[GGG]

Some interesting stuff out of the Convoy commission today. They are now in the policy phase where they are gathering opinions on how to modernize the acthttps://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/pol...1_6174928.html

You have the last two csis directors recommending that they remove references to the csis act and redefine emergency. You also have a former department of Justice lawyer for csis saying they didn’t meet the act as currently written.

Elcock said CSIS would need to interpret that definition very differently as an intelligence agency than cabinet would when it comes to deciding whether to declare a national emergency.
He said CSIS interprets the definition in terms of the limitations on its activities as an intelligence service. "None of those things are relevant to the discussions of cabinet or to the issues that a cabinet might debate," he testified.
Fadden said the CSIS definition is, appropriately, very narrow and precise.
"What this has to do with the declaration of a public order emergency escapes me entirely," Fadden said.
Both argued the government should redefine national security threats in the Emergencies Act, and could expand that to include threats to the economy and those posed by climate change.

Prof. Leah West, a national security law expert with Carleton University and a former Department of Justice lawyer for CSIS, argued Wednesday the protests did not meet the legal threshold.
"We should ask ourselves whether unlawful and even violent protests typically give rise to what we call a national security threat under the law in this country? Did we label the G8 and G20 protests in Toronto a national security or terrorist threat?" she posed to the commission.
"Similarly, we have never labelled blockades and other non-violent but illegal means of obstructing critical infrastructure as terrorism."

Should be interesting the recommended changes coming out of this commission are.