The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency has published warnings through the media that the culture of resisting and impeding the efficient progress of review activities is preventing them from running their important work as our watchdog on this.
I think about the need for that watchdog-type system for what Muslim Canadian organizations had to go through when their charitable organizations were wrongfully targeted as terrorist organizations in the past. NSIRA does work to ensure that those privacy concerns and transparency concerns are addressed.
As part of that and as part of your mandate, the Communications Security Establishment appeared before this committee. I asked them about their collection of data on Canadians. They used very specific language, almost like a loophole, to say they don't do that. However, NSIRA reported recently that they had major concerns with CSE sharing data about Canadians with CSIS and then not meeting Canadians' civil rights protections as required by legislation.
Can you talk about how CSE and other intelligence agencies are clearly collecting data and intelligence and how they are seemingly using loopholes to get around that? What changes are you making within your department to ensure that they are held to the highest standards of privacy and transparency, which NSIRA itself has said are issues?