Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sure I have an adequate answer for you on that one in an unclassified forum.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, thank you. I'm hesitant to comment precisely on the extent to which foreign adversaries can turn the needle in certain ridings or elections. Certainly with respect to China, they look to interfere domestically in all respects. That includes in certain elections and ridings.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll speak in general terms again, not specific to social media, and I'll just make a couple of comments. My colleague has already referred to this. Their approaches and their activity in the FI space do depend on their strategic intent. From open sources, you can generally infer that Russia is more inclined towards disrupting and undermining our system of government through messaging that casts what is happening here in some doubt.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, I think you covered it nicely. I could make a pitch, and I hope my colleagues will forgive me for doing this. I'm on solid ground in doing it. I know my deputy director has said the same thing in front of this committee. In terms of social media and the technology of foreign-influenced activity, the threat is evolving.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It was probably by design, Madam Chair. Forgive me for being so general about it. It's really not my area of expertise. I'll say that our act was designed in 1984, and it has not had significant changes or amendments. Certainly the technological environment we find ourselves in now, combined with the very real necessity to guard privacy rights and constitutional rights that are top of mind here, requires a rethink of how we approach these threats.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, I can perhaps start, and then I'll hand it over to my colleague from the RCMP. Certainly in terms of action that the service can take when it sees foreign-influenced activity occurring within Canada, we have mechanisms under our threat reduction mandate, both warranted and non-warranted solutions, that are sometimes applied to foreign-influenced activity that we see in an attempt to diminish that threat.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, if I can have a couple of seconds, I can add to that and reinforce the message from my colleague. From a service perspective, we see this as critically important. Foreign-influenced activity cannot be addressed by the federal government alone, never mind other levels of government and civil society.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Through you, Madam Chair, thank you for the question. I can take a run at that. I'm not a policy person. I'm not from a policy department. We provide intelligence and advice to government, so I hope you'll forgive me for answering the question in a general way. What I would say is that the threat of foreign influence activity is something that is felt not only here in Canada.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Good morning, Madam Chair. Through you, thank you for the question. On that issue, we clearly can't speak to specifics of cases or investigations. What we can say—I'm echoing what my colleague has said—is that throughout the election, any incidents or intelligence that pointed to foreign influence activity from a foreign state would have been provided in a coherent manner to the panel of five.