Certainly. I tried to explain a bit earlier that I believe respect for the law is a fundamental component of our democracy. We have to follow the laws that have been made. Laws are made because they are supposed to constrain us to obey the rules and give us a framework for how to act as national security officers. We have special powers that authorize us to conduct investigations and take measures to advance our national interest.
When government officials do not follow the law and do not respect the rules by which we have been appropriately constrained in the compliance that we have put in place to measure our behaviour, the effects are multiple, particularly, I think, on the human rights of individuals. When it's a government official using the powers and authorities to access information and then on their own, outside of the framework of the laws that govern us, deciding to provide that information without context, without explanation and without analysis to a public domain, that violates a whole range of things. It's not only their obligations, but the rights of the individuals named in those disclosures—their rights to privacy and rights to due process.
I think that is profoundly troublesome when people are working in security intelligence, in particular in an enterprise that has had a challenging history in Canada. To do so outside of the rule of law, again, is why I think it's fundamentally anti-democratic.
I'm sorry. Very quickly, I want to pick up on the earlier question, because it's related to it. One of the effects.... I mentioned it a bit in my statement. We in the security intelligence community need far greater diversity in our ranks, precisely so that we are able to understand language and cultural context, and to be able to provide the kind of insight that is essential. When members of those communities feel that we have not lived by the rule of law and we have not protected them to the extent that we need to, our ability to entice them to come and join us and be members of the security intelligence service is negatively affected. That in turn negatively affects our ability to be effective protectors of Canadian national interests.