Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, committee members.

I'm going to talk about the disclosure of intelligence, the new regime that's proposed in Bill C-70, as well as the criminalization of foreign intelligence. I'm going to echo in some ways Thomas Juneau's remarks with respect to transparency, and I do confess we didn't have time to collaborate on this. It's purely coincidental.

The proposal to amend section 19 of the CSIS Act is going to amplify the range and scope of disclosures from where they are currently. It is something I had some personal experience with. I was an intelligence officer in CSIS for 32 years and I was seized with the disclosure regime.

The proposal, of course, under the rubric of building resiliency against threats, is that the service may disclose intelligence to those outside federal departments. We're hearing about the private sector. We're hearing about universities, particularly those engaged in sensitive research. We're hearing about other levels of government, including indigenous government bodies as well, and municipal government and law enforcement. A wider orbit is being proposed where intelligence will be shared in the interests of national security.

This is going to be a significant overhaul in terms of both the mandate of CSIS and of national security. I do say that this is way beyond foreign interference. This covers other programs that CSIS collects intelligence on. The government is going to decide in some ways how this intelligence is going to be shared.

Nobody's going to be opening taps and turning on spigots and declassifying information, but I think there's a lot of expectations in various sectors in Canada that this is actually going to be happening. We're still going to have the need-to-know principle. We're still going to have to have people who are security cleared to receive that intelligence. They're going to actually have to have a clearance. They're going to have to have background checks. We're going to have to ensure that this intelligence has the physical and IT protection to safeguard it. You can't have intelligence being provided to new partners and then a week later be reading it on social media.

I'm enthusiastic about it. I think it's going to really enhance the government's more holistic view and assessment of threats. It gives CSIS a lot more leverage as well. Echoing my colleague's remarks, it makes more transparency clearly with government.

The other aspect I wanted to make reference to is the criminalization of foreign intelligence and the measures to counter foreign intelligence. We're talking about clause 50. We're talking about the foreign interference and security of information act for the amendment. I'm very enthusiastic about this. When I testified at a committee a year ago in March, one of the comments I made was that unlike for terrorism and for espionage, there actually is no legislative hammer. There actually are no legal consequences of any significance for enablers of foreign interference. That's changing with this new legislation. I'm very excited about it. This will allow the government to basically prosecute, whether it's transnational repression or whether it's interference in our democratic processes.

I also find it interesting that in this bill there's an extraterritorial application going into this foreign interference and transnational repression. This makes a lot of sense, because CSIS's mandate in security intelligence is not limited to Canada; CSIS works around the world. In many ways this will complement their subsection 2(b) activities in terms of intelligence collection on transnational repression as well as interference in an election so that it can actually be prosecuted.

I'm going to quote specifically. They're saying that “Despite subsection 26(1), a person who commits an act referred to in subsection (1) while outside Canada is deemed to have committed it in Canada if...the victim is in Canada” or if the victim is abroad.

Let's say they're in India or they're in the People's Republic of China; they can still be prosecuted in Canada. There's no sanctuary in the fact that this activity or an aspect of this activity is taking place outside of Canada.

The legislation also calls for the same thing with consequences on influencing political government processes. Proposed subsection 20.4(1) reads:

20.‍4 (1) Every person commits an indictable offence who, at the direction of, or in association with, a foreign entity, engages in surreptitious or deceptive conduct with the intent to influence a political or governmental process

and continues:

2) Every person who commits an offence under subsection (1) is liable to imprisonment for life.

This is serious. This is what you get with espionage and this is what you get with terrorism. I'm delighted to see this coming into the foreign interference file. The particular SOIA amendments will offer criminal sanctions against clandestine foreign interference designed to benefit a foreign state in actions against the Canadian state, its interests or the exercise of democratic rights. This will open the way to laying foreign interference charges in Canada—something we have not seen and that I think we'd all agree is fairly relevant these days.

Lastly, I want to mention that there have been some adjustments to CSIS authorities in section 16. That's the non-threat-related foreign interference. I'm very enthused about that. I know it's giving CSIS a lot more of a holistic view in terms of the foreign intelligence mandate they have. I know the bill has its limitations, but I would like to see, at some point, the government scrap section 12 and section 16, because it's an anachronistic classification we have from the Cold War. I think this change signifies that the government is recognizing that we don't need collection within Canada of what is considered to be foreign intelligence.

That's it, and thank you.