Madam Chair, I hope I'm afforded the same generosity with regard to time.
Mr. Chong, I want to say thanks for being here tonight. I appreciate your testimony. I note that you've been around Parliament Hill and serving for quite some time—I think about 19 years, if I'm not mistaken. Thank you for your service.
As this session tonight will form part of our study on foreign interference, which we've been studying for some time, I want to take the opportunity to ask you a bit more about foreign interference in the Harper government, which you obviously served in.
We haven't had a lot of opportunity to hear from officials or representatives from that period, with the exception of Ms. Byrne, whom we were happy to hear from recently. Last week, she said she was never briefed on the potential of foreign interference. She also said she never received any reports and there were no briefings by CSIS. She went on to say that foreign interference never came to mind. Essentially, it wasn't a major concern at the time.
Would you agree with that?