Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
I will direct my questions to whichever witness is able to answer them.
I want to talk about the 2021 federal election campaign. It has now been established that there was interference by Chinese Communist-controlled media. There was a proliferation of disinformation on social media platforms that was influenced or controlled by the Chinese Communist regime. There were civil society organizations that had reported on such interference during the election campaign, including DisinfoWatch.
During the election campaign, the rapid response mechanism at Global Affairs had observed such interference in terms of the spreading of disinformation, specifically targeting the Conservative Party and individual Conservative candidates. One glaring example was in the case of Kenny Chiu, the incumbent Conservative member in the riding of Steveston—Richmond East.
It had been mentioned that there is in place the critical election incident public protocol, the purpose of which is to communicate transparently with Canadians during an election about incidents that threaten the integrity of the election. Pursuant to the protocol, barring any overriding national security or public security reasons, the agencies will inform affected parties of any information regarding interference.
Was Kenny Chiu informed?