Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.
We indeed have a fairly long list of concerns regarding the PRC's attempts to steal Canada's secrets—both government secrets and, more and more, what is being developed in our cutting-edge universities and research laboratories.
As I've testified in this forum recently, we know it is a stated goal of China's government to make the People's Liberation Army the most sophisticated, capable military by 2049. One of the ways they need to do that is by stealing intellectual property from anywhere they can in the world. Canada is indeed part of that.
We saw during COVID, as well, a very sophisticated effort on the part of the PRC and other countries to try to steal, in this case, our life science research, because it was in their interest to try to understand what we were doing. If they could steal and manufacture a vaccine to gain an advantage, they would absolutely do so.
That's why we have been saying publicly at CSIS, for years now, that what makes Canada prosperous today, as well as the source of our prosperity in future years, is at risk. We need to raise our defences to protect that.