Could I add to that, honourable member, that it's not just who's on the committee, who the committee reports to, but what the committee can do. What are its powers?
I think one of the reasons we have diagnosed that the public complaints committee against the RCMP has not been effective historically is that it depends on public complaints. I can echo that, because I also have complaint investigation powers, but if I only had that in terms of what I could do with my mandate, I would be a lot less effective.
So it is extremely important that this committee can take on initiatives, have audit power, compel production, and define the issues that are going to be reviewed by the committee.
I'll give an example of some of our recent work. In the federal government we have audit power. Following the beginning of the O'Connor inquiry, at about the time we appeared, we began a review of the RCMP exempt banks. Exempt banks are banks where people ask, am I in the bank? Is there a government file on me? And the RCMP don't have to answer. It is secret.
What we did find out in a special report we laid before Parliament was that the RCMP, in spite of what was going on in the Arar inquiry, had neglected to clean out these banks to see whether all these citizens.... There were I think thousands of innocent citizens who found themselves in these exempt banks and therefore possibly could show up on police files as people of interest, but they weren't allowed to know why they were in there.
My whole report was laid before Parliament, and I am sure the members are familiar with it.
But without that kind of power, you cannot go and look in the dark corners to see what might be hidden under the dust.