Procedure and House Affairs committee  The nature of the discussions with the panel was that our role, at least as SITE members, was to provide them with the information. Certainly, they would have had follow-up questions asking us for updates on any information we would have provided and seeking additional information, but the deliberations of the panel in any decision-making would have been their own, and we were not involved in those discussions.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  To clarify, the panel is the panel as formulated in the protocol. They're also a committee of senior officials and deputy ministers, and part of their responsibility would also be to discuss response options. If there was any information presented to them that they felt required a response that was not a public announcement but some other form of response, they absolutely had the ability to provide that advice, question or suggestion, or to initiate a discussion at least.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That unfortunately is not a question I would be able to answer. The panel was established further to the protocol, which was undertaken by the PCO, so that would probably be best directed towards them.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm sorry, but did I misunderstand your first question? I thought you were asking me about political parties. I just want to confirm that I answered correctly the first time.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Okay. Thanks. Understood. In terms of the panel, similarly, yes, the panel was briefed regularly by the SITE task force in both electoral campaigns and ultimately did not find that there had been information that would reach the threshold required to advise Canadians.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Indeed I very much agree with that. Classified information by its very nature is that which is very sensitive. It could endanger human beings. It could endanger really sensitive techniques and tools that are utilized by the intelligence community, and revealing sensitive information certainly would pose a risk to Canada and Canadians should that information become available to our adversaries.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That is an excellent question. We have said on several occasions that the threat environment is challenging and evolving and that the techniques being used are more sophisticated. The SITE task force members continue to meet to discuss those and to evolve our techniques and ensure that we can keep pace with those developments.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I want to make sure I understood the question. Indeed we are tracking those trends on a regular basis. Those trends and any information that we as individual members have are briefed to the panel. The panel will make a decision as to whether that reaches a threshold that requires a public announcement.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. The task force was created in 2018.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's a fair point. They did not have it in this particular format. However, the security intelligence agencies that are represented here today have always worked very closely together on foreign interference or threats to any electoral processes. We didn't have in place the formal arrangement that I spoke about earlier today, which is not to say that the coordination and the collaboration were not already taking place prior to then.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, indeed, Madam Chair. It is important to note that every briefing was slightly different. I would say that in both the 2019 and 2021 elections, the briefings commenced with what I would call an overall threat briefing to provide a lay of the land and provide the political party representatives an expectation of what we generally see in the security intelligence community, what we view as ongoing foreign interference in Canadian society, what it looks like and some of the tactics used.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Hello, Madam Chair, and thank you very much. Thanks to the members of the committee for the invitation to reappear on the study of foreign election interference. As was noted, my name is Alia Tayyeb, and I am the deputy chief of CSE's signals intelligence branch. I appreciate the invitation to appear here alongside my colleagues from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Global Affairs Canada and the RCMP, the departments and agencies representing Canada’s security and intelligence threats to elections task force, known as SITE.