Mr. Speaker, because of committee work, unfortunately I was not here for the last part of the previous member's presentation to this House.
Also, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Edmonton Centre.
Mr. Speaker, we hear from the other side that the government is trying to somehow let Canadians know that we members of Parliament feel unsafe. I feel quite safe in this place. As a matter of fact, I feel quite safe in any part of my dear country called Canada.
However, we have a responsibility in this place. That was brought to our attention in a very unfortunate way, when a person visited us on October 22, 2014. Every Canadian who viewed the events of that day through the media and saw what occurred, saw the person running across the parliamentary precinct and right up the steps, wonders how these things happen.
We know that for some time prior to October 22 there had been discussions of security in this day and age. There had been discussions of security in the world in which we live, having regard to so-called homegrown terrorists and homegrown difficulties, even just the things that are happening in our world that have changed the paradigm. We are no longer living in 1940; we are living in 2015. We need to look at security, as other nations have across the world. We need to look at nations that have a parliamentary tradition similar to ours, a Westminster-style governance, such as our sister legislatures in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain. We see what they are doing about their security, and we find they are very similar to what the motion states it would do.
The government is not trying to significantly change the way we do things in this House, or the way that security is presented in this House. We are guided by the realities of 2015. The realities are that we cannot break a chain of responsibility into four or five different pieces and expect there to be efficiency and effectiveness. There needs to be uniformity, a plain and simple order of authority that is ultimately responsible: what job is it for every level, just like in Canada's second-largest deployed police force, in which I worked. We have detachments that respond to regions which were responding to headquarters.
In this place, as a result of October 22, we found that there were four different jurisdictions affected on that date, each one operating somewhat in a silo, although there was communication. We had the Ottawa Police Service, the House of Commons security services, the Senate protective service, and, of course, the RCMP.
I think any Canadian viewing this would say that a uniform chain of command is needed, a responsible agency at the top that works in conjunction with the different levels of security.
I heard a mention of the Ontario legislature. In the Ontario legislature, the province that I come from, we have the Ontario Government protective service, OGPS. It works in conjunction with the Ontario Provincial Police, which has the same type of relationship with the Government of Ontario that the RCMP has with the federal government.
That is what the motion says. No one is going to lose their job. It makes a lot of sense. Why does it make sense? Any person who knows the connection with the RCMP, which is responsible for policing this great nation of ours, and the rest of the world, knows it has international relationships with other nations and a close relationship with CSIS.
Therefore, in this place, the seat of democracy for our nation, we the government are proposing that the RCMP be able to gather all of this information because it is the most responsible body.
We will still have the House of Commons and Senate security, which we are saying should be one security service. We were already moving toward that before October 22. However, we have parliamentarians who want to go back 200 to 300 years and cloud this whole issue of security.
The RCMP is independent of the government. It knows its responsibility. This motion would not change that.
There are those who are saying that they want to make sure that the RCMP reports to Parliament. However, the RCMP will report through security, through the Speakers of each of our individual Houses. Therefore, we will maintain the independence we already have.
It would make sense to have one security agency, although it would operate in different parts. It would be just like it is with a deployed police force, such as the RCMP, which has detachments reporting to provincial governments, but which in the end is our national police force. We would have a uniformed police service reporting here. Instead of several independent agencies working in silos having meetings and sharing information, we would have a distinct chain of command. The RCMP would oversee security, but we would still have the great men and women who work in the House of Commons and Senate security and who keep us safe, and will continue to do so.
I look back on October 22 and see some of the things the average citizen sees and who asks how a person could have done the things he did. I respond that we are working on security. I inform my constituents that we continually improve security. We have those pylons for the green buses going by, which were not there a year and a half ago, and so we are increasing security. What the plan and this motion advance is the integration of these security forces. We need to continue that.
Time is of the essence and despite what members may have heard, this integrated approach is compliant with the Auditor General's report of 2012, which recommended unifying the security forces on Parliament Hill under a single point of command, making it possible to respond to situations more effectively and efficiently.
The RCMP, as I mentioned, has international as well as domestic relationships with other police forces. It would also have the ability to work in conjunction with the security forces on Parliament Hill to be able to make them into a stronger, more efficient and effective security service. That is what this motion would do. It actually goes further than the Auditor General's report.
I think the Auditor General would be very happy with that, because we would have the RCMP, which is able to correlate those additional resources from around the world with its connections with CSIS and the Five Eyes. Pursuant to this motion, having a completely integrated security service on Parliament Hill would bode well for all of the people who work and live in this precinct, including on days like this when we are here until nine or ten o'clock.
However, more important than the 308 of us here and 105 in the other place, Canadians would be able to come here and also feel safe. I care about everyone's safety, but it is the men, women, and children who come to this place whom we need to keep safe. They need to know that it is a safe place to visit. October 22 told them that bad things can happen, which we also see as we look around the world.
It is our responsibility to reassure our constituents that what we are doing in this place is making it safer not only for the men and women they send here, but also for their friends, their neighbours, and them and their children when they visit this great place of democracy where we are all so honoured and privileged to sit and represent our constituents.
