Thank you to the witnesses.
I just want to address, and have on record, the issue of trust. It is a reminder to the committee that this bill has come out of a study done by this committee in 2009 with respect to the conditions of Mr. Maher Arar and Mr. Almalki, Mr. Abou-Elmaati, and Mr. Nureddin.
The trust issue was not whether parliamentarians could be trusted with information. That was not the issue. The issue was whether our security and intelligence agencies could be trusted with the care and concerns of Canadian citizens. The trust we are attempting to engender by somehow saying that we have to build the trust of our agencies toward parliamentarians, I need to tell you, I find very difficult to stomach. I worked on this committee to present our report to Parliament regarding the need for oversight, by parliamentarians, of our security and intelligence agencies. That's the genesis of this bill. That's the first issue of trust.
The second issue of trust I think the committee needs to be aware of is that the report went to Parliament, to the House of Commons, and was concurred in, and Parliament decided that we should have a committee of parliamentarians. That did not take place throughout the whole last government. To hear at this committee that somehow the opposition needs to build trust in what the government has finally undertaken, which is to get a committee of parliamentarians to put this in place, perfect or not perfect, I need to say is a little bit rich for me after waiting for seven years to get this work done. We are ready to do it, and I think the time has come for us to do it.
That's enough said. I feel better.