Mr. Chair, I'm opposed to this amendment, and mainly to the issue the Liberal members keep arguing, that this is an operational question. There is a policy backing here, and that is why we need to talk to the Minister of Public Safety. Ultimately, the RCMP reports to him, or whoever the Minister of Public Safety is at the time. This goes back over a number of years. We're not concerned about the current Minister of Public Safety; it's about the general policy direction that was given by the Government of Canada through the Minister of Public Safety's office to the RCMP about how to deal with privacy issues around this technology. This spyware, Pegasus in particular, has huge, sweeping impacts on the privacy of Canadians. We also want to make sure that charter rights have been protected.
This comes down to the responsibility of the minister to ensure that warrants have been issued or ministerial authorization is given in extreme circumstances if they are investigating an individual at a certain point in time who was a national security threat or someone who is a threat to the public safety of Canadians. Whether we're talking about transnational criminal organizations, drug gangs or terrorist organizations, the Minister of Public Safety has a huge role to play and has ministerial authority over all those things. If they had to do a wiretap, in a lot of cases they would have gone to the Minister of Public Safety for authorization, if a judge wasn't available, to make the warrants applicable.
There is a major role for the Minister of Public Safety to play in the policy and in the issuing of authorizations to wiretap, spy and use malware such as Pegasus. We need to hear from the Minister of Public Safety.