I think the endgame is very similar to the one we were talking about here today. There are a number of foreign powers, in this case the Russian Federation, which are very interested in acquiring influence on the development of policy in the United States. This can be done in any number of ways. In this particular case it appears that the agents of Russia were insinuating themselves into the U.S. economy and U.S. society with the long-term view--again, I say this is an important element--of being able to either acquire information or exercise influence.
What happens in these cases, generally speaking, is when a moment comes up that a decision is important for the foreign power, some attempt is made to communicate with their agents in place and they're asked to try to influence the decision-making process through the people they have there or through themselves.
The methodology they use--and there is no great state secret here--is the same as anyone would use to try to get someone to do something else. You try to develop a relationship. You try to find some means of exercising pressure. Both are basically usable in all cases. Very often what is done is you find a common interest and develop a relationship over time, and before you know it you have an individual thinking slightly differently.
In other cases, and it's one we also worry about, the foreign power exercises influence on the Canadian because they're being threatened with one thing or the other. We didn't talk a lot about this during this two-hour period, but one of the things we're trying to do in dealing with foreign interference is actually protect Canadians from this kind of pressure by foreign powers.
Is the threat in Canada the same as in the United States or greater? As you mentioned in your remarks, we had a similar case in 2006 and we had others in 1996. I would say--and again I think this is probably logical--that the United States is the premier power in the world today and I suspect they get more attention than we do. But we take a lot of decisions and we have a lot of information we share with the Americans and a vast number of other countries, so Canada is of considerable interest. So it would be difficult to compare exactly, but I would say we are probably of lesser interest but still of material interest to a foreign power.