lenaitch
Army.ca Veteran
- Reaction score
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Depends. Some stuff you might see classified Secret and be exposed to at the army tactical level, sure... Some other parts of the National Security world, damned near anything can speak to sources, methods, or degree of penetration of an adversary.
That speaks to a very distinct matter, the need for better national security review. The shortcomings of NSICOP have been spoken on a fair bit. We don't have a proper equivalent to the fully empowered and security cleared congressional committees the Americans have. That said, regardless of the shortcomings we may presently have, on any given day executive decisions may need to be made based on highly classified material that absolutely cannot be compromised, but which absolutely must be considered in key decisions on things like can a certain foreign company but key parts of our infrastructure. We can want a better system (or better players within it), but the business itself must go on while we strive for that.
Clearly, for national security and economic sovereignty reasons, not every decision can be debated in open Parliament.. Not only would we benefit from something similar to the US committee system in terms of empowerment and clearances, but clear protocols about what gets handled where and by whom. If nothing else, it might help solve the current problem of trust within the PMO. The decision making should be secret but not the process. I have to believe other parliamentary systems handle this better and it is a unique problem to us since we tend to spell national security in small letters.