Thanks for the question.

It speaks directly to the access the committee has to highly classified information. That information is shared after a process of screening members for top-secret security clearance, swearing an oath and, effectively, as parliamentarians, signing away our parliamentary privilege.

It's also important for members and Canadians to understand that the government doesn't have a majority of members on this committee. It was actually designed so that no government would have a majority of members on the committee. In fact, with the Senate and House combined, the government is always in a minority situation. However, I think it's important for members and Canadians to know that, in the last five and a half years, we've never had to hold a vote. Everything has been unanimous. If we don't have a unanimous outcome, we go back at it again and deliberate.

It's important for us to remind Canadians that we deal with classified information and material. We have to be careful in how we use and share it, because it speaks to, for example, the sources and methods behind it. Where did this information come from? How did our information collectors obtain it? If it's shared publicly, that can put at risk those systems. It can put at risk the Canadians who are good women and men working in security and intelligence in this country. They are working to help keep us safe and deal with national security and intelligence threats. We have to be very careful, and behind closed doors, because some of the information we get is from our Five Eyes partners. Perhaps it's shared with us in great confidence that it won't be shared again or passed on anywhere else, in any other shape or form.

There are privacy considerations we have to work around. The committee is not choosing to hide itself in a secure facility somewhere because it doesn't want to see the light of day. On the contrary, Senator Lankin and other members—and Mr. Motz, during his time at NSICOP—were very forceful in helping the committee come to the conclusion that we want to be as transparent as we can. We want to share as much information as we can. We want to push out on the redaction process as hard as we can for Canadians' benefits.

However, the decision to do things in a secure facility when handling highly classified information is not something we invented just because we want to be secret people. It's because we have to handle this information.

David McGuinty

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