Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, welcome, and to our officials as well.
In my past life, I was part of this equation. I worked for Bell Canada for 22 years. If somebody called in and said “I think my home phone is tapped”, I would go and test their line. If they called in and said “There's noise on my line”, I would type their number into the computer, and when it came up, I would listen to seconds of their conversation to see if there was trouble there.
My point is that there are probably some instances where Canadians are unaware of the fact that somebody, here and there, is listening. Obviously, that was for a very different purpose.
What we're talking about here is what I consider to be, from what you're saying, a very exceptional situation. I think in fairness to the government, you've made a reasonable effort in this. For Canadians, in the society we live in, with the electronics and all the conspiracy movies you see, where the government, which is usually the U.S. in the movies, is intruding on people's lives, you can understand why people would be concerned.
The question I have is the following, even though it's been touched on three times here. We talk about the emergency wiretap, which has a connotation to it of a hardwire onto a phone line and that's it.
Just for the record, I want to put it before the committee that this would include cellular communications—