Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for their service to this country. Their ongoing expertise here today is most welcome.
I'll start with Mr. Saint-Jacques.
You had an editorial in December 2019 in the Vancouver Sun. You argued that Canada “should react quickly and firmly when we find instances of interference in Canadian affairs, including among Canadians of Chinese origin, espionage activities or attempts to limit debate on Canadian campuses.” It seems your testimony today reaffirms that.
This weekend I happened to see, on social media, that a school district—No. 43 Coquitlam—superintendent was being interviewed and admitted, through that interaction, that her school district actually felt it was completely appropriate to be taking funds for different activities from the Chinese government. Now, I've never heard of a foreign state actually funding these things. I don't know all the details. I'd like to see those details come out.
Sam Cooper this morning wrote in his Twitter feed that since the early 2000s, a former PLA officer and developer Li Zhe started making rounds with Vancouver area mayors, obviously taking them to China on different junkets. This became quite an issue in 2007.
I've never heard of this happening at the local government level. Have you heard of these things? What should we be looking to do in this matter? In your estimation, how far up the political scale does this go?