The opportunity to apply for the Ethics Commissioner arises very infrequently. It can be seven years minimum, and it can be much longer than seven years. You can see from my CV that I would probably not be available 15 years from now when the second Ethics Commissioner might retire. That's one factor.
Another is the importance of the position. I was talking about institutions that are there to protect Canada's democracy. I have a deep interest in that, in playing that role in each individual case I would be dealing with, and that has a lot of appeal to me. That's the second reason.
I have done 11 years at the Department of Justice, where I had to make hundreds of decisions of a much smaller but similar nature whenever employees and people associated with the Department of Justice were seeking permission to do something.