Action had been taken by the same organization that produced the intelligence. It is an accurate statement that the way the system works is that the collectors collect and they feed to consumers. On the basis of that, portraits form over time from disparate pieces of intelligence, the kinds of one-off reports that I spoke of. Sometimes they're only a paragraph long, right up to the kind of nine-page assessments I spoke of. That is meant to allow consumers such as me and others who are advising the government to form pictures of what's really going on out there. There are multiple collection agencies, and there are multiple consumers.
In the case we're talking about of threats against Canadian MPs, it happens to have been the same agency, to the best of my recollection, that first picked up the intelligence. They were the ones who then did the defensive briefing to Mr. Chong.
In general, there's a collection function and an assessment function, and then the likes of people like me read, are briefed or participate in discussions on intelligence. I should say that those discussions are not informed only by intelligence. Intelligence is an input into the discussions, but, from where I sit, I consume intelligence, but I also consume diplomatic reporting.
We have people all over the world who send us reports every day that give a view as to what is going on. In a collegial fashion, the deputy minister community at the highest level comes together to debate issues. We sometimes have different views as to exactly what is going on because we may read slightly different things and we may talk to slightly different people. Out of that comes a picture.