Dominic Rochon
Dominic Rochon spoke 91 times across 1 day of testimony.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I will affirm.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Dominic James Rochon. D-O- M-I-N-I-C R-O-C-H-O-N.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
That’s correct.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
That is correct.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Correct.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
October 31st was my first day.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I think if you just move up the page just slightly, but I can speak to them, yes. So the National Cyber Security Branch has five divisions. Primarily it is responsible for national security policy matters, national security operations matters, critical infrastructure, cyber security and over the last three years, there was a special task force regarding economic security.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
They could. Essentially, that particular Directorate oversees the critical infrastructure strategy that has been in place since 2010. We have been, over the last couple of years, in the midst of refreshing that strategy. We -- that particular Directorate engages with the 10 critical infrastructure sectors. There are private sector leads and public sector leads for each of those sectors and they deal with matters of -- we provide risk assessments when there are threats. They could be cyber-related threats, but any threats to any critical infrastructure across those 10 critical infrastructure sectors.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
And then the next not bullet there, but the next line in the chart, the Task Force on Economic Security, tell us a little bit about the work of that task force and whether or not it played into the convoy at all.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
It did not. That task force was stood up over the last three years, as I pointed out, in order to look at the broader framework that is economic security. Economic security is a term that can mean a lot of things. From a national security perspective, that task force was looking into -- through various lenses potential threats to Canada’s economy stemming from threat actors, potentially hostile state actors. Those threats can emanate from -- and indeed, we have an elaborate control system across Canada. We have export controls, we have the Investment Canada Act. We have a series of tools, but the Economic Security Task Force was looking at whether or not those tools were fit to purpose and, indeed, whether that tool set was adequate in order to protect ourselves against the threats of today. And so most of that work looked at and is moving towards an economic security strategy that would introduce research security to protect intellectual property, for example, things of that nature. So specifically that task force did not have a role to play with regard to the -- this particular situation.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would describe my role specifically having gone through the five Directorates in my branch. The one Directorate in particular, the National Security Operations Directorate, through that Directorate I have a responsibility -- and I’ll refer to the presentation that was given to us this morning where we highlighted the Privy Council Office and its role. With the Privy Council Office, they have a Security and Intelligence Secretariat. The assistant secretary responsible for that secretariat and I have a responsibility of convening the security and intelligence community, which is some 16 departments and agencies, on a regular basis to discuss ongoing operational national security matters for situational awareness and, indeed, to be able to make sure that we’re coordinating with community to be able to respond to potential threats to national security. So that particular committee is called the Assistant Deputy Minister National Security Operations Committee, ADMNSOPs, if you don’t mind me that acronym. I’ll probably refer to that a lot. So ADMNSOPs meets every week, once a week. During the convoy situation, I would say that the regular meeting on Tuesday, January 25th we discussed the convoy, but after that date, we decided to have ad hoc meetings, so every day, daily meetings of that committee pretty much throughout the rest of the operational situation, if I could put it that way. So I guess my role primarily was to convene along with my PCO colleague, the Privy Council Office colleague, all the various representatives of these departments and agencies in the security and intelligence community. And I’m happy to walk you through who they might be. But we would get together and discuss whether or not this issue was an issue of national security and whether or not it could lead to threats to national security.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Mike MacDonald is the Assistant Secretary to the Secretariat for Security and Intelligence.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
So I’ll start by explaining that intelligence with regard to the federal family, you have collectors of intelligence, you have assessors of intelligence and you have consumers of intelligence. Public Safety Department is a consumer. We don’t per se collect intelligence and we don’t assess intelligence. We consume it. Why does one consume intelligence? In order to be able to be better informed so that decisions -- so that decisions can be made. And those decisions are made across all departments and agencies. The key collectors of intelligence, CSIS, the Communications Security Establishment, CBSA to a certain extent, what they collect and what they see at the border, RCMP, but indeed, beyond the federal family, there’s also collection of intelligence that occurs within police of jurisdiction, which I’m sure you would have heard about it, municipal level, at the provincial level, et cetera. Intelligence is -- can be very broad. It’s not an exact science, and really only provides a piece of information at a moment in time. The federal family also has assessors of that intelligence, which means they pull different threads of intelligence together in order to be able to fuse it and provide a more holistic picture to again better inform potential decisions related to national security matters. Assessors are the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, ITAC. You have the Privy Council Office also has a secretariat, the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat, but to a certain extent, CSIS, the Communications Security Establishment, perform their own assessments and are able to provide reports, as does the RCMP. When we convene the ADMNSOPs group, typically we will use different pieces of intelligence in order to be able to inform us on various issues that are happening all over the world that could lead to or are posing a threat to national security. So throughout the particular situation with the convoy, I would say that there was some intelligence that was likely being pulled together at a police of jurisdiction level. That isn't something that would make its way to our federal family table as a matter of course. The RCMP sits at that table and would bring any information that they would learn, as they're stitched up with different police of jurisdiction across the country, they would bring that information to the table if there was something relevant that needed to be flagged. But there is a distinction between something rising to (a), national security level, and something that is a police matter that they might be dealing with throughout the country.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
So, again, our branch does not collect intelligence. We're consumers of it. So we would be receiving that intelligence from different parties, be it CSIS or be it the RCMP in the federal family context. The Government Operations Centre is another element of Public Safety. They fall under the Emergency Management Branch. They don't fall under my branch. Nevertheless, the Government Operations Centre, otherwise known as the GOC, does have a role to play with regard to any potential emergency in terms of pulling together information and disseminating that information about a potential emergency. They're a 24/7 OP Centre at Public Safety. So the reason I mention them is, obviously, if there is a potential protest -- or, for example, on Canada Day when there are provisions that need to be made in terms of securing a particular area, or if there's a potential threat that may be arising, the Government Operations Centre does start collecting open source information and sharing that information across the federal security and intelligence community in order for there to be situational awareness about a potential for social disruption or something that may be of concern. So I would say the GOC was aware, and within Public Safety would have been the first entity that would have started collecting information. I think that the weekend before the convoy decided to make its way to Ottawa, they would have started collecting some information and disseminating it. Following that, Transport Canada, obviously given their mandate, would have started having concerns about slow rolls and disruptions to traffic. And the member of Transport Canada that is a member of the ADM in this OPs, Kevin Brousseau, would have called both Mike MacDonald and I to say that he wanted to make sure that the issue was brought to the attention of the ADMNSOPs Committee because it did have the potential of rising to a national security level given the fact that this was happening across Canada.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
He did call, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
No.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would just elaborate that there are different forms of intelligence. You have human source -- so human intelligence that you get from human sources, you have signals intelligence. So there are a whole series of different types of intelligence that can be collected and different departments in the agencies can collect that intelligence under their respective mandates. So they can only collect that information, provided that it follows the various legislation that underpins their existence.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I certainly can. I would say, and you'll have the opportunity, I assume, to speak with the RCMP and with CSIS, as you have with police of jurisdiction, whether it be provincial or municipal. Every -- at every level, I would assume, and I believe it is the case, there are intelligence bodies that pull together intelligence on a wide variety of issues. And if there's a particular incident that is occurring, they will pull together a particular operation and start collecting information, intelligence about that particular issue. So I'm assuming here, in this case, that the Ontario Provincial Police will have -- would have started Operation Hendon. Now police of jurisdiction will get together and liaise with the RCMP, so I would be -- I am quite certain that the RCMP would have been privy to anything coming out of Project Hendon, as they would have been privy to anything coming out of the Ottawa Police Service and other police of jurisdiction across Ontario or indeed across Canada. And for the purposes of our National Security Committee that looks at operational situations, the RCMP would be feeding us any relevant information, but they would not be referring to an Operation Hendon or an operation -- whatever the various operations. They wouldn’t tell us where the information would be coming from specifically, they would simply be flagging anything that would be of interest for the table.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
M’hm.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Ninety-seven (97)?
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Oh, sorry. Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I’ll give it a go. To be honest, the national security strategy dates back to 2004. And there are several academic institutions as of late that have recommended that the Government of Canada come out with a more -- a newer version, or at least refresh that strategy. I’ll start by explaining what was meant in terms of CSIS and whether or not the threshold was met with regard to their Act. What that -- what I think Comm. Carrique was referring to was the fact that, as I was mentioning earlier, CSIS has the ability to collect intelligence, but they can only collect intelligence if certain thresholds have been met. CSIS are only but one of a number of inputs into the national security landscape. And so they do have targets, whether it be -- and I’ll use a term here that I’m sure is going to come up, or probably already has come up that will come up fairly frequently, that of ideologically motivated violent extremism. Public Safety also has a counterterrorism strategy; we have a cybersecurity strategy; we’re developing an economic security strategy, as I mentioned earlier. We’re looking to create a hostile activities of state actors’ framework to deal with foreign interference. So the reason why we don’t have a -- perhaps an up-to-date national security strategy is because national security now permeates a whole host of things, all walks of life in terms of Canadian society. And I won’t even get into threats posed by climate change; indeed, the pandemic itself, the Public Health situation. Unfortunately, there is no -- as far as I know, no definition in legislation of national security. CSIS does have a definition of threats to the security of Canada. I believe the Security of Canada’s Information Disclosure Act, SCIDA, also speaks to a definition of threats and security of Canada. We have review bodies for the security and intelligence community: the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians; NSIRA and NSICOP. They have gone to great pains to sort of define what their purview is, in terms of national security. And indeed it covers, as I mentioned earlier, some 16 departments and agencies. So when it comes to national security, we’re not necessarily looking at one specific threat, a terrorism threat, but rather the impact on Canada’s ability to maintain the security of its institutions, its democracy, its people, its economy, the resilience of all of these things.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes, absolutely.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
As far as the Ottawa situation was, yes. And we were also watching to see whether other protests that were bubbling across the country would also -- but the expectation was they would all be peaceful and they would last for that weekend.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
No, other than to say, you know, transport obviously had some concerns with regards to various protests happening and how it might affect the flow of traffic, how it might affect supply chain issues, from a transport perspective. Canada Border Services Agency, I think, started to ask questions about particular ports of entry. And so from the critical infrastructure perspective, and this is really why GOC was involved, is to make sure that we were mindful that there could be impacts to critical infrastructure. And as a result, you were being watchful. But the expectation, although it does say in this document, I note, that INTERSECT, which was the broader group that Mr. Stewart referred to a moment ago, they indicated that the situation was very fluid and that it could go on for a more prolonged period, particularly in Ottawa.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Defence, CBSA ---
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
--- interact.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Well on signals intelligence, I should point out the Communication Security Establishment is responsible for two things. One, collecting foreign signals intelligence on non-Canadians outside of Canada. It’s a very strict mandate. But they also have the responsibility for the Canadian Cyber Centre. So they produce threat assessments, for example, for cyber incidents and things of that nature.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
So commensurate with those two meetings that Mr. Stewart just described, ADMNSOPs was also meeting daily and essentially feeding into those meetings. So it’s just one layer below in terms of Assistant Deputy Ministers from all of those same departments and agencies coming together and discussing situational awareness around the various incidents that were occurring across the country.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yeah.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Well, in this particular case it, again, refers to extremist elements. So from a terrorism perspective, I had mentioned earlier the ideologically motivated violent extremism, which is something that CSIS is coming to grips with, and indeed, have provided language in and around defining that, because historically, I would say, individuals are influenced by a singular definable belief system. And that's how we used to treat terrorism. There's been an evolution with regard to terrorism as of late. Now there is a confluence of a whole series of grievances that can come to bear, and it becomes a lot more difficult to track exactly how a particular threat can manifest itself in this IMVE environment. So there are xenophobic violence, anti-authority violence, gender-driven violence, other grievances that CSIS now have to wrap their minds around, how do we go after and collect information to protect Canadians against these emerging threats, when it can -- as opposed to a, as I mentioned earlier, a believe system where there is a clear head and a org structure behind a particular organization. In today's world now, we're seeing more and more that a lone wolf, a lone actor can actually perpetrate a particular extremist violent event. Nevertheless, the tools at our disposal and at CSIS's disposal is very much the CSIS Act that was written in 1984. And there is part 2C of the CSIS Act, or indeed part 2 of the CSIS Act gives 4 different distinctions as to what they can collect intelligence on, and it describes threats to the security of Canada. So in this particular instance, what we were referring to, as you can appreciate, federal provinces and -- or sorry, provinces and territories, representatives would be under the impression that federal government is sitting on a treasure trove of classified intelligence. And based on that intelligence, they would want to know, are we seeing something from an intelligence perspective that would show that these protests are organized and that, ultimately, they constitute an extremist threat to overthrow the government or something to that effect. So specifically, with regard to that extremist element, what we were saying here, or what the Deputy was referring to here is that as of yet, CSIS has not met a threshold to cause them to collect additional intelligence on a broader set of Canadians because they had not seen evidence of that. That being said, I should just also qualify that that doesn't mean that they weren't monitoring certain extremist targets of theirs that have met that threshold and seeing whether or not they were interested. And I also want to qualify a comment that I might have made earlier, intelligence, again, is not an exact science, and it's not foolproof. So just because you have a piece of evidence, or a piece of intelligence rather, doesn't mean that you have the full picture. And it becomes a very difficult mosaic to try and pull together in terms of pulling together intelligence emanating from CSIS, emanating from police forces, emanating from Canada Border Services Agency, pulling that picture together to determine whether there's a national security threat is a different proposition than indicating whether or not CSIS specifically had evidence of a violent extremism meeting their threshold.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I did two.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
So the Assistant Secretary responsible for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention, Samantha Vinograd, did reach out to my National Security Policy Directorate to ask about, you know, for situational awareness about what was going on with regard to the protests, and whether or not threats were manifesting themselves. And so I was brought in. I don't have the date off the top of my head, but I was brought in I think the week of February 10th. During that week, I provided a brief to her and some of her officials in terms of the situation happening in Canada and whether or not we had any -- how we were coping with the potential threat to national security. And similarly, obviously, on her side of the border, you know, following -- the year prior with the January 6th capital event, they still had potential extremist elements and there was also the possibility of convoys happening in and around various activities happening in Washington. So we were just comparing and we agreed to keep each other in touch with regard to the threat situation from the counterterrorism perspective.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
From my recollection, not specifically, but they certainly had it on their radar as -- they were expressing concern about what they were hearing about, and seeing in Canada, and wanted to make sure that they understood how we were coping with it and whether or not it could manifest itself on their side of the border.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Sure. Following the invocation of the Act, I was given the responsibility to lead a number of government officials into a series of technical briefs that occurred over the course of, I want to say three, possibly four days. Those briefs included briefing leaders of opposition parties. In fact, culminating, I think we briefed all members of the Senate and their -- and Senators’ offices, and we essentially offered up as many technical briefs as necessary to explain why the Act was invoked and how it would be implemented. So I was chosen as -- given my position and my role with regard to National Security Policy, as the main chef d’orchestre of the brief, but included with me were members of CBSA, RCMP, Department of Finance, Department of Transport, and, of course, Department of Justice.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I should point out, I think we also did -- offered same technical briefs for members of the media.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Well, for section 12 they would have to get a warrant.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Again, I’m not an expert when it comes to CSIS, CSIS Act.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Si.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would agree, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
It was not. I agree.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would agree, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
That would be fair, yeah.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Correct.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Not technically speaking. The government is always looking at policy matters and it will be a decision for the sitting government of the day, whether or not to publish an update to that strategy. But subset to the National Security Strategy, there are a series of other strategies like a cyber security strategy, a critical infrastructure strategy. So we’re always working on those, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
The national security one? Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Indeed, I would say post 9- 1-1 the very creation of our department at public safety, followed and indeed I think that was the impetus for Canadian’s National Security Strategy at the time, in 2004.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would even go so far as to highlight the counterterrorism strategy which I think dates back to 2012, if I'm not mistaken, and we're in the process of refreshing that. Parliamentary Committee and the House of Commons for National Security, SECU, has recently done a study on ideologically motivated violent extremism, which came out with 33 recommendations. We recently tabled, I believe, the government response to that study and we're in the process of updating our counterterrorism strategy that will deal with what you referred to, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
That would be correct.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Correct.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I wouldn't say flawed because intelligence is only as good as a moment in time when it's collected, and you have to know where to go looking for it. And at the time, all of the various indications were pointing to a peaceful protest. And so police of jurisdiction, who handle these types of protests on a regular basis, there was no reason to question their integrity in terms of their assessment. But as the protests grew in number across the country and, indeed, witnessing the various behaviours and the entrenchment of the occupation in Ottawa, and the impacts on Canadians, Canadian lives, the economy, the reputation of the country, trading issues, supply chain issues, yes, it definitely rose to the national security concern.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
The difficulty is that you don't know what you don't know.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
And therefore, there are always unknowns.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would only agree with it insomuch as perhaps historically, there might have been a bias, but I believe more recently, as I've indicated, ideologically motivated violent extremism is -- has risen to the level where our security and intelligence agencies have it as the top priority at the moment. I would argue that if you look at just at the terrorist listings that we're responsible for with Public Safety, we've I think listed up to nine now INVE groups in the last three years. So I would not agree with that characterization in the present day. But historically speaking, we certainly were more focussed on other types of terrorism.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
No, I would disagree.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
No, I’m afraid not.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would argue that the reason why we have an ADM National Security Operations Committee Table every week is to have subject matter experts across 16 departments and agencies bring forward information that would be relevant for that table, and then we ask questions and try to anticipate threats to national security. And in this particular instance, we would have all been aware of convoys and we would have been deferring to the RCMP or Transport, or indeed, CSIS, ITAC and others to flag for us if there was something more to bring to our attention. And at the early stages, that wasn’t the case.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes and no. I mean, there’s enough experience around that ADM National Security Operations table to ask those types of questions. You know, intelligence fusion is always a challenge. And so bringing together all of the various pieces of intelligence to get an accurate picture at a moment in time is something that we have experience with, and at that point in time, we had no reason to believe this was going to be anything more than a peaceful protest.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I believe so, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would simply say from my recollection that we pretty much ran full on doing technical brief after technical brief after technical brief with different stakeholders, be they the both Houses of Parliament, media, as well as stakeholders, and each one typically would run for half an hour to an hour, but in this particular case, we were affording stakeholders sometimes up to two hours, sometimes even longer. And we were trying to address as many questions, but as you can appreciate, we had a panel of experts from a great number of departments and agencies, and therefore, questions stemmed from law enforcement activity to border service activity to finance, and therefore, we were, I think, if I look back at this exchange, probably wondering whether there wouldn't be a way of having people submit questions in writing and maybe there would be a better way of posting our answers online as opposed to continuing with the number of technical briefs that we were providing.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would say it’s the latter interpretation.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Sorry, I wasn’t sure if you were finished.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
That’s why I was waiting. So my apologies. Yes, I think it certainly gives them additional tools by other means of additional authorities that they can avail themselves of.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would agree.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Not specifically, no.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
But I don’t disagree with the thought, I guess.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Certainly. The way these briefs are typically handled, in my experience having gone through many of these over the course of my career, is that you normally have a moderator. So a moderator from a particular department will invite -- will essentially moderate a call. This typically will happen on a teleconference line. The teleconference line will be open to a series of stakeholders. If it’s a media event, for example, you'll have a number of media spokespeople who will be in a queue and they -- having never been on the other side, I’m not sure what technology they use. But they get into a queue in order to be able to ask questions. Normally, a moderator will open up, will explain who is representing the government, will walk through the time that will be allotted to an opening statement by the government officials, and how much time will be allotted for questions, and whether or not questions -- whether or not stakeholders are afforded a follow-up to that question. Having been a former Assistant Deputy Minister of Communications in a previous department, this is protocol that we normally follow. Unfortunately, in light of the way that these were being set up, this particular brief, from my recollection, Justice was supposed to be lead. So the first meeting was chaired by Public Safety. We would have followed that protocol. And therefore, we only would have gotten to six questions because the six questions were likely rather broad and they were followed by each a follow-up. And we didn’t -- the cut-off time of an hour, if I remember correctly, that first brief, ended up limiting itself to six questions. And there were a number of people in the queue that complained about that which is my first point. The second brief was one that was led by Justice officials. They didn’t have a moderator. And so if I remember correctly, I came on and had to play the role of moderator and try to police how the call was being managed because there was no moderator. Hence, my comment that it was rather bananas.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes, ma’am.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I did indeed.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes, not just that, but also, better coordination with the private sector and all levels of government.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
So those are two separate things. Emergency management is one framework. Critical infrastructure is a separate one, and the original Critical Infrastructure Strategy written back in 2010. Unfortunately, there are different strata within the management of emergencies, so cyber -- in a cyber event, cyber security, or a national security event, a terrorist event does not fall under the rubric of emergency management and it would follow a different set of circumstances. As it is written now, the new Critical Infrastructure Strategy that we're pulling together, we're currently consulting and we're leveraging various different tables in order to better understand how we can manage critical infrastructure going forward and that is still a work in progress.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Yes, I believe that's correct.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
That's my recollection, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I'm trying to think. At that time, I believe situation of the national security threat was certainly top of mind, and we were -- my recollection and not having the document in front of me, I -- my recollection is that we were looking at every available tool available to us and to provinces and territories and municipalities in order to be able to deal with the situation, the threat that seemed to be growing.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Sorry. Go ahead.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
I would argue there are always intelligence gaps. That’s the nature of the business. Part of the -- part of collecting intelligence and fusing it and assessing it is to come up with questions as to what is in the art of the possible; therefore, what do -- what is it that we know and what could also transpire and what do we need to protect Canada and Canadians against in terms of assessing threats? So when it comes to the unknown, you will have seen through a number of assessments, reports, whether it be from the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, ITAC; or PCOIAS, the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat; or indeed, from RCMP or other intelligence organizations, they were always flagging the level of threat. They would articulate it as medium and they would articulate the possibility of Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism and the fact that a lone wolf could occur. And so when it comes to assessing intelligence, there's always a level of what is the likelihood that something could transpire? So when it comes to unknowns, there were many unknowns throughout the situation, and as the situation continued to be prolonged, and indeed, as we saw it expand across the country, those questions as to whether or not a hostile state actor may be involved in terms of funding, whether there were questions of extremist groups or possible extremist factions involved, would this provide fertile ground for extremists to recruit? There were counter-protests that were emerging as well, so all of that factored into a bunch of questions that I would characterize as unknowns and that needed to be taken into consideration. So it's not just factually, what did we know, because at the end of the day, when it comes to intelligence and when it comes to law enforcement and security, it's not about dealing with something once it happens, but it's about preventing something before it happens, and in order to prevent it, you need to think through what could happen and put in place measures to protect Canada and Canadians.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
That’s a much more eloquent way of putting it, yes.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
The only thing I would add is that the opinion around the security and intelligence community was that this -- the paragraph that you read was factually correct. There were indications of potential violent acts, IMVE adherents that were certainly engaging on line and were making threats on line. And we needed to be mindful that those threats could materialize at any moment, given the growing nature of the situation both in Ottawa and across the country.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Exactly. I mean, what I was trying to explain earlier on today when I was asked the question, is captured in that paragraph in that there was the threat that the longer this situation was allowed to happen, the more likely it was that IMVE groups would take advantage of it. And that was a significant concern for the Security and Intelligence community.
-
Dominic Rochon, ADM (GC-PS)
Thank you very much.