Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, the director of strategic communications in Halifax, Lia Scanlan, said that government officials, including you, when you were the Minister of Public Safety, and Prime Minister Trudeau, were evaluating what they could and could not say. Now, this is a mass shooting, a tragedy where—I think you'll agree with me—the police are in the best position to determine what to say.
One of the things you talked about was transparency and independence of the national police force, and as Mr. Hardie was saying earlier, police officers often only have a few minutes, a few seconds, before they make a decision. Obviously, they are in the best position to explain the decisions they made.
Hearing that the government wanted to control the message gives the impression that, instead of thinking about the victims, they were thinking about their political agenda.
I wonder if you are aware of the public's perception.