We looked at it, and we were public about the fact, even in the last federal campaign, that there needed to be increased capacity for Canada to be protected by acquiring foreign intelligence. The two approaches to that were, one, to set up a separate agency, and two, to make some changes in the CSIS Act, to enhance their ability to collect information in certain situations, all according to the law, of course, in foreign fields.
The research we've done, the discussions we've had with a variety of groups, lead us to think that starting a separate agency would not be in our best interests. The cost of that, of course, would be huge. It would be a number of years in process just to get it set up, and it creates the possibility of yet another silo of information storage, which could be difficult, as organizations, just by their nature, are sometimes difficult, as we've seen in the past, with the RCMP and CSIS. I don't think they have that problem now, but in the past they did.
What you're going to see, in our discussions with CSIS and with our other partners on foreign fields, is that we will have the ability to change legislation, subject to obviously what this committee and Parliament says, that will enhance the ability for CSIS to gather information without having to create a separate silo and a separate agency. After some months of looking at it, this is the direction that we believe is the best way to go, and having determined that, we'll be presenting for consideration at some point, whether it's spring or fall, our approach to that, and hopefully get some good advice from this committee on what they think of it.