Opposition seeks parliamentary oversight of Canada’s spy agencies

OTTAWA — Opposition parties are calling for greater oversight of Canada’s spy agencies as questions continued to swirl about the size and scope of super-secret U.S. and Canadian surveillance programs.

Concerns about Canada’s spy agencies existed even before it was learned over the past week that the U.S. National Security Agency and the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) have been mining Internet and telephone records from around the world.

But those revelations have given extra impetus to calls for the need to ensure a proper balance between national security and privacy protection, as well as better ways to monitor the activities of agencies that largely operate in the shadows.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay noted Tuesday that CSEC is overseen by an independent commissioner, in this case a retired judge, who reviews the agency’s activities to ensure they comply with the law.

He also said federal law prevents the top-secret intelligence and cyber-security agency from specifically targeting Canadians anywhere in the world or anyone in Canada.
Communications Security Establishment Canada building on Heron Rd.

This includes a surveillance program MacKay authorized in November 2011 in which CSEC was tasked with collecting telephone records as well as electronic communications such as emails and documents between individuals around the world to find patterns of suspicious activity.

But CSEC has been spared any significant increase in oversight, and faces no parliamentary monitoring, even though it has grown from a staff of 900 and a budget of $140 million in 2001, to 1,950 staff and a $350-million budget in 2012.

Similarly, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service is overseen by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, but otherwise has no parliamentarians involved in the accountability process.

NDP defence critic Jack Harris said parliamentary oversight is necessary to ensure a proper balance between privacy and national security, and he called for some type of mechanism by which members of all parties could be approved to review secret information.

Such an initiative has been proposed in the past, most recently by Liberal Sen. Romeo Dallaire after the federal auditor general’s report found $3.1 billion in anti-terrorism spending was unaccounted for.

“The fact of the matter is the whole purpose of parliamentary oversight is that citizens should not be expected to trust one person,” he said. “There has to be that kind of oversight.”

Harris said despite MacKay’s assertions that Canadians are not being targeted by this country’s spy agencies, there remain significant questions about what happens when it comes across such information while looking overseas — or is given such information by an ally.

He applauded federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart’s decision to dig into whether Canadians’ privacy may have been unduly affected by the Canadian and U.S. “metadata” surveillance programs.

But he said CSEC’s separation from the Department of National Defence last year to become a stand-alone entity also reduced the Commons’ defence committee’s ability to look into CSEC’s activities.

Liberal defence critic John McKay said there may also be a need to review the rules and regulations surrounding the collection and use of electronic communications to ensure it is kept up to date with current technology.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Lee Berthiaume