What you should be concerned about is if your primary objective is to get rid of fat within the system to address the deficit problem and things like that, you look at fat, but you're stuck now with a policy issue that you're not equipped by your expertise, obviously, to look at. Your expertise is in finance, your expertise isn't over here. So you assume that yes, there's a million dollars, you save a million dollars, so we're ahead of the game.
What you're not being told is why those structures were put in place in the first place. You had about a two-year long royal commission of inquiry headed by a superior court judge where you had criminal charges laid against people. You had a unique combined House of Commons and Senate committee sitting to craft this piece of legislation. We're one of the first in the world to create legislation to set out a mandate for an intelligence service, so we were unique in that way. We addressed the problem. We said there was a problem and we were going to take care of it. And there were abuses.
So now you have a regime that you have no background on, no knowledge on. There's a series of calls by various commissions and even some oversight bodies to strengthen the regime. You do nothing to strengthen the regime, and yet here you are pulling away a piece without realizing what you're doing.
Now, it's eyes and ears, because as I said—and I'm not exaggerating—the minister is personally accountable for those intelligence officers. That was the way the model was, because the public can't be involved in it. So the public's assurances are that we have a responsible minister and he's on the hook for this, and he's informed and can do the job and deliver it for us.
With the RCMP, they're independent in terms of who they investigate and when. If they get in trouble, it's all in the public. It plays out in public. This is a covert intelligence agency, so these vehicles are put in there to allow the minister to control it so that he can give the public those assurances. One of the tools that's there is being removed.
You have to remember.... Fine, I've dealt with CSIS for a long time and I have many friends there and I admire them, but I'll say the same thing I said to my colleagues at the RCMP, which I dealt with for 36 years, who wanted to be involved in what oversight powers they had. I said the horse doesn't get to select the saddle. The Mounties don't decide who has oversight on them and to what extent. For anyone to sit here and possibly think that because CSIS doesn't like this, CSIS should be accommodated and it should be removed is sheer insanity. It really is. CSIS doesn't get to make that call.
Your job is to give the public the assurances and make sure the tools are there to give it. If you come up with a better model, fine, but do it in a comprehensive fashion. Don't do it as a money-saving effort, because CSIS wants it and it looks easy. That would be, with the greatest respect, the height of irresponsibility. It really would be.