Mr. Speaker, the member, for whom I have a lot of respect, could not have gotten what I said more backwards than he did.
I raised the issue because of the directive of the Minister of Public Safety to the RCMP, as announced by the Commissioner of the RCMP, to the effect that members of Parliament are not allowed to talk to commanding officers or whomever in the RCMP unless the minister's office is first informed. That is not getting into day-to-day issues of the RCMP from the perspective of the member of Parliament; that is doing our jobs as members of Parliament by talking to commanding officers about policing in a region, talking about what is needed if we see a problem in one area and more personnel are needed on the ground, et cetera.
However, what is terribly wrong about it is that the Minister of Public Safety now is involving himself in day-to-day policing and that operatives, political staff in that minister's office, are going to have to be informed on issues that could be serious concerns that would be better left with the police that are involved.