The consequences are that we are losing our strategic position on the international stage. We're losing the confidence of our allies, who are now looking at us and saying that Canada isn't serious. From this perspective, there's a whole section of our population that is poorly protected, that is vulnerable and that will be used.
According to experts, Canada has literally millions of zombie computers. These are computers that hackers have managed to get into, which are used to bounce from one computer to another. We lose track of them.
We're very ill-informed at the moment. In my statement, I said that Canada was lagging behind the G7 countries. We're not investing enough in the fight against cyber-attacks, and we're not doing enough to raise awareness among the population, particularly parliamentarians, who are the primary target.
As the effectiveness of foreign interference has been reduced on the ground, in the years to come, many more covert means will be used. Computer attacks are a case in point.