Thank you, Mr. Dubourg.
Of course, I'd like to answer. It's an important matter.
I want to first thank the member for those questions.
I want to preface by saying this is really taken out of context. This is picking one little thing out of a hundred others, so you pick a lot of noise.
First, it is not representative of the usual function. Out of 200 interviews I may have given in three years, this one may be the one where I asked for some thoughts, but I received none and I spoke freely afterwards. You must put this in a larger context.
Second, I did say that I had not heard directly from CSIS, but that I had heard from Paul Evans. This is exactly what you find in the emails.
Third, when it comes to the PAC, the presidential advisory council, this is an old idea that goes back to 2014 or 2015. It has been kicked around in the council, but so far, it has led to nothing. Nothing came out of it. Primarily, the idea was to create an advisory group. It's not primarily about fundraising. You picked a little bit of noise here, but we have to look at the primary goal.
I also want to make it clear that the China council played a role in, for example, convincing the president not to have a Confucius Institute at UBC. We did the research. We did interviews with government, and found that this was risky. We pushed back and we advised against having it. We played a role in ensuring the Dalai Lama came to UBC. We are very neutral. We are pretty happy and are very proud of the role we play in hearing all sides. It's very important to state that the elements picked up here were not representative.
There was a discussion, as noted in the emails, about Huawei that was triggered by the hearings with Paul Evans in Ottawa. They were hearings at GAC, not at CSIS, where we heard there were concerns in Ottawa so we did trigger the meeting. The issue was not about managing media. It was about responding to what we heard from government. We had a very fair discussion. We decided to monitor, to watch what was happening and to be very careful.
Also, one consequence of that was that the officer in charge, the vice-president of research, Gail Murphy, went to Ottawa and was briefed. She did it not as a China council member but as vice-president of research, so she is the lead person managing that.