Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thought I'd start by explaining my role and how I receive intelligence.
My job is to advise the Prime Minister and manage the Prime Minister's Office. A key part of my role is ensuring he receives advice and information from all parts of government so that he can make the best decisions possible. This includes briefings from the national security and intelligence adviser, the NSIA, and other intelligence officials. I am usually with the Prime Minister for these briefings.
Sometimes we receive these briefings in secure settings known as SCIFs. That stands for sensitive compartmented information facility. All of our phones and electronics get locked up by the elevator and don't enter the floor, let alone the room itself. Other times the NSIA will request that I read a document that is brought to me by a CRO, a client relations officer. The CRO hands me the document, supervises me while I read it and takes it back.
Sensitive intelligence is treated with the utmost care. There is a rigorous vetting process to obtain top secret clearance, which I have, and there are equally important obligations one must uphold to keep that clearance. That is because publicly disclosing what our intelligence agencies know or how they come to know it can irreparably harm Canada's national interests and put people's lives in danger. It can also threaten Canada's ability to obtain intelligence in the future, because Canada is a net importer of intelligence.
In my years in this job, I have seen a huge range of intelligence from all parts of the world. Some of it has been wrong—proven wrong—and some of it has been right. For some, we may never know, or only with time will we learn, if it's true.
Even intelligence that is proven wrong can be useful. It can shed light on the motivations or agenda of the source or on a narrative being pushed. Intelligence often comes as fragments of information that then need to be analyzed, assessed and discussed to understand what they really mean. That work has to be done by situating those fragments in a wider context of information. As the deputy minister of foreign affairs told you at this very committee, “intelligence rarely paints a full, concrete or actionable picture.”
Our government has been strengthening the measures that protect our institutions from foreign interference since 2015. I can confirm hand on heart that this issue has always been a priority and that we have taken concrete measures in this area. It is therefore important to take a moment to look back at the work that we have accomplished.
The Liberal Party made a commitment in its 2015 platform to form what has become the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. The current Prime Minister, who was an MP when the Afghan detainee scandal broke out under the Harper government, saw the need for certain MPs to access classified information, which was not possible at the time. That's why our government passed a law to form such a committee. For six years now, MPs of all parties with top secret security clearance have been able to look at classified information and study it independently before producing a report that is made public. This committee is now reviewing foreign interference in the federal election process, amongst other files.
The threat of foreign interference has evolved since 2015. After seeing what happened with the American election in 2016 and the French election in 2017, our government, in order to better protect the 2019 federal election, set up the critical election incident public protocol. This protocol was part of the whole‑of‑government plan to protect Canada's democracy that we put into place in January 2019. The government officials in charge of the protocol who had access to classified information on matters of national security concluded that the 2019 and 2021 elections were carried out freely and fairly.
In 2019, we also set up the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. This agency reviews how our security and intelligence agencies evaluated foreign interference before and after the two previous elections.
We also set up rapid response mechanism Canada and the security and intelligence threats to intelligence task force. Both help us to detect foreign threats to our democracy and disable them.
As the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs has told you, we have more and more tools to fight foreign interference.
David Johnston, the former Governor General of Canada, will present his recommendations on the issue by May 23. He will have unlimited access to classified documents to do his work and obviously, we have already confirmed that we will accept his recommendations.
Still, I know you have questions about what the Prime Minister's Office was told about specific intelligence and what we did as a result. I will do my best to answer your questions. At the same time, I must respect the law and the same boundaries the directors of CSIS and the NSIA did when they appeared before you. These constraints are exactly why NSICOP was created.
What I can say here is this: When we receive intelligence briefings of any kind, we don't leave any stones unturned. We usually start by asking a lot of questions: questions like how credible the intelligence is, who else has been briefed, who else needs to be briefed, what decisions are in front of decision-makers, what actions have already been taken, what actions can be taken and what authorities are needed to take them. Very often they are not within the Prime Minister's or cabinet's authorities. By that, I mean those are decisions for law enforcement or intelligence officials, and you've heard from them about the tools they have available, like CSIS's threat reductions.
All that being said, if there are actions to be taken to protect national security, we do not hesitate. Let's remember that foreign interference threatens all democracies. It comes from many authoritarian states, like China, Russia and Iran. It targets all aspects of society: our communities—particularly diaspora communities—our universities, research institutes, all levels of government and all political parties. It is not a new threat, but it is an evolving threat. It is a threat we will continue to do our utmost to guard against.
I want to end by addressing the debate around my appearance today and whether I am the right person to appear before you. I am a consumer of intelligence, not the one who briefs on intelligence. The NSIA is the person who directly reports to the Prime Minister on these matters. On top of that, for all the reasons outlined today, these matters are extremely sensitive, and the law limits what I can talk about in this public setting.
Ultimately, I have accepted this invitation because I want Parliament to work.
I've devoted most of my professional life to getting people involved in politics: to run for office, to advance the causes they believe in and to make a difference in their communities and in their country. That's why I'm here, and I believe it's why we're all here. Protecting our democracy is one of the most important things we can do and one of the most important parts of my job. Campaigns, politics and democracy are all about people expressing their rights and electing who represents them. I will always fight for these rights and defend against any attempts to undermine them.
With that, I will do my very best to answer your questions.
