If the right hon. member can invoke that it is one point, I am equally entitled to invoke that it is something else, particularly when I believe that the position I have is the correct one, just as he presumably thinks the same about his.
On the issue in question, the right hon. member knows perfectly well, and even alluded to it during his answer, that because of the threshold of security for visits and anything else of high security involving CSIS, there is a mechanism established by Parliament with a review to have the threshold of security respected and the civilian overview that goes on top of that to protect Canadians.
Second, the estimates of that organization are tabled before the House. The right hon. member knows that. That process carries through the House. The votes are then proceeded with in Parliament and those are all occurring.
The right hon. member says that he can understand why specific security issues involving CSIS should not be revealed. In fact that is exactly what this is. It involves probably the highest level of security that one could ever achieve; receiving heads of state of other countries. I will not refer to how that is in the language of the security community, but I think all of us recognize that visits of this nature must represent the highest threshold.
Obviously, the amount of resources that are utilized regarding a very high level security incident like this forms part of the information which must be kept by that security community. That is why we have the Security Intelligence Review Committee. Not only that, we have a committee of Parliament that reviews its report in addition to that threshold. We all know that those points are not valid.
The right hon. member, having been a former prime minister and having been the minister of foreign affairs, will know of the level of security involved in foreign visits, particularly heads of state and heads of government. He is well aware of all this, as we all are. He was a member of cabinet that appointed members to the Security Intelligence Review Committee in the years presumably when he was prime minister, even though he was only there a short while, and when he was minister later on in another cabinet.