Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll start with the first question. The Prime Minister was truthful in his statement. I have nothing to add to it. With regard to the second matter, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding it. Are you asking whether we went to authorities different from the ones who spoke to us in the first place?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would echo that. I think sometimes it's easy for observers of politics to fall into the fallacy of thinking, particularly with regard to ethnic communities, of there being some sort of monolithic block that have their own set of issues that are foreign to others. That of course is not the case.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In my experience with it, rarely will intelligence agencies come with a conclusion that says, “This is concrete evidence of a fully formed plan of foreign interference.” They responsibly try to not make those types of conclusions. They just say, “here's what we know”, in terms of whether it's conversations that may have taken place or actions taken, but they don't necessarily speak to motive and conclusions if they don't know it for sure.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's a difficult question, because there are different situations. I would cite David Morrison, who came before this committee and talked about how each piece of intelligence is part of the picture, and conclusions are reached in looking at the whole piece. Necessarily, what information is being provided to parties during an election campaign isn't going to be the entire picture, but it is enough to provide the party with the information that they need to be vigilant themselves.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would also, maybe, take from your question.... I mean, one of the things about this process has been the intelligence agencies' learning about the whole political process. I can tell you anecdotally, from working with them through government, that they didn't have great understanding of the political processes and the timelines involved, so when they would provide information, they were not thinking about timelines.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It is difficult to sort of get at how I would talk without referring to the specific content of it, but I would agree largely with what Mr. Ishmael said.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the question, which I will answer in English. It's hard to give a generalization based on such a small sample size of occurrences of what happens, but we have seen information provided that is—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Azam was present on the briefings as well, so I might turn to him to give you some concrete evidence, but you aren't looking at raw data and asked to come to your own conclusion. You're given a synopsis of information, but the conclusions—I can speak to this from the government side—are rarely concrete, right?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, I'm not going to confirm what information was provided or about whom it was provided, but the determination of candidates is the bailiwick of the parties.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not going to discuss the nature of the content of the briefings—their subject matter. Again, I can only point out what is publicly reported. I think I've pointed out that there have been inaccuracies in that public reporting.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, I'm not going to discuss what the content of those briefings was. I think you are making assumptions based on reporting that has not always been accurate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I could add to that, if it was a matter of an ongoing wrongdoing that was impacting the election at the time and we were receiving that information from the intelligence agencies, those intelligence agencies have the networks—whether it's the RCMP or Elections Canada—to take the appropriate law enforcement....

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's Mathieu Lafrance.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I am sure I can confirm I spoke to the Prime Minister alone.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In that circumstance, I would say the reporting was incorrect. I would say that is often the case. There is no way that any staffer working as a field organizer in the 2019 election campaign would have had access to any information provided in the briefing.