The Private Member’s Bill C-622, also known as the CSEC Accountability and Transparency Act, sponsored by Liberal MP Joyce Murray, was defeated at the second reading stage yesterday, November 5th, in the House of Commons. One hundred and twenty MPs voted in favour of the bill, while 142 (all of them members of the Conservative caucus) voted against it. One Conservative MP voted in favour. Click here to read the official transcript of the vote.

The bill sought to enhance parliamentary oversight for Canada’s signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and other Canadian spy agencies and would have required judicial authorization for activities that might involve the collection of “protected information” about Canadians or persons in Canada. For more information on the content of Bill C-622, read Joyce Murray’s backgrounder.

Prior to the vote, David Pugliese provided some additional background on the bill:

[Liberal MP Joyce Murray] is the one proposing the bill which would establish integrated parliamentary oversight for Canada’s security and intelligence agencies, similar to what exists among Canada’s allies.

More from Murray’s office:

The government has stated that it will vote against the bill, even though several Conservative MPs have expressed their interest in the bill being sent to committee for further study.

[…]

The following people support Bill C-622 to be sent to the committee stage:

Public Officials

John Adams, former CSEC Chief

Ann Cavoukian, PhD, former Ontario Privacy Commissioner

Politicians

Jack Harris, NDP Defence Critic

Hugh Segal, former Conservative Senator

Jean-Jacques Blais, former Minister of Defence and member of the Security Intelligence Review Committee

Civil Society

Cailey Dipuma, BC Civil Liberties Association

Steve Anderson, Open Media

Kevin Scott, Canadian Identity Theft Support Centre

Tamir Israel, Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic

Ron Deibart, Citizen Lab

Sheldon Clare, President, National Firearms Association (Canada)

Bill Robinson, Lux Ex Umbra security blog

Academia

Wesley Wark, Professor at the University of Ottawa and a National Security expert

Craig Forcese, Professor at the University of Ottawa Law School

Michael Geist, Professor at the University of Ottawa Law School

Paul J Quirk, Professor at the University of British Columbia.”

Read David Pugliese’s full article to here.

Photo credit: CC BY 2.0 image “Ottawa – Parliament House of Commons – Government side” by A Yee on Flickr