Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for an opportunity to get back to a question I had hoped to fit into my first round. Just to refresh your memory, it was in regard to the case of alleged Russian spies--more specifically, a story that ran in The Vancouver Sun on June 29. I want to quote that story really quickly, and then I have a series of questions.
The FBI has broken up a Russian spy ring, some of whose members were posing as Canadian citizens, the Department of Justice announced Monday. Eight “deep cover” agents working for the Russian Federation and two others on a similar mission were arrested Sunday in New Jersey, Virginia and Boston. All are suspected agents of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, Russia’s foreign spy agency. The arrests come four years after the RCMP arrested an SVR agent who was living in Montreal as “Paul William Hampel.” Three of the agents arrested on Sunday had assumed identities as Canadians named Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley and Patricia Mills. A fourth suspect, Christopher Metsos, also claimed to be Canadian. He is still at large.
What is the endgame for such agents, and what are they trying to achieve? If you wouldn't mind, please talk about the methods they are employing. Then finally, could you provide us with a sense of how the threat to Canada compares to that experienced by our close allies?