OTTAWA—A bill to establish a long-promised parliamentary committee to review Canada’s national security agencies will make it a criminal offence for MPs to blab what they learn, says Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

It is already an offence under the Security of Information Act for government officials to disclose security and intelligence information and for any person to make unauthorized disclosures, but Goodale suggested there will be additional precautions taken in the act.

“These MPs will be undertaking a very serious responsibility,” he told reporters. “They’ll have to meet certain, very specific security standards. They’ll have to swear an oath with regard to the information they obtain. And violation of that oath is a criminal offence and a breach of trust. So the consequences for illegally improperly divulging information that is contrary to the national security of Canada is a serious, criminal offence.”

The proposed law Goodale will introduce Thursday in Parliament will fulfill a Liberal promise to give elected MPs the ability to oversee the activities of agencies like the RCMP, the spy agency CSIS, the electronic signals intelligence agency CSE, and border guards at the CBSA.

It is not yet clear whether the Liberal government will allow MPs to oversee in real time the activities and operations of national security agencies, or whether they will operate more as the civilian-led watchdog of CSIS now does — conducting after-the-fact review of those activities. Those details will be revealed when the bill is tabled.

However Goodale expressed confidence Canadian parliamentarians won’t mess up.

Asked how the United States feels about Canadian MPs’ ability to keep classified secrets, Goodale said the U.S. itself doesn’t have such a great track record of keeping secrets.

“The record of Canada in this regard is actually far better than the record of the United States. Their security process is an elaborate one …and it frequently creates headlines,” said Goodale.

“The British model, by comparison, has a very strong record with respect to security,” said Goodale.

Goodale said the broad objective is to have a committee of parliamentarians which would have “extraordinary authority to examine all of the security and intelligence operations of the government of Canada.”

Selected MPs from all parties will have a two-prong job. They will have access to classified information, he said, so that they can “reassure other parliamentarians and Canadians generally that …our security and intelligence agencies are doing what they need to do to keep Canadians safe, and two, that they are safeguarding the values and the rights and freedoms of Canadians.”

Other promised, but unspecified, changes to Canada’s controversial national security law, C51, the 2015 amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act, passed last year by the Conservative government, will have to wait.

The Liberal government, which has been conducting informal consultations for several months, will launch a formal consultation on C51 amendments through the summer and doesn’t expect that will conclude work until late fall, meaning no amendments are likely to be proposed until 2017.

Goodale said he has looked at parliamentary oversight practices in the United Kingdom, France, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

“This will be our own Canadian model that will include what we think best features of other countries and some that will be uniquely our own.”

Goodale insisted he will protect Canadians’ interests in a new border entry/exit system that he has now introduced.

He tabled legislation Wednesday which will see Canada and the U.S. exchange information on who crosses their respective borders.

The entry information collected by the U.S. will be shared and become the exit information Canadian agencies and departments will use to track the movement of Canadian citizens, permanent residents, fugitives, illegal immigrants and human traffickers, said Goodale.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Goodale said it will be useful to track the movements of suspected terrorist sympathizers – something he said Canada’s allies have demanded.

“Every one of our Five Eyes allies and most other countries in the western world have this kind of system in place,” he said.

He said federal agencies and departments will be able to use the information to guard against fraudulent claims, for example, of unemployment insurance benefits.