Obviously we live in a globalized world on all sorts of levels, including intelligence and security, and the threats that are out there are obviously globalized threats. It is important that we have relationships, but I believe it is also important to keep in mind our values in how we interact with the Five Eyes allies.
Saudi Arabia is not a Five Eyes partner, but I've used Saudi Arabia or states like this as an example. SCISA says that activities that undermine the security of another state hit the radar here. Does that include Saudi Arabia? If we are talking about Raif Badawi or about trying to change the government in Saudi Arabia, does that get people here on the radar? That's problematic, but I'll leave it for a minute and go back to the Five Eyes.
We need to share with those allies. One real problem now is that Mr. Trump says that waterboarding is just the start, and that he will kill the families of people who are suspected terrorists. Essentially, he is negating U.S. obligations under domestic and international law. The U.S. is our biggest partner in terms of information sharing on national security. I would be worried about how we protect our values, which are to share but to comply with the charter, the Convention against Torture, and the rule of law, essentially. Canadians need to interact with the world, but we still need to be Canadian. We need to take our values with us. Those are important relationships, but we need to be careful about how we engage and what we share.
I'll give you Arar as a classic example where we were sloppy in our sharing, and that led to a problem.
That's my answer—we need to do it, but we also need to be very conscious of injecting our values, protocols, and protections into that interaction.