Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, good afternoon and thank you for joining us today.
I'm happy to be hearing from you. I see behind you the Acadian flag, and I'm very glad. You see behind me a blue, white and red flag. Make no mistake, that is not the French flag, but in fact the Acadian flag, as that is where I hail from. My ancestors come from the village of Sainte-Anne, on the Saint John River. The British actually built Fredericton on its ruins.
In the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the education minister of one of Canada's provinces wanted to meet with us concerning security issues involved in Canada-China relations. It was even more interesting that, in testimony delivered on April 19 of this year, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former member of CSIS and expert on intelligence and national security, told us that a former director of the Confucius Institute in New Brunswick was forced to leave Canada following activities much more akin to espionage. He added that he investigated a case where a former director had asked an employee of the provincial government to obtain an official email in order to have access to the provincial government's information.
Did you have access to that information before you decided to partially sever ties, for the time being, and eventually completely sever ties between the Government of New Brunswick and its school system and the Confucius Institute?