Thank you.
I won't be supporting the subamendment for a couple of reasons. I think there's actually a proposed amendment coming up that touches on this. I'm not sure. I was trying to find it to see what language we used in the amendment, but it is certainly not the intent of the information sharing act to impose on branches or agencies to come up with comprehensive agreements. There may be situations where it's a one-off situation. Certainly it wouldn't be happening in a commonplace scenario. But, again, the purpose of this is to be able to share information pertinent to national security issues, and to be able to do so in a very quick and timely manner.
Obviously, the issue of terrorism has come up before, not only in Canada but also in countries around the world, and so we need to be able to provide the tools and not tie the hands of our agencies by waiting for some sort of document to be able to tell them that they can do this. This act is giving them that authority. Obviously, the Privacy Act and the Privacy Commissioner and others have the ability to review any of the activities that take place under this act.
But for those reasons, the fact that there are one-off situations that may be unique and occur only once a year perhaps, and that certainly there are other situations that could come up very quickly.... That is not the intent of the information sharing act and I will not be supporting the subamendment.