Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Kolga, I'm going to start with you.
Mr. Judd, I hope I'll have some time. I have some questions for you as well.
Mr. Kolga, I found your last intervention particularly interesting. It was about making sure that elected officials have the disinformation and information available to them. I transport in my mind to your comments earlier, too, about Russian TV broadcasting the convoy and how awkward it must be for those elected officials who posed with convoy members or who brought them coffee, and then they could be broadcast on Russian TV after that. Your comments about elected officials having this information, understanding their role in the very disinformation and the agents of Russian foreign actors are quite interesting.
I want to get to my questions around some of your comments on disinformation and that you can't discredit what could have been an outcome in Mr. Chiu's election. You spoke about the involvement of Chinese agents or activity from China. You also spoke about ongoing activity from Russia, and you specifically named Minister Freeland as somebody to receive that attention from these actors.
I have a couple of questions here, and then I'll leave it to you. How do you distinguish that ongoing Russian activity against Minister Freeland doesn't have any impact but activity during the election period for Mr. Chiu could have had an impact? I think that disinformation or activity from foreign state actors is real, but I think we have to be very careful about certain parties using it as the excuse for a loss.
I can tell you that the voters in Steveston—Richmond East rejected Mr. Chiu in 2015. Then he won the election in 2019. Looking at the numbers of the 2019 and the 2021 elections, there was a difference of 4,412 votes for Mr. Chiu between those elections. I also note that, from the 2019 election to the 2021 election, voter turnout was smaller by about 3,070 votes. One could argue—I'm sure the Conservatives would—that the voter turnout was smaller because of the disinformation and the campaigns from China. I'd also like to point out that, in my election, from 2019 to 2021, my voter turnout was smaller by over 5,000 votes, which is more.
How can you determine that, if the electors in 2015 rejected Mr. Chiu...? Voter turnout was smaller across the country. How can you determine that the Chinese actions had an impact and that the Russian actions had no impact for Minister Freeland? Do we run the risk of playing this game of where impact was had versus protecting our democracy overall from foreign interference, instead of trying to pick winners and losers riding by riding, when you can't determine it with any data?