Thank you very much, Minister.
Thank you for the question.
With respect to this section, proposed subsection 24(1) does talk about how CSE may acquire, use, and analyze “publicly available information”. I think there are two things to perhaps first frame this conversation. Number one, it has to be in relation to our mandate. We are a foreign signals intelligence organization. We focus on foreign targets and foreign threats to Canada, so we don't have a mandate to focus on Canadians. We're definitely an organization that's focused on foreign threats to Canada.
In terms of the intent of this provision, it very much allows us to be able to conduct perhaps a basic research, I would say, with respect to our mandate. I will give you an example. For example, we might issue a foreign intelligence report or a cybersecurity report, and there might be publicly available information that would help complement that. For example, if we were talking about a security breach or a cybersecurity breach that happened, we might want to reference publicly available information that may talk about the nature of that breach and how it was reported elsewhere.
We don't have an investigative mandate. We don't have a mandate to focus on Canadians. Again, it's very much in association with our mandate: foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity protection.