Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
Clearly, the opinion submitted to the House by the privacy commissioner is thought-provoking.
I think the privacy commissioner's concerns in his commentary on previous legislation of this sort, and we have yet to hear from him on this bill, are reason enough for us to go through this process again in great detail.
As we know, the privacy commissioner is an independent body. His office has powers of investigation, powers to delve into detail and talk to persons, unlike the ethics counsellor. The privacy commissioner has raised the alarm. I suspect that in and of itself should be pointed out repeatedly. It is something of which members of Parliament could make greater use in speaking with the privacy commissioner. I have to be honest that I have not taken the opportunity to meet with them on the bill, but I hope to do so.
All sorts of elements to the legislation talk about priorities and levels of scrutiny. One of the issues that hits me in the face is this. Yesterday we were discussing defence issues, and this legislation is almost busy work for the government. It is almost an attempt to appear to approach this from a bureaucratic sense as opposed to giving more resources and attention to enforcing the existing laws of the land, empowering our existing security forces, whether they be military, police, CSIS or immigration, and giving them resources that they need to enforce the current laws and the enormous task of securing our borders and areas throughout the country to protection from threats both abroad and domestic. It become a question of priority and where we should put our resources and our focus.
Legislation is but a tiny piece of the puzzle. In my view the government has spent too much time talking about and legislating on this issue and insufficient time bolstering our current capacity to face this threat head on in a very realistic way.
Again I thank the member for this very important question.