Mr. Chong, I am as concerned as you are about protecting the integrity of our elections. I would provide you with two answers.
First, on the specific issue that you raise around the threat that is posed by foreign funding, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, this government has raised the bar when it comes to providing legislative tools to crack down on foreign funding that could potentially compromise candidates and campaigns in a federal election. I would hope that would be something you would applaud as a tool to protect the integrity of our elections.
Secondly, I would clarify, and I take your point about wanting to see transparency, that this is precisely why we created the SITE task force. That is a task force that is made up of the clerk and deputy ministers from a number of portfolios that are directly implicated in the protection of our democratic institutions. Within the protocol around critical incidents during elections, there are thresholds. Those thresholds are assessed and evaluated not by me and you, who are elected officials, which, in my view, would be wholly inappropriate given our vested interest in the outcome of those elections, but rather, by the non-elected, independent, non-partisan professional public service. They make the calls about what can and should be released with regard to any events that implicate foreign interference, and we put our confidence in those officials to make those calls.
That does not mean, I would add, that the elected branch of government is not accountable. We are accountable for those policies that we put into place. That is precisely why the conversation that we are having today at this committee is important. It is not a partisan issue. We do not want to go down the path that we've seen in some other democracies where people start to question our elections. We want to have full faith and confidence in our elections, and that is something that I think we're all united behind.