In general terms, if you consider the creation of this committee, the new committee, it's being bolted on to what we'll call an architecture that is fairly long-standing. Certainly, SIRC has operated in a certain way now for over 30 years.
I think it was discussed when SIRC was here that, at the end of the day, SIRC is led by a part-time chair and part-time members, with a professional staff. It looks like what the new committee of parliamentarians will be: part-time committee members with a professional staff.
If you think about this new committee and what the existing review bodies do, this is done absent understanding what else could occur within the review environment. They follow the thread. For instance, the ability for some of these organizations to take their review beyond the walls of the organization they review has been mentioned as a problem going back years. The Air India commission mentioned this. I think it is a fundamental problem.
As you bolt on this new committee, absent an architecture that says more specifically that there will be coordination and there will be collaboration, the final point I would make is that once upon a time there were two review bodies at CSIS. There was an inspector general, and there was SIRC. The inspector general position was abolished a few years back, but I can tell you that when I was running operations at CSIS it wasn't unusual to have both looking at the same general issues. The coordination seemed to be the responsibility of CSIS, because the two review bodies would say “we have a mandate and we will do what we will”.
I would be worried for the agencies that there would be this sort of redundant and uncoordinated activity. That's what I mean by an architecture.