Thank you, Chair.
Of course, all of my questions go through the chair as they must. I want thank all of the people who are here testifying before us. For me the biggest concern I have is that Canadians have faith in our system, and that if there are problems within our system we fix those and we don't create a bunch of fearful speculations but rather a conscious effort to bring clarity and understanding. I feel that this is an area that we all need to do a little bit better in, to be quite frank.
We know that China and other foreign actors have had involvement in Canada's politics and have been going on for quite a long time trying to interfere, and that's very concerning. We see that, in the 2019 election, there were some pretty profound things that happened. We're hearing that there hasn't been an impact on our elections, but I think people's fear is growing and that really concerns me.
I'll direct my first question to Mr. King, and if anybody else wants to answer it please feel free to join in.
I feel, based on the research I have done, that Canada is far behind so many other countries and that concerns me greatly.
My first question is around the registry. What kinds of discussions are happening internally? I know you can't give us all of the details, but I think Canadians want to know there is information out there that we've heard. There isn't clarity on how that has impacted us in a way. There's not clarity, quite frankly, around what MPs and their parties can do to protect themselves. I'm concerned that there could be something happening and I would be merrily going along my way doing my work during an election and I would have no idea.
Is the registry being discussed, and what are other ways that we can look forward to in elections so that MPs can protect themselves from these kinds of things? Are there specific questions of ourselves and our parties? I heard Ms. O'Connell talking about those things and saying the Conservatives.... How would they know when to ask? What are the things that we need to be watching for as parties, as political folks, as MPs, as people who are running to be MPs, to have a better awareness and ask the correct questions so that hopefully we can get the information we need to do the things we need to do during the election process?
I know that was a lot to take in.