Public Safety committee  As I said in my opening remarks, basically this bill is a great way forward. It's a very important step forward—a little late, but very good. I'm extremely positive on the whole about this new committee. I didn't talk about independence all that much, but I added certain things a

Public Safety committee  Yes. However, there's quite a long list of departments. If we want—

Public Safety committee  Are you asking me whether intelligence activities are carried out within the departments?

Public Safety committee  The agencies carry out those activities, but there are still possibilities. Many analysts and intelligence processing centres fall directly under departments. They don't work for agencies.

Public Safety committee  Yes. The Canada Revenue Agency conducts cross-checks and communicates with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC. There's also the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

Public Safety committee  Yes. The Canada Revenue Agency carries out intelligence activities and works with FINTRAC to obtain information on the funding of various activities.

Public Safety committee  I don't remember whether it was section 8.

Public Safety committee  I think that, in terms of the regulatory, policy, administrative and financial framework, it means that we want to know whether our agencies are relatively well equipped to handle what they themselves define as national security and also what the parliamentarians will choose to d

Public Safety committee  No. I don't have a problem with reviewing the departments. The problem arises when we talk about “activities.” Does it mean that the list of activities will be reviewed, and of the thousand activities, three will be scrutinized?

Public Safety committee  Paragraph 8(c) concerns me less than paragraph 8(b). Paragraph 8(b) refers to a committee that focuses on operations and activities, or on “... any activity carried out by a department that relates to...” However, paragraph 8(a), which refers to “the legislative, regulatory, pol

Public Safety committee  I agree, and I have nothing more to add to what you said.

Public Safety committee  I think Mr. Therrien touched on that problem, also. The whole point of having parliamentarians in a special committee that has special oversight, that is bound by secrecy, that is going to look at stuff in camera, and that is going to have security clearance is precisely to facil

Public Safety committee  I'm afraid I wasn't particularly clear about that. I was concerned about the resources that we allocated to the committee and whether it was going to be able to do its work properly. There's nothing about that in the law. It's normal. There's nothing in the law about budgets, b

Public Safety committee  If you have a multiplication of agencies that are going to be under surveillance, then to me it's a good thing. That's a positive part, because finally we have a central authority that can do oversight of a vast number of different agencies. This is good, but that creates a workl

Public Safety committee  If you have a very large organization, as I said before, and if you really have a huge budget and you centralize all this oversight in one place, then it might work, but I don't see that being too likely. What we're going to have with this committee will be like the committee you