The federal Liberal government is\u00a0creating a new “super” civilian watchdog to review security and intelligence agencies across government and extending new powers to Canada’s electronic spy agency.<\/p>\n
The proposed changes were unveiled today as part of a massive legislative overhaul\u00a0of Canada’s anti-terrorism regime.<\/p>\n
After tabling the 139-page\u00a0bill in the House of Commons, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale\u00a0said it aims to strike a better balance between strengthening security in a fast-changing threat environment, and safeguarding the charter and privacy rights of Canadians.<\/p>\n
“Governments have no greater responsibilities than keeping their citizens safe and safeguarding their rights and freedoms,” he said. “These are the fundamental obligations that underpin the new national security legislation.”<\/p>\n
Goodale said the new expert review body, called the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, is a “major innovation in our security architecture.”<\/p>\n
The watchdog agency, which will have a chair and between three and six members, will oversee the Canadian Security Intelligence Service\u00a0(CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and security functions of the RCMP. It will also\u00a0have jurisdiction over every government\u00a0department and agency that has a security or intelligence role, including the Canada Border Services Agency.<\/p>\n
Trudeau Scheer and Mulcair talk about the security legislation<\/strong>0:43<\/p>\n Under new legislation, CSE, the electronic spy agency, will have new powers to work with the Canadian Armed Forces and to\u00a0carry out offensive operations against\u00a0foreign actors,\u00a0to shut down potential cyberattacks in order to protect Canadian assets and critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n The current mandate only allows the agency to defend, block or shield from such attacks.<\/p>\n Today’s legislation also creates\u00a0a new intelligence commissioner position, and that person will authorize certain intelligence and cybersecurity activities before they are carried out.<\/p>\n The commissioner could review and approve ministerial decisions on what kinds of\u00a0data CSIS can\u00a0collect, as well as what foreign data could be retained.<\/p>\n Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan\u00a0said the military will benefit from the electronic spy agency’s new authorities in the face of escalating cyberthreats.<\/p>\n “This allows CSE to be able to use specialized tools and skills to making sure we as a government have the broad range of tools to make sure our interests are protected,” he said.<\/p>\n One of the most controversial elements of C-51, the former Conservative government’s anti-terror bill,\u00a0was to give CSIS\u00a0new powers to disrupt a terrorist threat. That authority was retained in the Liberal bill, but Goodale said\u00a0CSIS will now require\u00a0court approval before taking any\u00a0action that might violate constitutional rights.<\/p>\n “What is critically important is that it be exercised consistently with the law and the charter, and we’ve put the framework in place to make sure that is the case,” he said.<\/p>\n Goodale announces new anti-terror bill<\/strong>2:16<\/p>\n The new bill also checks off a number of election campaign promises to repeal what the platform\u00a0called “problematic elements” of Bill C-51, including:<\/p>\n Conservative MP Erin O’Toole\u00a0criticized what he called an “omnibus security bill” for raising the burden for detaining\u00a0a potential attacker, and relaxing the language around promoting terror. He said those changes will make it harder to prevent attacks.<\/p>\n “They are watering down Canadian security measures all to maintain the election promise with respect to C-51,” he said. “They’re making it more difficult for law enforcement and security agencies to protect Canadians on our soil.”<\/p>\n But NDP public safety critic Matthew Dub\u00e9 said the bill does not go far enough in repealing Conservative measures that compromised the privacy of Canadians.<\/p>\n He raised specific concerns about the continued information-sharing regime, and around the retained power of CSIS to disrupt terror threats, calling that “extremely concerning.”<\/p>\n “While C-51 was a haphazard way of bringing in these broad powers for national security agencies, the broad powers are still there, they’ve only been formalized by the Liberals,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Goodale said the government will also modernize the security apparatus to adapt to new tools and technology to respond to emerging threats from espionage to confront an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment and\u00a0“emboldened adversaries who are more creative\u00a0than ever in their plots.”<\/p>\n The legislation was shaped largely by nationwide consultations through online surveys, town halls and MP outreach, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last month, the government released a summary of those consultations. It found that while most participants were prepared to accept new measures and powers for law enforcement and national security agencies to protect Canadians, they wanted more checks and balances in place.<\/p>\n “A clear majority of stakeholders considered current oversight to be inadequate, and many believe existing review bodies need more capacity and should be allowed to collaborate on reviews,” the report read.\u00a0“There was strong support among roundtable participants and online responses for a single, expert, independent, non-partisan body to oversee all of the government’s national security activities.”<\/p><\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/security-terrorism-legislation-1.4168780?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The federal Liberal government is\u00a0creating a new “super” civilian watchdog to review security and intelligence agencies across government and extending new powers to Canada’s electronic spy agency. The proposed changes were unveiled today as part of a massive legislative overhaul\u00a0of Canada’s anti-terrorism regime. After tabling the 139-page\u00a0bill in the House of Commons, Public Safety Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-79417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}CSIS retains power to disrupt threat<\/h2>\n
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Modernizing security apparatus<\/h2>\n