Well, my primary concern stems from the inconsistency of language, which is where this conversation began.
The first thing I would note is that my amendment only deals with, I believe, lines 11 and 12, where the ministerial discretion is defined. The operative word there—and I'm sorry to use “operative”—says “relates to national security or intelligence unless the activity is an ongoing activity”. The proposal now is to change “activity” to “operations”, but it does not deal with the first part of paragraph 8(b), which refers to “any activity”, so there is an inconsistency of terminology that I think would lead to confusion.
Whether or not it's judicial or ministerial, if we start trying to wordsmith without really understanding what it is that the opposition intends to define in its use of the term “operations”.... I take Mr. Rankin's point about wanting to broaden the limits of curtailing the ministerial discretion, but it is going to lead to a lot of confusion if we start just parachuting new words and terminology into these clauses with subamendments.