Order, please.
Good afternoon, colleagues. This is the 15th meeting of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The orders of the day are pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the study of the Mulroney Airbus settlement.
Colleagues, as you know, we have three witnesses today, and as was agreed upon at our last in camera meeting at the end of January, we will be flexible with our time to make sure we have equitable distribution of questions to all parties, and we will possibly go a little over our 5:30 p.m. time if necessary in order to achieve that equity. So I ask for your indulgence as we move through the witnesses.
I have a very quick update on a couple of important matters—or maybe just one matter.
First of all, on January 16, as you will know, I wrote both to Mr. Schreiber and to Mr. Mulroney with regard to outstanding requests for information that they undertook in their testimony to provide the committee. On the 16th specifically, I wrote to Mr. Pratte with regard to Mr. Mulroney's undertakings. On January 28 we still had not received the information. I reminded him in a letter with the details of what we need on the international trips to China, Russia, France, and the United States—who he met, at what times, who accompanied him, etc., the full details.
On February 8 we still had not received a response from Mr. Pratte. The clerk sent a message to Mr. Pratte to again remind him of the undertaking to provide that information, and yesterday Mr. Pratte responded to that message indicating that Mr. Mulroney was travelling and could not be reached, and that Mr. Pratte himself would be in court for most of the week but he would do his best to accede to our request.
I simply wanted the committee to know that this is vital information in terms of the work done by Mr. Mulroney with regard to the payments made to him, and we will take all necessary steps to get the information for the members.
Our first witness today is the Honourable Marc Lalonde, who is a privy councillor and was a member of Parliament from 1973 to 1984. During this time he served as Minister of Finance, Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations, Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, Minister of Amateur Sport, and Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Good afternoon, Mr. Lalonde.