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Government Operations committee Thank you. What I wanted to say was with the period of time that was determined after I had my incident in the news last September, I had withdrawn from a lot of the activity of my business--almost all of it, for a period of about a month and a half to two months. From that period, it was my understanding that we were not pursuing...even though a contract was signed, which I was not directly involved with, with Mr.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee Obviously these are personal questions to do with my finances, but I will answer them because I've got nothing to hide.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee The bulk of my income during 2009 was my severance pay after my defeat here as an MP. With that--also, I sold my home that I used to have here in Ottawa--I had budgeted to make an investment into my company and to not have to worry about finances for most of 2009, even into 2010.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee That's right. As I said, our goal...because I know you asked about our business model. It is a bit confusing, because, let's face it, we were new at this. I was an MP for 11 years. We were trying to develop a new business. I had been out of practice. We thought we were going about things in a prudent manner, not to take any money before we established what kind of business we were going to be in.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee No. I said that a lot of work that we were doing was research for our own benefit to determine what kind of business we would do. We didn't want to charge anyone for our own need for knowledge and our need for experience before we established our business.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee Sure, please.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee I'm happy to exclaim, as proof shows, that I have no influence whatsoever in delivering anything, so I'm not going to be subject to that provision of the law.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee If those things were accurate--those things are not accurate.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee Are you asking me specifically about interactions I had with Mr. Gillani, or are you asking me about influence?
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee As I said, and let me go back to what--
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee No. To my knowledge, no.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee As I recollect, in our discussions about this whole issue of registration for the Lobbying Act, Patrick and I went through a thorough discussion of whether this was an appropriate action. Because we didn't know the nature of our business at the time and we were not--and I qualify, we were not--taking any contracts at all until we determined what sort of business we would do, there was no need, as we interpreted the law, to register.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee Again, you'd have to ask Mr. Glémaud, but the way I understood it was that in order for us to proceed, by putting any application in—because there wasn't even a guarantee that if we went through the process we would work with these companies—we were taking a risk in order to get some initial information, to do some research, to find out what was happening.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee As Mr. Gillani said--and my understanding of the contract he tabled and the way it was explained to me--for any future business, whether he was raising money in the private sector or we were raising money from the private sector or any other source, we would have to sit down and draft the terms of an agreement with the parties who would be receiving the money.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer
Government Operations committee I appreciate that. I would just say, Madam Chair, that I'm willing to abide by the expert in this particular area, the Commissioner of Lobbying, and I will follow whatever she determines once she's done her review.
June 17th, 2010Committee meeting
Rahim Jaffer