Procedure and House Affairs committee  When I was speaking about the problem of vertical communication, that's exactly what I was alluding to. When I said in my earlier testimony that we had noticed some information was reaching the highest level but that, unfortunately, whether for personal partisan reasons, or simply because people had been given bad advice, poor decisions were made.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree, and I did state and will repeat again that, since Mr. Mulroney, every single prime minister has been compromised one way or the other and led to decisions that were questionable in terms of the interests of Canada. We accuse or we impugn this to the agent of influence that succeeded in gaining access to the decision process.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. We certainly heard that from several senior and high-ranking witnesses. We have excellent investigators in Canada, and our reputation is admirable from the operational standpoint. On the other hand, in matters of policy, we've been shooting ourselves in the foot, by which I mean that we've been taking far too long to make certain decisions.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Definitely. We need to be able to, at this point, educate the general population at the same time. That will be one of the aims or purposes of this general inquiry. At the same time, a fair amount of knowledge has been accumulated through various committees. Over 350 witnesses have come in front of Parliament to testify at various levels.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I want to apologize to the interpreters because I don't have a written brief, but my remarks will be relatively short. I'll be commenting on the testimony that you heard this week, particularly that of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and CSIS.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I totally agree with you that this would be the best place to start, because it's the weak point in our system. Foreign interference is not just political in nature,; it also takes the form of influence and intimidation. All authoritarian governments that practise intimidation will work from within communities, whether to embed agents there, or simply to intimidate the people.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely not. That is also part of the manipulation. We have seen, for example, Chinese foreign students being told and instructed by the consulate, after being given a document with pictures of candidates, to go door to door and speak in Chinese to constituents, saying, “You vote for this person; you do not vote for that person.”

Procedure and House Affairs committee  He became soft. It started with smoking guns when he was elected the first time, even quoting me occasionally in the House of Commons, but with time, agents of influence were capable of gaining access to him and changed the course of his decision-making.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  National interests at least, definitely.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That imbalance has been present for decades now. It's always been present. We always had a trade deficit with China, so it didn't change anything. It didn't improve anything either.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I did share my document with the clerk.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In our jargon, we call them “agents of influence”. Stalin used to call them the useful idiots.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Those useful people sometimes either intentionally or by inadvertence offer their services simply because they are seduced by a culture, by a country or by national interest. They believe they do the right thing, but unfortunately they don't understand that there are professional intelligence officers who are capable of manipulating them and eventually get what they want.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, but the problem we currently have with CSIS and the RCMP is that their chain of command and the reporting goes directly to the Prime Minister, and that's where the road blocks.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely.