Public Safety committee  There's a lot of debate on oversight versus review. I think that a committee such as this one does not want to be in the midst of ongoing investigations to the point where are guiding the investigation and guiding and influencing decisions. I think there's a general agreement tha

Public Safety committee  I have never thought about that. Are you talking strictly about subpoenas concerning federal government employees? If not, are you thinking of any other stakeholders, including provincial police forces?

Public Safety committee  I don't think it would be necessary in the case of federal employees. The situation becomes more problematic—and I don't know how much you have taken this into account—when national safety issues involve all stakeholders. I think that 17 departments were talked about. In reality,

Public Safety committee  I think that you said it well: nothing is more sacred than the protection of informers' identity, especially for an intelligence service whose mandate is to recruit such individuals in order to be better informed. As soon as you undermine that protection, you're out of business.

Public Safety committee  If you compare CBSA with other national security organizations, you'll find that there's no civilian oversight mechanism. If you look at what CBSA does for a living, my contention is that it is not a tier one national security organization. It does not use the same methods as d

Public Safety committee  That is different from having a SIRC or a commissioner of CSEC organization, so there's a sliver of public confidence lacking.

Public Safety committee  I would say it happens on an ad hoc basis, but if you look at security at the border, you see a combination of information that CBSA receives from the RCMP, from CSIS, and from many others, which goes into the lookouts to protect Canada.

Public Safety committee  My view is that whether you call it civilian oversight or review, the one dimension of CBSA activities that is done in-house is around public complaints. Public complaints of misbehaviour by its officers, let's say, or about what happens in its detention centres, are handled in-h

Public Safety committee  Again, I think that if the starting point is a realization that the new committee of parliamentarians must leave in-depth ongoing review to the other review bodies, you have to figure out a mechanism that perhaps is able to task those review bodies absent the new committee's taki

Public Safety committee  It's a fair comment.

Public Safety committee  Just to add to that, in terms of clause 14, there is no reference, as far as I can tell, to ongoing CSIS investigations: it's ongoing criminal investigations. CSIS tends to run its investigations in the long term. I don't see much in terms of problems with the committee having ac

Public Safety committee  In general terms, if you consider the creation of this committee, the new committee, it's being bolted on to what we'll call an architecture that is fairly long-standing. Certainly, SIRC has operated in a certain way now for over 30 years. I think it was discussed when SIRC was

Public Safety committee  Exactly.

Public Safety committee  I would say that's a good example. Information sharing among all agencies, whether they play a lead role or a supporting role in national security, could be part of the annual mandate the new committee gives itself. The committee could carry out an annual study, for example, on i

Public Safety committee  I completely agree. That is why I said in my opening remarks that the organizations to be scrutinized by the new committee should not be limited to those listed. That is because it may potentially be discovered that an organization not on the list is receiving information.