Sure. Very briefly, I think it's absolutely vital.
In an earlier draft of my remarks to the committee, I was going to cite some examples where additional eyes on issues like this might have been helpful. I'll just take advantage of this moment to say that “thanks” to the Snowden leaks, we know of some instances of CSE operations that probably needed more careful thought before they were implemented. I think the most egregious example was the operation in which CSE was involved. It was part of a Five Eyes operation to target the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy, and it was clear from the prime minister at the time's comments on that operation, when it was revealed in public, that there wasn't any particular political scrutiny of that at a high level.
I think if we go into the realm of active cyber-operations, what we're talking about are taking some very sensitive operations against foreign targets, foreign states, and foreign entities of all kinds—adversaries. We'll be doing this in a Five Eyes context. We will have to be in a position to understand the likelihood of success or failure, and the possibility of what kind of blowback may occur from this, whether we're encouraging an escalatory spiral.
That was the reason I mentioned the Stuxnet attack on the Iranian infrastructure, which was designed to damage their nuclear weapons program, but resulted in the Iranians ultimately launching a cyber-attack on the Saudi Arabian oil industry. There is that escalatory blowback dimension of this, and I think the Minister of Foreign Affairs needs to be involved in terms of providing consent to give eyes to the international dimensions of what might happen if we decide to do this, to really give more eyes to the question of costs and benefits.