Procedure and House Affairs committee  Minister Blair would have been given a reading package. What happened in the Department of Public Safety at that time, I can't speak to. You'll have to speak to the officials who were there at the time. Minister Blair doesn't walk around with a secret laptop, logging into it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mike MacDonald is leaving for a different opportunity in the national security world, having done the job he is in—which is a 24-7 job—for three years.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I acknowledge that Mr. Chong should have been told.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There is no one person. There's no single point of failure. I've said that already.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I do.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I do.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The Prime Minister cannot brief parliamentarians on things he's not been told.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sure how I'd characterize it. I think the partisan nature of the discussion we're having clouds the ability to discuss foreign interference in a mature way, as a G7 country should. I hope the work of this committee will bring to light the seriousness of foreign interference and the work that needs to be done going forward to ensure that Canada is safe from foreign interference.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It would have been destroyed through destruction processes. It wasn't lying around as a risk. If it had been relevant to the operating of the Department of National Defence, or information we had to provide to the then minister of national defence, somebody else in the Department of National Defence would have read it and actioned it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There is absolutely a risk to transparency. There is a greater risk to not talking about foreign interference.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In terms of intelligence-gathering, I think it's important to have the agencies who collect speak to that, rather than have my observations on collection. The work that is done is difficult. It's highly technical. People put themselves at risk, and it's really important to the security of Canada that they be able to continue to do that job.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.