Mr. Speaker, I see the minister is returning and I am pleased he is. First, I want to congratulate the minister on the practice of making a statement to the House of Commons. It is a practice that should be followed much more regularly by the government and I regret that is not the case.
In the case of the Solicitor General's department, his statement proves that it is not fatal to give information to Parliament on questions of security. I raise that because this Government of Canada is probably the most secretive in the western world; secretive of all the democracies with respect to the information that it makes available to the elected Parliament of Canada with respect to matters of international security.
I raised the other day a position taken by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service in which it claimed, as a matter of policy, that it did not reply to questions of members of the House of Commons.
The Speaker may recall that on an earlier occasion I asked the Prime Minister for information about al-Qaeda. He said that it would be a breach of national security to present that information. That very night, precisely the information that I had outlined of the al-Qaeda network was published on the website of the prime minister of the United Kingdom, indicating a far different standard for Parliament in that case.
There is a very real concern as to whether information on security matters is not only shared with Parliament, but is shared among departments of government. I am particularly concerned that the department, of which I once had the honour to be minister, the Department of Foreign Affairs, is not being kept advised on matters that should be within its purview because of turf wars over intelligence in the government.
I am bound to say that I think all of us in the House have heard enough from the Solicitor General saying that there is a process in place when we put questions to him. The only process in place that we have been able to identify is to keep this Parliament as much in the dark as possible.
I find it very curious in his statement today that the minister says that there will be more lists. Is that a guess or does he know of other organizations that will go on the list? If he knows, why is he delaying adding those organizations to the list? This is not a matter about which the Solicitor General should tease public opinion. There will be a stigma attached to organizations that are not on the list, knowing that there is another shoe to drop and knowing that the minister has a group in mind but he is not, for some reason or another, prepared to add them to the list yet.
One of the things we would like to know is the procedure that is followed by the government and what sources of information and intelligence it bases its decisions on when it adds to this list.