Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. Respectfully, that’s not exactly what I said. I did not say — and would not say and could not say specifically — what CSIS might have disclosed. I was referring to a CSIS annual report, and there have been many of them that pointed out a long period of ignoring the rise of far-right extremism in Canada. CSIS — and indeed the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, in its report, also, if I recall — signalled that. Based upon information to which, frankly, I’m not privy, even as a member of the Privy Council, there has been such a rise and threat posed by far-right extremist groups such as to re-engage CSIS’s focus and place them at the top of the list with which CSIS is concerned — more so than other forms of terrorism or extremism that have dominated the public mind, and in some cases tragically in terms of actual acts.

That’s what I was saying, senator. It is a matter of public record that our security services have identified far-right extremism. We have evidence of foreign funding as well. CSIS has made the link publicly between the agenda of these extremist groups and the COVID-19 fatigue that has allowed them to mobilize that to other ends.