Again, we have a smoking gun that came out of the U.S. with the DOJ indictment. Ten million dollars was used to create a new platform, with the help of Canadians, to try to influence Canadian and American discourse. We see it happening. It's not a question of something that is going to happen at the time when the writ drops. It's already happening right now.
I think one of the problems we have in this country is this belief that these foreign authoritarian regimes only activate themselves when there's an election. They don't. China and Russia are sophisticated. They engage in these sorts of operations well in advance of any election. It's 24-7 for them.
The Russian government, for example, spends $3 billion per year on these operations. We're not even close. Even if you combine all NATO countries and their resources in terms of spending to challenge and defend against these operations, we're nowhere close. We see it's happening.
I think we need to step back and acknowledge the fact that it's not just at election time; it's a full-time operation. How are we going to defend against that?