Good morning. I want to talk about the region in a more global way.
One of the things we saw in our travels when we were there was the campaign of disinformation by the Russians. I say that specifically, because in the four countries where we travelled and that you highlighted in your opening remarks— Kazakhstan, Poland, Latvia, and Ukraine—between 20% and 25% of the population seems to be ethnic Russian. In many cases, the media outlets in those countries are directly or indirectly managed or owned by Russian media.
When we look at our own involvement in that region, especially with Operation Reassurance that we're now leading, and the dramatic examples of fake news that we were shown at the centre of NATO excellence in Riga, including either fake tweets or fake Facebook posts, what is the Canadian government doing? Do we have a plan? Our troops are going there. We know that we're going to be bombarded with disinformation as Russia tries to stimulate some domestic opposition within that ethnic Russian population. Do we have a counterstrategy to say that we're going to make sure we get our message out so that people know that the work we're actually doing there is going to benefit the region as a whole?