Yes, thank you.
I understand how politics works as an outsider and I understand that it can be a tough business. I understand that you may have disagreements among or between yourselves in the parties. As members of public office I think you signed up for that and you've taken on a public role, so if you don't like something the other party is doing, I understand the need to call each other out at times. I think you should be civil, but I understand how that works.
We are tangentially connected to this matter. As I mentioned in my statement, we don't have any knowledge of the student service grant. We have nothing to do with that.
It was very surprising, a week after we received a call from the clerk of this committee telling us not to submit documents, to receive a letter from a member of the committee, on House of Commons letterhead, asking us to “do the right thing” and release all the documents.
We retained a counsel who is an expert in privacy law because we realized from the beginning that this was probably a complex matter and we probably should make sure we proceeded properly at all times. I sent that letter to our counsel and she was actually quite upset by the letter. She said that it was an illegal request and that if we complied with the request it would be breaking Canadian law. We would be violating our clients' privacy rights.
I was surprised that a member of this committee would ask us to do that, to contravene Canadian law. What was more surprising was that I received the letter on the morning of August 27, and at the same time I received it, I also received a letter from a journalist, a reporter from The Canadian Press, attaching a copy of the letter and asking for my comment.
I was actually confused and baffled at how a reporter had a letter that was sent to me that I hadn't even had a chance to read yet. We don't have time to get into it, but a series of events that happened after that put us in a really difficult situation, something I've never experienced before.
As a leader of a small company I feel that my first obligation is to ensure the physical, emotional and mental health safety and well-being of our employees. For the first time in my 25-year career I was in a situation where I didn't feel that I could properly protect everyone from what was going on. We had to get the police involved. It was a really nasty situation.