Ms. O'Connell, I, too, was surprised that it seems to be the approach they offered up.
Not to correct a senior parliamentarian like you, Ms. O'Connell, but they also think I should be the investigator. One would investigate the case, prosecute your own case and come to a conclusion. Then, if you say you're not willing to do that, to say, “You're not an expert in Canada's security law” feels rather amateur as an approach.
What's interesting—our deputy minister and the director just confirmed this—is the very existence of a threat reduction measure. Again, Mr. Berthold confused Mr. Chong's interview with CSIS officials. These are undertaken in the judgment...the director of CSIS can approve a threat reduction measure within his authorities. I have total confidence that they do this in an entirely appropriate way. There's a very narrow, rare category of high-risk threat reduction measures for which I'm asked to provide approval, but we don't actually discuss those particular threat reduction measures or those meetings.
This is my view; I'm obviously not speaking for the public servants. I think it's somewhat irresponsible to receive that and then to go and talk about it in the House of Commons. The reason one gets that confidential—and highly sensitive, in many cases—threat reduction briefing is to reduce the threat, as opposed to parading around in front of a television camera. I don't think that's entirely consistent with best practices in terms of national security.