Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here.
As my colleague Marianne said before, I think it's important for this committee to take its role seriously as to what this is about and where we can recommend improvements to the framework.
As such, Minister, I guess my first question is this. I've been, previously, parliamentary secretary of the Treasury Board. I understand Treasury Board's role in terms of overseeing government-wide policies, but it does seem slightly odd to me that the RCMP and CSIS could, theoretically, make recommendations to a department, and the deputy head in that department can overrule the recommendations of CSIS and the RCMP with regard to security clearance.
Do you believe, Minister, we should be looking at clarifying that so there is a process whereby, if a department deputy head is going to overrule a recommendation of either CSIS or the RCMP, they would have to justify that to somebody? They would have to go to the public safety minister and get a waiver the public safety minister has signed off on, for example, versus a civil servant doing that on their own.