Well, as I said in my opening comments, the reason I wrote the letter was to make sure you had the delegated authority here, and people with delegated authority, rather than those who didn't have it, and those who are familiar with responding to questions like this. The fact is that as a deputy minister of my department I carry on the responsibilities of my predecessor. It's a bit like a minister of the Crown whose responsibility for his predecessor's actions continues. So I'm here, not only in my personal capacity but in my institutional capacity as the deputy minister of the department.
On June 19th, 2007. See this statement in context.