Procedure and House Affairs committee  First of all, I salute your two sons and their service, which I admire very much. Second, how we refine that information and put it into a palatable, understandable form is a major challenge, and we have, as we pointed out, challenges with respect to this that must be addressed and improved.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, certainly some people will not want to appear before a public hearing. That said, we will encourage anyone who wants to make a submission to us, or write to us, or account personal experiences that they've had. They would be very much welcome, and we hope we can give that appropriate attention.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, I think it's quite possible, and very appropriate, that in the public hearings, one could have in camera sessions. In fact, since our review will continue with respect to threats to our safety and so on, I expect we will have to go in camera, certainly to hear from officials with classified information.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, I have two observations. One is that, as we've been dealing with an ocean of information in eight short weeks, it's like painting a picture where you have different brush strokes. You need brush stroke after brush stroke until finally a picture emerges. In building a synthesis, that is very key.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, with respect to the second of those two questions, I think that is something that should be looked at very carefully, particularly if it permits parliamentarians to perform their proper functions. Other jurisdictions have had experience with that. They have review committees like NSICOP, but to expand the “cone of silence”, so to speak, and the opportunity to get at this to make intelligence decisions in Parliament makes sense.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, we reported on what was available to us. What transpired in the discussion between the director of CSIS and Mr. O'Toole I don't know. But the issue of—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We had significant information, Madam Chair, from CSIS and we had information, of course, from other agencies, such as the national security adviser and so on, and direct testimony from the heads of the different agencies.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, we came to the conclusion set out there based on the information that was available to us at the time—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, the answer to the question is that our conclusion was that we could not find direct attribution to any state actor. There was no question that there were activities, but that they could be traced to a state actor directly was not the conclusion we came to.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, if I understand the reference, I'm looking at our report, which spoke about WeChat in an article from The Hill Times. Is that the reference?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, with respect to that, the information we had did not permit us to conclude that there was a state-sponsored source. There may be other information that would make that clearer, but that was not clear to us at the time.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, let me refer specifically to what we said on that matter on page 25: Chinese-Canadian MPs, including Mr. Chiu, were and remain of particular interest to the PRC. There was online misinformation about Mr. Chiu's proposed foreign agent legislation, which he corrected in the media during the campaign.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, when we drafted our report, we had the intelligence then available from CSIS and other sources, and that was the basis of our conclusion.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In preparing for these public hearings, we'll try to list a series of questions and then invite experts from outside the government, and some from within the government, to provide their advice on just that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's interesting. Another one of the issues that are in this list of things to be reviewed in the next four or five months is “Whether NSICOP is properly constituted as a committee of the executive, rather than a committee of Parliament.” NSICOP has a very fundamental role, as does NSIRA.