Thank you for the question.
Yes, I can tell you that metadata is critical to CSE's operations from three perspectives, and I'll try to be brief.
As you know, metadata is not the content of the communications; it's the context around the communications. It's routing information, how telecommunications are routed through the global information infrastructure.
There are three critical roles that metadata plays for CSE and for the Government of Canada. First, it helps us to better understand the global information infrastructure, that vast intranet of information, and how it works. Second, it helps us to identify foreign threat actors—who they are and whom we'll target our defence activities against. Third, it helps us from a cyber-defence perspective. It helps us to identify malicious cyber-actors and to protect Government of Canada systems.
So the short answer is yes, metadata is critical to our operations.