Public Safety committee  The issues that came up in the nineties, for example, I don't think were a major concern. It wasn't until after 9/11 that you started to see concerns emerging. It's not really until after 9/11 that you see technological innovation impacting on privacy in any way.

Public Safety committee  No, I'm saying that we had, at the time of McDonald, which is from the seventies and early eighties, this concern about civil liberties. I was asking Micheal Vonn about this, whether she thought my interpretation was correct. That's another question I think you could ask her.

Public Safety committee  They do intrude from time to time. Certainly they have done it with various elements of first nations, in Quebec, for example. The first nations are concerned about things that impinge on their claimed property, and they have been concerned when things like pipelines, etc., have been a topic that they seem to be losing out on, or on environmental issues more broadly.

Public Safety committee  I don't have all the answers. I'm sorry. I think that maybe you need to divide the work up a bit more than we do in Parliament.

Public Safety committee  If you have individual agencies—and we have a number of them that are important, particularly within the Department of Public Safety—they need to be able to communicate what their findings are. They need to be able to do dual investigations where necessary. They need to inform whatever that parliamentary element is, so that Parliament has that capacity to see what the oversight bodies do and how competent they are.

Public Safety committee  You should ask Reg Whitaker when he comes because he worked more intimately on it than I did; I was only an expert witness to that commission. The national security adviser essentially replaced a body that was responsible for the security and defence policy, as I understand it. It came under a number of different names.

Public Safety committee  —he or she needed to know.

Public Safety committee  No, I didn't say that. What I said was that they hadn't been as interested to the same degree about their concerns over civil liberties.

Public Safety committee  We did do it, but as I said, it was 20 years too late.

Public Safety committee  Absolutely.

Public Safety committee  There are the sorts of threats that CSIS itself looks at. Section 2 of the CSIS Act has four components to it. All those things need to be considered, and I think that one of the things.... Let me talk about the RCMP for the moment. If you look at the activities that the security element at the RCMP has done and what impact it has had, I'd point to two things.

Public Safety committee  I think it depends on the types of activities you are going to perform.

Public Safety committee  Yes, but I'm talking about the techniques.

Public Safety committee  One of the things we did when the special committee that reviewed the CSIS Act came into being was to decide on the sorts of approaches we would take. I have to say my committee chair was very influential on two points. One, he had just done two previous statutory reviews, so he was experienced in understanding the difficulties Parliament has in getting information from the executive branch.

Public Safety committee  I'd be happy to do that.