There were three main objectives to the briefing. The first was—as when you are in a crisis—trying to describe to the media the facts and the sequence of events as best as we knew them at that time. The second was to answer a lot of their questions, and when you look at all the articles that these journalists wrote after that, you can see that I answered a lot of questions on security screening, vetting of lists, and no-fly lists.
The third objective—and it was an important one—was that we could see you had inaccurate information, but you also had what really looked like coordinated efforts to try to create a narrative that was actually using, in an inappropriate way, three respected public institutions, CSIS, the RCMP, and our diplomatic mission in Delhi—at the time of the background briefing, we knew about CSIS and the RCMP, while the third one came later—and suggesting that they had been alerted that Mr. Atwal was on the guest list, they had said to the Prime Minister's Office that this was the case, and that somehow the invitation was not rescinded.
From a public policy standpoint and from a Canadian interest standpoint, it's absolutely correct that the media and Canadians should ask tough questions of the government and the member of Parliament as to how this invitation was extended. It was a faux pas. It should not have happened. I answered a lot of these questions that night, as you can see from the reports from the people who received the background briefing.
In the same way, if you have actors who are trying to fabricate a narrative that is totally untrue and using three of our most respected public institutions to do that, I think there has to be someone who is neutral who can come in and alert the media to that. That's why I did it.