Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Wright, I think what strikes me most is the extraordinary lengths people have gone to, to essentially make a round peg fit into a square hole, to craft things so that you would be suitable for this position when the sheer scale of the steps that have to be taken clearly indicates that you're not.
I'm reading through some of this arcane stuff that Joe has developed here. Point 7 is worthy of Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister. It says:
Should an official identify an issue which falls within the subject matter of the ethical wall, the official should raise the matter with his or her director, who will then discuss it with the Deputy Secretary for the secretariat, who will be responsible for referring this to the Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet...and Counsel to the Clerk.
You've created a whole mini-bureaucracy just to try to keep you away from documents. And it also says any such files shall be labelled as “not to be shown to Nigel Wright”. So half of the cabinet documents floating around or generated by the Harper administration will be stamped with “not to be shown to Nigel Wright”. Doesn't that strike you as absurd?