Excuse me. I know it must be hard to listen to a woman and not be able to control your emotions, but I sat quietly while you spoke, Mr. Cooper.
While I am passionate about studying this topic because I think it is something every Canadian should be aware of, let's not use this as a guise to suggest that when Conservatives lose, it's foreign interference. By the way, it's only one country; they don't bring up the other countries that have been cited by CSIS and others on the public record. I find that troubling. I would like to expand this to make sure that we're looking at all targets and all actions that are taken where we can, and at how we then support democracy so that Canadians have trust in our institutions.
I do not want to get into the U.S. rhetoric of rigged elections, and this is what we're heading towards. Let's stay focused on protecting our democracy and ensuring that our security agencies have the tools they need. I want to have that conversation. I think we should hear about what's been happening in this space and how we're going to protect these institutions, but if we're going to do it under the guise of certain parameters that the Conservatives think benefit them, then I think we're actually feeding right into what foreign state actors that engage in this activity want, which is mistrust in our systems. I have no issues bringing more people in, having more conversations and having more meetings, but the Conservative awakening to the fact that this is a problem is actually astonishing to me because we've had multiple reports tabled in the very House where many of them sat in 2019 and, I'm sure, before.
The other point I would throw out there—and perhaps I'll wait until I hear from other members—is that I'd like to know how.... Our government introduced the briefing of political parties, in advance of elections, on foreign interference and threats, and I'd be very curious about whether other parties were not engaging with their candidates on how to prepare for this and how to protect themselves with security measures and things like that. Perhaps we should have those conversations with party members and party leadership, who would have also been briefed. It was something new and implemented by our government to ensure that going into elections, parties have information and can help protect their candidates and ensure that their candidates know what to look out for. I think that's something the Conservatives have missed in their drafting, but I'm happy to have that conversation.
As I said, I'm happy to move forward. I think there are some concerns, once again, in terms of the production of documents and the Conservatives' continuation of not understanding how to properly handle documents of national security, but I'm sure we can figure out a solution to that and how to have that information. I suggest they don't pull their members off NSICOP again if they want access to national security information, but time will tell with their leadership and what they actually take seriously.
In terms of the seriousness of foreign interference, we've been working on this and we've been talking about this, so I'm glad the Conservatives woke up and are now taking it seriously.