NDVA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

¿

0910

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.))

Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Prof. Martin Rudner (Director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University)

¿

0915

¿

0920

¿

0925

¿

0930

The Chair

Mr. Leon Benoit

¿

0935

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. Martin Rudner

¿

0940

The Chair

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.)

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. David Price

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. David Price

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. David Price

Prof. Martin Rudner

¿

0945

Mr. David Price

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. David Price

Prof. Martin Rudner

¿

0950

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Prof. Martin Rudner

¿

0955

Mr. Claude Bachand

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1000

The Chair

Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.)

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Joe McGuire

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1005

Mr. Joe McGuire

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Joe McGuire

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Joe McGuire

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Joe McGuire

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1010

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP)

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1015

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1020

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.)

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1025

À

1030

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC)

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1035

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Mr. Janko Peric (Cambridge, Lib.)

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1040

Mr. Janko Peric

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand

À

1045

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1050

Mr. Claude Bachand

Prof. Martin Rudner

The Chair

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.)

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Ivan Grose

Prof. Martin Rudner

Mr. Ivan Grose

The Chair

Mr. Joe McGuire

Prof. Martin Rudner

À

1055

Mr. Joe McGuire

The Chair

Ms. Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre, Lib.)

Prof. Martin Rudner

The Chair

Á

1100

Prof. Martin Rudner

The Chair

Mr. Joe McGuire

The Chair

Prof. Martin Rudner

Á

1105

The Chair

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

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NUMBER 008

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿  (0910)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.)): I'd like to call this meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs to order.

    Before we get to the subject at hand, I would like to officially welcome some of our new committee members. On the government side, we find this committee interesting. For those of us who have been here for a little while, I would venture to say it's almost the highlight of our day when we come to the committee table to speak to witnesses and hear what they have to say.

    I'd like to issue a special welcome as well to our new parliamentary secretary, Dominic LeBlanc, who obviously takes over for Mr. John O'Reilly, who did yeoman's service over the last number of years. Dominic, we wish you well with your new responsibilities.

    I also understand Mr. Stoffer is going to be making a statement toward the conclusion of this meeting.

    Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Is he resigning?

    The Chair: I won't pre-empt anything Mr. Stoffer might have to say.

    Perhaps we can get underway with our witness at this point. We have with us Professor Martin Rudner, who is the director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

    Professor Rudner, you are very well known in your area of expertise. We thank you for being here on what is relatively short notice, to share with us your thoughts in connection with our study of Canada–U.S. relations and the various aspects and dimensions of that relationship.

    Professor Rudner, you have the floor.

    Prof. Martin Rudner (Director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is indeed an honour and a privilege to be here today with the committee. Despite our dismal warm weather in the middle of February, what I'd like to share with you this morning are some thoughts on the intelligence dimension of the study that the committee has embarked upon, looking at the relationship between Canada and the United States in the domain of intelligence—both foreign intelligence and security intelligence, the two dimensions of the intelligence domain in which Canada is involved internationally, especially with the United States, of course.

    I did provide the committee with a document that has been distributed this morning. It derives from a larger study that I've recently completed but which is not yet published. It looks at Canada's role in intelligence, and it will be published later. What I would like to do in my opening remarks is address a number of the salient issues, with a particular focus on the connection with the United States in this area of intelligence.

    When one looks at Canada's international relationships in intelligence, one can divide these relationships into three levels or three tiers of relationship: the multilateral, the plurilateral, and the bilateral. Of course, our connection with United States is of major significance at each of these levels, but each of these levels performs a different function. I'd just like to briefly go over them so that we can see the complexity of our involvement with the United States in particular and with the international community in meeting our needs—and I want to underscore “our needs”—for intelligence.

    By way of a footnote, let me just suggest that “intelligence” is a fancy word for information and knowledge. It becomes intelligence when that information and knowledge is clandestinely procured, when it's procured not necessarily with the agreement of the source of that information, which is why sources and methods have to be kept secret.

    It is said that 95% of intelligence is open-source. What it is, in fact, is a very detailed analysis of that information from open sources. The other 5% to 10% is the secrets that our enemies or our adversaries don't want us to have, and those are secrets relating to two things, their intentions and their capabilities—their intentions to attack us or our allies and friends, and their capabilities to implement those attacks on our enemies and friends. So intelligence is knowledge or information management.

    We are involved in a complex web of relationships. Let me just briefly go through them.

    At the multilateral level, our major involvements have to do with something called signals intelligence, which is a fancy term referring to our ability to get information through electronic technologies, including radio, the Internet, or telecommunications. Even the radiated signals of computers can provide sensors with detailed information. We have the ability to decode information that is coded and ciphered. In that sense, we can understand what people are communicating to each other.

    As we all are aware, signals intelligence was of primary significance in our victory at the time of the Second World War. It's no less significant today. As we speak, much of our information about al-Qaeda is derived from our ability to intercept their electronic communications. Let me give you an example of how sophisticated and complex this might sometimes be.

    About two years ago, by mistake, an American congressman came out with a statement to the effect that the U.S. is able to track Osama bin Laden, and even his phone calls to his mother. The congressman had been sworn to secrecy but was making what he thought, I guess, was a proud and perhaps glib statement. In effect, it also sent a message to Osama bin Laden, and Mr. bin Laden from then on stopped using his cell phone to speak to his mother. As you can imagine, for a while that blacked out the Americans' ability to intercept al-Qaeda's communications and to know their intentions and their capabilities.

¿  (0915)  

    More recently, we have information that al-Qaeda communicates through much more sophisticated electronic communications, through something called steganography, which is the ability, for example, to imbed a few bytes of code in music or in a picture. This will not distort the music and will not distort the picture. You send it over the Internet. It's one of those 1 billion files sent every single day by young people and by other people, here's a photo or here's a song. By all accounts, as an alliance, we have the ability not only to intercept these, but to identify and decode the coded messages. It's extremely sophisticated technology.

    Where did this come from? It came from an alliance that is still officially secret, is over fifty years old, and includes Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. These countries not only have a global capability to gather signals intelligence, we are tightly woven together and we share all that we capture in the ether, so to speak. We work together in an alliance with virtually global coverage. We have massive computer capabilities that are capable of breaking anything enciphered or coded, and of providing the intelligence derived from communications from groups like al-Qaeda and other terrorist components of the terrorist network.

    From the point of view of this committee, it's important to understand that Canada has been part of this alliance for over fifty years, but we were originally not welcomed by the United States. At its origins, historians tell us, the U.S. was doubtful about whether Canada had anything to offer. After all, what was our capability in this area to collect and to export in order to trade in information? It was the British who set up or tried to set up, right after the war, a Commonwealth arrangement with global reach that would have involved the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The British signed the agreement with the United States, also signing on behalf of Canada. That's how we got into the arrangement.

    Canada did in fact prove to be a valuable collector and producer, mainly out of collection facilities in the north and in the west that, during the Cold War, provided very important strategic coverage of the Soviet Arctic, the Soviet far east, and the Chinese northeast. If you look at a globe, you can see the strategic importance of those regions of the former Soviet Union for North American security. If the Soviets were going to send missiles or if they were going to send bombers, they would have come across the Arctic. This, then, was part of our early warning capability to find out former Soviet intentions and capabilities in the Arctic that threatened all of North America, including Canada, of course. So we became a very important part of the alliance.

    This alliance survives today, and it is very much at the leading edge of the democratic world's capability to track terrorist capabilities and intentions. For example, not only do we need to know if and when terrorists are planning to attack, we also want to monitor the flow of funds. Much of the international flow of funds is no longer handing gold bars from one bank to another bank. Almost all of it is electronically communicated. Signals intelligence doesn't only involve communications in the verbal sense or in the cyber sense, it involves the capacity to intercept communications through banking systems and whatever. So these are very important instruments with global reach to be able to secure the counter-terrorism effort.

    It also has to do even with things like identity theft, for example. One of the great challenges for all democratic countries today is the fact that terrorists have had access to documentation that could enable them to cross borders virtually anonymously by stealing the identities of innocent people, including Canadians, frankly. Of course, one of the ways one controls this is by having, at almost every immigration post everywhere in the world, a terminal through which passports are passed to either validate or invalidate documentation. But that depends on up-to-date databanks that can be reached instantaneously from everywhere in the world and that are updated instantaneously with the latest intelligence. That's one of the tasks of signals intelligence.

¿  (0920)  

    Now we go to a plural level. The plurilateral level involves Canada with countries that are like-minded. These include a number of groupings, none of which have been officially confirmed, and even the names of these groupings are code words. All the information in this document that I've submitted to the committee is from open sources, incidentally, but some of these names leak out over time. There's no doubt in my mind that once the names leak out, they're changed. If something was called “Kilowatt” in the 1970s, it's probably no longer called “Kilowatt” from within, but that is the name that was in fact brought to the public domain, and it's the name by which we know that group.

    Just briefly, Kilowatt began in Europe. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Europeans were confronted with a surge of terrorism that struck at Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, and led to the murders of prime ministers, business people, and parliamentarians. There were terrorist attacks on the community. The Europeans formed together a group called TREVI—which stands for Terrorisme, Radicalisme, Extrémisme et Violence Internationale—which was intended to share intelligence. Since the terrorists were international, then so too did the intelligence and law enforcement capabilities become international. The terrorists couldn't find sanctuary across a border and plan their attacks from a third country. By the early 1970s, another group was formed to deal with the upsurge in Arab terrorism, and Canada became party to that group, which was then called Kilowatt.

    A third group was formed to deal with non-Arab terrorism, such as Basque terrorism. This was called Megaton. Much later, a fourth group was formed to deal with the financial flows among terrorists, and it was called Egmond—and that's an official name, because the Dutch revealed it in their annual report to the Dutch Intelligence Agency.

    These groups are effectively databanks. When Canada, through our law enforcement and intelligence communities, gets information that tells us about terrorist intentions and capabilities, it's lodged in these databanks. If the intention is to sponsor an attack against Britain, for example, the British would have access to this intelligence, just as anyone else would have it as an early warning about a terrorism event planned to occur within their jurisdiction.

    There's a special group within these groups called CAZAB. This is an official name, although it may not be known by that name. It involves Canada, Australia, New Zealand—without the “New”—America, and Britain. This is a group that meets annually, at the level of the heads of the security intelligence services—in our case, CSIS—to share planning information and to share strategic information, as well as to share current information. This is the human intelligence counterpart to that signals intelligence alliance. It is our closest international relationship.

    In both security intelligence and signals intelligence, while we deal with the Australians, New Zealanders, and British very closely, there's no question that the main flow of intelligence, from Canada's point of view, is north–south. It comes from south to north. The United States arguably is the world's major collector, because the U.S. has global interests. They have the world's largest intelligence community in terms of capabilities; they have the capabilities from space down to below the sea surface and to the bottom of the ocean. They can identify and intercept information of tactical or strategic importance to the United States. Under these alliances, we have access to that information. In fact, it's almost fulsome sharing. It's almost as if we could plug into their knowledge base and get what we need to know for the Government of Canada for our strategic purposes.

¿  (0925)  

    And thirdly, there's a range of bilateral connections. In our official reports on our intelligence community, it's said we have approximately 140 bilateral relationships between our intelligence community and the intelligence communities of other countries. Most of them involve immigration issues and apply to our ability to get information about people planning to visit or to immigrate to Canada and to assure ourselves, from the security perspective, that the movements of these people don't threaten Canada's security. Of course, a very important component of security intelligence is making sure of the bona fides of people coming to Canada.

    But as you can imagine, there's also a very important counter-terrorism dimension to our bilateral relationships. Probably for the first time ever, we are now involved in intelligence sharing with countries with which intelligence sharing, from the point of view of democracies, would hither to have been unthinkable. These are countries in the Middle East and they've been identified, in the international press in particular, as countries like Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, and Iran, which have certain advantages in penetrating the terrorist networks.

    For reasons of their own, these countries have penetrated the terrorist networks and have intelligence that they're prepared to share with the United States, despite the formal enmity. The President of Syria, for example, went public eight or nine months ago and said Syria was not getting enough credit from the United States for the intelligence it was sharing. The Syrians don't love the United States and they have many disputes with the United States, but there's a convergence of interests on terrorism, and especially on al-Qaeda terrorism. So we're in the business today of sharing intelligence with a range of countries.

    My document dealt with some of the different kinds of information and what the issues are. Firstly, how does one identify terrorist cells? Some countries have what we can call an ethnocultural advantage in placing agents in al-Qaeda and its broader network. Some countries have advantages in interrogation. Sometimes that interrogation can be rigorous or even brutal, but not always. Some of the advantages can derive from the cultural advantage—language, religion—thus allowing you to be able to induce people to share information. Often, it's not so much getting people to speak as it is getting people who are in the organizations concerned, in the terrorist networks, to serve as agents, because the only way the counter-terrorism effort can succeed is by having agents who are within those organizations and are prepared to disclose information to us. So we're in this new business of intelligence sharing at a bilateral level.

    My last word is on successes and failures. Does this network that involves Canada at a plurilateral, multilateral, and bilateral level produce intelligence that is of value in securing Canada against terrorist threats? There's evidence of success and evidence of failure. As evidence of success, we've had the capture of a terrorist who was planning operationally from Canada, to attack Los Angeles International Airport. He was caught, has been sentenced, and is serving a prison term.

    In Britain, they received intelligence from outside the U.K. and from inside the U.K. that led them to the capture of terrorists who are now under arrest. One or two have been charged with an effort to introduce the poison ricin into British military and other facilities. And just within the past month, Spain, France, and Italy have succeeded in capturing a major component of a terrorist network that was planning terrorist attacks in Europe and in the United Kingdom. All of this involved sharing information amongst intelligence communities.

    The Singaporeans recently published a white paper describing terrorist networks and cells in Southeast Asia that had been planning terrorist attacks on Singapore from bases in Indonesia and Malaysia, and from planning bases in Thailand. International intelligence sharing again mitigated those attacks and led to the arrest of the perpetrators, including someone who was carrying a Canadian passport and is currently under interrogation in the United States.

¿  (0930)  

    In the past short while, because of these types of networks, there have been successes in interrupting very serious terrorist attacks that could have cost thousands of lives. But there have also been failures in intelligence sharing or failures in intelligence collecting. Bali is an example of an intelligence failure. In Djerba, Tunisia, al-Qaeda exploded a truck near the ancient synagogue, killing over ten German tourists. That's an example of intelligence failure. In Yemen, the attack on a French tanker in the Bab el Mandeb is an example of an intelligence failure in sharing and implementation.

    So our relationships with the United States are crucial to the Canadian capacity to collect and operate internationally in intelligence. Where our international sharing arrangement works effectively, we have had demonstrated success in interrupting terrorist operations. Where intelligence sharing has been impeded, there is evidence that we paid a very high price in terms of terrorist attacks that did succeed.

    Thank you very much for your attention. I'm available for questions and for discussion.

    The Chair: On behalf of the committee, Professor Rudner, I'd like to thank you for your very informative presentation, and for your paper as well.

    As usual, we'll begin the questioning with Mr. Benoit.

    Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you for being here today, Professor.

    Your presentation and your presence here as a witness are part of a study on the Canada–U.S. military relationship. Last week, it was reported that the Canadian government was sending spies into the United States to help to organize anti-war rallies. Whether that happened or not, we don't know. We probably won't for some time, if ever. But if the Americans feel we're doing that, what might they do and what impact might that have on the Canada–U.S. sharing of intelligence?

¿  (0935)  

    Prof. Martin Rudner: To the best of my understanding, Mr. Benoit, it wasn't the Government of Canada that was suspected of sending spies, it was the Iraqi embassy.

    Mr. Leon Benoit: That was actually unclear. It may have been someone from the Iraqi embassy, but it may have been somebody coming through—

    Prof. Martin Rudner: The issue was that the Iraqi embassy, as an embassy, had organized agents provocateurs to go to the United States to stimulate anti-war activity, and, secondly, perhaps also to conduct espionage on U.S. military efforts directed against Iraq.

    Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me that the Iraqi embassy would do this—and I'm not picking on Iraq in particular. Countries that are in a state of hostility or near hostility with one another do use their embassies as part of their intelligence resources, and intelligence collection would be something we would expect of Iraq and perhaps some other countries as well.

    To me, the real question is not whether Iraq did this or didn't do this. I would suspect that they would have. That's why the embassy is here. The question is whether Canada—

    Mr. Leon Benoit: —should have caught them.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: —through our security and intelligence community, was tracking the Iraqis and was aware of the Iraqi effort.

    In intelligence, one doesn't necessarily arrest. Let's put it that way. The notion could be that, rather than stringing them up, we string them along, because while we are stringing them along, we are controlling them and we are monitoring what they are informing about and what they are doing. I would presume our Canadian Security Intelligence Service is more than capable of monitoring the activities of a hostile embassy in Canada, including its efforts against our friends and allies.

    From the point of view of the United States, what they would expect of Canada is precisely that. To me, then, the question is—and they won't answer this of course—whether CSIS was on top of this, when CSIS was on top of it, and if they shared it with the United States. As an academic, I'm not privy to that kind of information, but from what we've seen and what my research has told me about our close relationships, I would presume that, yes, CSIS would be on top of it, and if CSIS is on top of it, then we would share it, yes.

    Mr. Leon Benoit: So the comments made by....I forget who it was the United States—

    Prof. Martin Rudner: It was from the Newsday newspaper.

    An hon. member: [Inaudible—Editor]

    Mr. Leon Benoit: No, I believe it was an American official who made the comment.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: I thought it was a newspaper person who got the information—or so he said—out of the Department of Homeland Security files.

    Mr. Leon Benoit: Right, and it was the source of it that I was going to get onto next. There could be a lot of reasons the Americans might want to make comments on anti-war rallies and try to say they're being instigated by someone else.

    In terms of Canadian intelligence and the role of the Communications Security Establishment in intelligence, could you just explain a little bit about how it fits into the scheme of things, particularly in regard to the Canada–U.S. relationship? I'd then like you to comment on the oversight of the CSE. The oversight is provided only by an appointed commissioner, whereas with CSIS, for example, the oversight comes from the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which is an appointed, three-person body. I think there's a considerable difference between the two. Could you comment on that?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: As a word on the CSE, its mandate is the collection of foreign intelligence through signals, including telecommunications and other forms of radiated signals. For example, in the old days, a Soviet radar station and its signals would have been received and analyzed by CSE. CSE operates in a very close network with the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand for signals intelligence sharing and analysis.

    Until Bill C-36, CSE did not have legal authority to intercept messages to or from Canadian persons.

    Mr. Leon Benoit: But they were doing that. I think that was pretty clear.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Oh, no, they weren't. We have word from the judge who is responsible, as CSE commissioner—

    Mr. Leon Benoit: The commissioner, yes.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: —that this was not being done. They do have the authority now, provided it's related to terrorism and it's not a Canadian citizen but the signal is coming from Canada. For example, if somebody from al-Qaeda is within the jurisdiction of Canada and sends an e-mail message to Pakistan, for argument's sake, that message today can be intercepted. If it's Martin Rudner who is sending a message to Pakistan and is even using the word “al-Qaeda”, CSE legally cannot.

    On oversight, the oversight facility for CSE is the CSE commissioner, who is a judge. He issues an annual report. In the annual report, three things of interest to this committee have been said.

    The first thing was the product of CSE. The CSE commissioner has said that the product of CSE last year amounted to, if memory serves, 150,000 reports to the Government of Canada on threats and issues having to do with threats that were intercepted. That's a massive production, in my view.

    Secondly, the CSE commissioner assured us that in no case was Canadian law violated. This did not involve interception. This was before Bill C-36, before the Anti-terrorism Act. This did not involve the interception of communications from Canadian persons, which include people or firms or organizations.

    Thirdly and, to me, very importantly, the CSE commissioner gave the assurance that we do not use our allies to intercept messages from Canadians in a manner in which CSE itself could not legally engage. You do not have a situation in which, for example, while CSE can't intercept messages from Canadians, perhaps the Australians do it and then share it with CSE; and the Australians are not allowed to intercept Australians' messages with CSE doing the interception for them. The CSE commissioner gives us an explicit assurance that this is not the case.

¿  (0940)  

    The Chair: I'm going to have to cut you off there, Professor Rudner, because Mr. Benoit is well over his time.

    At this point, we'll go to Mr. Price.

    Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.): Professor, thank you very much for being here today. I'll follow right along on what you were just talking about.

    I have some other questions, but are you saying that information collected here on, say, an American citizen, cannot be shared with the Americans?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Let's put it this way. If Canada intercepted a communication from an American that dealt with issues having to do with Canada, we would certainly intercept it and it would be intelligence for the Government of Canada. What we could not do is accept the tasking from the United States National Security Agency—this would be my understanding of what the CSE commissioner has said—to run an operation intercepting messages from American persons, because that would be in violation of this principle.

    Another principle that we have, incidentally, is that we do not spy on each other. This is part of the alliance, and a basic principle of all these international arrangements is that Canada and, in this case, the United States do not engage in intelligence operations on each other. Ordinarily, then, CSE wouldn't be intercepting signals coming out of the United States. Now, if Canada by chance intercepted an American message from, say, a U.S. national in Britain who is communicating with somebody in Saudi Arabia, for argument's sake, on things that touch on Canada's security and counter-terrorism, that would be intelligence for the Government of Canada. But, no, we don't conduct intelligence operations against the United States.

    Mr. David Price: What if it touched on American security? Would that information be shared?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Yes, but we wouldn't task for them.

    Mr. David Price: No, it wouldn't be asked for, it would be an accident.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: And nor would we be conducting an operation in the United States or against the United States.

    Mr. David Price: Thank you.

    I have a question on the Department of Homeland Security. If we look at all of the groups, all of the different departments that this department is gathering together, we know most of those groups in the past have had problems sharing information back and forth. We also know that in some of those groups, Canada has been involved and has been doing some information sharing back and forth. In gathering them together in this one group, they're going to filter their information a lot more carefully than they did before, they're going to look at things. Do you feel that will block out Canada from information we were sharing before?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Just for clarification, are you asking about the export side or the import side, so to speak? Is it information we're getting or information we're—

¿  (0945)  

    Mr. David Price: I'm thinking of both sides. Border controls are one issue that comes to mind—and I'll go just a little further on that.

    In border control, we know we haven't been able to directly share databases, but an informal operation takes place on the border, with verbal sharing back and forth. We talk across the border, “Would you please check this guy out for us?” We don't have access directly, but that has been going on for a long time. Is the homeland security department going to put constraints on that type of operation?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: I have to be honest. I think one has to differentiate between three domains of information here. They are separate because, I think, both countries treat them separately. They are intelligence information, law enforcement information, and other public information that, under the laws of Canada and the laws of the United States, are in fact enjoined in privacy.

    On intelligence information relating to threats, I don't think we have any inhibition currently in sharing signals intelligence and security intelligence under existing arrangements with the United States. Law enforcement information is slightly different and more difficult, because their law enforcement information is shared between different jurisdictions, but there are always legal constraints and privacy constraints on what types of information can be shared by law enforcement agencies.

    Other forms of information—for example, on travellers, health, financial, and other things—is bound by secrecy in both countries, and that raises very important questions. The security and intelligence people are now trying to make a case that one does in fact need a broader web of information because terrorists are embedded in society. They do not have a brass plate on their door saying, “Terrorist”. One has to be able to put bits and pieces together to identify a full network. That may involve information that, up until now, has been regarded as private information. Intelligence communities are not comfortable with that for a range of reasons, because we must share.

    My answer to you would therefore be that we're in very early stages in our ability to define the principles of sharing. In the old days, it was fairly easy. We had these three boundaries, but now they're blurry. How we're going to handle this is going to be, I think, left to studies by committees and others to deal with the ethical, legal, and operational implications of any decision we make.

    Mr. David Price: In your talk, you mentioned something about Canada being such a multicultural country, and how that gives us certain advantages. I'll ask you the question directly. Do you feel Canada, in that position, maybe should have its own foreign intelligence agency?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: In my opinion, Canada has to have a capability to collect and analyze foreign intelligence. We have international interests and we have international objectives. To me, that means we have to have a means of getting information that is relevant to our security, our foreign policy, and our objectives and interests.

    But let me also say we already have a foreign intelligence agency. In fact, we have three. Ward Elcock is correct when he says the mandate of CSIS does in fact permit CSIS to operate abroad in respect to threats to Canada, so we have three. The other two are the Communications Security Establishment, which is a foreign intelligence agency in signals; and J2, at the Department of National Defence.

    J2 is the intelligence operations division of the Department of National Defence, and it is involved—and quite correctly—in the collection of military intelligence abroad, so that when the Canadian Forces operate abroad for peacekeeping or whatever, they have appropriate intelligence. You can't operate abroad without knowing where you're operating and about the area in which you are operating. So we already have that.

    The question that comes up then is whether we need more. In my opinion, the answer is that, for a Canadian presence internationally, we do. Whether this should take the form of an expanded CSIS capability or a dedicated agency is a decision for the Government of Canada, in consultation with the Parliament of Canada and the people, but I think there is a very compelling case for a dedicated agency.

¿  (0950)  

    The Chair: Professor, I'm going to have to cut you off there and go to our next questioner.

[Translation]

    You have seven minutes, Mr. Bachand.

    Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ): First of all, thank you for your presentation. I had an opportunity to read your text yesterday afternoon and I found it quite interesting in that it deals with a rather dark and mysterious subject, namely the whole question of intelligence and espionage. Since politicians are curious by nature, we find this topic fascinating.

    You stated that Canada does not have a mandate to spy on the United States. However, in your submission that I read yesterday afternoon, you noted that there is no such thing as allied intelligence services. Our allies have intelligence services which tend increasingly to monitor the activities of neutral countries as well as those of our allies.

    I would imagine this creates some problems in terms of the reliability of sources and of cooperation. For instance, if Canada knows that the Americans are involved in espionage operations here in Canada, not because they view us as the enemy, but because they want to spy on us, I would imagine that this kind of activity would have a somewhat adverse effect on cooperation.

    I'm also wondering if it's common practice to send false intelligence reports. It's also important to overseeing the reliability of intelligence. Is there someone within our service currently responsible for doing just that?

[English]

    Prof. Martin Rudner: First, as a point of clarification, as part of our signals intelligence alliance and our human intelligence arrangement, we do not have espionage, one against the other, within the alliance. I therefore think we can rest absolutely assured that the United States and the other allies do not conduct intelligence operations in Canada against Canada, full stop. That's clear.

    But the larger question that you ask is also very important. Do we in fact have a counter-intelligence capability? The answer is yes. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has, as one of its major operational components, a counter-intelligence capability.

    What is counter-intelligence? Counter-intelligence is not an attempt to have a policeman at every door to protect security. That is a responsibility effect of what is called protective security. In Canada, protective security would be the responsibility of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the police services of provinces and municipalities.

    I don't underestimate the importance of protective security, but that's not counter-intelligence. Counter-intelligence is actually the penetration of hostile intelligence services. If we look at the record of the Cold War, which is the only evidence we have, the answer is that Canada's counter-intelligence capability demonstrates an ability to penetrate the intelligence services of hostile countries. How do we do that? From the record, there are really three ways.

    One way is to plant a Canadian agent in the service of a hostile intelligence service. We do that. Cold War history tells us that we do that. Secondly, we “turn” one of their agents, who in effect becomes a double agent, “You work for them, but you also work for us.” From court cases in Canada and from other memoirs, we have evidence that we succeeded in turning former Warsaw Pact agents during the Cold War, and even other hostile agents since then, such as ones from Iran or from Iraq.

    Thirdly, probably the most interesting one is the so-called “walk-in”. Here's what happens. Hostile intelligence services usually will place an agent in Canada. That agent could be undercover as a journalist, a diplomat, a student, a business person, or a traveller. That person comes to our country and finds out we are not the demons he or she was sent to challenge. In fact, they like us, and they literally walk in and offer their services to Canada in return for something—let's be honest—and that something is usually sanctuary in Canada.

    From the evidence we have in the public domain, those are signs of a very successful counter-intelligence capability by Canadians. So we do have this counter-intelligence capability, but we don't have a fear—and I think it's very important for us to rest assured of this—of hostile intelligence operations in Canada by our allies.

¿  (0955)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Claude Bachand: Thank you very much.

[English]

    The Chair: You have a minute and a half.

[Translation]

    Mr. Claude Bachand: I'd like to focus on interrogation methods. I was surprised by some of the things I read in your paper. We already knew that to circumvent laws protecting US citizens, the Americans transferred their operations out of the country, in this particular case, to Guantanamo. You also discuss rather openly a phenomenon that also surprised me, namely the fact that in order to gather intelligence, suspects who have been detained are sent to countries that use “tougher” interrogation methods. You admit that confessions obtained in this manner are not admissible in court, although they do play an important part in building up a centralized data base on terrorist activities.

    What's your impression of these methods? Do they violate international law? I realize that we're talking about individuals suspected of being terrorists, but some may be innocent of the charges. I for one would not appreciate being shipped off to Turkey and having the bottoms of my feet whipped for the purpose of extracting a false statement from me. I would prefer to be judged here in Canada. Who decides such matters at the present time? A small group of individuals?

[English]

    Prof. Martin Rudner: This is a very broad issue, but let me make a number of points by way of response because of the limited time.

    The first thing is the people who are subject to what they call extraordinary renditions. This is the transfer of persons for interrogation, from whatever domain they are captured in to a domain in which they are subject to a more robust form of interrogation. That's operational. One doesn't pick people up like that. You can't.

    Intelligence has scarce resources. What are the scarce resources? Scarce resources include time. What you are out to achieve, of course, is information that is very time-sensitive. If somebody tells you that eight months ago, something was planned at a meeting, eight months is too far back. It's already irrelevant.

    What they're out to achieve is very timely information of two sorts. The first is the ticking bomb. Is there anything the person can tell us about something that is imminent?

    The second one is the more interesting one and, I believe, the more important one. Why haven't we been given the names of the people being held at Guantanamo and other places? It's an interesting question. Why? The answer is that al-Qaeda doesn't know who is there. The real issue is not that they were at a meeting last year in Afghanistan and we want them to tell us what the meeting discussed. That's history. The real issue is to whom we turn and who is prepared to work for us. We can then release them and not others. These people go back into the al-Qaeda network. When al-Qaeda asks them where they were, they don't say they were in Guantanamo. They say they were in the hill country of eastern Afghanistan, survived this terrible American attack, and are available. We don't know the number of people who have been arrested, turned, and released, so to speak, and who are now serving as our agents in place.

    Likewise, in my opinion, much of the interrogation taking place in Morocco or Jordan is of the sort that doesn't determine what secret they had way back when, but if they are prepared to work for us from now on. That once again tells us why their names are not disclosed and why you must have the fog of war, so to speak, around this issue in order to maintain the capacity to penetrate and intercept the terrorists.

    That's a personal opinion, from open sources.

À  (1000)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Professor Rudner. We let you continue on there because it was an interesting line of questioning and there was some good information provided.

    Are there any questions from the government side at this point?

    Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.): Professor, I was just wondering if there was enough intelligence around that wasn't acted upon that would have prevented September 11, in your opinion.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: The answer to that question is a definite yes, as the intelligence services themselves have conceded. Let me just give you two examples.

    The National Security Agency, which is the United States' signals intelligence agency, said it actually intercepted communications on the eve of September 11 that were related to the September 11 attacks. It succeeded in not only intercepting them, but in identifying their importance and in decrypting them, but they were in Arabic and they were literally awaiting translation. The problem wasn't a problem of intelligence and it was not a failure of intelligence. It was a resource failure. The Government of the United States, in its wisdom or folly, did not provide for a capacity to undertake translations, in real time, from a range of languages into the language that the United States uses—in other words, English.

    Today, it is not a secret that the United States' intelligence community is vacuuming up people who have language skills, and Canada is doing likewise. Even if you have things in code, once you break the code, you don't necessarily find them in French, English, or even Spanish or other languages with which you have broadly based familiarity. So that was one example.

    We also know German intelligence and French intelligence had information about the Hamburg cell. Malaysian intelligence had information about the Kuala Lumpur planning meeting at which September 11 was planned. The problem was that the sharing mechanism was slow. The Malaysians had collected, the Egyptians had information, the French had information, and the Germans had information, but there weren't the smooth mechanisms needed to ensure that all of this was brought together so that American analysts could do their assessments and come to the correct conclusion.

    Needless to say, since September 11, it has been those mechanisms that have now been lubricated—to use a word—so that information flows.

    Mr. Joe McGuire: So the monotony is over on collecting intelligence and interpreting it.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: We're always going to have a challenge. The challenge is that, in the end, this is a slow and tedious business of gathering lots of bits and pieces of information and so on, and then connecting the dots. Once the dots are connected, you need analysts who can assess the meaning of things in terms of an imminent threat. You need a range of knowledge, of skills, of languages, and of cultures.

    People need to know Pushtu for dealing with terrorism arising from Afghanistan, or Urdu for talking of problems coming out of Pakistan. Jamia Islamia has its roots in Java and Malaysia, and they could be using Javanese language or Bahasa Malaysia. Very few people have talent in all these languages and cultures. We need to build up our knowledge and resource base in order to address that challenge. In my opinion, this would be one reason for why Canada would want to have this foreign intelligence capability. No one ally could cover the whole world in all this. We Canadians have a real contribution to make on this analytical capability side.

À  (1005)  

    Mr. Joe McGuire: What's the perception that the American people have, either the American newspeople or their politicians? Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has accused our border of being a sieve for spies and terrorists and all sorts of bad people going back and forth from this country. Has that undermined our trust on an official level between the two governments, or is what Senator Clinton is saying true?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Let me begin by saying that our border is one of Canada's most vital strategic interests. The openness of that border is of primary importance for our country, and not only for the economy, by the way. In terms of our business, we university people need access to crossing the border, no question, as do parliamentarians and culture and sports people.

    Secondly, in my opinion, our intelligence cooperation has been immensely effective. Not everything comes out in the public domain. I don't believe that how Ahmed Ressam was caught crossing the border was an accidental, random opportunity taken by an immigration or customs officer who spotted that one car in 10,000. I cannot but believe that intelligence gave forewarning of where to look and what to do. So our intelligence has been effective.

    But we do have a problem, and this problem goes both ways. Both of us are democratic societies under the rule of law, and where privacy laws are a very important component of our rule of law. We don't and can't pry into every single person's private life and private connections. That is an important element of our law. So, yes, there will be people from Canada crossing the border going southward and people from the United States crossing the border going northward who are malevolent, even in security terms. That's a real challenge, and that's one of the challenges our security and intelligence community faces within the law.

    I think we have the ability to work within the law, and we certainly have the capability to share within the law. We've not done badly—

    Mr. Joe McGuire: Is it possible to be free and safe at the same time?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Yes, there's no question about that.

    Mr. Joe McGuire: Some are of the opinion that we can't be anymore, and that we're too intrusive into people's private lives.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: I think one has to go with the historical record of democracies. For example, the United Kingdom fought a war against terrorism at home and is fighting a war against terrorism now with minimal constraints on the liberty of British citizens. Spain has become democratic in the context of a war against very serious terrorism. The Israelis have maintained a democracy and the rule of law when confronted with a kind of terrorist threat that very few other societies have had to encounter, with people blowing themselves up in the civil domain. So one can fight terrorism within the law, no question, and that is historically demonstrable.

    Mr. Joe McGuire: So in our relationship with the United States, at least on the official level, there shouldn't be any problem continuing the trust that has been built up over the last fifty years. Or with our limited participation in a lot of the military effort going on in the United States, is there a mistrust or a view of Canada as a secondary supplier of information or security?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: I think one would have to separate an American view of Canada's role in the military dimension or the military domain—where they make the case that we are underinvesting in our military capability, thereby weakening our role in alliances, including NATO—from that of the intelligence domain, in which Canada has in fact been a modest producer, no question. We have been a valuable producer and have produced intelligence of a high quality that the United States have found helpful for their security purposes, as have the rest of our allies.

    Some of our allies were concerned. It's not a secret, for example, that groups in Canada were involved in support of Irish terrorism. But Canada had a role to play in minimizing that, as well as a role to play in the determination of the severe state of Irish terrorism and the promotion of the Good Friday agreement and the subsequent arrangements for peacebuilding, which also came out of our intelligence capabilities. We do not send people abroad without knowledge, and that knowledge is in good part gained from our intelligence community.

    I think our allies value our role. The question is whether or not we are prepared to invest resources in Canada to counter the threat as terrorism expands—and it is expanding and the threat is there. The evidence from September 11 to today is that, yes, we have massively expanded our spending. Our intelligence community has grown in capability precisely in order to meet these challenges not because they are threats to the United States, but because they're threats to Canada.

    So, yes, I think we're modest in the intelligence domain, but we're not niche producers. We're important, high-value producers within this modest domain called Canada.

À  (1010)  

    The Chair: Mr. Stoffer.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you very much for your presentation, sir.

    Our Solicitor General recently stated that, in his opinion, Canadians would be willing to give up a little privacy in order to ensure enhanced security. Is that a statement you would agree with?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: I think so, but let me ask what this issue of privacy is. For example—

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Air travel, for example.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Let's put it this way. Privacy means things within. If somebody says to me that they'd like to look into your bank account, my answer would be that they cannot do so under current law. Somebody might say they want to go into your health files against your will. The answer is that, no, they cannot. That's privacy.

    When I take a flight from Canada to the United Kingdom, is that privacy? When I board the aircraft, I have to go through Canadian customs and immigration, and when I disembark from the aircraft, I go through British customs and immigration. So, no, it's not a question of privacy. If that information is shared or retained...frankly, I don't know if the British Immigration and Nationality Directorate retains that information for an hour, for a week, or for a month when I get off the plane at Heathrow, but I voluntarily give it. I don't have to go to the U.K. There's no human right that says the U.K. must let me in. To me, your public persona doesn't necessarily violate privacy in that sense. I'm not sure our ability to know people have flown from here to Pakistan encroaches on privacy, and I'm not sure most Canadians would feel that somehow compromises their persona.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: As you know, sir, George Radwanski, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, would probably disagree with you on that, because he has in fact stated otherwise. I'd basically like your opinion on his comments in his recent report, about his serious concerns in terms of where we're going in regard to intelligence security within Canada.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: My understanding is that he had two concerns. One concern was that, under the proposed new law, the information would not only be available to security services, it might also be available, for argument's sake, to the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. There, one might say the information is of a security relevance, yes, but that it ought not necessarily be shared with, for example, a range of other government departments that might use the information for non-security purposes. I can understand that, but I think it raises a somewhat different issue.

    CCRA does not necessarily need to know if Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs went to London, full stop. Health Canada doesn't need to know if Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs went to Thailand. In terms of security concerns, if one has suspicions that Mr. or Mrs. Bloggs was in Thailand to meet with Jamia Islamia people, that could be an important dot that needs to be connected for the security of Canada, if at issue.

    So, yes, I think one wants to ensure that security information is available for security only.

    As I read it in his report, the second thing the Privacy Commissioner was suggesting was that he is very worried about the thin end of the wedge, in that this might only be the beginning of a rampant security effort that would in fact begin compressing persona, the privacy of the person, for the collective requirements of public safety. I don't share that concern.

    Let me just give my view of the intelligence community. The intelligence community on the whole is a small community in Canada. The numbers are very small in almost every society. The last thing they need or want is a massive, excessive flow of irrelevant and unimportant information—meaning unimportant in terms of a threat. Who needs it? They certainly don't.

    It's interesting that under British law up until just a month or so ago, there wasn't a single prosecution under the British Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act. They didn't need it. Intelligence services didn't want it. In fact, from the point of view of intelligence services, what they need information for more often than not is how to get a person who is operating against you to become a double agent. That kind of information could come about through something like this: “Listen. We know you have a sister who needs health care. Work with us. Your sister comes to Canada, has health care. We know you have a cousin who's looking for a university place in engineering. Work with us, your cousin comes and gets a visa and comes to Canada.” It's things like that.

    So, yes, we may need to know something about that operative in order to make those kinds of offers. I'm not sure this threatens the privacy of Canadians.

À  (1015)  

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: One amazing thing that you mentioned is the capability to decipher photos on the Internet. We're able to have that technology, yet I can't seem to find my car keys on a regular basis.

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    The Chair: That's another intelligence issue altogether, Peter.

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have two more quick things. A lot of people are very concerned about the U.S. proposal on missile defence. I'd basically like to know what your views are. Some people are saying—and it's also a suggested question to you—that if we don't participate in that, we lose either favour or the ability to cooperate further in intelligence gathering.

    Also, you said the United States—and correct me if I'm wrong—doesn't do intelligence within Canada in that regard. I find that rather concerning. As you know, Aryan Nations was a big thing back in the 1980s, and there was a cross-border connection between the Dakotas, Montana, and Alberta. Also, there are aboriginal concerns with the Mohawk Nation and the loose border connection, with people smuggling in and out of that area. We had the FLQ back in the 1970s. And there are other concerns in that regard about people who immigrate to Canada and who may be here under nefarious circumstances. Are you saying the United States doesn't do any kind of intelligence on Canadians in Canada in order to protect their own security? I would suspect they would.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Mr. Stoffer, let me say that every single pronouncement between our alliance regimes has said that allies do not conduct operations against their allies. Not only do they not collect intelligence on Canadians, they do not conduct operations in Canada against others, be they visitors, tourists, or whatever.

    Let's be very definite on what we're talking about. This does not mean there is not information sharing between law enforcement agencies when laws are broken. All the incidents you described were law enforcement problems. Laws were broken by all these groups, and that information was shared amongst law enforcement agencies, according to the law.

    What is the difference? The difference is that law enforcement agencies can only operate on probable cause when they see a probable violation of the law, and then they can operate. Intelligence agencies can operate on looser grounds of suspicion, which is why intelligence agencies don't bring evidence to court. It's a looser cause, so to speak, for an operation, but that means it also must be more tightly controlled by law. Therefore, they cannot operate in Canada on Canadian citizens, precisely to protect us against having what would frankly be a Gestapo-type environment in which somebody could operate anywhere on any cause. We don't want that, and that's the rule. And it's the rule also observed by our allies. That's very important.

    On missile defence and intelligence, I think the United States is more than aware of Canada's weaknesses on defence and military accounts. The United States have a very capable embassy here in Ottawa, and they'll report all debates in Canada, both in Parliament and in civil society. They certainly look at our budget, so they know our spending. They converse. They're out there. They know our weaknesses. They may be critical of them. They may want us to do more. That's fair enough, from their point of view, but we're a sovereign country and will make those decisions for Canada. I think they understand that and accept that.

    On intelligence, they also have an understanding—and so do we—that when it comes to intelligence, borders are irrelevant. We work as allies. We share intelligence because this is the security of all of us. We're connecting the dots. In that intelligence domain, I think they have confidence in Canada, as we have confidence in the U.S. and in our other allies, and I think that survives. It survived the end of the Cold War, and it's surviving in this very difficult challenge of international terrorism.

À  (1020)  

    The Chair: Professor, I'm going to have to cut you off there.

    Mr. Stoffer, thank you for your questions.

    Mr. LeBlanc.

    Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.): Thank you for a very interesting presentation and interesting discussion, Professor. As somebody who has very little knowledge of many of these issues and is trying to learn, what I particularly appreciate is that you are able to present the context in layman's language. That must make some of the classes you teach very interesting.

    I want to follow up on a couple of questions asked by Joe McGuire and Peter Stoffer. They're rather precise questions, so I'll put them to you and then you can answer them. That way, I won't take up any more of the time that my colleagues may want to have to discuss with you.

    In your opening comments, you talked about the Canada–U.S. intelligence sharing relationship. You said we have “almost fulsome sharing”. I'm wondering why it wouldn't be “fulsome”. Why did you put the word “almost” in? What might be the kinds of situations in which—and I'd be curious to know the reasons—there would not be sharing in both directions? That's one.

    Secondly, you talked about rather dramatic and tragic examples of failures of intelligence. I'm curious if, in your view, there was a failure to share information or a failure to gather information. For example, was the information available but not translated or not shared, or was there simply no information available?

    And the third question may be unfair, but we've talked a little bit about the legal context in which intelligence gathering and sharing operates. Peter talked about some privacy issues. If you were given a chance to amend Canadian law, are there areas in which you think the laws could be amended to make some of the intelligence work more easily, or in which, in your view, amendments would be required to fill lapses or holes that allow certain perhaps worrisome practices, either for privacy reasons or for security reasons?

    It's a bit of a hypothetical question, but I studied some law in the United States. I've tried to compare the two jurisdictions, so I'm curious about your simple reaction to that.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: You pose three absolutely fascinating questions. Let me try go with them one at a time, yet within the allotted time.

    On the sharing arrangement, I think it's fair to say it's about as complete as I know. I used the word “almost” because as an academic, one is never sure that everything is total. Let me give you an example of what I'm getting at.

    We know that in NATO peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, NATO intelligence was shared in literally three tiers. The U.S. had its technologies that were “fantabulous”, to invent a word—satellite imagery, surveillance, signals, everything. They shared it with one other country: Canada.

    A second tier was other NATO allies, and they were deprived of access to some of this American intelligence. It was not because they're not allies, because they are NATO allies of the United States. However, they still weren't entitled to it, and you'll see why in a moment.

    The third tier was other countries that were part of the coalition for peacekeeping, but they couldn't get any of it. Why? The answer is that the U.S. won't reveal methods and sources when these are highly sophisticated and they don't want to even allow other people to have an inkling that Americans have this capability.

    And incidentally, as a footnote, that's why the Americans have a great reticence about intelligence about Iraq. What they're going to do before the Secretary of State's presentation tomorrow is desensitize all this information so that the Iraqis and others don't know what America is capable of achieving. After all, if they can do it over Baghdad, they can do it over Miami or over Benghazi or over Karachi.

    So they allow us access to that. We are so trusted that we are the only other country that gets access to even that level of sensitive American intelligence methods and capabilities. If the U.S. gathers something that they choose not to share with Canada for whatever reason—I don't know, but I imagine there might be—for reasons of U.S. foreign policy, they might think the Canadians don't need to know this. Most intelligence is need-to-know; therefore, they don't need to tell the Canadians. However, if the Canadians should ask, the Canadians could get it under the arrangement. We don't know about it, though; therefore, we don't ask.

    So that's why the “almost” is there. But it's about as intimate a relationship as any that could exist between countries.

    On failures, again, it's difficult to know, because we don't know anything other than from open sources. There's enough open-source information to know that Bali was clearly a failure of sharing. There was intelligence that said Jamia Islamia was planning an attack in Bali. There was information on where this planning took place in southern Thailand and Malaysia. The dots weren't connected, so early warning couldn't be given. The Singaporean white paper is very revealing, and I would just add the recommendation that people look at it, because it's on the web.

    They've also done a psychological analysis of terrorists whom they've caught, in order to try to understand the psychology of people in terms of what it is that brings them to commit this type of suicidal terrorism. Again, that analysis shared. It's shared on the web for sure.

    But information even of this type of microanalytical sort, beyond the white paper, would have been shared with allies in a way that.... Before Bali, let's say, had a country conducted psychological assessments, perhaps they might have thought they didn't really need to share their findings. Well, today you share them. Our security and intelligence people in Canada would therefore have knowledge about potential terrorists thanks to the Singaporeans, and would have intelligence of the sort that, hitherto, we might not have had. So Bali tells us it's a sharing problem.

À  (1025)  

    On the law, I'm not a lawyer. My impression from the security and intelligence community is that the present laws are adequate for their purposes. The British have one additional legal instrument that we don't have. It might be useful, although our own intelligence and security community has not said they necessarily need it. There's a new introduction in Britain, and that's the ability to bring intelligence information to court as evidence when it does not meet the ordinary standards of evidence. It's legally acquired, it's not inappropriately acquired, but it doesn't meet the strict legal standards that evidence requires and that our courts observe.

    Because of the challenges of terrorism in the U.K., the British have relaxed on that and now they allow the judge to make the decision on whether intelligence evidence—if we want to call it that—can stand the test the courts want to apply in order to pursue a prosecution. I don't believe we've gone that route in Canada, or perhaps our intelligence and law enforcement communities are of the view that we don't need to go that route. But it's perhaps one of the things we might want to look at in terms of best practices. If this becomes important, then perhaps we ought to be looking that way. But to the best of my knowledge, our law enforcement and security and intelligence communities are of the view that the Canadian statutory armoury suffices.

À  (1030)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Professor.

    Thank you, Mr. LeBlanc.

    Mrs. Wayne.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): I appreciate your presence with us today, Professor. I have some questions with regard to border security and anti-terrorist security between Canada and the U.S.

    My understanding is that members of the FBI are working here in Canada. CIA intelligence operatives are also working here in Canada. That being the case, that tells me they have major concerns about the terrorist situation in Canada as such.

    Back in Saint John, New Brunswick, the closest city to the U.S. in our part of Canada—and I brought this up some time ago—23 reservations to Washington were made before September 11. None of them were kept. The travel agent was so worried about this that she went to a lawyer and she and the lawyer came to me. I found out that when they went to the RCMP, nothing was done in Canada. She then gave me the whole file, which I brought up here to Ottawa to the RCMP. At that time, there just happened to be one reservation that was kept. When they got to Toronto, they found out the Arab chap had false ID, a false passport, false everything. That was a very serious situation.

    If the U.S.A. feels we are doing our job, why are their FBI and their CIA working here in Canada?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: It's for the same reason that the Canadian intelligence community has our people in Washington. Yes, a large contingent of CIA and FBI and perhaps other American intelligence organizations' representatives are here in Ottawa as part of this bilateral liaison relationship. They are liaison officers, and their job is to liaise directly between their component of the U.S. CIA and our counterpart component of CSIS, such as the counter-intelligence component or the counter-terrorism component.

    That web of relationships works very closely. For some representatives of the U.S. National Security Agency here in Ottawa, their job is to liaise with the Communications Security Establishment; with the RCMP, which also has a counter-terrorism and security mandate; with Citizenship and Immigration Canada; with Transport Canada; and with all the other parts of the Government of Canada's departmental framework in which you have intelligence units, in such things as the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, etc. That's what they're doing here. We have our people, our liaison officers, doing exactly the same thing in Washington. And they're in London, too, by the way, and other capitals as well. So, yes, they're here, but they're not operational in the sense of conducting intelligence operations. They are conducting liaison work.

    I don't want to minimize the importance of liaisons. Liaisons are the network for this intelligence sharing. They are a very important function, but they don't demonstrate a lack of confidence in Canada and they certainly don't demonstrate intelligence operations in Canada. In fact, it's the opposite. Liaisons tell us that the U.S. has confidence in Canada. That's precisely why they send in liaison officers. If they didn't have confidence, they wouldn't be liaising. They're getting value out of the liaison relationship, just as our people in Washington and in London are getting value out of liaison relationships that they conduct in Washington and London. So it's an understandable presence in both countries.

    But you raised a larger question, and that's whether there are people who are embedded in Canadian society and pose a threat to the security of Canada and/or the security of our friends and allies. The answer is yes. Ward Elcock say so in his CSIS public annual report. There are people here for malevolent purposes. Let me give you an example of the kinds of challenges that are not addressed, if I could just have a moment on this, because I think it's a very important example.

    The British discovered that many of the people involved in Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction, biological, chemical, and nuclear, were trained in universities in the U.K. The U.K. intelligence community identified them early on, and in most cases passed warnings to the universities. There's a mechanism through which they can do this, and they in effect said Bloggs shouldn't be allowed to study nuclear physics. The universities are not foolish. They understood what the message was, and Bloggs wasn't allowed to study nuclear physics. But in several cases, these people were not identified. They did fulfill their studies and research in the U.K. and now are suspected, in Iraq, of being the key instruments for Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction, at least in the past. I hope Hans Blix will let us know in due course whether or not they're still doing it.

    What are the implications for Canada? We don't have such a mechanism. It doesn't exist. In the Canadian context, it would be totally inappropriate for the Canadian security and intelligence community or law enforcement community to come to a university and tell a department of chemistry, biology, or physics that somebody might abuse the lab. Yet I think we would be naive to think that, when you leave a chink in your armour, people who are malevolent and are concerned about attacking will not penetrate that chink. So we do have real challenges.

À  (1035)  

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: You do, because at my university back home, which is an international university, at the hour that they struck in New York on the day of September 11, every one of the Arab students ran out in the yard in the back of the university and were cheering and cheering. The president and the vice-president went out and ordered them to come back into class immediately. So they were all well aware of what was going to take place.

    I mentioned the 23 reservations that were made and were not kept, sir. That was a major concern. There's no question that a great deal of investigation has gone into everything and that things are being monitored and will continue to be monitored. But what really worries me is that we have a nuclear power plant and the largest privately-owned oil refinery there is. When they did some research in some of the apartments of the students, they found a list of all of the nuclear power plants in Canada and where they were located.

    The Chair: Mrs. Wayne, your time has expired, so I'm going to have to take that as a statement rather than a question.

    Mr. Peric.

    Mr. Janko Peric (Cambridge, Lib.): Professor, you mentioned the Balkans. Are you aware of the reason why, in your opinion, Michael Rose shared information with Slobodan Milosevic at the time when Mr. Rose was in charge of UN forces in Bosnia?

    About three months ago, information was made public that when the Hague tribunal ordered the international forces to capture Radovan Karadzic in Bosnia, a French officer made a call to one of Karadzic's people to inform him that they were going to move in. In your opinion, why would they share that information with the enemy?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: That's a very interesting question, but I don't want to go beyond my depth. I'm not a specialist in modern Balkan history and events, but I could comment on two things that perhaps would be helpful to understanding that issue and its implications.

    From the evidence available in the public domain, we know Yugoslavian intelligence services had successfully penetrated parts of the NATO and EU effort in the former Yugoslavia, in Croatia and in Bosnia–Herzegovina in particular, mainly through a number of French officers who were working for them. What does this tell us? It tells us that, in the domain of intelligence agencies, intelligence services will always seek to plant an agent in their rivals' service. Just as we conduct counter-intelligence to try to plant a Canadian double agent or agent in hostile services, so too will they do the same to us. The challenge of our counter-intelligence is exactly to identify that. That's why it exists. NATO intelligence did not have that counter-intelligence capability.

    I don't know how it was disclosed, to be honest. That part does not necessarily come into the public domain. But we do know at least two French officers—I think it was two—were arrested and charged with having betrayed their intelligence service.

    So that would be a classic case of intelligence and counter-intelligence. Anybody on an operation would have expected that to take place. After all, Yugoslavia has an intelligence service for a purpose, and its purpose is to penetrate.

    What does this teach us more widely? I think this is an important one for Canada. As we all know, outside of our U.S.connection, Canada is very much involved in peacekeeping. One of the issues in peacekeeping has been that peacekeeping, by UN requirement, has eschewed an intelligence capability. It was felt intelligence somehow did not fit in with the UN purpose. The lesson of the wars in the Balkans was that you cannot operate effectively without an intelligence capability. Because of Lakhdar Brahimi's report on UN peacekeeping reform, the United Nations Secretariat has begun to introduce a UN intelligence capability, although they're calling it strategic information, which is a euphemism.

    What does this teach us as Canadians? I think the important thing it teaches us as Canadians is that our involvement from now on in UN peace support operations, especially where they may engage Canada in combat-type operations, has to be accompanied by an intelligence capability. We can't send our people abroad to perform military functions without an intelligence and counter-intelligence capability in place precisely to protect our forces against what we have to expect, and that's that our adversaries are going to conduct intelligence operations against us and are going to secure our information and use it against us if they can.

    I hope that answers your question.

À  (1040)  

    Mr. Janko Peric: Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Peric.

    We're into the five-minute round now, and I'm going to go to Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

    Mr. Claude Bachand: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier, Mr. Rudner, you recounted how a US congressman had publicly revealed that it was even possible to listen in on conversations between Osama Bin Laden and his mother. That pronouncement shook up the intelligence services, since this was surely an important source of theirs.

    Let me therefore put the following question to you. We are all Members of Parliament democratically elected by the voters in our respective ridings. Our constituents have entrusted us with the responsibility of managing their tax dollars and all matters related to their safety. As you know, here in Canada, organizations like the RCMP, CSIS and the CSE are not exactly democratic bodies. They are not accountable to the public for their activities.

    As MPs, we also observe that not all nations are equal. For example, my colleague David Price and I visited the US Central Command in Tampa Bay and talked to the people commanding the operation in Afghanistan. They related to us the number of special JTF2 forces in Afghanistan and where exactly these forces were positioned, information that we would never have been able to get here in Canada. I'm not even certain the Minister of National Defence was aware of the location of JTF2 in Afghanistan.

    I've always been concerned about this situation. US politicians have considerably more oversight over intelligence matters. Perhaps it's because they make decisions about budgets and about the funds to be allocated to the intelligence community. Here in Canada, we have decision-making authority over budgetary matters. In the last federal budget, we saw how a significant amount of additional funding had been allocated to all of these organizations.

    Is there some way to keep MPs here in Canada better informed about ongoing operations? I have to say that right now, we're completely kept in the dark. I wouldn't dream of calling the RCMP or CSIS for an update on their latest intelligence operations. I doubt they would be willing to answer my questions. Do you think their reluctance to do so would be justified? Don't you think MPs should be informed in advance, since they have been mandated to act on their constituents' behalf and ultimately have responsibility for the safety of their constituents and for the administration of the nation's coffers?

À  (1045)  

[English]

    Prof. Martin Rudner: You ask what I think is one of the most important questions, and that's on the problem of transparency in the intelligence and security community. For obvious reasons, at least on two issues, you can't have the same type of transparency in the security and intelligence community as one would expect in, for example, the health domain, in trade, or in finance. You can't have it on methods and you can't have it on sources, for obvious reasons. To know the source in Iraq who is giving the U.K. and the U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as we speak would be to sentence that person to instant death, yet there is somebody there.

    So we can't know, obviously. But I think this is a very important point. This doesn't mean parliamentary oversight cannot be structured in such a way as to provide parliamentary oversight of the security and intelligence community. In Canada, we have mechanisms for executive oversight. The Security Intelligence Review Committee, the CSE commissioner, and the Auditor General of Canada all perform executive oversight. In my view, parliamentary oversight has not been as vigorous or as rigorous as it could be. What is the standard of “could be”? Frankly, the standard of “could be” is our other allies.

    Let's examine what the constraints are. To me, there's one major constraint, and it is that we are net importers of intelligence. We bring in from our allies more than we produce and export to our allies. What does that mean for oversight? Well, our allies are of the view that they will only share with Canada provided that Canada keeps the information as absolutely secure as they would, plus. The Americans could disclose things that they have collected, but they would be outraged were Canada to disclose the same things. They would say that, because we're the importer, our standards have to be higher than theirs as the exporter.

    In their secrecy, CSIS and CSE tend to be much more heightened, if you will, than our U.S. or U.K. allies. As net importers, they want to remain what amounts to being trade-worthy or intelligence-worthy. That's why you can learn things in Washington that you cannot learn in Ottawa about the same thing.

    There are ways to overcome this. The U.S. Congress oversight is powerful, but with an important issue in play. They are sworn to secrecy.

À  (1050)  

    Mr. Claude Bachand: Should we be sworn to secrecy?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: That would be an interesting question. Within the Canadian Parliament, would parliamentarians be ready to accept the discipline of secrecy? And it is a discipline.

    The British found a different solution, by the way. The British solution was to create a committee of parliamentarians—not a parliamentary committee, but a committee of parliamentarians of both Houses—that was sworn to secrecy and was able to function as an oversight committee. It's an interesting model. And the Australians have pursued or are now putting in place another model.

    My advice would be to look at best practices. I would look at the American model, the British model, the Israeli Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee model, and the Australian model, because these are all parliamentary systems. They have the same kinds of challenges we have—the Australians, like us, are net importers—so we could see what we could come up with by way of designing something appropriate to the Parliament of Canada and to the needs of members of Parliament.

    This is an important implication of your question. You want them to be both inside the tent by taking the oath of secrecy, but outside the tent as a way of being transparent to the Canadian public.

    The Chair: Professor Rudner, I'm going to have to cut you off. Although it's an interesting line of questioning, we have to get on to some of our other committee members here.

    Mr. Grose.

    Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.): Professor Rudner, you made the statement that United States agencies share information with Canada that they may not even share with anyone else. That's certainly not the perception out there. Is this the price we must pay because elements in the American administration don't trust us and don't trust anyone? If the perception was that we were that tight with American information-gathering agencies, we might not get that information. Do we have to keep that secret so that we remain as we are and get the confidential information?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: The answer to your question is no. Everything I've said and everything in my paper is in public sources. We know the Americans share with us intelligence that they don't share with everyone else. That comes from public sources, including, I should mention, a report to the Dutch government by a commission of inquiry of their Netherlands Institute for War Documentation into the tragedy of Srebrenica. To summarize what is a very complex issue, the Dutch effectively said they didn't have access to intelligence that the Canadians had. That intelligence came from U.S. sources and methods that are so very sensitive that the U.S. would only share it with its most intimate ally.

    Mr. Ivan Grose: We know that, but if the New York Times tomorrow morning said, “U.S. shares all secrets with Canada”, do you think that sharing would continue?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: The answer to that is yes. I think the U.S. Congress, which does have an oversight responsibility, is aware of that if Martin Rudner is aware of it from those same open sources. In fact, it goes to the intimacy of an intelligence relationship north–south over fifty-plus years. This is not new. This is fifty years old. We were getting intelligence on signals from the United States, for example, when the very initials of the NSA and CSE were secret—those very initials. Canada and the U.S. were allies in signals intelligence. We knew they had penetrated Soviet communications to the level of information going to the Politburo. The Americans shared it with us.

    Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. McGuire, there are two and a half minutes left.

    Mr. Joe McGuire: I have two questions, Professor. One, is our level of maritime surveillance and intelligence properly financed? Do we have the people and equipment to do the job for Canada? And two, is Russia now included in any of our international alliances that are sharing intelligence?

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Let me answer your second question first.

    No, the Russians are not part of these plurilateral alliances. They're regarded as a friendly country, but in the intelligence domain, we know they conduct intelligence operations against Canada and our allies. It wouldn't surprise me that this is reciprocity in that domain.

    Publicly, it is known that we also have liaison relationships with Russia. The Russian intelligence services have a liaison officer at the Russian embassy here in Ottawa. That liaison officer would liaise with Canadian counterparts as appropriate, but those sharing relationships are much more limited.

    Consider the equivalent of bilateral trade to a free trade agreement. With the U.S., we have a free trade agreement. With the Russians, they send us some caviar and we send them some hockey sticks, and that type of thing.

    On the first one, surveillance, it's a very important question, and I think the answer has to be addressed to the specialists involved with the Canadian Forces. I couldn't answer on whether they feel they need more assets to conduct proper coastal surveillance on our three oceans. That would be very much an operational question in their domain.

À  (1055)  

    Mr. Joe McGuire: Thank you.

    The Chair: We have time for a very quick question, Mrs. Neville.

    Ms. Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre, Lib.): Professor, I do want to thank you very much for what has been just a fascinating presentation.

    You talk about American–Canadian cooperation, and you talk about the challenges of border security. We've all heard much about the American apprehension about Canadian citizens often not born in this country but probably born in countries in the Middle East. Can you address that issue and how you see it? How is that ultimately going to be resolved? We hear much about the racial profiling that is going on in this country.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: On racial profiling, we have an assurance from the law enforcement community that it is not the case, but one also has to have a sense of realism. Not every person who is of Arab descent, who is a Muslim, who is from Pakistan, is necessarily suspect of being involved in a terrorist network. There's no question about that.

    Equally, there's no question that that area of the world has been an incubator of terrorist attacks on those countries as well. We must recall that al-Qaeda terrorist operations have taken place in countries like Egypt and countries like Iraq. Egypt lost a president to the predecessors of al-Qaeda. So there's a reality here.

    To use Mr. Stoffer's analogy, one looks for a lost key not where the light is best, but where the key was lost. So, yes, our intelligence community has to maintain a degree of sensitivity against racial profiling, but also a degree of sensitivity to looking to where the problems may lie.

    What does this have to do with Canadian status and Canadian citizenship? One of the challenges is identity theft. People actually do abuse Canadian documentation for security threat purposes. Secondly, there is evidence that at least some Canadians have been recruited by terrorist organizations. The Omani, for example, caught one Canadian who is now being interrogated and who, according to newspaper accounts, is speaking and is revealing many things about his involvement and that of others in al-Qaeda in its network.

    Now, from the viewpoint of the United States, if they should detain a visitor coming into their jurisdiction and he has Canadian certification and another certification, they might well choose to deport that person not to Canada, but to the country of other certification. Is there anything Canada can do about it? The answer is no, not any more than if somebody arrived at our port of entry carrying from two jurisdictions and we suspected that they were engaged in an illegal or terrorist activity. We might choose to deport them to either of those two jurisdictions.

    From that point of view, U.S. law allows the Americans to make that choice. There's very little that Canada can do. Canada can only advise landed immigrants to Canada to accept Canadian citizenship as soon as possible to mitigate this type of risk. Canadian citizenship requires a degree of security clearance, though, and that should be an assurance to our allies and friends that people who become Canadian citizens are bona fides.

    The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Neville.

    I would actually like to just get two very brief questions on the record, Professor Rudner.

    First, do you have any concerns with respect to the fact that CSIS obviously has the ability to move into areas traditionally done by foreign intelligence agencies, in terms of the statutes? If we go back to the Macdonald commission of 1984, it was clear that Donald Macdonald talked about the fact that, at some point, we were going to need to have, at the very least, a debate on a foreign intelligence agency. Given the events of September 11, do you see CSIS moving into the foreign intelligence area in a way that is potentially unhealthy for the future of the organization?

    Also and finally, if we were to create a foreign intelligence agency for Canada, how do you think that agency would be greeted by our closest allies, including the Americans?

Á  (1100)  

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Those are two very important questions. Let me answer them in that order.

    The director of CSIS, Mr. Elcock, has said that existing statutes enable CSIS to operate internationally, but within a very limited purview. The limited purview is threats to Canada—that's fair enough—so CSIS has liaisons abroad in many different capitals. CSIS could actually, in principle anyway, engage in collection operations abroad, provided there's a threat to Canada.

    One of the difficulties, of course, is what happens if CSIS identifies a threat abroad that is not a threat to Canada but is a threat to one of our allies. In law and in principle, CSIS cannot operate. This could create a gap that could have horrendous consequences. In my view, then, one therefore wants to either change the CSIS enabling legislation to broaden that definition, or else one wants to establish another Canadian capability that is not so constrained.

    This leads me to your second question. Is CSIS the appropriate instrument? In my opinion, one has to take into account at least two things in answer to that question.

    First, security intelligence is an absolutely legitimate and important dimension of Canada's intelligence effort, as it is of that of other countries. It requires very specialized skills that are very different from the skills for foreign intelligence. I would worry about having one agency trying to develop too many skills, because you tend to dilute your efforts and you tend to compromise your excellence. I much prefer specialization, and I think most countries in the intelligence domain have preferred specialization. They have intelligence services that specialize in security intelligence, and intelligence agencies that specialize in foreign human intelligence and foreign signals intelligence. They require very special skills and talent, and you don't want to compromise them.

    Secondly and very importantly, in democracies, we tend to be very hesitant to give too much of this type of power to any one organization to conduct investigations on other than probable cause. It's not healthy. The Israelis have Shin Bet. The British have the British Security Service or MI5. The French, the Americans, and the Australians have dedicated internal security agencies and dedicated external security agencies and do not blend the two, lest too much power accumulate in too few hands.

    I think there is a healthy jurisdictional issue here that international experience seems to validate, and in my opinion, Canada wants to continue to emulate that.

    Did I miss the second question?

    The Chair: The second question was how our allies might greet the creation—

    Mr. Joe McGuire: Your time is up.

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    The Chair: Yes, thank you, Mr. McGuire.

    Prof. Martin Rudner: Just briefly, in very informal conversation with our allies, it's interesting to note that our allies like the status quo for a variety of reasons, both selfish and unselfish. The selfish reason, by the way, is that they know Canada is a net importer of foreign intelligence. Whose foreign intelligence are we importing? Theirs.

    They don't necessarily control Canada's agenda. They can't. But they certainly control a large part of the information available to Canada that is used to determine our agenda. I'm not saying they're malevolent, but they know pretty much what the Government of Canada knows. It suits.

    Secondly, many are of the view that Canada's value-added might be very little. In fact, a Canadian foreign intelligence service might tread on and duplicate what they're doing, and it might challenge them. But I'm not so sure. I don't see them having the same response to the Australians, for example. The Australians have a very important foreign intelligence collection capability. They do add value to the intelligence available to the larger CAZAB and UKUSA arrangements, and to other bilateral arrangements as well.

    So the answer is that our allies would tend to be quite happy with the status quo, but I think there is a value-added potential if Canada should choose to embark in this area.

Á  (1105)  

    The Chair: On behalf of all members of the committee, thank you very much, Professor Rudner. I think I speak for everyone when I say you have impressed us with both the breadth and depth of your understanding of this very complex issue.

    Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

    The Chair: I would like to give Mr. Stoffer an opportunity to say a few words.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    As of 9:30 yesterday morning, I have been advised that I will no longer be on the defence committee. Your new colleague on the committee will be Bill Blaikie.

    Jack Layton asked me about that. I think there are only two people in my party to whom I think I could turn this over and whom I could see as pragmatic spokespersons when it comes to our party on defence issues, and they are Bill Blaikie and Lorne Nystrom. Bill has talked to me and has said he would like to do this and would be encouraged to do this. I think it will be very helpful for our party. Everyone knows where I come from when it comes to defence issues, but with his 23 years of experience in Parliament, I think Bill will also assist the party in maybe changing its perception of issues of the military and defence.

    I just want to thank David Pratt very much for his cooperativeness with my ability, and all of you for listening on Shearwater. I know you'll continue on the great work of protecting that base.

    Thank you very much, Michel and our researchers and assistants, all of you. It's been a great committee. You folks are fabulous. One of the proudest moments I've had was signing off on that almost unanimous SCONDVA report. To me, that's almost my bible when it comes to my riding. I agree with it, I think it's what should happen, and I'm sure hopeful our next budget will see an increase of proper proportions for our men and women in the military.

    As I've said to my own party and as I've said to anyone who will listen, the men and women of our military pay the ultimate liability for their country. As parliamentarians, we have the ultimate responsibility. If we're not prepared to meet that obligation, we shouldn't sit here in the House of Commons.

    So thank you all. It's been fun.

    Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

    The Chair: Mr. Stoffer, I think I speak on behalf of all members of the committee when I say you've made quite a very substantial contribution to the work of this committee. Your interest in military affairs and your commitment to the welfare of the men and women of the Canadian Forces are very well recognized. I think the media has recognized that, as well.

    We are going to miss you here. You're leaving some pretty big shoes for Bill Blaikie to fill.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Well, he's pretty big.

    The Chair: He is indeed.

    Once again, on behalf of all of the members of the committee, thank you very much.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

    The Chair: The meeting is adjourned.