I'm sorry. When I say “independent of Parliament”, I should be clear that the suggestion isn't that they're not reporting to Parliament, or are somehow supreme with regard to Parliament, or more important than or separate from Parliament. The issue with the committee of parliamentarians is that the parliamentarians are not.... As much as this committee spends a great deal of time dealing with national security, for the most part the members have many other responsibilities and concerns, and are not subject matter experts in your careers and engagement with these issues.
When we're talking about dealing with SIRC or with other oversight agencies, these are full-time institutions that deal with these issues on an ongoing institutional basis. They can undertake long-term studies, have an institutional memory, and can engage with respect to oversight.
I use “oversight” and “review” interchangeably. I apologize for that. I should speak about review. What I'm talking about is review, in the sense that it's used, for example, by Professors Forcese and Roach. They make a specific distinction between those two.
With respect to review, having what's been colloquially referred to as a “super SIRC” serves a different purpose than a committee of parliamentarians. The committee of parliamentarians has a very important role, just as this committee does. This committee, although it could do a lot of the work that the RCMP complaints commissioner does, would be overwhelmed if it were to undertake the work that the RCMP commissioner does with respect to the RCMP. However, any of the things that it does presumably could be done by this committee.