Second-Lieutenant Edgards Eglitis of the Latvian National Armed Forces (left), gives orders to members of his battalion as Master Warrant Officer James Aucoin, Sergeant Major of the Mobile Training Team from the Royal Canadian Artillery School at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown oversees training. Photo: Aviator Jerome Lessard/Task Force Latvia

The top-secret committee created to review Canada’s security operations is urging the government to create laws that explicitly outline how the military carries out its intelligence operations, as part of the parliamentary body’s first ever annual report.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) tabled its first annual report in the House of Commons on Tuesday. NSICOP was created in 2017 to review how national security and intelligence operations are undertaken in Canada. According to its mandate, it exists to review any issue related to security and intelligence, including legislation, regulations, policy and financial matters.

In the review of its first year, NSICOP set out to report on the Department of National Defence’s (DND) intelligence activities and the government’s process for establishing intelligence priorities.

Responding to observations it made over 54 meetings that included appearances by the leaders of all of Canada’s security and intelligence organizations, NSICOP recommended that the government create “explicit legislative authority” for how DND conducts defence intelligence operations, that the government amend Bill C-59 — which is midway through its legislative journey in the Senate — to create an agency that requires DND to report its intelligence operations each year, and for DND to strengthen the framework that guides its intelligence operations to ensure it properly tracks and meets its obligations.

The chair of NSICOP, Liberal MP David McGuinty, said the committee made the recommendations despite “no evidence of wrongdoing” by DND, in how it conducts intelligence operations.

“We’re not saying that there’s an absence of legality or legal-footing for the activities of DND, we’re saying that the extent of those activities, the size of those activities, the contemplated expansion of those activities, and the fact that DND is … the only full spectrum organization in the country that does what CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), CSE (Communications Security Establishment) and the RCMP do combined … so we’ve tried to produce a very objective analysis of the merits of this, which is why we’ve suggested that the government ought to take a serious look at this issue,” McGuinty told reporters on Tuesday.

In French, McGuinty said they saw no proof of “misunderstanding or unlawfulness” by DND.

NSICOP’s report also contained concerns that officials of DND and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) raised during its review. This included comments from deputy defence minister Jody Thomas, who warned that creating more explicit laws would put Canada military’s information sharing commitments to its allies and its operational flexibility at risk.

“Even the most carefully crafted legislation can lead to unintended or unanticipated consequences, and a set of legal authorities that looks sufficient and clear today may not work under the changed — and often unforeseen — operational realities of tomorrow,” Thomas is quoted as saying, in the report.

NSICOP also made four recommendations related to the government’s process for establishing its intelligence priorities. It wants the National Security and Intelligence Advisor (NSIA), the prime minister’s top security adviser, to take a larger role in setting the government’s intelligence priorities; It urges Canada’s security and intelligence organizations to develop a strategic overview to ensure the government’s cabinet receives the best information it needs to make decisions; It asks for the same organizations to develop tools that address coordination challenges; And it calls for the same governmental groups to develop performance measurement standards to examine how effectively each is at the intelligence tasks its assigned to.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians

NSICOP is multi-partisan and includes eight MPs and three senators, all of whom have the highest level of security clearance. NSICOP is not a parliamentary committee — it reports to the executive branch and meets secretly. Members are also permanently bound to secrecy. The committee has access to any information of a department that’s related to its studies. It’s only restricted from accessing information covered by cabinet confidences, under ongoing criminal investigations, or related to the identity of protected sources.

The committee reported that the average length of its more than 50 meetings for last year’s report was longer than four hours. The report that was made public on Tuesday featured redactions made by Department of Justice, with input from the government’s security organizations, as well as the prime minister. Information is only redacted if it could hurt national security and defence, foreign relations, or if it would violate solicitor-client privilege.

NSICOP also has the ability to conduct special reports. Last year it reviewed incidents during Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s trip to India, in which it found that the Prime Minister’s Office added convicted terrorist Jaspal Atwal’s name to a list of invitees to events where Trudeau appeared.

In 2019, the committee plans to review the threat that foreign interference poses to Canada’s national security, the intelligence operations of the Canada Border Services Agency, diversity in Canada’s security and intelligence community, and the use, retention and dissemination of Canadians’ information by DND in its intelligence operations.

*This story has been updated to note that NSICOP reports to the executive branch.

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