Thank you, and thanks to all the witnesses for being here today.
Let me first address some comments in the opening remarks of Mr. Kennedy. I take great exception to his comments about funding and the comparison made between the budgets of the CPC and the RCMP. I find that to be a completely unreasonable statement to make. No offence intended here, but it is unreasonable to compare the work of bureaucrats or paper pushers to that of RCMP officers who risk their lives to keep us all safe and secure.
Comparing the whole budget of the RCMP to the whole budget of the CPC indicates to me that there's an assertion there that all of the activities of the RCMP require review and oversight. When you look at the RCMP there's the cost of vehicles, infrastructure, buildings in each community where they serve, training, and equipment. Of course, there's the increasing load of paperwork we put on our officers that requires more support staff, computers in their cars, etc. To make that comparison is entirely unreasonable, given that a lot of their expenses do not require oversight or review by the commission.
I wanted to make that comment, make that clear, and put that on the record, because I took great exception to those comments.
My question is for Ms. Pollack. In your opening statement you mentioned that many times SIRC's recommendations to CSIS are not binding. Yet my understanding is that CSIS does tend to accept or endorse the majority of your committee's recommendations. I'm just trying to get a better feel for where CSIS and you tend to agree and which issues you tend to diverge on. Maybe you can give me an example of each of those. Maybe you can give me a significant recommendation that CSIS adopted, some of the reasons why they chose to agree, and an example of where you felt a significant recommendation was not accepted and why.