Public Safety committee  If it's a choice between the two, I'd go for a super-SIRC, because if there's intelligence or information sharing among all these agencies, then there should be some kind of reporting after the fact.

Public Safety committee  Well, it should certainly be over the RCMP, and yes, I would include members of Parliament under the same circumstances as the current SIRC members operate. The Australians, as I said, have done this for awhile and it seems to be working fairly well and they have the same kind of regime as we do.

Public Safety committee  No.

Public Safety committee  Yes, I do.

Public Safety committee  Well, yes. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to say it's somewhat gratifying to see that other than academics are concerned with the problem of politicized religions, and to see papers like that one in The Atlantic or in The New York Times is something of a novelty. For those of us who have been looking at the sources of terrorism, the recent waves of terrorism, most of the analogies are made with medieval, apocalyptic movements that believed they were going to transform the entire world by introducing, basically, new realities that were taken from the Book of Revelation.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for the invitation to appear before this committee on such an important matter. It will be obvious enough that I'm not a lawyer. I'm a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Among other things relevant to your deliberations, I've written a book on terrorism as a political religion, major reports on why we need a foreign intelligence service, on the RCMP, and on problems that democracies have in fighting small wars.