The government's proposed establishment of an act for CSE itself is a huge improvement and innovation over the current situation, where it is embedded in the National Defence Act.
I would say that on cybersecurity in this country, by and large not only do we have our head in the sand, but we need to do much better, especially at the intelligence sharing. The CCTX, the new mechanism to exchange cyber-intelligence, is a good improvement here. One challenge we have had is that CSE is, by law, extremely restricted as to what it can share with the private sector, and under what conditions. In this area, you ultimately need to prevent, anticipate, and have effective and timely intelligence sharing, given how quickly cyber-challenges and threats move. It is integral.
Other countries are much further ahead, if you look at Australia, the Netherlands, Israel, or the United Kingdom. This is what's sometimes known as phase two. If we cannot effectively protect our cyber-infrastructure, that is going to have a deleterious consequence for our economy, because people will only invest in innovation, in R and D, in the Canadian economy if those elements are then also protected. Why would you invest, if that's going to be immediately stolen? We know this country has done particularly poorly on the innovation agenda, and luckily, this government is trying to improve Canada's innovation capacity. That will not be effective if we can't then also ensure that the cyber-domain is effectively protected.