Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Again, thank you to the witnesses for being here. It is quite the panel we have: the commissioner of the RCMP, the national security adviser, the director of CSIS and two top-level deputy ministers for Public Safety and Global Affairs. I appreciate your time very much, and your commitment to national security in this country. I have no doubt that you all work extremely hard to keep Canadians safe.
Ultimately, of course, you all answer to the Prime Minister in some way or another. He is the head of our government. You'll recall that, in 2015, when Mr. Trudeau first became Prime Minister, a document was released called “Open and Accountable Government”. I'm sure you're all familiar with it. It mentions that, as the head of government, the Prime Minister has special responsibility for national security, federal-provincial-territorial relations and the conduct of international affairs.
Do you all agree that the Prime Minister is the head of our national security apparatus? Does anyone disagree with that?
No.
The responsibility ultimately ends with him, as you agreed.
We are in a circumstance in which multiple individuals—one for sure and perhaps others, according to the Washington Post article—have been murdered by those with direct ties to the Government of India. We have quite an extraordinary situation on our hands. We also have a situation in which we have a foreign interference inquiry with Justice Hogue. The real centre of that is China, which has been interfering in multiple elections and looking to undermine our democracy. We have misinformation en masse from Russia. We have issues with Iran. We have issues with Pakistan and others. Canada, in my understanding, has never been in this type of pickle—to put it lightly—where so many adversaries, and others whom we thought were certainly friends, are coming at us from all angles.
Can you point to any other time, deputy minister, when Canada was facing this many threats in this way, domestically, from foreign actors? Was there any other time in the last two generations, for example?