Mr. Speaker, this is part of what I have been speaking about. At the moment I would say that we have a tremendous number of chimneys of information, a vertical flow of information from the information or intelligence gathering, up through to the top, where the top is concerned about the management of the vertical flow of information.
The difficulty is that the government is undertaking, on behalf of the people of Canada through this law, a process that requires more than a vertical chimney of information. We do not have any effective way of creating it at this point, but we must create a horizontal pipeline of information. In other words, there could very well be information that the minister of public works should have in his possession that is resident in a department adjacent to the public works ministry.
That information, which could very well turn the tide as to whether he would certify an individual for access, could be sitting in the department literally right next door to the minister and the public works ministry could be unaware of that information. That is what we are talking about.
We are in favour of this act because it achieves the mutual objectives between our two countries, but my colleague, the critic for public works, and I are trying to drive home to the minister that because we can have intelligence in an adjacent ministry of which the public works ministry is unaware, he could indeed end up certifying people who perhaps should not be certified.
Within this government or the successor government, whether it is the Liberals, the Alliance or whoever forms the next government, the ability within government to access and manage intelligence sharing on a horizontal basis between departments must be created so that when the public works ministry, as in this case, makes a determination that a person is worthy of a certificate it will be making that determination on more than a simple rubber stamping. It will be making it based on the very best information and intelligence available.