What is the solution?

Madame Minister, again, the bravery is so apparent to me, how do you address the openness, the trust that you hold so true with your own security services?

I’ll leave you with that, and we’ll look forward to taking questions. Thank you very much.

All of the things that we were raised on, all of the things that our security forces spend a career maintaining. This is the dichotomy. This is the problem that we are confronting with. This is ultimately the challenge for security services.

How do we engage in the cyber world, commerce, democracy? It is probably the greatest democratic tool we have right now. How do we engage there, whilst at the same time, protect our national security, and therein protect the values that we share here in the United States, that we ...

It is the largest model that we see. Taiwan and India have introduced a new model for us. The Taiwan model, one of openness, fairness, accountability, all the things that we would like to see. Yet, on the other hand, we have a very aggressive state moving equally as dynamically ...

I know that we’re going to go to questions, so I won’t spend too much time. The challenge, again, for us is how do we create a secure environment? We know that model. Our friends in China are very cognizant of the model they use.

That’s not just an academic question for us. It is a real-life question. It is a real-life question because democracy is being challenged around the world today. In fact, dare I say, it is being challenged here. Dare I say, when we have a president who on occasion will ask ...

The social contract is there for China and its people. The social governance that they extend through the communist party makes it very clear the ambitions of the Chinese government. How, then, do we confront this government, whilst at the same time as the minister has said, create an open, ...

Huawei has just moved to 5G. Will we meet them there? Against this challenge, then, against this challenge, we have a government that is expansionist. We see China mobilizing in much of Africa now to assist the developing world in large projects, whilst at the same time, we see Chinese ...

When we do a security audit for Beijing, we find that the extent to government is well beyond that of just the society, just beyond the local governments, through to companies. We see this presently in my own country of Canada when the Americans asked for the arrest and detention ...

This leads us to a variety of issues that we have to deal with. How do we, in democratic societies, advocate for openness, whilst at the same time, one of our large adversaries is moving mountains to create an environment of security and dare I say, even social repression?

Recognizing that technology and the advances that are being made so quickly cannot be controlled relatively easily by government. As we have the expansion, the growth of technology, so, too, do we have the desire to control in China.

China has been very open with its concept of cyber sovereignty and the desire to extend its own ideas and its own ways of social governance to the cyber world. They are the midst of building the most extensive governance regime for cyberspace and information telecommunications that any country has ...

How do we get there whilst at the same time have security? We are confronted by a government, Madame Minister, where right beside you, that has spent a great amount of time, a great amount of money, in creating probably the most dynamic social security force that we have seen.

The model that our friends in Taiwan have expressed, one of openness and accountability, is a utopian state for us. How do we get there? How do we get there sir, or ma’am, ladies and gentleman? How do we get there?

Preserving innovation and honoring the social contract that it has between the citizens and the state, whilst at the same time, maintain security. Responsible governance, then, is new to cyberspace, but ultimately imperative.

That, in itself, is a dichotomy for me, having spent my career in secrecy, to now find the optimal path is one of openness. You’re challenging me, Minister, at my very core. The problem we have is governments need to confront the challenge of cyberspace, whilst being equal and just.

Ultimately, somewhere along that chain, you have disseminate that information. Intelligence officers realize that at some point along the continuum, that information that’s going to be of value must be disseminated to other partners to share and then operationalize.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Minister. They were lovely words. These are challenging times for me personally. They’re challenging times because I’ve built a career on secrecy. I was in the intelligence services, and secrecy of information is what we do and what we collect.