Public Safety committee  I have the privilege, honourable member, to coordinate an incredible group of people, from security and intelligence, to international, to defence. I have these people around my table every Wednesday, and the work they did over that 48 hours, when you look at the sequence of even

Public Safety committee  What I have said is that there were people who were trying to make a faux pas, like something that should not have happened, and tough questions should be asked. They were trying to make that faux pas a lot bigger by fabricating false stories, and my intervention was to debunk th

Public Safety committee  That's correct.

Public Safety committee  Sir, at the stage where I am in my career, I don't think I would be trying to do something like that. Second, the easy thing would have been to stay away from it, and of course, Canadians would have had a lot more misinformation implicating public institutions that are respected.

Public Safety committee  First of all, we're not going to discuss classified information here, but what I can say is that, throughout the incident, the Prime Minister was being briefed on both unclassified and classified information.

Public Safety committee  You understand, of course, sir, that the Prime Minister was in India and I was in Ottawa, right?

Public Safety committee  I was in India the week before doing hard work for our relationship with India. That evening, when I proposed to make the background briefing—for the three reasons that I've said—I did speak, as I always do, with officials in the PCO. I spoke to people in the PMO, and I called

Public Safety committee  It's not really for me to judge, sir. As a public servant, as an official, I do not engage in parliamentary processes, tactics. There was a valid reason, and I can certainly appreciate it, and that's why I think it's going to be fantastic that we have a national security committe

Public Safety committee  In fairness to the Leader of the Opposition, I would say that he took the position that he wanted the unclassified before, and in fairness to the opposition, I would also say that you are back today from a two-week break. As the chair knows, I made the offer to do the briefing an

Public Safety committee  In general terms, we're doing a lot of work, as I said. We're doing a lot of work to support the Minister of Democratic Institutions, and we're also doing a lot of work to support the Minister of Public Safety. There is, of course, foreign interference when you are in a situation

Public Safety committee  Not necessarily, no. I think that when you have a situation like that, in the heart of a crisis, the national security adviser is right in the centre of it. He's the one who has all the information. Otherwise, I would have had to bring in the CSIS people, the RCMP people, the GAC

Public Safety committee  In all fairness—

Public Safety committee  I have a lot of respect for Mr. Fadden. I was actually his right arm when he was the deputy minister at immigration, and—

Public Safety committee  —and I'd like to say that it's very difficult to command when you don't have facts in front of you. Now there will be some facts.

Public Safety committee  I never raised a conspiracy theory, as I said before. What I said is that there were coordinated efforts to try to misinform, and I said that these were either private people—it was definitely not the Government of India—or if there were people from India, they were acting in a r