Conclusion
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Annual Report 2020

113. This year has been difficult for all Canadians. With its changed membership since the 2019 election, the Committee had barely begun its work when measures to contrai the spread of COVID-19 were intraduced. Those measures forced the Committee to adapt its work plan and to find ways of conducting its business while respecting requirements for bath health and security. The Committee acknowledges the assistance of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in praviding the Committee with a secure means of holding meetings in the fulfillment of its mandate. lt also recognizes the efforts of the security and intelligence organizations to pravide documentation in response to Committee requests despite grappling with their own pandemic-related challenges.

114. These efforts reinforce for the Committee the importance of ensuring accountability even in the most trying of circumstances. As the Committee's overview of threats to national security shows, risks to Canada's security continue to evolve, including during a global crisis. Terrarist threats have changed in important ways; states conducted opportunistic attacks to interfere with our politics and steal hard-won research and praprietary data; and organized crime graups exploited legislative and enforcement weaknesses to launder money and traffic increasingly lethal drugs. Canadian security and intelligence organizations have not been complacent, as they continue to identify and mitigate threats while they adapt their own operations to new realities.

115. The same must be true for the organizations responsible for reviewing Canada's security and intelligence framework and activities. The Committee recognizes the pressures security and intelligence organizations face in meeting their operational responsibilities. lt adjusted its own demands on departments in response, extending deadlines and reducing requests for briefings. Nevertheless, the Committee and its counterpart organization, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, continue to fulfill the raies assigned to them in statute. ln the coming year, the Committee intends to pravide two reviews to the Prime Minister-the framework for the government's cyber defence activities and the national security and intelligence activities of Global Affairs Canada - which will explore important issues of accountability, governance and effectiveness. This intention reflects the Committee's belief that for security and intelligence, operations and their review are bath critical to pratecting Canadians' security, rights and freedoms, and that the resumption of bath must praceed hand in glove.