"Very bluntly, I will say that — and you know me well enough — that I'm not in the habit of commenting on private diplomatic conversations," Cohen said.
"Look, I will say this was a matter of shared intelligence information," he added. "There was a lot of communication between Canada and the United States about this, and I think that's as far as I'm comfortable going."
Earlier this week, Trudeau told reporters that officials had been working closely with intelligence agencies since the summer to "make sure that we had solid grounding in understanding what was going on."
And, after raising the matter directly with allies and India on the sidelines of the G20, Trudeau said he felt that Canadians had the "right to know."