Mr. Speaker, I was a little surprised at the partisan tone of the parliamentary secretary's remarks. This is not a partisan issue. I was also surprised by the attack on the CBC. Should the House be warning the reporter, who I believe was Greg Weston? Is he going to be targeted now? Public Safety is responsible for the RCMP, for CSIS, for the Canada Border Services Agency. There are a lot of ways the government could target someone it has a concern with.
This is what the 2012-13 annual report of SIRC said:
The risk to CSIS, then, is the ability of a Five Eyes partner to act independently on CSIS-originated information. This, in turn, carries the possible risk of detention or harm of a target based on information that originated with CSIS. ... There are [also] clear hazards, including the lack of control over the intelligence once it has been shared.
That comes from the SIRC report. There is clearly present danger in terms of information being misused. That is what an oversight agency would be involved in. I would suggest that the metadata at airports and the information coming out at the moment are only the tip of the iceberg.
Why can the Conservative government not see this and allow Parliament to do its job, accept its responsibility, and provide parliamentary oversight, as the rest of our five eyes partners do?