Thank you very much.
I would have loved to have had the opportunity to go to Latvia with the defence committee. We have financial constraints, and so the entire committee couldn't go. It didn't mean that we wouldn't have loved to have gone. We heard all kinds of great information from it. Even though we weren't there, some of us, we were able to benefit from the fantastic trip. Thanks very much.
The reason why we're having this study is to leverage a little bit of what my colleague James was talking about. We are at a point, I think, not only in Canada but in other countries, where the questions are really whether we need NATO, whether we should leave NATO to the Europeans, why NATO matters to Canada, and why Canada matters to NATO. That's the reason we're having this study and bringing people in to testify.
Is Russia really a threat? I think it's a legitimate question. I think people think it's not necessarily about invasion, because of course we do have the enhanced forward presence to be able to mitigate or dissuade from invasion.
You do have an election coming up. We do have an increased prevalence of cyber-threats, misinformation, and all that kind of stuff. Our democracy, of course, is based on our ability to have that information and those democratic conversations with our citizens.
How concerned are you about that kind of interference? How much support are you getting? You mentioned it a bit from the NATO cyber centre of excellence. Do you see that as a threat and to what extent?