I want to take this opportunity to try to educate the members of the public and the committee about the distinction between review and oversight. What I'd like to do is to talk about a few concepts under each of those two headers, and then I want to hear your ideas about how you draw that distinction in the context of the new parliamentary committee that will be created with forthcoming legislation.
Review, in my mind, is generally retrospective. It looks backwards in time. It tends to be public, although there are aspects of certain review committees that do consider information that is confidential and sensitive. Moreover, review committees do adjudicate external complaints from civilians. That's the review side.
The oversight framework that I believe we're contemplating on a go-forward basis with new legislation could be operational and real time. It's likely to preside over this committee largely in camera. The general rule of thumb would be that it would not be accessible to the public. Moreover, it may not adjudicate external complaints from civilians.
Those are the two conceptual ways that I see review and oversight. The question I have for you is this. Take CBSA right now, which has no external review body that looks after that specific organization within the Public Safety portfolio. How would you keep review and oversight conceptually apart? Or do you see that the oversight committee would exist concurrently with some of the pre-existing review committees? How do you see that working?