Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I apologize for messing up your order earlier on.
Division 15, or clauses 378 to 387 of the budget implementation act, is relatively straightforward. It amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to abolish the Office of the Inspector General.
For those who are perhaps unfamiliar with the role of the Inspector General, I'll briefly go through what it does. The main task of the Inspector General is to produce an annual report, what is called in legislation a “certificate”, for the public safety minister. The certificate is basically an attestation by the Inspector General that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is abiding by its mandate, legislation, and ministerial direction, and that the report of the director of the service is accurate. That's the primary function of the Inspector General. The Inspector General does not deal with complaints in any way; it's a review body.
Clause 380 in the BIA repeals the functions and the powers of the Inspector General. Clause 381 gives those functions and powers over to the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which is another review body of the service. Basically, the director's report will be looked at by the Security Intelligence Review Committee and it will proceed from there.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Security Intelligence Review Committee, it is a legislated external review body that reports to Parliament. It does external reviews of the performance of CSIS—I guess that would be its main function—and it also deals with complaints about the activities of the service. Again, as with the Inspector General, it looks in particular at CSIS's adherence to its mandate, to ministerial direction and, to some extent, CSIS's internal operational policies. I can go over some of the work of the Security Intelligence Review Committee in more detail, if you're interested.
But to finish off on the other clauses in the budget implementation act, there are a few other clauses that tighten up the reporting role that the Security Intelligence Review Committee will have to ensure that all reviews will go to the minister. It also ensures there will be at least an annual briefing to the minister, or at any other time the minister requests.
As I said, these 10 clauses are relatively straightforward in transferring the primary role of the Inspector General to the Security Intelligence Review Committee.