Thank you very much, Senator Harder. I appreciate your generosity in bringing me into the conversation.
As I mentioned before, we're seeing that the phenomenon of IMVE has been increasing over the last number of years, mostly fuelled by social media. You referenced the American experience as a connection. Social media has no boundaries. We have seen individuals who have been inspired and who have colluded. We have examples. There is a public example of an individual in Canada, a former army corporal, who has been identified as a member of a listed entity under the terrorism act and who has essentially being going to the U.S. for training. We are aware that there are some of these cross-border issues. We, along with law enforcement, pay a lot of attention to it.
In the context of the convoy, we saw that a number of individuals who were of concern to CSIS and known to CSIS before had been interested by the convoy and had been interested in engaging in some of the online activity. We were very concerned by the ability of some of these individuals to show up in different demonstrations in Ottawa and other places. We used our investigative resources to make sure that we had a good level of awareness of these known threats and were able to inform our law enforcement partners of these activities, through the joint intelligence group, but also to inform government about the nature of the threat to national security that was developing.
That's the nature of that specific assessment that I cannot go into more details on. But I can tell you that what we saw with the demonstration was a continuation and an amplification of some of the violent rhetoric that exists on social media and that exists against the public health measures. Where we at CSIS intervenes is when that rhetoric turns into potential plots of violence. That is a complex phenomenon.
I would also like to add, Senator Harder, that as we're talking here, we're providing sometimes fairly definitive views, but it's also clear that what we saw and what we knew then was fluid. We did not have the full picture. That added to the level of uncertainty that everybody we were working with was feeling about how this very volatile demonstration was evolving. I think these would be some of the elements that we would want to make sure the Governor in Council would have been aware of while making the decision to invoke or not the Emergencies Act.
