Mr. Chair, I don't support Madam Damoff's amendment. NSICOP is not a parliamentary committee. It's not a committee of Parliament. In fact, subsection 4(3) of the act that created the committee explicitly states that NSICOP is “[n]ot a committee of Parliament”.
We are parliamentarians. We function in parliamentary committees and on the floor of the House of Commons as a whole. I think that giving these documents to an extra-parliamentary committee is completely unacceptable.
Parliament needs information to do its work. Committees and the House as a whole are where we do our work. That work is on the public record. It's in Hansard. It's on video recordings. It's kept in the archives for posterity. This is the place where these documents need to be sent, not to some committee outside of Parliament that sits within the executive branch of government.
If we had a committee like the United Kingdom's Intelligence and Security Committee, which is in fact a committee of Parliament whose members are voted on by members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, then that would be a different matter. The fact is that this committee is not a committee of Parliament and it is not accountable to Parliament; it is accountable to the Prime Minister's Office. Its members serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister.
In fact, subsection 5(1) of the act that created NSICOP makes it clear that all the appointments are GIC at-pleasure appointments—in other words, Governor in Council at-pleasure appointments of the Prime Minister. Any minister of the government has the right to terminate a committee's review and the right to deny the committee information, and the Prime Minister has the power to review and demand revisions to reports before they are made public. It's all in the act that creates that committee.
Clearly, it's the wrong place to be sending these documents. In fact, just two months ago, in March, the committee issued a statement of pretty harsh rebuke of the government. In that statement, the committee said that the government had not been giving the committee the information it requested and did not provide relevant material. It said, “Should this continue, the ability of the committee to fulfill its statutory mandate will be compromised”. This was just two months ago. This was publicly reported on. This was a public statement by the committee. This followed on similar concerns that were raised by the committee in 2019 and 2020.
I don't support this amendment. We are parliamentarians. Parliament needs to be respected. The information ought to be sent to a parliamentary committee, not to some committee of the executive branch of government.