Public Safety committee  I'm not aware of any other body, an independent, arm's-length body such as ours, that would have the span of review that is envisaged in O'Connor's report, no.

Public Safety committee  That's correct.

Public Safety committee  Actually, the parliamentary committees, as far as I can see, do not have the degree of access that we enjoy at SIRC. I think it's because we are independent and not within Parliament or answerable to a minister that we were given those extraordinary powers of access. So there's a bit of a saw-off between whether you want an organization that has full and complete access but doesn't have any kind of political function, or whether you give it to the political arm and you restrict the access to some degree.

Public Safety committee  It's just a different model.

Public Safety committee  You're correct in the terminology. It's known as the Passenger Protect list. It is a list administered by Transport Canada. As Ms. Roussel explained, people can complain to SIRC if they believe that the reason they're on that list relates to information that has been provided to Transport Canada by CSIS.

Public Safety committee  That's correct.

Public Safety committee  We have had some complaints, but I can't go into any details.

Public Safety committee  I'll deal with the latter question first. We've never seen any information to suggest that anything of this sort has been happening here. As for the first question, related to information obtained through torture, there is a decision that has been rendered by a member of this committee in the context of a complaint that was made, in which it was determined that at times, yes, CSIS does use information that was obtained through torture and that their overriding focus in doing so....

Public Safety committee  I'm assuming you're talking about the quasi-judicial aspect of our work.

Public Safety committee  Post 9/11, when the so-called PSAC budget, the Public Safety anti-terrorism budget, was enacted, we did say that if CSIS was going to have its budget increased by a substantial amount then we felt SIRC would need to have something reflective of that. We did make representations.

Public Safety committee  No.

Public Safety committee  Let me say to begin with that I think you need to approach the work on the basis that CSIS is, as we are, a professional organization that takes pride in what they do. They take it seriously. The people who work there are recruited with great care. They are trained and they spend most of their working career in that line of work.

Public Safety committee  I think that's a very good way of summarizing it.

Public Safety committee  Can I just take a moment to talk about “review” versus “oversight”?

Public Safety committee  I don't want to give you a university lecture, but I'm pretty religious about sticking to the term “review” because it was the intended role of SIRC vis-à-vis CSIS. “Oversight” would imply we are inside directing the day-to-day decisions of the organization, and therefore we would be implicated in any impact of those decisions down the road.