Thank you, Mr. Calkins. It's nice to see you, as well.
We did receive briefings. The structure of the program functioned, but I think its effectiveness is wanting. What Mr. Soliman told me.... As I said, I delegated this to him and in part, a little bit, to Tausha Michaud, my chief of staff, because I trusted that they would brief me.
I was hearing from candidates on the ground—particularly from Mr. Chiu, but also from in and around the riding of Bob Saroya in the Markham area—that there was a lot of activity in WeChat and some in-store and in-person intimidation.
Our polling numbers were off the charts, yet the results didn't come back. If people are scared to vote, they're not going to show up. We were reporting incidents that we were hearing from the ground. Mr. Soliman and Ms. Michaud told me that they always had the impression that they were being listened to but not heard.
We wanted, at some point, for the threshold—as Ms. Blaney referred to it as—to be met, for at least a warning to be given with respect to certain social media channels, WeChat in particular.
I have been told that there are over 600,000 Canadians in British Columbia alone who use that tool as their primary communications and news reception device. I'm sure that my colleagues from the fourth estate behind me don't like hearing that, but a lot of people get their news from WeChat and Facebook. If that was being corrupted, we needed to warn people to just take a second look. That warning never came.