Thank you very much for that question.
In terms of my experience with the Afghanistan task force, I was the deputy minister of the Afghanistan task force at the Privy Council Office for about two and a half years. I was the second deputy minister of that task force. I served as the deputy minister of that task force from 2009 until 2012. As for how I believe my experience with the Afghanistan task force may contribute, and hopefully will contribute, to my role as the chief of CSE, it is about how our work on Afghanistan, in terms of the time that I was part of it, was very much a whole-of-government effort.
I sometimes reflect upon that. We hear a lot of talk these days about “whole-of-government”. It's a terminology that's used for a lot of different work. Actually, that makes me quite proud, because I believe that when the whole-of-government effort came into play, we really saw it in terms of the Government of Canada and the Canadian Forces work in Afghanistan. It was a true partnership, bringing together the military and the civilian organizations. In terms of the civilian organizations, whether it was from Foreign Affairs, the International Development Agency, or the Canada Border Services Agency, a lot of organizations came together with a common objective.
I hope that experience in terms of bringing together various skill sets and backgrounds and being able to apply all of our work collectively to serve the mandate that we have at CSE will serve me well, and I believe it will. In fact, I really have seen the power of that whole-of-government experience, having worked in Afghanistan.
I also was able to see the important role of the Canadian Armed Forces, and as I raised earlier in this discussion—
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Are you trying to cut me off?