Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm going to direct my questions to Mr. Bordeleau.
In a July 2021 paper that you wrote for the centre for international and defence policy, entitled “Securing Elections: A Comparative Assessment of Canada's Response to Foreign Interference”, you rightly note that “the Canadian government has the full liberty to decide whether or not to disclose an interference”.
That is precisely what our other allies have done, including as you note, with the foreign influence transparency scheme public register, established by Australia, which I will ask you about shortly. We also saw this with the United Kingdom. For example, last summer the U.K. government, along with the MI5, when they became aware of a Beijing agent working within the U.K. Parliament, wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons. That individual agent, Christine Lee, was named, as well as the members of Parliament who were influenced by her.
CSIS has advised this government that, when it comes to foreign interference, the policy of government be grounded in sunlight and transparency, yet we have seen absolutely no sunlight and no transparency. Indeed, all of the troubling revelations about a vast campaign of interference by Beijing in the 2019 and 2021 elections have only come to light as a result of whistle-blowers and reputable journalists.
Do you find it troubling that the government kept Canadians in the dark over what clearly were some very concerning issues relating to interference by Beijing? Contrast that to how some of our allies have approached this.