Mr. Chairman, I was asked a question about the mandate. This goes to the core of the entire issue, and I am telling you that the mandate was given under oath by Mr. Schreiber in 2004 in the Eurocopter case. Here is what he said:
I had many things in mind, and I told you, I wanted to hire Mr. Mulroney for Thyssen, to do the same thing that he's doing now, and it would have been a nice thing to have a previous Canadian Prime Minister on a peacekeeping track for Thyssen products, again, as this government wanted the German companies to do. I was also involved in the pasta business, enriched durum semolina products, and this is the moment I spoke to him about Archer Daniels Midland, and he provided me with material.
I was a senior director of Archer Daniels Midland. This is where the mandate came from. It's not some snarky comment about pasta machines saving the peace of the world. It's an entirely legitimate business proposal, which he proposed, and I accepted. And I think Mr. Ménard is right--the only dubious part about it, which I've acknowledged, was that I ought not to have accepted the payment in cash.