Thank you very much for the question.
For me, there are two aspects that I think need to be improved. One is, as I mentioned earlier, the co-operation of political parties. I was in those briefings. I was one of the representatives on the task force. I very much felt, certainly at the beginning, that these people were being asked to meet with us and it was almost like we were a burden to them, that we were these weird outsiders who weren't part of government in the way things really worked, and therefore, our views would be solicited in sort of the briefest, most vague form.
Perhaps now that we've been through two elections that has improved. This was very new in 2019, so I hope that has improved. I think that a regular relationship will help with that. If parties, between elections, are given briefings maybe three or four times a year, and there's a back and forth and trust can develop, that will be helpful. As the intelligence services learn more about how we operate campaigns, that would be very helpful.
The other thing that we really need to do is understand what that threshold for public notification is, because it was very vague to me and it was clear to me that nobody else really knew what that was. Is it one riding being influenced? If three ridings were influenced for whatever party, party A or party B, it doesn't matter, but it does impact the outcome of who is the national government, and in a minority Parliament, three seats could obviously make a difference.
They say, “Well, it was only three seats and it didn't meet the criteria of the threshold.” To the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who live in those three seats who are now represented by a party that may have been the result of foreign interference, that's fundamentally problematic. I don't know what that threshold is. We need to have a discussion on it, and it needs to be crystal clear to everybody involved, because my overwhelming sense was unless.... You know, the threshold was so high it would never actually be met. Because the committee was so concerned, to try to have the Clerk of the Privy Council go out and say this election is under threat is such a high bar it would be such a disruptive event in and of itself that they weren't willing to do it.