Mr. Chair, I can start and my colleague will be able to add to my answer.
From the perspective of our international partners, what they require from us in order to continue providing information and critical intelligence is the confidence that the information they give us will be protected and—if we choose and get their permission to pass that information on to others in the Canadian government or those external to the Canadian government—that there are appropriate frameworks and measures in place to ensure against the distribution of that information even further onward.
From our perspective, the really critical piece is ensuring that with those intelligence-sharing agreements that we have, we can live up to our obligations and protect the information. This is something that's so critically important to us. We are a double-headed intelligence service. We do both domestic and foreign. We are a relatively small intelligence service, so we are very dependent upon the information that our intelligence allies give us to be able to do our job and protect Canadians.
What we produce is very much desired by our partners and allies, but we ultimately are also net importers of intelligence, so we need to be able to provide those assurances and have those frameworks in place, and that's why that need-to-know principle is so important for us.