Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not going to speak to government officials and their language requirements specifically, but we always look to increase our capability when it comes to foreign languages. It's the same with any skill set. These can be rare and hard to come by, depending what our focus is wi

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a tricky one if you're saying you want to have a list—don't go here or you could be at risk here—because it shifts over time and the problem is that platforms can be used by anybody. To single one out because there may be a presence of some nefarious activity there, that c

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. Yes, I'd support my colleagues' view when it comes to the foreign registry. It's not a domain I would play in, since CSE is a foreign intelligence agency. These are more domestic-related pieces. I think the items you noted are fair. I'll go back to the protocol, an

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. I'll just note as well that the cyber centre does engage regularly with provincial, territorial and some municipal bodies. In fact, we do things like regular threat briefings. To be quite fair, it's around cyber-threats and information we can share. I

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would have to verify. I imagine it will happen. We welcome, honestly, review by oversight bodies to have a look at what we're doing. Absolutely, we've had conversations with NSICOP on previous activities, so I imagine that would be forthcoming. I could not verify with you tod

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Perhaps I can add a few comments as well, Madam Chair. I think we'll be very honest, and my colleague Adam has stated this: This is a learning process for all of us. Adam, you mentioned that 10 years ago you wouldn't have imagined sitting here before committee. I wouldn't hav

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for your question. I would say that we speak about foreign interference consistently, certainly in the lead-up. Again, I've referred to some of the publications that we try to put out there, both in the service and the cyber centre, to educate the public about what fo

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for your question. In terms of online misinformation, disinformation, malinformation and that whole ecosystem, it's unfortunate that our Global Affairs colleagues aren't here with us today to speak about it, because that is very much their domain in terms of SITE's rol

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. That is correct. I think part of the problem is that, by nature, we have to live and operate in the shadows to an extent, given the nature of the source material and the methods of collection, etc., that we employ. However, we worked very hard in th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will probably pass to my service colleagues maybe to talk about the foreign registry, or a few of those points. Just briefly in terms of protection of MPs maybe I should just start by saying there's a constant learning process here for us as well. What we did in 2019 worked r

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, if I understand the question correctly, and just to make sure.... Are you verifying whether or not the protocol prevented us from sharing information that you're saying was publicly available? Publicly available information is there for everybody. We are not just—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for that. With respect to the protocol, it's there for a very particular purpose in a defined time frame: an election period. I will note—as Cherie, my colleague from the service, mentioned before—there are avenues outside of that through which we can communicate tren

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will reiterate that, especially when you have online information playing out in a public domain.... We talk about online influence that is available for people to see and for anyone to pick up, look at, interpret and share. We, inside, are also trying to understand what is behi

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Typically the way SITE approaches this matter is not to try to get into the evaluation of impact, ultimately. It's to understand what is happening in that domain and to inform and to try to take some action. We don't typically get into a deep assessment of the impact of that acti

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's correct, to my understanding. I'm not involved in that space anymore—