Madam Chair, first of all, I warmly reinforce the comments that have just been made with respect to people losing interest in and understanding of democracy and that we must work very hard to build that trust.
I would also say that what we're seeing around the world is a diminishing trust in democracies all over. As people move away from the rule of law, which is so important here, and move to the law of rule, strong people, autocratic governments, come into place. That's the danger we face.
With respect to the question of a public inquiry, we thought long and hard about this. The dilemma is that we're dealing with classified information. It is not possible to discuss classified information in public, nor to report it in your reports. This has been apparent in other inquiries that have had to deal with this difficult matter.
What we have done is say that, having dealt as best we can with the classified information on the questions of responsibility within the government for dealing with foreign interference, there are very serious shortcomings. We'll proceed in the second phase of our mandate, the next five months, to deal with those issues in public hearings, inviting the public to come in and participate with experts to do so, and to put a focus on the urgency of getting on with this. We'll begin with public hearings with diaspora communities, whose voices have been explaining these concerns to us but without adequate protection and response up until now.
In the balance of our work, we hope to address that and a number of other issues that will place a very strong focus on the urgency of dealing with foreign interference, encouraging and strengthening our parliamentary institutions to develop the appropriate reforms, put them into place, and then see that they operate in a way that does, in fact, build trust in our democracy.