Thank you, Madam Chair.
I guess I have the consent of the committee to lead off here. I note, Madam Chair, that you did not read the order of reference for today, but that's okay, as the members have had a chance to read it.
As most of you know, I'm a House procedures guy. There might be 10, 20, or 30 of us in the House. Arising out of that predisposition of mine, I have to say that while I have a natural desire to respond to committees in the House and to help out colleagues, my appearance here today as a witness has to be conditional on the committee establishing its authority to undertake this study. It is a study cobbled together during a committee debate about me and, as I understand it, on claims made on an Internet website.
I should also say that the issues apparently raised and discussed have also been raised by other members at another committee and in the House itself. I don't have any document to show this, but I am advised that the government had undertaken a complete search of my 22 years as a member of the House of Commons, for whatever purposes, in preparing for today. You will understand my response when I say that all of this seemed to occur the very week that I and some other members of the House achieved some measure of success in the House on the issue of the House's subpoena powers. I just couldn't help but think it was payback, as members around the table will understand. There are some political equations always extant in the House and at its committees.
I am going to ask the chair and clerk to describe the committee's authority to proceed on this particular issue today. You can take a minute or two, because I have a couple of other remarks to make first, but I am inviting the chair, with the assistance of the clerk, to read to me the provisions of the Standing Orders providing a mandate or authority to this committee to my satisfaction.
In the meantime, for the committee, I will say that I am sitting before you as a member and colleague and as a lawyer. I confirm that. I've been a lawyer my entire career.
Under section 7 of the Conflict of Interest Code contained in the appendix of our Standing Orders, there are the explicit words that a member is not prevented from:
engaging in employment or in the practice of a profession.
Also, section 27 of the same set of rules provides that:
A Member who has reasonable grounds to believe that another Member has not complied with...[the] Code may...set out the reasonable grounds for that belief—
—and send those to the commissioner for an inquiry.
The House has set up a complete code of procedures to deal with these kinds of issues. This committee, of course, isn't involved in those procedures, but I just wanted to refer you to sections 7 and 27 of the code.
You should also know that I released a statement on May 6 as a result of statements made in the House by one of the government ministers, and I said then and I am repeating it now that I am a lawyer. I am not a lobbyist, and I have never been paid in any way to lobby the federal government.
I'll just check with the chair. Do you have the statement of the committee's authority there? If you're not quite ready, I have one closing piece that I'll just add.