Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, for the great job he is doing in that new portfolio and for the question.
It is a very relevant question. His background and mine have been in the military environment. Other colleagues have been in the police environment, where it is extremely important that people know who is coordinating, who is in charge. It does not mean that this person or that office is doing all the jobs. It means that there is one point of command.
Personally, I would relate to being the wing operations officer at 4 Wing Cold Lake. It was a large operation with many different facets. The command post ran the operation, and I ran the command post. There were people out there doing all the different jobs: military police, the flying operation, the security operation, the supply operation, and the armaments operation. All those operations were run by people we trusted, because they knew what they were doing, just like the RCMP trusts the security forces inside the House of Commons and the Senate to know what they are doing. However, there had to be someone at the point of authority to take in the reports, collate them, and say what was going well and where help was needed. There had to be someone there to coordinate and control that and to command that.
That is what this is about. It is about hard-earned experience from decades and decades of military operations, which, let us face it, in many ways is what we are talking about here. This is a paramilitary operation. Especially when they are using force or the force of arms at times, they had better have control over that. They had better know what is going on. There had better be one body in charge of coordinating that reporting to someone who has authority over them, just like the base commander had authority over me in Cold Lake. Someone is the base commander and someone is the Wings Ops O; the RCMP is the Wings Ops O.
The RCMP should be trusted to do the job. It is the one equipped to do it. It has the experience, training, capacity, and tools. Let the RCMP get on with it.