Procedure and House Affairs committee  As I think the minister indicated, the proposal was developed very much bearing in mind the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the Senate reference case. A number of important markers were laid down there and that's very much a part of the framing of the proposals in question.

Public Safety committee  Actually, it's the right clause in terms of the provision that has been under discussion. What I would say on that is that the intention is for the Prime Minister to make a determination with respect to the types of information that are flagged in subclause 21(5), indicate that t

Public Safety committee  Ian McCowan, deputy secretary to the cabinet for governance at PCO.

Public Safety committee  I guess I would say there are a couple of differences here. First of all, the review agencies all have a complaints function as part of their framework, and they operate in a quasi-judicial frame. They're a slightly different creature, if you will. Also, what's trying to be achi

Public Safety committee  The statute, as you'll have seen, allows for the transfer of information back and forth between the review bodies and the committee in certain defined circumstances. There's also a request that ideally they work in a way to try to avoid duplication. I think Minister Goodale did

Public Safety committee  I guess what I'd say, again, is that there are different purposes here. In terms of the review bodies, again, there is, for example, a complaints function and there's a quasi-judicial frame. So it's not exactly the same frameworks that are being compared here. What we've tried to

Public Safety committee  There's no definition for national security intelligence and there's no definition for injurious to national security. These are terms that are used elsewhere in the legal framework. They are felt to provide the necessary guidance in terms of the relevant decisions that you just

Public Safety committee  As you noted, there's only the one instance in the statute where reasons are required. If the committee feels that determinations are being made in an inappropriate way, obviously they will be able in their reports to make note of that and to flag the fact that in their view ther

Public Safety committee  I'm not sure how much further I can add to what the minister said earlier other than to say that this committee is an unusual committee. It would be a statutory committee of parliamentarians, a creature of the executive, not a creature of Parliament. It's fundamentally distinct a

Public Safety committee  I'm not familiar with that particular committee. All I can say in terms of what makes this one different is that it is a creature of the executive, similar to how the U.K. started out when they first went down this road. In that manner, it is distinct and different from the other

Public Safety committee  I think the minister, when he responded earlier to a question in this area, indicated that similar to the U.K. we were starting with a certain basic framework. In the U.K. it was over a fairly long period of time before they made it a committee of Parliament. As the relationships

Public Safety committee  Yes, the intent was to try to get as specific as possible in requiring that whatever the redaction is fits into one of these specific categories. These categories exist in other parts of statutes, but the aim was to be specific in tying a redaction request to a very specific rati

Public Safety committee  I think Minister Goodale indicated in answer to an earlier question that he was open to suggestions from committee members on any possible amendments he was willing to consider. I would think in that spirit, if there is an alternate formulation that you think better captures th

Public Safety committee  Could you give me a few more specifics on the scenario that you're concerned about here?

Public Safety committee  My colleague might have some more thoughts, but the objective of the statute is to give as much access to sensitive information as possible to parliamentarians. The flip side of that is that there are some checks and balances in terms of the information. I think you're referrin