We would identify concerns.
In response to your first questions, “specified activities” are what are sometimes called systemic investigations or policy investigations. Recent ones conducted by the commission would have included things about street checks or strip searches. These are broader investigations into fields of practice or fields of policy that go beyond just a single complaint.
Our concern with the amendment is that clause 28, as drafted, was not intended to limit who could come to the commission and propose that it would be in the public interest to have a specified activity review undertaken. The commission could receive that view from any third party. It could be from unions, from some of the groups Mr. Julian mentioned, from parliamentary committees, from the Auditor General or from one of the other officers of Parliament. All of those bodies and organizations could contribute to the body of knowledge that the commission uses to decide for itself when to undertake a specified activity review.
The reason the minister is brought in at clause 28 is that the minister is otherwise unable to direct the commission. The intent is that if the minister refers a matter to the commission, first, that it still be the commission that decides whether to undertake the review, and second, that the minister do so by exercising a statutory avenue so that no outside observer could conclude that the minister was in some way interfering with the quasi-judicial arm's-length nature of the commission.
I think the concern would be that if it were broadened out to other groups, it could put the commission in a position of answering to groups that are outside the process for decisions that are fully within the commission's own authority and own mandate to make.