Thank you.
To underscore as we move through, to the best of my knowledge almost every incident, if not all, involves foreign dignitaries, and the security is beefed up to recognize the protection we owe them. I want to raise this now because it's the thread all the way through. The answer is not that there's an immediate instance and the security people have stepped in and we don't want them to. No matter what's going on it's not that immediate situation that needs to be decided at the moment in the best interest of the priority. At that time the priority is our visiting dignitary; that's understood.
The issue here is the absolute continuing lack of planning. You know these visits are coming. We know the disruption that's going to be caused, but the security service also knows that this place still functions. We don't grind to a halt, and so they need to build into their plans that ability for every member, no matter where they might be, to get into this House. Consistently, that's where it's failed, in my opinion. That's what I'll be homing in on, that it's not a matter of “don't do the right thing to protect a secure moment”. That's nuts, and that's not what we're talking about. We're saying you know what's going to happen on the Hill, you're planning for every minute and movement of our guest, you can also build into those plans how the members are going to get around to continue their business.
We keep being told—and you'll hear this, colleagues—that we're going to do that from now on. Yet I keep finding myself sitting here, over and over again, in the same kinds of circumstances. It's because we haven't yet gotten the message through that the planning for members having access to the House of Commons is as important as planning for the security of our guest. It's a constitutional requirement, not some polite Canadian niceness. I'll be homing in on this all the way through, Chair, because to me, that's the answer. It's the planning that needs to take place but isn't taking place, and we inevitably get into these clashes.