I have two comments. One is that we know that access to information in this country is seriously broken. We've all read the recent Globe and Mail reporting. We've read the access to information commissioner reports. This is a basic premise of democracy. I think parliamentary committees can substitute.
I also think perhaps Dr. Wark and I are coming at this from different assumptions. This is a bit of the conversation we had about a very contentious bill a decade back, where people pulled out the worst-case-possible scenarios that we could possibly think of. We're talking about national security, about classified intelligence. I actually think that obfuscates the conversation. A secret clearance would give select parliamentarians on committees the opportunity to see sensitive and protected material and to have everyday conversations with civil servants in a review capacity. It would be ex post facto . We're not talking about oversight. We're talking about review here. It would be about standard, run-of-the-mill things that a committee believes require a level of conversation that perhaps cannot be had broadly in public.
We're not talking about national security. We're not talking about highly classified information here that might become accessible to members of Parliament. I think we're simply talking about raising by one notch the ability for members of Parliament, and especially parliamentary committees, to hold the government to account.
Dr. Wark, I guess you disagree with me, but whether a committee reports to the political executive or to Parliament, that to me, in terms of the executive branch and the legislative branch, is a substantial, fundamental difference in what we're talking about with regard to responsible government and parliamentary supremacy.