Senator Gold: I will continue to make every effort to answer seriously the questions that raise serious issues, though it does somehow sometimes strain my creativity to do so in the face of some of the implications.

I’m about to answer it, colleagues, but you’ll at least allow me the small indulgence to comment on the rhetoric that surrounds these otherwise important issues that you raise for your purposes.

The Prime Minister was very clear that although his government was not made aware until The Globe and Mail published the leaked documents, he instructed CSIS:

Going forward, we are making it very, very clear to CSIS and all our intelligence officials that when there are concerns that talk specifically about any MP, particularly about their family, those need to be elevated.

He also said:

Even if CSIS doesn’t feel that it’s a sufficient level of concern for them to take more direct action, we still need to know about it at the upper government level.

That is what this government has instructed CSIS. That is the way in which it expects the intelligence services to go forward.