Thank you.
Minister, I know you're going soon, so I do have a question that is policy related.
We talk about CSEC being required to obey Canadian law. Of course we all have to respect Canadian law, whether we're individuals or institutions or members of Parliament or whatever, so that's not really the point here.
But I'm sure you're aware that the privacy commissioner, in a report to Parliament called “Checks and Controls: Reinforcing Privacy Protection and Oversight for the Canadian Intelligence Community in an Era of Cyber-Surveillance”,suggested and argues that the law must be updated to reflect the increased surveillance capabilities, including requiring CSEC to disclose statistics about their assistance to other agencies; that greater clarity must be presented to the National Defence Act in terms of the definitions of what is required so that people can understand what's going on; and that there ought to be an expanded parliamentary oversight and strengthening of the accountability regime to better reflect the state of national security operations.
We're talking about major changes since this legislation has been made. We've seen the budget going from $50 million a year to something in the order of $500 million or more per year.
A lot of people are reflecting on what the privacy commissioner has said, and are concerned about the capabilities of your organization, Mr. Forster.
What is your reaction, Mr. Minister, to these recommendations, and are you prepared to consider making changes that are going to update the act to make it more transparent as to what is going on so that people have a better understanding and better protection of their privacy?