Thank you.
I certainly agree with what Ms. Watts has said. If you just look at the language, you see it's so different from other legislation. It's been around for 30 or 40 years. The Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act use words like “reasonably be expected to be injurious”, which gives a certain discretion and an ability to meet an objective test. Here it allows any appropriate minister—the Minister for CBSA, or the 17 agencies to which this bill is subject—to roll in and say, “This review would be injurious to national security.” There would be no opportunity to address that anywhere else. It could be a unilateral reason, which certainly this government wouldn't use to hide things simply because they were embarrassing, but other governments might do so, and this is a bill that's here for a long time. It's not going to be amended anytime soon.
It also has to be understood, in response to Mr. Mendicino, in the context of the existence of sections 14 and 16; hence the triple lock. Just to refresh the committee's memory about what Ron Atkey said, he said we've had this open-ended power, and it's not ever been abused. He said there have been tensions from time to time, but matters have been worked out, and to his knowledge, security operations have not been compromised.
I don't understand why the government wants a triple lock and why they would erode so dramatically the credibility of this entire exercise.