Thank you.
I want to quote something from Ian Shugart, whom you mentioned in your opening remarks, Mr. Morrison. Recently, Ian Shugart, former clerk of the privy council and member of the panel in 2019, was on CBC and said this: “Yes, we would have been prepared to intervene and to go public and alert the public of a situation, had it arisen, even on the basis of one or two ridings or if something had been national in its scope. It would have depended on the nature of the intervention.
“But we need to understand that often intelligence information is partial, and it is incomplete in the sense that you have indications of interest, but it stops well short of having any effect. Do you intervene because the other side is interested and even that the other side may be at work? No, you don't, necessarily, because you may simply want to gather more evidence, or you might not have evidence that is clear enough about what their intentions are.
“So the intelligence agencies watch, and they pay attention, and they continue to gather information, but we on the panel at no point in the 2019 election were presented with information that said, 'This has the potential to distort things in such a way that the outcome of the election, either locally or nationally, could be affected.' Our mandate, our remit, would have allowed us to do interventions on either scale—either local or national.”
Mr. Morrison, given your opening remarks I think you've already made some comments in relation to the partial nature of intelligence being pieces that we're putting together to approximate some conclusions. Do you want to react to or comment on Mr. Shugart's statement?