In your email that you submitted to the committee, you said, “for a production of documents what might be more illuminating is to ask for the extracts from the document logging system” and so on. In this paragraph, you say:
The Clerk's office has always kept a log of all documents sent to the PM by PCO—which fall into two types—notes for decision and notes for information that don't seek a decision. PCO constantly chases to get a “return” from the Prime Minister's Office. Most notes are acknowledged or returned by PMO but certainly not 100 percent of them.
I have in my hand a document issued by the Privy Council Office dated the 17th of January, 2019, the time frame for which you were the Clerk of the Privy Council. It states:
Espionage and Foreign Interference Activities
China is still the most active and sophisticated perpetrator of espionage2 and foreign interference3 activities in Canada.
2Espionage is the state-sponsored collection of sensitive political, economic, or security information by clandestine means.
3Foreign interference activities refer to actions by state actors, proxies or co-optees that are covert, deceptive, or coercive and go beyond normal or acceptable diplomatic activity and are meant to mislead or actively undermine the host state.
This is a document that is by and large redacted, but I've read just the parts that I as a parliamentarian am able to see. In your earlier answers to questions by Mr. Cooper, you led this committee to believe that you in no way remember having any discussions at all about Chinese foreign interference. However, I have a document right here from your office, for which you were the clerk at the time, that says, “China is still the most active and sophisticated perpetrator of espionage and foreign interference activities in Canada”, which the document then went and defined.
Can you circle that square for me, Mr. Wernick? How would you not know about Chinese foreign interference, given that you were the Clerk of the Privy Council at the time?