When it comes to looking into foreign interference (e.g. Peoples Republic of China) in Canada’s electoral processes, work of elected officials or government dealings, opposition parties keep clamouring for a public inquiry. However, it would appear that fairly recent legislation already provides for more than enough ability on the part of parliamentarians to examine national security matters.
In 2017, Parliament passed the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act to review national security matters. The Committee (NSICP) is to consist of not more than three members who are members of the Senate and not more than eight members who are members of the House of Commons. Not more than five Committee members who are members of the House of Commons may be members of the government party. According to the Act, the mandate of the Committee is to review
(a) the legislative, regulatory, policy, administrative and financial framework for national security and intelligence;
(b) any activity carried out by a department that relates to national security or intelligence, unless the activity is an ongoing operation and the appropriate Minister determines that the review would be injurious to national security; and
(c) any matter relating to national security or intelligence that a minister of the Crown refers to the Committee.
Subsequently, in 2019, Parliament passed the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Act. The Agency’s mandate is to
(a) review any activity carried out by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service or the Communications Security Establishment;
(b) review any activity carried out by a department that relates to national security or intelligence;
(c) review any matter that relates to national security or intelligence that a minister of the Crown refers to the Agency; and
(d) investigate an array of possible complaints.
The NSICP already can review national security measures while concurrently determining whether any review of an ongoing operation could be injurious to national security. This conclusion was outlined in the recent report of highly respected David Johnston who was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “special rapporteur”. In his report, he outlined the reasons why a public inquiry was not the way to go. This did not please the opposition parties in Parliament, who continue to call for a public inquiry, and the House of Commons consequently voted for Mr. Johnston to step aside. The problem really is that the Conservative opposition members had previously withdrawn from participating on the NSICP over a past case involving a national security issue. While the case was still ongoing, they wanted access to all confidential information concerning the active case. As a result, the NSICP was and has been unable to fulfill its mandate.
There is little doubt that the opposition parties in Parliament, especially the Conservative party, see this issue as a political windfall. However, this approach does nothing to resolve the current immediate questions of Chinese interference as a matter of national security. Remember that the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency was set up as an oversight body, and can brief NSICP members on operational matters. Parliamentarians should be doing their jobs via the NSICP, which is the most logical and speedy mechanism to carry out any timely national security review. Public inquiries are expensive and normally take a long time to complete. After all, any judge appointed to carry out such a review must first obtain expert assistance in the review and take time to become acquainted with such a complicated issue. One has to ask oneself why all this legislation was put in place if Parliamentarians are simply going to ignore it?
FROLITICKS 