Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the question and the opportunity to appear.
I don't have the text of section 38 before me, but broadly speaking, what it requires is a witness who believes their evidence may involve issues that would impinge on national security or the defence or international relations of Canada, or in this case a counsel who, believing that evidence that might be tabled in a public proceeding could involve those things, takes steps to prevent that from happening and undergoes a process to review it to determine whether or not the release of that information would in fact impinge on national security, the defence of Canada, or international relations, and if so, to redact or remove those parts of the evidence.
The government, like all other parties, is bound by section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act and is taking steps to simply follow the procedures that the act sets out to determine this. It is an awkward proceeding, admittedly. It might be easier in many ways to let it out. But once the cat is out of the bag in respect of something that truly does impinge on national security, defence, or international relations, it's impossible to rein it back in, in a public proceeding.
So that's the balance that section 38 tries to strike. In this case, on the belief that there is evidence that could affect the national defence or national security of Canada, steps have been taken to try to follow the process that section 38 sets out.