Thank you, Chair.
I think there are two elements of response. The first is the whole question of the sharing of information. We note in the report that many of the departments and agencies raise concerns about sharing of information, citing either legal restraints—there might actually be in certain acts clauses that do not allow them to share information—or in other cases privacy concerns. The Department of Justice has been apprised of this for quite some time, has been working on it, has been categorizing the different concerns. It certainly indicates in its report that it will identify these obstacles and try to propose solutions. We believe it is really critical that this be done as quickly as possible, because the sharing of information is really critical to security intelligence.
I believe that for the privacy question, many of these issues can be resolved by working with the commissioner of privacy, but the departments need to work more closely with her to have clarity around it. I think it's sometimes too easy to invoke privacy without, perhaps, having done all the research and background work that is necessary.
The second issue I would bring up is the question of oversight of agencies and departments that have security operations. We have noted in the report, as we had noted in our first report, that there is a varying degree of oversight to these agencies, some of which in fact have no oversight. We have recommended in the past to the government that this be reviewed and that oversight be commensurate with the powers of intrusion of these organizations.
Government has done a fair bit of work on this, has certainly studied various options, and is, I believe, waiting for the results of certain inquiries to be made known before completing all that analysis and then perhaps bringing something forward. That is also a very important issue to give confidence to Canadians that the balance between security and privacy is being managed appropriately.