Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to make this clear in response to Ms. Simson's comment that we would not be simply asking the legal officer of Parliament for his opinion on the definition of public office-holder. You may also recall I made an argument earlier that in subparagraph 108(3)(h)(vi) the word “and” is different from the word “or” in subparagraph 108(3)(h)(v), as used prior to the words “the ethical standards of public office holders”. There's a reason that two different words were used there.
We would be asking him to give us his opinion on the study itself as to whether it's within the mandate, based not just on the definition of public office-holder but on the interpretation of that whole subparagraph. That's a significant legal argument, and one, I would suggest, that probably comes up in the mandates of many other committees of Parliament.
On this very important matter, I think it's of great value to Parliament and to the taxpayers to have the legal opinion of someone who's employed by Parliament, to have those legal opinions before we launch into a multi-meeting, multi-week, or multi-month study dealing with three or four thousand pages of information, as the chair has pointed out.
Thank you.