CSIS fundamentally is an information-gathering institution. It's something that we tend to forget. We sometimes think there's a James Bond element whereby people swoop in and fix things. Fundamentally, it's an information-gathering institution.
It takes that information, it analyzes it and it distributes it. I would argue that—and I would say the same thing about when I was there—I don't think we did a good enough job to vulgariser, to make the information more generally available in language that people understand.
The main role that CSIS plays is informing government about issues that arise. They have no executive power. They have no powers of compulsion. All they can do is, if necessary, pound a bit on the table and ask that people take their views seriously.
If you're going to focus on CSIS and their role in protecting, it's important to understand that their role is to inform, and sometimes to prod, but they don't have much more of a role than that. It really then becomes the job of departments and agencies to find those parts of the intelligence that they feel need to be acted upon.