Mr. Chair, I'm going to start by going back to some testimony we heard previously. I mentioned to you at the time, not on the record, that I was worried that one of our witnesses, when they were presenting, had a prop behind them. It came to my attention through Twitter last night that it's been tweeted out by the Globe and Mail reporter Bill Curry as well.
I have grave concerns and I bring it to your attention as the chair, and to the attention of the clerk of the committee as well, that I do think it's inappropriate to have political signs posted behind you when you provide information to a committee. It clearly does not happen here. There's nobody standing with a “Stop Harper” sign behind any of them. It may be implicit in what they're saying, and that's okay, but there is no physical sign. We object to that happening. We didn't do anything at the time because it was very difficult to see and ascertain exactly what was on it, but clearly from what we're seeing on Twitter, what we're seeing from people telling us, we can conclusively say that it was a “Stop Harper” sign, and it had to do with political campaign issues. We think it was inappropriate. I hope that you take some action to ensure that this doesn't happen going forward.