Madam Speaker, the essence of the hon. member's question is whether CSIS is accountable. I went through the process and CSIS seems to be just as accountable as every other government department through Parliament. That is a fundamental of our democratic system.
It is a ludicrous assumption to me if we are saying that a royal commission is needed every time something has to be investigated, whether it has to do with CSIS, the Department of Industry or anything else. What would be the purpose of Parliament if we resorted to a royal commission every time a problem arose? We have made too much use of royal commissions and studies. The Library of Parliament is full of them, many of which are just collecting dust. What we are saying is that to move away from that process is a total disregard of our parliamentary traditions.
More important is the cost. Clearly, the cost would be justifiable if there was an invasion of civil liberties, but the reality is that we have the functions here. There are all kinds of systems which scrutinize CSIS. Why spend the extra money? With the deficit running at billions of dollars it seems totally ludicrous that we would even think about a royal commission on something that already has tremendous investigative advantages.