The difficulty is that in order to get the facts I have to institute an investigation, so it's a bit circular. I require at least some evidence to satisfy me that there's probably something there to investigate.
The difficulty I had with the Democracy Watch requests was that they were all over the place. They were very imprecise, and it was very unclear exactly what he was asking for. He was asking me to find that the Prime Minister, every single cabinet minister, and every single senior public servant who was appointed by either Mr. Harper or Mr. Mulroney had done something wrong. There wasn't enough precision in what he was requesting to justify going into a huge investigation like that--and I do have discretion. He had no particular standing to request an investigation—only an MP or a senator has standing to do that. So it would have been a personally initiated investigation if I had decided to do it, and I just didn't have enough to go on.