Absolutely, and thank you. I was afraid you were going to ask me that question. I may give a bit of a different perspective on this, having spent most of my federal career within that community.
With all due respect, I wouldn't necessarily accuse the community of stonewalling. However, I would potentially accuse them of overclassifying information. I think this comes down to the culture and the culture of those organizations.
When I joined CSE on April 2, 1988, I wasn't allowed to tell my family how many people worked there. There were so many things that you.... You were behind that iron curtain. We had this...call it a cloak of secrecy or “need to know”. Call it what you want. The community needs to mature on that front.
If we are going to really engage critical infrastructure, critical infrastructure players can get security clearances. We can provide them with classified information. The government can do that. That is available. We need to declassify when we need to declassify. Having valuable threat information but not being able to act on it is not a good place to be. Those are my thoughts on that.
As it relates to the national security committee of parliamentarians, I can tell you that I personally did a happy dance when it was formed. I thought that was a tremendous step forward. It was good on us and good on Canada for doing that. Does it require some tweaking as it matures? Potentially, but it is a very good construct for Parliament.