The Senate heard a lot of testimony yesterday regarding Bill C-44 – the other bill to boost CSIS’ powers, in case you’d forgotten about it. Those new powers include being able to operate abroad and break laws in other countries, which might be a bit of a problem, and raises a bunch of questions when it comes to how you oversee those kinds of operations, particularly given the limitations that SIRC faces when they can only visit one CSIS foreign posting per year to look into their operations. There was also testimony from Ray Boisvert, the former assistant director at CSIS, who described the internal processes of conducting investigations and getting warrants, painting a pretty robust system of high bars to proceed with investigations or operations – but again, we have to take his word for it, because we no longer have the in-house oversight of the Inspector General’s office, and SIRC does an annual review. SIRC, incidentally, said they have enough resources to do the job they’re supposed for now, but if they’re going to need to take on new responsibilities such as overseeing a far more robust and empowered CSIS, well, they’ll also need more money, which this government seems pretty unwilling to give. Curiously, the deputy minister of Public Safety said that the Auditor General also provides oversight of CSIS operations, which is pretty wrong – he looks at value-for-money, which is not the kind of oversight that CSIS requires.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau gave a speech in Toronto about liberty, and accused the government of spreading fears about Muslims.
• Jason Kenney tweeted some photos of women on the weekend to demonstrate how vile ISIS is. The problem? Those photos are misleading and have been debunked.
• The RCMP have filed an ITO to get more access to suspended Senator Pamela Wallin’s records, and the ITO has some interesting revelations.
• The Chief of Defence Staff says the friendly fire incident won’t damage our relationship with the Kurdish fighters in Iraq.
• Erin O’Toole is busy with damage control on the veterans file.
• The Canadian Press profiles the woman who offered to take in Omar Khadr if he gets bail, and includes a video interview of a prof who’s been working with him.

Odds and ends:

Yvon Godin is outraged that Anglophone kids and francophone kids might ride on the same school bus together. Seriously?

Even Marjory LeBreton realises that the government needs to do a better job when it comes to reaching out to Muslims.

It was Commonwealth Day yesterday. You can read the Queen’s message here, and listen to her read it here.