National Defence committee  The nuance with the request for assistance part of the mandate is that we would act under the Canadian Armed Forces' mandate and authority, so it would be to the extent that they have the authority to do something. Whether it be active or defensive in nature, we could assist them insofar as their authorities permit.

National Defence committee  I can take that one. We work extremely closely with the Canadian Armed Forces in terms of intelligence provision. We share with them all intelligence that we collect, whether it relates to threats to their armed forces' deployments abroad or internal threats to Canada that would affect the Department of National Defence, as we have a very close working relationship there.

National Defence committee  I don't have that report in front of me, but indeed, on the first recommendation, in terms of investing in active and defensive cyber-operations, as I indicated, in the budget announced in 2022, we did [Technical difficulty—Editor].

National Defence committee  Broadly speaking, I would say both scenarios are possible. It depends on the type of threat affecting the partners. Mr. Khoury may have something different to say about that.

National Defence committee  The information-sharing mechanism is very effective and very transparent, especially between the members of the Five Eyes alliance. We work in partnership to address all the threats we've discussed today. We have very close relationships with our partners in those organizations.

National Defence committee  Thanks very much for that. Allow me the opportunity to just clarify a point, if I misspoke earlier. To be clear, CSE is not permitted in any way, shape or form to target Canadians or any individuals in Canada. That's a basic prohibition. That extends to our foreign intelligence mandate and our cyber-operations mandate.

National Defence committee  No, we are not.

National Defence committee  Yes, indeed. Maybe just further on the aspect of your question in terms of what we've seen Russia do in Ukraine, I think there has been a considerable amount of information—including in open sources—documenting Russia's use of cyber-tools against Ukraine in its most recent conflict and the use of those cyber-attacks and cyber-threats against Ukraine in conjunction with their kinetic attacks, the most prominent example being the disabling of satellite communications over Ukraine in the lead-up to the war.

National Defence committee  I think Sami described it well. We are constantly surveying the space in terms of looking for new tactics and techniques that are used by ransomware actors to target Canadians. It is an evolving space, and it's something that requires a dedicated effort to follow up on to make sure that we continue to protect Canadian infrastructure.

National Defence committee  Sure.

National Defence committee  Thanks very much. That's a fantastic question. We've found an excellent partner in the Canadian Armed Forces in terms of what we call “force generation”: developing a new workforce to be interested in the cyber domain. CSE also works very closely with U.S. Cyber Command in this field.

National Defence committee  Thanks for that question. Indeed, we definitely do not work independently. We work very closely with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of Foreign Affairs. The Department of Foreign Affairs, in fact, is required for active cyber-operations. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is required to provide her consent for those operations.

National Defence committee  Maybe I could take that one from the beginning. It's a great question. It's something that we talk about a lot at CSE and the centre for cybersecurity. We're lucky, in a way. Statistics-wise, we do have a great deal of interest in our organization. We have an interesting mission.

National Defence committee  Thank you for your question. We are always looking for ways to improve how we do things. We recently made a programming investment, and mainly, that helped us improve our ability to work with our foreign affairs colleagues. They play a very important role in our approval process.

National Defence committee  I think I would best turn that one over to my colleague, Sami.