Mr. Speaker, we have to be careful because often just empowering one person with vague, general powers is a lazy way of trying to get at a problem. Instead of creating a mechanism that has built within it accountability, we throw a whole bunch of powers to one person and hope he or she uses them judiciously. That is a dangerous approach at the best of times, but in the absence of oversight, it is downright reckless.
We know right now that there are serious questions within the RCMP about how things are working at the most senior level, about how criticism is being taken and how judiciously power is being used. Therefore, I have grave concerns about bestowing additional powers onto one person and one office.
As an adjunct to this, something I did not mention in my speech, which is something for which the RCMP has been calling for a long time and which has been sitting around this place for the last five years, was lawful access. If we are to give police officers new powers, and we very much support that so they can go after terrorist networks, child predators or whomever it might be online and get at them as they move and operate technologically, we cannot move on those new powers unless we correspondingly have oversight. The two must move in tandem. Therefore, it is concerning in the bill, yet again, to see new powers bestowed with no new oversight.