Thank you.
Thank you for your kind comment at the beginning of your question.
We're surrounded by information—every one of us. It's information overload. Intelligence means something quite different from information. It is something that can be used for a purpose. Oftentimes we refer to “actionable intelligence”.
On the issue of politicians understanding the intelligence community and the intelligence community understanding the politicians, I would expand that to law enforcement understanding politicians.
In my career, although I did work in an intelligence capacity for a while, it was primarily in law enforcement. We had to create those barriers between politics and law enforcement. We had to do our job regardless of whether it ended up favouring one political party or another. I'm thinking here about corruption investigations. I think the police in this country understand that. I don't think that's a big issue. I think politicians, quite frankly, understand that. When there's a law enforcement investigation, we do not see interference by politicians. That's very unusual.
In the other direction, though, I can understand why—and we heard it from the previous speakers, as well as my colleague on the panel right now—it's important that politicians, members of Parliament and so forth, be aware of the intelligence apparatus, of what they can learn from it and of what that intelligence community is intended to do. At the end of the day, the intelligence community is there to serve Canadians. If it's not providing you with the information you need, then I guess we have a problem.