On the issue of overclassification, I mentioned it very quickly in passing, simply because, as part of broader efforts for the intelligence and national security community to be more transparent on the issue of foreign interference and when dealing with other threats—economic espionage, disinformation and others—overclassification is an obstacle to the sharing of information.
I find—and I think it's a view shared by quite a number of observers, former ones too—that a lot of information within government and within the intelligence community is classified while it could easily not be classified, or it should be classified but it is classified at too high a level. That makes efforts to share information with Canadians generally speaking, with parliamentarians in many cases, including as we've seen in the news in the last few days, and with civil society much more difficult.
As part of what I was trying to suggest—having a broader, much more significant push to be more transparent to help us better counter foreign interference—that is going to be a major obstacle. It is the result of a culture in the national security community that remains very insular, very protective, and where the incentive structure very much favours overclassification. You can be penalized for not classifying information, but you can't be penalized for overclassifying information. It's very easy for me to come here and say it's a problem. In practice, I fully acknowledge that solutions are not easy, but they are essential.