Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, yes. There's no question that sanctions have hurt Iran very badly, despite the benefits to the Revolutionary Guards, which we talked about in the context of the previous question. I don't think there's any question that this has pushed Iran into negotiations. The problem is that today the situation has changed.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much for your question. That's one of the things I'm most interested in. One of the big problems we have in Canada is that collective national security literacy is low. In a sense, that's good. If you think about it, it's the result of our very secure geographical location, which is a luxury.

Information & Ethics committee  Exactly. It's sort of a chicken and egg thing. We can sum it up in a few seconds: Our best tool to fight disinformation is information. In a democracy, information is our strength against autocracies, which are completely built on lies. We need to flood the market with truthful information and transparency.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for your question. Just as a preamble, if you are interested in that, I would recommend two sources that are especially interesting and that go very much in depth on these issues. NSICOP's annual report—I think it might be 2019, but it may not be that year—has a full chapter on diversity in the intelligence community.

Information & Ethics committee  If I have the right article that you're referring to, I was responding to a comment whereby somebody said the government does nothing to counter foreign interference, which I thought was just nonsense. The government does things. I think it should do a lot more. It was just to say that the “nothing” part was nonsense.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for raising this very important issue in committee. The first thing I want to say about this is that I have confidence in the reports by Mr. Judd and Mr. Rosenberg on the work done during the most recent elections. In spite of the real threat that existed, there's no reason to believe that the overall integrity of the elections was in jeopardy.

Information & Ethics committee  That's a good question. I think that a number of steps.... I'm going to sound like a broken record, but there should be more transparency on the part of the government at the political level but also at the bureaucratic level to better communicate with Canadians about what the nature of the threat is and what is being done to mitigate that threat.

Information & Ethics committee  I would go back to some of the key points that I mentioned on Tuesday at PROC. I think there is a serious need for governance reform of the national security apparatus to be able to better deal with these threats—putting aside, as you said, the transparency dimension. We need a national security committee of cabinet to focus high-level political debate on national security issues, which is not the case right now.

Information & Ethics committee  It's at every level. There are problems with recruitment. There are problems with retention. There are problems with security clearances with massive backlogs. There are problems with careers paths, and so on.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't recall saying that. Could you elaborate?

Information & Ethics committee  I think the country as a whole does not take foreign interference seriously enough. That is something I've said—including when you were there, I think—in a couple of other committees, including the Canada-China one a while back. So I would say no, not seriously enough.

Information & Ethics committee  I am. I'm not sure what I said in saying that it is problematic. I have said that it should be more transparent in its work, but that the basic idea of the protocol I think is correct and appropriate.

Information & Ethics committee  Maybe I remember which article you're referring to. One thing that I did say was on the issue of a threshold. The current system indicates that above a certain threshold, a panel of deputy ministers and senior public service officials would then speak out on an issue of interference.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. This is the third time in the past month that I am appearing before a House committee to discuss foreign interference. In each case, I focused my remarks not on the threat but on possible solutions. The first time I was at PROC, in May, I talked in general terms about how transparency in national security is—or should be—an essential part of our arsenal to counter foreign interference.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The short answer is absolutely yes. As I mentioned briefly in my remarks at the beginning, there is a resistance to change within the national security community. If public hearings can create an impetus, public pressure for change and pressure coming from the political level, I think that can only be a good thing.