Briefly I would say that once upon a time, going back to 1984 and the passage of the CSIS Act, Canada was a bit of a global leader in terms of providing for accountability for security and intelligence, albeit in a relatively limited realm. That was augmented when the CSE commissioner's office was created in 1996.
However, after that time I think we fell behind advancing practices among our counterparts, particularly our Five Eyes members. We didn't have across-the-board integrated review. We weren't covering many aspects of an increasingly integrated practice of intelligence and security. We had no parliamentary capacity to really dig into the classified information, which is the lifeblood of the security and intelligence system.
My view is that with regard to the creation of NSIRA, the intelligence commissioner, and the legislation that has been passed to create a National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, that package puts Canada, I would say, in a leading position in the world in terms of providing for accountability, in theory. Now we'll have to see how well it is actually put into practice. However, we certainly have the bones of a very impressive system for accountability, and now we'll just have to make sure we can make it work.