Thank you, Mr. Fergus.
The one thing that I think is important above all, and a reason why I advocate for public hearings as opposed to a judicial inquiry, is that we face in Canada—and this echoes some of what my colleague and friend Thomas Juneau had to say—a significant issue of deficiency around what the CSIS director calls “national security literacy”. The public has a very important role to play in responding to and combatting foreign interference, perhaps the most important play of all the actors at work in this. It is vital that we try to raise that level of public understanding and education.
There are all kinds of instruments through which that can be done, including a national security strategy, which, as Professor Juneau has indicated, was last produced in 2004. I think public hearings, with the kind of flexibility they have and given that they are very different from a judicial inquiry, could really advance that conversation.
That would be my one key hope that I would promote.