's comments, I think, echo comments made by the RCMP Commissioner, Bill Elliott. Commissioner Elliott made the same kinds of comments in a relatively rare public address on national security issues in 2009. I am paraphrasing what he said, but he argued that it is time that Canada engage in what he called a "paradigm shift" away from an exclusive focus on intelligence- gathering methods to defend Canada against terrorism threats, and more towards a law enforcement and prosecutorial process. In theory, I agree entirely. I think that shift is the way to go. We have seen the Obama administration in the United States decide to proceed that way. The U.K. authorities have proceeded that way, by and large, as well. If we went that route in a wholesale fashion, it would align us with some of our key allies.
The question is whether we are ready and have the capacity to make that shift. Is the RCMP ready to pursue these cases? Is the criminal justice system ready to pursue these cases? The cases are complex and lengthy. Some of the signs show that we are getting there, but the truth of the matter is that in the aftermath of the Arar inquiries, for which I have much higher regard than John Thompson does, and in the aftermath of the Iacobucci inquiry, the RCMP national security Criminal Intelligence Directorate, which is the key institution in the RCMP dealing with these matters, has gone through a great deal of wrenching organizational and policy change. It would require a kind of inner look at RCMP capabilities in terms of resources, expertise, the intelligence and law enforcement relationship, and the ability of the RCMP to sustain a presence and assist in courts and Crown prosecutors in pursuing cases. We would have to break that question down into some of its detailed components before I would be ready to say, we should go from the theory to the practice wholesale.
In theory, yes we should, but in practice I am a little concerned that the RCMP has not yet reached the point where we can fully trust a paradigm shift to have the effect we would want it to have.
Senator Nolin: It is not the tools that are the problem; it is how they manipulate those tools.
Mr. Wark: To put the issue into perspective, I would say two things. One is that the RCMP national security Criminal Intelligence Directorate was not prepared for the 9/11 and post-9/11 security environment. To put it a little bit too bluntly and perhaps, unfairly, it was a backwater in the RCMP, and it had been a backwater ever since 1984 when CSIS was created. I think that honest officials at senior levels in the RCMP will acknowledge something close to that truth. Therefore, they had to go through a great deal of change to re-emphasize the RCMP's role in national security criminal intelligence enforcement, which meant bringing new people, resources and policy frameworks to bear. We found that they were not up to the job, I think, in crucial regards. We found that out through the Arar inquiry, and troubling questions were raised by the Iacobucci inquiry. The RCMP recognized the need for change and the government insisted on change, although this change has been made internally without much public discussion. Those changes are recent developments. In other words, we are talking about an understood need to change and reform that has occurred in the last four or five years, and that time frame is short to ask an organization fundamentally to reorient itself in terms of its capabilities and resources.
I think that work is in process. All I am saying is that we are at that point where we can fully invest our national security policies in a wholesale change to emphasis on prosecution as the best approach. That is the way we have to go, but we may have to move a little more slowly and make sure we have the tools in place to do that well.
Senator Nolin: Of course, I used the word "manipulate." I should have used the word "handle."
Senator Jaffer: I want to start first with the Air India incident. You said it is 25 years. I come from British Columbia, and the pain of Air India is very much felt in my province. You said it has disappeared, but if you see the processions recently, the family continues to suffer the pain when people have the processions.
My preoccupation is how we stop the homegrown threat. For me, that is a threat from within, and I have seen for 25 years how my community in B.C. has suffered from what I would call a homegrown threat as well, and then people being killed.
How do they reach mostly the young people? Certainly, one way is through the Internet? What can we do to stop them?
Mr. Littlewood: I mentioned in my prepared statement that I saw worrying portents in terms of current ongoing activity regarding Sikh extremism. This is an example of something that is not on the public agenda or recognized, but it is nevertheless something the community itself, whether it is the B.C. community or the security and intelligence community, must be aware of. Those are some of the efforts, resources and times that are required.
How do we stop homegrown terrorism? One problem we have is coming to recognize in the media the radicalization of individuals and the radicalization leading to efforts of violence, and that radicalization, in itself, leading to terrorism. When we look at convicted terrorists and try to trace back how that individual became radicalized, there is no single blueprint, single track or identifiable tipping point, which makes it more complex to deal with the various issues.
One of the understandable stock responses is that we need to reach out to youth because this problem involves youth in many cases and as well, it is an education issue. To an extent, that may be true, but just as effective counterterrorism requires a response across a whole range of government departments, it also must involve the community. That involvement, in itself, requires some kind of a safe space for communication between law enforcement, intelligence and different parts of the community itself, not necessarily only community figureheads — what kind of leaders they are.
Different and conflicting signals come out of those processes, and it is not always possible to identify that this person is interested in politics and maybe has some radical views, but this person is interested in politics and has radical views that are leading toward violent radicalization. It is violent radical views that are of concern in terrorism.
The unfortunate reality is that it takes a lot of effort and there are many false leads or dead ends, in one sense, to identify the few violent cases, and we will often not find them. That is an unfortunate reality. We are as much into trying to pre-empt violent radicalization as we are into a management issue of how to deal with it if it begins to manifest in its community.
One case in point that I will mention briefly is it has become clear to the U.S. and the Canadian authorities, in my view, over the last 18 months to two years, that there is, broadly and generally speaking, a potential Somali problem in North America. That problem was not on the agenda three years ago, but it is now.
There will be other communities in Canada and in the United States that are not currently on the agenda, but all the same kind of portents exist, so we must be aware of them. It is an effort that often will not lead to publicly recognizable rewards or things we can measure in terms of effectiveness or ineffectiveness.
Senator Jaffer: You work with the U.K., and the U.K. has innovative community programs to deliver their message, especially to young people in the mosques and things like that. Are you aware of something we can use here that will help in identification? At this point, we assume the threat is from the Muslim community, which varies from time to time, but for now that is the case.
Mr. Littlewood: The U.K. has taken an effort. It has a Counter-Terrorism Strategy, CONTEST, which includes a public outreach effort. The U.K. works closely with communities in what is now publicly known as the Channel Project, which was a pilot project working with various mosques, community leaders and imams. That work can all be useful in terms of raising the profile and awareness, and increasing community-level knowledge between different groups, which can have a beneficial counterterrorism strategy, but it can also create cleavages within communities.
We can also be somewhat misled if we go to known community speakers but do not understand the dynamics of the community itself. Who is the correct person to approach? How does that community work, in practice? Can people who are not recognized leaders speak with authority? If we were looking from the perspective of the security community, can we put a level of trust or emphasis on any of those processes?
The other problem is in the sense of the mosque connection. It is known now in the U.K. context that mosques or imams that take a radical view will probably be under some kind of surveillance or awareness that is brought to the attention of the security community. This is why we see the existence of unofficial, hidden or secret mosques that belong to specific groups. These mosques operate through an invitation-only process. Whether they can be uncovered is an intelligence or police-led issue that relies partly on the community.
We must go down this track of trying to reach out to the community for good reasons, but we must not fall into the trap of thinking we have reached out to the community, and that community police or intelligence relationships are good and therefore we have resolved the problem. We are putting down one issue to see the problem manifest itself in a new way six months or 12 months later that requires a slightly different strategy. That is why it is a dynamic process. That is the best I can offer.
Mr. Wark: Senator Jaffer, we are blessed in Canada, at least, with the fact that homegrown terrorism is a manageable phenomenon. I would be at pains to emphasize that I do not think we should exaggerate the scale of a homegrown terrorism threat in the past, in the present or in the likely future of Canada.
To a certain extent, I think the homegrown terrorism threat is more likely to impact on our allies and therefore engage interests than it is likely to affect us directly. With that said, homegrown terrorism is something we have to watch as a phenomenon here, as part of this broader panoply of security threats we face, and it calls for three principal tools.
First, we must have good intelligence that will function within the appropriate legal and democratic framework. As a lesson from many different jurisdictions, we must have good community policing capabilities. As Mr. Littlewood suggested, we must have some form of sustained community engagement because ethnic communities in the context of homegrown terrorism will be our most important ally. We have to be able to trust those communities to a certain extent to identify problems within their own communities, and we have to trust those communities to speak out about those problems and approach the authorities when they recognize these issues.
In addition, one thing that inhibits all these different elements of a homegrown counterterrorism phenomenon is, again, the absence of public education and willingness to speak out and explain to Canadians, not only as individual ethnic communities but to Canadians as a whole, what the evolving nature of the terrorist threat is and what instruments the Canadian government is using to combat it.
One of the difficulties CSIS has had in the past in various efforts to engage with communities is when it engages in those efforts on an episodic basis that is sometimes driven by security crisis, inevitably, it is received by those communities with some degree of suspicion and ignorance: Why is CSIS suddenly knocking on my door, wanting to appear at my mosque, church or whatever it is?
To overcome the sense that CSIS is suddenly appearing wherever because of motives for which they misunderstand or are suspicious of, they need a sustained public education process under way so that individual communities can fulfil the function of assisting in the policing fashion and do not feel they are being singled out for targeted and unfair treatment.
Senator Wallin: I want to come back to the point raised by Senator Joyal because it troubles me. I think there was too much of the attitude of "blame George Bush and blame the war in Iraq" for perhaps undermining people's perspectives on this issue.
We went to Afghanistan in 2001, and we were focused on the place they had come from. I think we had the information about what was taking place. Still, the government of the day believed, and therefore the public believed, talking about public education here, that this situation was somehow a U.S. situation, and perhaps worse yet, that the Government of the United States overreacted and took us too far down the road.
I want to hear briefly from all of you on this point. Do you think that we remain in denial about these issues?
I will focus particularly on this country. Secondly, because we were in denial, which was my contention at the time, we did not put in the necessary infrastructure on which to build currently. The issues we are talking about of crime versus terrorism, do we have the right intelligence gatherers, the right criminal mechanisms to deal with terrorism if there is a terrorist incident, et cetera? That question is broad, but will you start, Mr. Thompson?
Mr. Thompson: It is a broad question, Senator Wallin. The problem is it also begins with broad answer.
If we look at the whole history of Canada, by and large we are a peaceful kingdom. Most Canadians have a great deal of difficulty coping with external threats, even accepting that they actually exist. It is something they have a great deal of difficulty with.
I mentioned that sometimes the more answers I find, the more questions I have. For example with homegrowns, to return to that issue if I can, I think Canada statistically has the second-highest proportion of non-native citizens to native-born citizens of any country in the world. Only Australia exceeds us slightly in terms of number of new people. However, looking to the Netherlands, Britain, the United States, they all have greater trouble than we do. I cannot understand why we do not have the same degree of difficulty. There is something in this society that is working. If anyone has a theory, I will be glad to hear it. It is still a mystery to me and something we do not want to look at sometimes.
The Chair: You do not think it is hockey?
Mr. Thompson: That could be part of it. There are a number of things, but if we want to go off into a discussion of the Canadian identity and what it is —
The Chair: Thank God not at this committee.
Mr. Thompson: — it has not worked on us. The first thing is that people have great difficulty feeling there is a personal threat. There is that reflexive part of Canadian anti-Americanism that will never really go away. We find the common adage: The Americans have invited their own trouble. The simple reality is we are a threat, but most of our citizens have difficulty accepting that. It is as simple as that.
This feeling goes back to the point I have heard from many front-line police officers and border agents, that Canadians will not feel threatened until a large number of us are hurt on our own soil.
Senator Wallin: That was my follow-up question.
Mr. Wark: To come at the question of, are we in denial, I think my response would be yes we are, but in part it is appropriate that we should be. I do not want to undermine points I have been banging on about for years now.
Having said that, we are in denial that Canada is effectively, not necessarily by its own choice, at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates and the idea al Qaeda espouses. We are at war with that idea. Are we in denial about that idea — absolutely. Are we in denial about the idea that there are grave terrorist threats menacing Canada as we speak — I think we are in denial about that idea appropriately.
The difficulty we face in Canada is appreciating that 21st-century-style, global transnational terrorism is a menace to Canadian interests and values, not necessarily because it will strike directly but because it will strike somewhere around the clock against that sense of international stability and international values.
Afghanistan, as I said in my brief piece, provided us an opportunity, as have some of the attacks mounted by al Qaeda affiliates against Canadian interests. We have not found a way to explain to the Canadian public why we think — and I think we should think — al Qaeda-style terrorism is global scourge. It may not be the most terrible global scourge, but it is a global scourge that Canada has a responsibility to take part in combatting. It is that aspect of the question that I think we are in denial about.
Mr. Littlewood: Thank you, Senator Wallin. I think Mr. Thompson's words referred to in the past were, Canada's involvement or experience of terrorism largely revolves around things like other people's wars. It is that very fact; it is not that Canada is the direct target, although it can be. It is the unfortunate reality that Canadians are indirectly in some cases involved in other activities of terrorism in other places, and that is how terrorism impacts most generally on Canada. That means it is hard to articulate a convincing narrative for the public, or indeed for hard-pressed security members or parliamentarians to say why we should pay attention to the detail even though that detail is not exploding in our faces, if you like, on a weekly basis.
To an extent, I think we are in denial. I agree with Mr. Wark. We have not come to grips with the impact that scourge of al Qaeda, to use his phrase, can have in being detrimental to Canada and Canadian interests. However, equally we have failed to have that conversation on trying to articulate why it is important to us to deal with al Qaeda even though it is not likely to manifest itself in terms of a rolling, systematic, violent campaign within Canada directed at Canada specifically.
We live in a globalized world; this is one of our globalized problems. However, that means Canada has responsibilities to its allies, and it is that indirect threat from Canadians to some of Canada's allies that I think are an important factor in how we think about counterterrorism today.
Senator Wallin: Following up on Senator Nolin's point on the crime versus terrorism, I think you have all agreed that we probably lack the intelligence- gathering capability or even the frame in which to gather that intelligence. If that were all perfect, would we have the tools? Is that the right way to approach it, or are we twisting ourselves in knots because of our other identity issues to fight this as a crime as opposed to terrorism?
Mr. Thompson: There are cases in Canada where we have worked toward other solutions or other partial solutions to terrorism. One problem we keep running up against, because some of the terrorism develops from particular communities, is that we have not had the resources to understand those communities. It has been 31 years since the radical Sikhs first murdered someone to take control of temple funds, and in some ways we are still surprised when violence arrives at a Sikh temple when we should have known what has been happening for a long time.
The Tamil Tigers were here for about 12 years before Canadian police started to cotton on to the problem. One of the problems in Ontario, especially in Toronto where so many of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan, LTTE, were concentrated, is it took a long time for police to develop resources and a long time to obtain information of the community. As they started to gain partial successes against the Tigers, Canadian Tamils started to come forward and volunteer more information. At one stage, there were disruptive activities aimed at big Tamil Tiger events to undermine the authority of the Tigers. They had been trying to keep control of the whole community.
For example, ordinary Tamils were ordered to come out to events. The people who went around collecting the war tax would also say: This is Martyrs Day; everyone attend this event. The last couple of years the Martyrs Day events were severely disrupted. Among other things, police went around to the places where halls had been hired for the big Martyrs Day events and reminded the owners or the civil servants running these particular assets that to host this event would mean they were in violation of Canadian anti-terror laws, so the Tigers had a hard time hosting an event. When the event was scheduled somewhere, suddenly police were in the parking lot writing down licence plate numbers. Many people who had been ordered to come now had the excuse to stay away. The word spread around, and this activity broke the control that the activists for the terrorist group had over the whole community. Suddenly it meant that this particular police force had a flood of informants. They were receiving more information than they could handle. The other problem now is, between sending people off to cover the Olympics and the G8-G20 meetings, there is almost no one on that desk any more answering phone calls.
Mr. Wark: In response to your question, in an ideal world, when we can prosecute, then prosecute, because that is the best way to ensure that the case we have built meets the test of validity. It is the best way to ensure that we engage in a process of deterrence against other potential criminal activities in the future.
To rely on their legal system is, at the end of the day, absolutely the best strategy, but it has to be recognized that not all terrorism cases are prosecutable. Where those cases are not prosecutable, for a variety of reasons — because the evidence cannot be produced in court or because the evidence is not complete — then we are in a difficult world, it seems to me, where we have to rely on the capacities and good judgment of our intelligence service to identify threats appropriately and to try to take preventive measures against those threats within the framework of the law.
To make sure the system works well — and we will deploy it time and again, because not all terrorism cases will be prosecutable — we must have a high level of confidence in our intelligence service, in this case CSIS; and we must have, it seems to me, acute political engagement. By that I do not mean cabinet ministers meddling with the details of cases, but cabinet ministers and senior officials at the level of assistant deputy minister and deputy minister acutely aware of the dimensions of the cases, what they might mean and what challenges they might present.
The traditional difficulty we have had in Canada is that an intelligence service like CSIS or its predecessors is often operated at a considerable remove from those forms of political control and accountability. That situation has begun to change in a post-9/11 world, but I do not know that we have made that shift fully in understanding that it is not enough to simply trust our intelligence service but that we must have means to verify that the trust is appropriate, as well as a constant process of scrutiny and monitoring. We have some devices that allow us to have some confidence in respect to a general's office that reports to the minister and the Security Intelligence Review Committee, but it is worth questioning whether those instruments are adequate if they are operating in the absence of that close-in political monitoring and engagement.
Mr. Littlewood: I fully agree that when we can prosecute, yes, we should go down that route. However, we must be aware of, and be prepared for, the times when we cannot prosecute. That preparation involves thinking through the various options available to the broader security community, whether in a legal framework or with political backing. Yes, prosecute, but accept the reality that we will not always be able do so. We must be prepared for that grey area, effectively.
Senator Smith: I am reminded today about the bad pun about why therapy would not work on Cleopatra — because she was "queen of denial."
My question is to Professor Wark and it follows on the heels of the point that Senator Jaffer explored about the homegrown trouble. You are based in Toronto. I am also based in Toronto, although I am on planes all the time. The Toronto 18 charges occurred more than a couple of years ago. Maybe I should not use this phrase, but I will use it anyway. Some of the mainstream elements of the Muslim community in Toronto were skeptical and thought that maybe there had been police overreaction. I think they were speaking in good faith. However, now well over half of them have pleaded guilty and serious sentences have been given out.
You made the point about sustained public education, which I totally agree with, but I often think that if they are hearing it from their own community, it makes more of a difference. I am talking about the mainstream elements, not fringe radicals. In terms of preaching the doctrine of non-violence, which is in conformity with my understanding of the Muslim faith, do you think progress has been made within the mainstream elements that they cannot take it for granted but that they have to hear it not only from sustained public education but from their own leadership? Do you have any sense of whether progress has occurred in that respect?
Mr. Wark: My impression about this — and it is only an impression — is that the Muslim community in Canada appreciates that it is sometimes treated with some degree of suspicion by other elements of Canadian society, and it is sensitive to that treatment. The Muslim community is concerned to ensure that its religion and values are not misunderstood.
Taking your example of the Toronto 18 or Toronto 11 case, we saw two different kinds of phenomena. One is a general sense, not only in the Muslim community but in Canadian society at large, that this threat cannot be real; we cannot have had a cell of 18 individuals who were threatening to behead the Canadian Prime Minister, blow up Parliament, attack the CBC, et cetera. There was a degree of shock, which I think was appropriate in those circumstances, and perhaps a degree of skepticism that went along with the shock.
The difficulty that emerges is, in part, a difficulty in detail and in part, something that is simply incumbent in these kinds of legal proceedings. The difficulty in detail is that in Canada we have to find a way, when we launch legal proceedings in these kinds of cases, for the government to make its case a little more clearly about what the threat is without prejudicing the interests of those who are named in these kinds of cases. The U.K. government is also struggling with this issue, and I hope that Canadians and their British counterparts are talking about ways in which it might be possible to allow for a fuller discussion to the public about why the government believes that it had to proceed with charges against these individuals. That discussion might remove some, but not all, of the skepticism that will surround these kinds of events when they come as a shock to the Canadian public.
We also have to find a way to speed up these legal proceedings. The Toronto 18 were arrested in 2006. The remaining trials — if I recall, two or three of these trials — are still underway in 2011. These cases are complex and we do not want to rush them, but I would argue that a five-year time lag between laying charges and conviction is too long. In that five-year time period, all kinds of ideas can flourish — that the threat was grave or ridiculous and overhyped by the government. We will not know until a judge or jury reaches a decision. However, we need to reach the point where judges and juries reach decisions so that public opinion can be informed in these cases. We have to accompany that decision with a greater ability, again without prejudicing the interests of the named persons, for the government to say: Here is what we believe happened.
If we think back to the Toronto 18 case, how did we learn about what was taking place? It was through leaks and statements made by defence counsel for the named persons. How should we treat that material? Maybe it was accurate, maybe not.
One reason why the case was treated in the various ways it was goes back to the fact that there is too little knowledge to judge, on the part of the Canadian public in general, as well as among experts. Anyone with any expertise in this area would look at that case at its outset and say: The law enforcement community used 600 police officers to engage in widespread arrests in Ontario on the basis of a multi-year investigation. There may be more smoke than fire, but there has to be fire. That has to be the starting point from any reasonable perspective. Was that necessarily the perspective? No, because we lack that public education.
I do not agree with the view of CSIS director Dick Fadden that there is an informal cabal out there determined to press their own views on the Canadian public.
I think that statement is overly alarmist and exaggerated, and I said so when Mr. Fadden made those remarks last year. I do not think there is any cabal. We do not need to underestimate the capacity of our media community to uncover stories and to approach them in an objective way, or to place the kinds of views that individuals might have about these events in some kind of perspective.
There is no cabal, but there is not enough education or capacity to bring out information before the public, and our legal process is too slow.
Senator Nolin: That last comment raises this question: Should we change the old system or adopt a specific judicial system only for that type of procedure? That idea has been tried in other jurisdictions. Maybe you have an opinion on that idea.
Mr. Wark: Senator Nolin, it is an interesting question. We perhaps should wait and see what Justice Major has to say on this issue in the context of the release — finally — hopefully, this month of the Air India inquiry. It is part of his mandate to present recommendations in that regard. My perspective is that we do not need to change the system fundamentally.
Senator Nolin: I am also of that opinion.
Mr. Wark: We can stay with judges and jury trials, as we traditionally have. What we have to invest this process with is more urgency. Some of the difficulties and delays have been the result of, understandably, Charter challenges mounted against the Anti-terrorism Act. The further we enter into and experience the Anti-terrorism Act and the further we deal with Charter challenges in the future, the less likely it will be that these cases will take as long as they have, because the challenges will have been dealt with.
I still say there is not enough urgency and not enough recognition of the need for speed in these cases. We have to go at that part of the reform process somehow.
Senator Marshall: My question is for Mr. Thompson, although I think Mr. Littlewood touched on the issue when he responded to Senator Jaffer.
You spoke about radical Islam. How much do we know about the characteristics of people who end up in the category of radicalism or terrorism? It seems like a lot of them are middle-aged men or young men, fairly well educated. How much work has been done on that aspect?
Mr. Thompson: Senator Marshall, the ideology of terrorism and the personal motives that people bring when they become involved in terrorism is one of the things that first attracted me to pay more attention to it 25 years ago. This area again is one in which I still cannot answer everything for myself.
There are particular creeds within Islam. We talk about Islam here like it is one big monolithic block, and that is the last thing it is. There are elements within Islam. For example, there is the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia, which is militant, and there is the Da'wa, their missionary arm. Most of what they engage in is legitimate, although it is pointed. They are much more militant than most other Muslims.
Their counterpart in India is the Tablighi Jamaat, out of the Deobandi school. Again, this school is a hard-line, fundamentalist school.
There is the Muslim Brotherhood out of Egypt. Normally, if people ask me about conspiracy theories, I laugh. I think — human nature being what it is — sustaining a conspiracy is almost impossible, but this group is one of the exceptions. This group is attempting to be involved in systemic infiltration and systemic subversion in many countries. It is not a deliberate master plan. There is no room full of people wearing masks and hoods, and plotting, that I know of. I could be wrong, you are right. It is activists moving in parallel directions over the course of the years. What they talk about, what they believe in, is, first of all, a purified Islam that is very much in their lights. They have killed far more Muslims than anyone else has. If you look at the victims of Islamic fundamentalism, most of them have been other Muslims. The group also has stated often and openly their beliefs that they must restore the Khali faith, restore all Muslims under their control, and they must humble the western world. These are things they believe in and are working towards.
The ideology is there. It is well formed. The agents of the ideology are present, working in the Islamic communities throughout the western world. This group is one of the challenges we face. It is an immigration issue that we have not thought about seriously because we do not like to think about religious issues and how they can become complicated.
We are a society based on immigration. We can assimilate almost anyone with enough time, and we have. This is the first time we have a group with a direct countervailing influence trying to prevent assimilation, and we are allowing it to operate here. This is the ideological backdrop.
They are at work in various ways through mosques, madrasahs, websites, schools and everything else. We find that some people become terrorists because it is an issue of self-identity — it is self-expression. Some people want to have a heroic self-image for themselves. Other people follow along because it looks like the thing to do.
When people talk about root causes of terrorism, the root cause is not poverty, it is usually self-identity. It is a luxury for someone who has their other needs taken care of.
Yes, they pick up on confused kids, they pick up on the dysfunctional, but they also pick up on functional, well- educated, well-off people whose other needs have been met, except for the need, again, to assume a heroic self-identity for themselves.
If you look at a group of 50 terrorists, there are 50 different reasons why they join.
Senator Marshall: That situation makes it more difficult, and makes it almost scary, because there is no way to put people into certain categories. It is almost like terrorism is all over the place.
When you talk about terrorism, terrorists must have different objectives, but is the overriding one the demise of the west? What is the overriding objective?
Mr. Thompson: After 25 years of I thinking about this question, I think the real overriding criterion for any terrorist is the need to convince themselves that they are heroic and important; that they are the agent of destiny. The ideology is something they then adopt that allows them to act things out. We still have radical left, radical right and others. Right now Islam is the power ideology. It is the one that seems to be the most powerful and it has these groups that want to change the world. It is literally true that that is what they want, and they are working to achieve it. Never mind if it is possible; they will give it a good try.
People who want to be important and want to see themselves as heroic figures will be attracted towards an ideology that allows them to try to achieve these ends.
Senator Marshall: That reason is basic, though, when you think about the impact of terrorism throughout the world. It is almost like it is a personal issue for people as opposed to something I would see as a bigger issue.
Mr. Thompson: At every level it is personal. No one has to become a terrorist. Everyone who becomes a terrorist at some level has chosen to become a terrorist.
The Chair: There may be other members of the panel who wish to comment on Senator Marshall's question.
Mr. Littlewood: We are entering this area where we have to recognize that there are different strategies behind terrorists and terrorist groups. Some terrorist activity can be only to maintain the status quo, and then there are the reactionary groups.
From the Canadian perspective, our experience is generally that the reason is terrorists seeking a different policy or a change in policy. That goal can mean different things for different people within the same group, or for people who identify or are sympathetic to the group. For some individuals, perhaps withdrawal from Afghanistan would be sufficient. For others the goal is to no longer support the United States in its efforts. This is where we enter difficult territory: What is behind that individual and what is the tipping point? We do not have that blueprint and profile available to us.
We have to be honest when we live in a democracy and a multicultural country. There is nothing wrong with radical politics, even radical politics to change the system peacefully over a period of time and get rid of the system as it exists. That belief is a factor of life in the political spectrum of politics.
We have a problem when radical politics tips over into violence. That is when radical politics must be countered from a national security and safety perspective.
Mr. Thompson is correct. Each individual is different. We will have 50 different profiles for 50 different people. Even if we can identify ten similar factors, those factors are insufficient to make judgments about everyone else in that community or separate communities around them.
The Chair: There have been other terrorist groups in history. The Irish Republican Army, IRA, had a terrorist wing, which was addressed in some fashion. The Irgun was deemed to be a terrorist operation during the British mandate in Palestine prior to 1948. The African National Congress had an armed division that was deemed to be a terrorist operation, with which people had to come to terms to produce the new democratic South Africa. Terrorism has clearly changed. The nature of the terrorist's purpose has changed. Please reflect on that dynamic when you answer Senator Marshall's question.
Mr. Wark: I will try to provide answers. First, in response to Senator Marshall's question, many studies of this radicalization process focus not on radicalization as a problem, but how it tips over into terrorism and political violence. All these studies are being done elsewhere. None are being done in Canada — as far as I am aware — either by the government or in the expert community. Again, this situation raises the question of public education strategies.
The Chair: I want to ensure I understand what you said. To the best of your knowledge, no studies about present trends in radicalization are taking place in this country, sponsored either by the government or other interested organizations.
Mr. Wark: To the best of my knowledge, that is correct. The only study I am aware of that the Department of Public Safety engaged in was one in which they asked a U.K. organization to explore radicalization in Canada, which I thought was a strange proceeding.
We have many of these studies. I want to bring to the committee's attention a recent study produced by a highly respected terrorism expert, Brian Jenkins. It is a Rand Corporation occasional paper called, Would-Be Warriors: Incidents of Jihadist Terrorist Radicalization in the United States Since September 11, 2001. I will give the clerk of the committee a copy in case it is of interest.
In terms of how we can understand the agenda of individuals moving from radicalization to terrorism, we can understand by dividing the agenda into two different pursuits. First, a terrorist can pursue a revolutionary agenda focused on violent overthrow of a particular regime. In the context of jihadism, this agenda is often violent overthrow of what they regard as an apostate regime among one of many Middle East states. Second, terrorists can embrace a more pan-Islamic agenda in which they seek to use terrorism violence to effect broader change in the nature of the Muslim umma. This agenda often requires targeting not an apostate regime, but the West.
I think the agendas divide between one of those two pursuits. That division does not make it easier to identify the process or the psychology behind the process. However, it at least allows us to distinguish between different threats.
Senator Segal asked what is new about terrorism in a 20th century context. Terrorism is truly a globalized phenomenon. We have pioneering organizations like al Qaeda that have embraced a transnational terrorist agenda and ideology. Previously, we had terrorist groups dealing with local and regional issues for which they believed terrorism was the appropriate vehicle. This current global phenomenon pursues global objectives, at least in its pan-Islamic form. In its revolutionary form, perhaps it has more localized objectives. However, it can move back and forth between the revolutionary and pan-Islamic agendas.
In a Canadian context, we should be alarmed that we are not conducting our own studies of radicalization. These studies do not have to be purely academic. We have individuals who can explore this question in great depth. We have convicted homegrown terrorists behind bars — Mohammad Momin Khawaja, members of the Toronto 11 and others. It behooves the state, directly or indirectly, to try to understand through the use of experts how those individuals became who they are in a Canadian setting. We are not studying that issue.
Senator Smith: You referenced studies on what motivates terrorists. It is fair to say that while all suicide bombers may be terrorists, not all terrorists are suicide bombers. The leaders of a group are almost never the suicide bombers. The suicide bombers seem to come from the ranks of the less educated, poorer and less informed.
Do any of these studies come to conclusions on whether suicide bombers, including those in Iraq, are motivated by the concept of instantly going to heaven and being a hero?
Mr. Wark: It is an interesting question.
Senator Smith: It is hard to ask the bombers after the fact.
Mr. Wark: The Israelis have incarcerated and interrogated some would-be suicide bombers. They may have learned lessons from this experience. There is a particular concern in the Middle East and Israel about female suicide bombers. Women are more difficult to detect in many circumstances.
In response to your question, suicide bombers are, by nature, foot soldiers rather than leaders. They are expendable elements of a terrorist regime and are prepared to be expendable elements of the regime. However, not all foot soldiers should be regarded in a derogatory fashion to suggest they are simply pawns in the broader game.
One example is the Lebanese doctor that the Lebanese security service believed was an informant working on their side and likely to lead them to the inner circles of al Qaeda. He was welcomed onto a Central Intelligence Agency station in eastern Afghanistan and blew up seven CIA officials along with himself.
This kind of character is different than we normally see in suicide bombing attempts. We do not have a profile of suicide bombers. We recoil from the idea that anyone is prepared to commit suicide acts of this kind.
We have experienced these acts in the past. Suicide bombing is not new. The Japanese deployed suicide bombing as a tactic in World War II; they called it kamikaze. We came to understand why and how they committed such acts in understanding the context of the Japanese militarized society that then existed. It is not beyond our capacity to understand suicide bombing as a tactic and strategy. It may be beyond our capacity to identify who may be willing to serve as a suicide bomber but we can understand the phenomenon, nevertheless.
Senator Furey: My first questions are for Mr. Thompson. With respect to counterterrorism, you said that success equals complacency equals vulnerability; that we are becoming too complacent. Who do you mean by "we" — individuals, organizations, governments, or all of the above?
Mr. Thompson: I would say, Canadian society and, to a lesser extent, Canadian government. The people on the front lines of counterterrorism efforts are not complacent. They are often nervous because they are aware of the near misses and failures that do not come to the public's attention.
Senator Furey: Do you include organizations like the RCMP and CSIS in that comment?
Mr. Thompson: I cannot tell you what the commanders may say, but the officers I talk to are becoming nervous.
Senator Furey: You also stated that "There must be fast and efficient ways of sharing information between agencies and forces again." I presume you mean both domestically and on the foreign stage, but let us focus on the domestic stage.
Last week, a question about the sharing and the flow of information between CSIS, the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, the RCMP and the Department of National Defence was put to Monik Beauregard, the Director of the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre. Do you agree with her response that the flow of information between those agencies is quite satisfactory?
Mr. Thompson: In a lot of respects, the flow between some agencies is quite satisfactory. In other cases, it has fallen off in the last few years. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we started to set up this nested task force system where we had counter-terror task forces at the federal, provincial, municipal and even site-specific level. For example, at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, we had a counter-terror and a counter-organized-crime force that had multiple agency involvement. Then Durham police, York police, Peel Police and Toronto Police Services had their task forces working out of their intelligence cells. From there, they could go to the provincial anti-terrorism section and the Ontario INSET team, all the way up to the federal government.
At that level, there was a lot of flow of information in the first five years after 9/11. Also, for example, the Toronto Police Service had liaison officers with their counterparts in Chicago and New York. There was a Toronto Police Service officer in New York City and the Chicago police departments, and the information flowed back and forth.
The officers are no longer there. The ability to pick up the phone and request information is nowhere near as rapid and responsive as it used to be. They now must go through channels, whereas they could have an answer in a couple of hours before. Now, a response may take three or four weeks.
There is an innately tribal nature to police. There is some reluctance amongst them. One police department, historically, might be reluctant to share its sources with a nearby police department. The task force system was set up as a way of overcoming the tribal reluctance to deal with each other. For a while it worked, but it has been fading again.
There is a complaint about CSIS. At first, they were directly involved in the task force system and, again, they had a quick, open and rapid response with the officers assigned to a particular task force. That is nowhere as fast as it used to be. They now must go through channels and wait for delay. This is one of the problems. Going through channels cuts down on reaction time and more staff time must be spent on requests for information. Before, they could request the information informally.
Senator Furey: Before I ask another question of Dr. Littlewood, do the other witnesses want to comment on the flow of information between organizations?
Mr. Wark: Senator Furey, I come at the question from a slightly different perspective than my esteemed colleague, Mr. Thompson. First, I am not privy to any detailed information about the time-scale of information-sharing.
Channels might be necessary. That might be one lesson we learn from the Arar inquiry and the Iacobucci inquiry. If we share sensitive information, whether it is intelligence or other forms of information, with other jurisdictions, whether beyond our borders or with other levels of government or police forces, we have to be careful about the nature of that sharing to protect rights and privacy.
That is not an excuse to allow an overweening bureaucracy to clog the system and I am not sure — I have no evidence — that is the way the system is currently working. However, an appropriate level of concern and attention to the potential impacts of information-sharing is something I think we have learned in a post-9/11 world, and learned appropriately.
From my own limited sources on this issue, I do not see any evidence of any significant falling away of intelligence- sharing in practice or in theory. I think the idea and understanding has been reinforced; that intelligence-sharing across jurisdictions within Canada and with allies is important.
The real difficulties are elsewhere: intelligence-sharing with unfamiliar partners, such as new intelligence partners overseas; new jurisdictions we are not used to sharing intelligence with; and intelligence-sharing across that boundary between government and the private sector, which is becoming increasingly important for the protection of many dimensions of Canadian security.
Consider cyber-security practices. How will we ensure cyber security in Canada? It will not happen as a result of the federal government doing this or that. It will happen in partnership with the private sector. To ensure we tackle threats in appropriate ways, we have to be able to share information back and forth across that boundary.
This area is fundamentally new and I am not sure we are doing it well, though not because we are deliberately doing it poorly. It is simply new.
The question of sharing intelligence with foreign partners is an ongoing issue. It requires a great deal of political attention, as the Security Intelligence Review Committee suggested in its recent annual report. Its inspectors general have suggested, as well, that a great deal of political attention is required to ensure we have that intelligence-sharing relationship right.
The only troubling thing I have noted in that process is what seems to be an increasing willingness to allow significant decisions to be made at a lower level than I think they should be made, which is at the CSIS directors level, the senior officials level or at the cabinet level itself.
Senator Furey: Dr. Littlewood, you said the three main drivers of terrorism are revenge, renown and reaction. You have probably given a whole new meaning to the three Rs. How do you rank those drivers in terms of causation?
Mr. Littlewood: I should say first that is not my own work. I am drawing from another academic's work. Please do not take it as me offering a new interpretation of the three Rs.
We would be hard pressed before the fact of an act to say that this person or this group is looking for revenge; and this group is looking for renown or reaction. Perhaps it is only post event where we might be able to decipher the motivations behind the group.
That is not to say that we cannot try to delve deeper into mindsets of groups or individuals that are of concern to the community.
Where incidents involve family relationships where a cousin, a sibling or a father has been killed, imprisoned or maltreated, in their view, we can think that revenge is involved. If we have a disaffected individual who is looking to increase their esteem or their self-esteem, perhaps we are into renown territory. If a political thinker or strategist is behind things, we can determine there is a longer-term effort here, and we may think that we are into reaction territory.
I personally come down to the view that, when we look at terrorism, we should always try to decipher what the political objectives are behind this act, while recognizing that the specific incident itself might be only part of an overall strategy.
I always start from the perspective of what the group intends the reaction to be. In a lot of the terrorism strategy literature, the group significantly is looking for an overreaction by the state or the community. That is how it will gain sympathy for its cause, because the assumption is that the overreaction focuses in on the specific community. That overreaction alienates the community, which gives greater voice and assistance to the group within that community that is perpetrating violent acts.
I caution against trying to work out which one of those three is more important, not least because they are only three generic identifying points that open up a discussion and do not explain itself the complexities of terrorism.
Senator Tkachuk: Earlier, you spoke with Senator Jaffer about public education. When you say "public education," what do you mean exactly? What two things do you think the public should be aware of that they are not aware of now?
Mr. Wark: My use of this term points to processes rather than the substance. The substance can be varied and might vary over time, depending on the national security environment.
By the need for greater public education than what currently exists, I refer to two things. One was mentioned by Mr. Littlewood, which is that the Canadian public deserves to receive some systemic form of ongoing reporting from the Canadian government — whether directly or through Parliament — that will provide it with updates on threat assessments. That reporting happens routinely in many other countries. In the United States, the U.K., the Netherlands and other countries, this process is routine because governments in those countries understand that an educated public will be attuned to threats, will support policies and will be of assistance in counterterrorism strategies.
As I said before, successive governments, whether Conservative or Liberal, have fallen down in their duty to pursue this education. We had the 2004 national security statement released. It was perhaps a useful experiment but it has been allowed to gather dust since that time.
There is no reason why the Canadian government should not inform Canadians directly, through Parliament or through both channels, regularly and in a substantive way — by substantive, I do not mean as a political statement about how the government is in control of these things and not to worry — about the reality of not only domestic threats to Canadian security, but threats in the global environment.
The second thing is that there needs to be a way in which a proper study of this subject to inform the young generation, the coming generation can be accomplished in institutions of post-secondary education. Perhaps you will look at me and say, that is the job of post-secondary institutions, but post-secondary institutions have their own problems in coming to grips with new issues. They have not done well in this field in Canada in a post-9/11 world. We need dedicated mechanisms and a government kick-start to ensure there will be a new generation of academics and knowledgeable students who can pursue these studies in the future.
The demand is there; the supply is not. It is one of the two key deficits I regard as being present in Canadian national security policy, which is that we have neither that public education initiative from the government nor do we have a take-up from the universities in this regard.
Mr. Thompson: I suppose one aspect of public education or one way of gauging it is when we come into informed opinion from the public — when we scan letters to the editor or if we are on a talk show and the calls are coming in. I find, generally, the involved and engaged public is often aware of issues.
It took this public a while but they came to understand who the Tamil Tigers were. It took a long time but they finally remembered that Air India was a Canadian problem, not an Indian problem. That must have taken about 15 years.
Again, that public is the public that is involved. I cannot say the general public knows much about terrorism, and there are attitudes that perpetuate themselves. I have a great deal of irritation that I still encounter the idea that all terrorists are insane. They are not. That idea is clearly not the case, but that opinion is still widespread among many members of the public. There is also the idea that terrorism is how poor or weak people fight back against the strong, which is another misnomer.
How do we redress this issue? I agree with Mr. Wark that the only real way is to mount a sustained campaign of education in the schools. In civics classes and everything else, run a section on terrorism and remind people about some of the fundamental verities of it.
Mr. Littlewood: I think understanding the terrorist threat, or the lack of understanding of it, broadly speaking, within Canadian society is an outcome of the fact that security discourse on all kinds of security issues within Canada — coming from the perspective of a U.K. national who moved here four years ago — is baffling to an outsider. Why are security issues not a prominent issue within discussions in the House of Commons and the Senate or within the broader society? Canada is a safe, stable, secure democracy.
Senator Tkachuk: It is because of our next door neighbour.
Mr. Littlewood: Perhaps that is so. To most Canadians, it may be someone else's problem. Perhaps one can justify that situation and accept it, but the reality of the security community, and that of lawmakers and policy-makers, is to recognize that is not just the case; there is a grey zone that needs to be considered. Awareness of the global picture and how it affects Canada is an important part of raising that awareness. These are small steppingstones; none of them is this magic bullet that will make the problem disappear for us.
Senator Tkachuk: To follow up, we used to enjoy the James Bond films because they always had some international conspiracy to destroy or to prevent from taking over the world.
The Chair: That was one of reasons.
Senator Tkachuk: Yes, it was. We were used to people going to war and reading about wars among states, but not about war with organizations. In this particular case, the organization is a terrorist organization and an international organization that leaves lots of clues around — as many clues as Hitler left with Mein Kampf. Anyone who read the book would have known what he was going to do, and it would have been no surprise. It was so unbelievable that no one believed what they were doing.
How do you go to war against an organization? If they had taken a submarine and destroyed the Port of Halifax, we would have been attacked by an organization that had names that we take credit for. How do we declare war on that organization and then how do we deploy our forces to fight that war?
Mr. Thompson: If we look at the jihad movement, sometimes they have people who are proxies for a government that is sometimes hostile. For example, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are proxies for Iran. There are regional militias; tribal organizations; autonomous individuals who pick up on the ideology off the Internet and decide to join it; and everything in between. Al Qaeda is only one component of a much larger movement. The only thing they have in common is the ideology and that is the thing we should try to fight; but Western democracies have a hard time fighting a specific ideology.
If we look back 30 years, the ideology that was causing us the most trouble — by comparison to the current problems, they were trivial — was the radical left, and look how well we have been fighting them. We have not tried nor has it been necessary.
The ideology behind the jihad movement is not from one single thread. We cannot begin to go after the movement without perhaps committing to actions or undertaking approaches that are alien to us, which we have carefully weeded out of our psychology — practices we have avoided for a long time.
We do not discriminate based on religion anymore. We cannot. What do we do when we have this religiously based hostile ideology? We teach ourselves not to go after teachers, not to go after particular institutions and to let people practice things for themselves. However, here we have teachers, community groups and everyone else that propagate the ideology. How do we go after the ideology?
This is the problem with terrorism; it has always been a tails-I-win, heads-you-lose proposition. In this particular case, the stakes are higher. However, do we remain a democracy and fully tackle every aspect of the ideology or do we start thinking about those specific circumstances when we can go after the transmission points of the ideology?
How do we discriminate against the Wahhabi Da'wa and not against other aspects of Islam? I do not know how to begin. We need a wider debate on that issue. How do we go after the Khomeini's?
We talk about al Qaeda but the most dangerous group in the world is Hezbollah. It makes the most money, has the most arms and is the most disciplined. We hardly realize they are around because they remain so quiet, and the ideological agents behind the group are almost unheard of. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa practice almost openly. When was the last time you heard about the Khomeini preachers' organization? Is there one? There seems to be one because they are recruiting people and propagating the ideology, but we do not know how they are doing it.
Senator Jaffer: For clarification, Senator Smith asked you a question about the Toronto 18. I do not remember the name of the operation but the reason for the skepticism was that another 12 or 14 people were arrested. Most of those cases ended as immigration issues or people overstaying their visas. That case went nowhere. Do you remember the details of that case? People were unsure of what happened.
Mr. Wark: I remember the case but I cannot remember the code name for the operation. It was understood to be a botched investigation that was launched inappropriately by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. In the beginning, it was not a security case, and most of the charges had to be withdrawn because the situation had been overhyped. I believe it was called Project Thread and, although I cannot remember the precise chronology of events, it occurred at least a couple of years prior to the arrests in the original Toronto 18 case. Whether public memory was strong enough to link the two cases, I am not sure.
Senator Jaffer: For the community, it was strong enough. That is why some of us hoped that this one would not be like that operation, and be seen in a bad light.
I will ask about two things. You spoke about Somalia. We are looking at the present threats to our country. We have touched on the issue of Somalia. Can you give us more knowledge on the issue of what we should be aware of, in particular in terms of the threat within? I want to hear about the issue of Somalia.
Mr. Littlewood: I must be honest and say that I am not a Somali expert or a Somali terrorism expert. Perhaps of note here is that, in part, this group is an example of problems within a state being, or having been, exploited by external groups that are part of the violent threats. The state failure in Somalia is beginning to have a detrimental impact on other countries, such as Canada and the United States that have significant Somali populations. Over the last 18 months, we have seen a few cases of individuals who have gone to Somalia reputedly for training or involvement with radical Islamic groups. They return in most cases to the United States with a view to perpetrating terrorist acts for some kind of objective.
Given the existence of a Somali community in Canada, we have to be aware of that situation. Given the ability of Somali communities to travel within North America, we have to be aware of it not only from a national perspective but also from the perspective of keeping one eye on the requirements of dealing and allying with the United States. The specific details of the Somali case are beyond my expertise at this time.
Senator Jaffer: I struggle with whether we encourage homegrown terrorists by virtue of some foreign policies. I will ask the three of you to respond, including the question on Somalia.
Mr. Thompson: As you have probably noticed, I tend to argue that, as opposed to a political motive for terrorism, there is always an underlying emotional psychological motive.
Through Canada's experience with other people's wars, we have seen that terrorism is often an issue of identification. For example, a group of people who have left their homeland, often under troubled circumstances, have come to Canada to make new lives for themselves. The children and grandchildren miss the thing that defined the older generation and feel they need to make up for it. The problem is that they do not understand the homeland for the way it is, but they are willing to listen to another appeal. For example, the Fenian nationalists were the children of the Irish potato famine generation.
The children of Tamil Tigers do not understand the old realities of Sri Lanka and are far more militant than their parents. The parents came here in the early 1990s under grim circumstances, but the youngsters missed that experience. Some of them have a sense that part of their identity is missing and that there is unfinished business back in the homeland. Where that sense exists, there will always be someone willing to exploit it. People are recruited from Canada for the Somali militia, which was the antecedent to the current al Shabaab group.
The other side is that some Somali Canadians, including those who came over in the early 1990s, have been going back to act as a stabilizing element. Some of the fights between what passes for the Somali government and the al Qaeda proxy in Somalia have been between Canadians. I do not think of Canadians who have gone back to Somalia to stabilize the country as that much of a problem compared to those who gravitate toward the militants.
These are a couple of the dimensions to our problem with Somalia. Of course, with the Somalis, we have the classic ingredients for an increased likelihood of involvement in organized crime among the youngsters. In Alberta and in parts of the United States, we see more and more organized crime in those communities. We have seen this phenomenon in the past with groups from other countries, a phenomenon that adds another dimension to some of the unrest inside Somali communities. There is a high murder rate in Alberta among the Somalis, which relates to organized crime.
Mr. Wark: I have a quick comment on the Somali situation and the question of how it links to Canadian or western policy. The United States recently arrested two American citizens on allegations that they had been apprehended in the act of proceeding to Somalia to engage in terrorist activity. A couple of interesting pieces about this situation appeared in the New York Times today. It is interesting that these individuals and others are convinced that part of the reason they want to engage in the fight in Somalia is so they can come into conflict with American forces illegitimately in Somalia as occupiers, but there are no American or Canadian military forces in Somalia at this time.
The concern was expressed publicly by William Elliott, Commissioner of the RCMP, and by American authorities that the al Shabaab movement clearly contributes to current instability and insurgency in Somalia. Al Shabaab seems keen on generating a foreign fighter cadre from Western expatriate elements of that community, and is deliberately recruiting from the United States and Canada. The organization has constructed a means to do that through the Internet and through religious preaching, including messaging from a Khomeini cleric by the name of Anwar al- Awlaki, who encourages people to join the movement as a way of participating in a pan-Islamic goal of defeating Western engagement and interests in Somalia.
The concern is this contribution to instability in Somalia and the potential blowback of young Somalis who go over, fight, see the turbulence and bloodshed, gain paramilitary and military skills, return to Canada further radicalized and possibly use those skills in Canada or the U.S. That flow of events is of concern.
Senator Joyal: Mr. Wark, in your presentation you mentioned that there are still two long-standing problems. The first is that there is too much emphasis on intelligence collection and not enough on evaluation that leads to a strategic plan to answer back.
Can you be more specific? That is a broad judgment on the work of CSIS and the other Canadian agencies.
Mr. Wark: I will do my best. It is an interesting question and you have pinned me in ways that I may not be fully able to answer appropriately.
It is a traditional problem for all intelligence and policy communities that intelligence services tend to overspend on gathering information as opposed to the effort that needs to be put into evaluating the significance of that information and ensuring that there are systems to place it in front of decision-makers where decision-makers have an opportunity to reflect on it.
Canada shares a traditional problem that is present in many intelligence communities. We spend a great deal on intelligence collection and partly we are forced into that circumstance because increasingly we have to invest in high tech systems for intelligence collection, be it ways of tapping into the Internet, signals intelligence interception and surveillance or other forms of monitoring. These systems become increasingly complex and throw up increasing quantities of information.
The logical reflection on this system is that it does not matter how much information they collect if they do not have a capacity to understand what it is telling them. They are only generating more and more data without sufficient understanding.
I will explain how this issue comes home to roost in Canada, although I cannot be specific because much of this happens behind the screen of national security confidentiality. In the post 9/11 world, I think we woke up to the fact that we were insufficiently strong on the intelligence analysis side, and CSIS tried to ramp up its capabilities. Many other agencies suddenly found themselves in the intelligence analysis business, including Transport Canada, to name one. The Department of National Defence vastly increased its intelligence directorate resources to perform analysis, as did the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and so on. Everyone was following the logic, if you like, that we need more and better. However, that process happened in an ad hoc fashion. We created a variety of sometimes-not-well-connected analytical units across the spectrum of government operations. As we created those units, we diluted the pool of real analytical talent, which takes a long time to grow and mature. We have not appreciated what we needed to do. We may have appreciated that we need better analysis, but our ad hoc response to that phenomenon has been insufficient.
The Integrated Threat Assessment Centre is an interesting phenomenon, but it is an experiment with many problems that we might want to discuss another day.
I will try to answer your question by saying that it is a traditional problem. We have begun to address it, but I do not think we have addressed it well. We have allowed too many analytical units of varying degrees of polity to grow up in the Canadian system without investing in a strong core central analytical unit of the kind that we need, a real fusion centre, which is what ITAC was meant to be. However, it does not have the capacity to fulfil that function.
Senator Joyal: You said that the policy-making decision process does not take into account the nature of the threat and integrate it into its decision-making capacity. Can you expand more on that point?
We raised that point with representatives of the RCMP, CSIS and DND last week. The answer we received was either a glass half full or half empty. In other words, it was not totally convincing that the system of government was organized such that in every department and at the centre, it was integrated enough to be effective.
Mr. Wark: Again, I am blindly trying to feel the beast, in a way, and this situation is again a product of national security confidentiality issues. Any outside observer will have difficulties providing an honest answer to your question, and any inside observer will also have honest difficulties providing an answer to your questions in an open forum.
My sense is that the difficulty we face is that it has not been the tradition of many departments of government to fully integrate intelligence material, analysis and products into decision-making. It has not been the tradition, especially, to integrate them at the senior level, the cabinet table. I think that goes to what people often say is the absence of an intelligence culture in Canada, whatever that means. It is incontrovertible that we do not have that intelligence culture, but why we do not have it is a complex issue. We are evolving slowly in that direction, but that evolution has been forced by the pace of post 9/11 events.
To be succinct and to give one indication of where we understand the problem but have not fully resolved it, we can ask ourselves who, at the senior-most level, pays attention to intelligence on a regular basis. In Canada, the Prime Minister still does not have a high-level regular intelligence product that fulfills the function of the joint intelligence committee in the U.K. The President of the United States has a daily intelligence briefing. We never had that or thought we needed it. I think we need it now, but we still do not have it.
We created a top-level cabinet committee to look regularly at intelligence issues in relation to security, and the committee was chaired for a time by John Manley. We had a dedicated public safety committee. In recent years, post- 2006, we watered down the cabinet committee so that it is now a cabinet committee on public safety and foreign affairs.
I suggest that the very fact that we think it is sufficient to have one cabinet committee looking at these two different, albeit related, and complex areas gives us an indication that we have not yet seized on the priority that this question of intelligence influencing policy-making on broad security issues has to acquire.
Senator Furey: Mr. Thompson, you referred to Mr. Fadden's accidental cabal comment. You referred to those who consciously contribute to that and those who subconsciously contribute to it. We know that Mr. Wark has made it known on a number of occasions that he disagrees with this accidental cabal issue.
Why do you embrace the concept? Is it because you think that members of the groups to which he referred, which are "single-issue NGOs, advocacy journalists and lawyers," overemphasize the individual-rights side of the security and rights equation, or are there other reasons?
Mr. Thompson: This goes back to my observation over the years that the thinking of most people in political matters is often unconscious. There are some people who are thought of as being from the progressive left and therefore disliking anything that seems to be conservative or reactionary. There are some people who do not like defence or policing at an instinctive level. There are some people who honestly believe that these matters are human rights abuses that have to be taken care of. Other people use human rights abuse as a cover for their own beliefs, perhaps at an unconscious level. As well, there are, again, the front organizations for the various Islamic groups that are working to disable our police and security apparatus where and when they can.
Senator Furey: Are you content to buy into the idea of an accidental cabal?
Mr. Thompson: Accidental cabal; again, I stated that I believe that deliberate cabals are few and far between.
Senator Furey: You made a distinction between those who contribute consciously and those who contribute unconsciously.
The Chair: Mr. Wark, I want to engage you with your notion that we lack a full, if I understood correctly, public annual report on the national security threat, such as exists in other democracies like our own.
If I weave together two or three of the comments you made, I conclude that because we do not have an intelligence culture, governments of different affiliations over the years have not been prone to move in this direction.
Except for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, we also have no structured parliamentary oversight with respect to security activities, certainly not with respect to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and certainly not with respect to defence security. I expect that the distinguished officials who appeared before us last week, and did an excellent job, all had far higher security clearances than anyone sitting around the Senate side of this table, for good and substantial reason.
If there was that kind of report, I assume your belief would be that it would be debated at Parliament, there would be committee hearings and it would perform a function of public education.
What are the elements, by category, that you and your colleagues on the expert panel might wish to see included in that kind of report?
Mr. Wark: Thank you for the opportunity of trying to outline this report. This kind of report can find a model, for example, in either the U.S. national security strategy statements — substantive documents, the most recent iteration of which was released last week by the Obama administration — or maybe a little more pointedly in the annual threat assessments that the Director of National Intelligence in the United States is required to provide to Congress.
We see a combination of things in these kinds of documents, and the documents are replicated in other forms and other national jurisdictions, for example, the U.K. security strategy, and other statements in the Netherlands, France and so on. We see a substantive discussion of the nature of the international security environment and the kinds of threats that are present in the 21st century, and these threats, of course, are complex. They can range from threats posed by nation-states and non-state actors to threats posed by forces that are beyond human agency, such as ecological degradation and natural disasters. Some portrait of the international security environment and how it might impact on Canada's national security interests would be a key component of this document.
The other aspect would be to explain Canadian policy responses. How is the Canadian government at the federal level, where it has primary jurisdiction, marshalling its resources, spending taxpayers' dollars, to try to meet these threats in the present and in the future? One way that this kind of annual reporting can be of value is to make sure it is not simply a snapshot in time about a specific year but it looks back and ahead and discusses trends because trends themselves will be important parts of this kind of discussion. Whether it was done as a result of a direct documentary production by the government, perhaps from the National Security Adviser to Parliament, or generated in terms of a report prepared for a parliamentary committee, there are various things we could do here.
However, as you suggest, it points to the absence of any parliamentary committee of a kind that was once suggested we might create to deal with security and intelligence issues, and was the result of all-party consensus at one time. The bill died on the Order Paper in 2006, if I recall. The instruments we have allowed to substitute, for example, the public versions of the Security Intelligence Review Committee report and the inspector general's certificate, are redacted documents, and they are so heavily redacted that, from my perspective, reading them over many years, they are of little value as an educational tool.
I have two things in conclusion. We need that kind of annual reporting of the substantive kind from the government through Parliament. We need a dedicated parliamentary committee with some form of security clearance available to it that can expertly evaluate, critique and judge the nature of those reports and allow that document to be taken up by the media, the informed community and Canadians to digest as they will.
Mr. Thompson: The only distinction I will add is that I would plead that such a document be frank, forthright and clear. The old U.S. Patterns of Global Terrorism document that was issued for the general public, which means the media, used to be the defining document for media and public discussions of terrorism for many years. We could produce something like that document, especially if it talked about domestic issues.
The other point, of course, is that SIRC's public statements used to be masterpieces of brevity, which meant the release of the document was a nonstory: There is nothing to report; everything is fine; move on, citizen.
If we are to have a factual debate, we need the facts.
Mr. Littlewood: I agree with my colleagues. I suggest going for an annual report, perhaps by the National Security Adviser, however it is laid before Parliament or the cabinet, and that the document is public, which will allow us, over time — it is not an instant response — to require someone to look at the various trend lines that affect security, which, if nothing else, will at least give people like me or Professor Wark extra ammunition for people who are dazzled simply by the latest headline. If people can look at the trend line, then they will not want to look at the headlines. That is the key issue here. We are building a picture over time.
Senator Smith: What level of confidence do you have that this government will issue a frank, candid and forthright report such as you describe?
The Chair: Or any government, to be fair.
Senator Smith: Any government.
Mr. Thompson: Hope springs eternal.
Senator Smith: That was a good answer.
Senator Joyal: On a point of information, chair, I want to share with the members of the committee and our witnesses that it was one of our first recommendations, a long time ago. The government came close to accepting the establishment of a permanent committee. There was an election and the Canadian voters decided otherwise. I think for you gentlemen and for us as senators, we have to come back to that recommendation, first and foremost.
The Chair: I cannot agree more with that proposition. With that, may I express the committee's thanks and the Senate's thanks to Professor Littlewood and Professor Wark. Mr. Thompson, you have been forthcoming and generous with your time. As an expert panel, you have assisted us immensely. We thank you very much and for the work you continue to do in this field.
(The committee adjourned.)