Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for coming forward today.
I want to focus on one particular aspect, and that is the publishing of names of human rights defenders, or prisoners of conscience, as they may be called. Before I get there, I want to put on record that the rule of law is the rule of law, and that we don't need to ever advance our country away from the rule of law to advance goodness. It's a bedrock, and I think that as we consider this bill, we will need to be very careful that we never veer away from the rule of law just because the bad guys do. We don't want to become the bad guys.
Thank you, Ms. McInnes, for your comments.
I want to focus a bit on publishing.
Mr. Kara-Murza, thank you for everything. Thank you for your testimony here, and not only here and now, but at other points, as well as for your persistence and your courage. I want to have you tell us a little about the story of your release and the processes. There are public processes, but I assume that there were private processes as well, which you may or may not feel comfortable disclosing. If you put together the key protagonists—Russia and the United States—and then you add in six allies of the United States into discussions that were highly sensitive, this eventually involved 16 prisoners being released and a number of countries releasing prisoners...to gain release.
Can you tell us a bit about that process? I know that in your understanding, with the publication and the public nature of you and your cause, you feel helped. How did it help and how could it have hindered?