Mr. Speaker, one thing is very clear. There is an astronomical void in the solicitor general's department and it begins at the top.
This document indicates quite clearly that the department is on complete auto pilot. We see meaningless comments littered throughout this document with respect to the priorities of the government and the department.
We know that cost cutting is the actual priority of the department. Although we hear time and time again about public safety being the number one priority, it has become clear that it does not even appear to rank in the top 10 when we look at this document and what is being done by the department.
There is a place in society for private security, but private security should certainly not be replacing our police forces. This seems to be a direction in which the department is headed.
The tabling of responses often comes after the fact, as we have seen in the case of leaked information in 1996 when a CSIS agent left sensitive CSIS documents on a disk in a phone booth. Almost two years later a report was filed. This report is even less relevant than the report filed on that lost information.
On the more recent leak that occurred at a hockey game in Toronto, I would think the solicitor general would be prepared to stand in his place to say “The puck stops here. I am head of this department. I will get to the bottom of this”.
We know that it took almost a month before there was any action by the department. There was no action whatsoever against the director of CSIS who was complicit with the solicitor general in keeping this information from SIRC, the watchdog that is supposed to oversee the actions of CSIS.
That information came to the attention of the head of SIRC through no other source than the Globe and Mail , which belays again the fact that quite clearly these very interconnected and supposedly co-operative departments are not co-operating at all. In fact they are operating in little fiefdoms separate from one another in an effort perhaps to try to compete for scarce resources. Perhaps they simply do not communicate because they are not getting any direction from the head of the department.
The solicitor general was armed with the information of the leak and chose not to pass that on to the head of SIRC. We know that he did not even pass it on to the Prime Minister although the Prime Minister was overseas and making comments about this not being a serious matter, that he was not too concerned about it, and that it was something that should not preoccupy Canadians. Yet he did not even have the information from the solicitor general.
It is an absolutely shocking revelation that this is going on at a time when we know that our borders and our coastlines are being inundated with the entrance of illegal immigrants and that organized crime is on the rise in this country.
I spoke to a member of the RCMP from Montreal very recently who was involved in internal operations. He told me that there has been a doubling of clubhouses of Hell's Angels in and around the city of Montreal in the past six months. We know that on both coasts the same is happening. The Russian Mafia, the Asian Mafia and our age old motorcycle gangs are all on the rise. All this is going on and the solicitor general persists in contemplating cuts to detachments.
We know that for a period of time on his watch our national training facility in Saskatchewan was closed. Very recently we had the rights of RCMP advertising turned backed over from the Disney corporation. The government is running this most serious and necessary department like a Mickey Mouse operation, so it is very ironic that Disney held the rights to the department.
What does the solicitor general do today? He comes before the House and tables a report that is littered with meaningless platitudes. A grade nine student could have come up with a better document to set out the current situation within our national security.
The solicitor general took great licence with the word “immediately” when he spoke of the theft of the documents from a car outside a hockey rink in Toronto. He told the House that he had informed the director of his department immediately. Weeks had gone by before the matter was even brought before the House, and it was not brought about because the solicitor general took any action whatsoever. Why were CSIS and and SIRC not brought to task over their handling of this? Serious communication breakdowns occurred.
We know the RCMP and CSIS do not communicate well already. Obviously the solicitor general does not communicate well with his own department or with the prime minister. We saw the worst breach of national security in 15 years. Obviously our partners outside our borders, MI5, the CIA, the FBI and other national security agencies, are looking at Canada right now with a very jaded view as a result of the way we have handled matters in the last six months.
When will we get some accountability and some responsibility from this department and particularly this minister? It is obvious that the shortcomings of CSIS senior managers were seen directly without the discovery of the mishaps. Yet the CSIS director has had no accounting and has never appeared before a parliamentary committee with any substance. In fact when he does come, he folds his arms and says “Gee, I would like to tell you more but I would have to kill you”. This is the attitude and the type of response we get from the director of national security to members of the House who are elected to serve the people of Canada.
The former CSIS chief of strategic planning criticized the way the matter was being handled by the government. This department and this office are on complete auto pilot. This latest fiasco is an international embarrassment. There is no mention whatsoever in this document, not even an acknowledgement, that there are problems within the department. This document completely betrays the fact that this department is out of control.
CSIS and the RCMP in particular have had their budgets cut to ribbons by the government. Agents and officers are working overtime and working with extremely large workloads. The National Post reported that this was the fourth time in the last four years that CSIS and the RCMP had lost documents as a result of who knows what.
Canadians are worried about personal and national security. They should get little solace or little comfort from the document tabled today by the solicitor general and his hollow, meaningless comments in this regard.