Bernard Patry at the Foreign Affairs and International Development Committee

On November 24th, 2009. See this statement in context.

November 24th, 2009 / 10:20 a.m.

Liberal

Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

Thank you very much.

Thank you for being here this morning, Ms. Evans. I'd like to get a clearer understanding of your mandate.

Let's talk about it.

I'm going to read in English the request for review.

Article 6 says, The Counsellor may review an issue on receipt of a request from

(a) an individual, group or community

That's fine, and if I go to limitation on authority, you see that :

The Counsellor shall only undertake a review with the express written consent of the parties involved.

You were here this morning during the very well-documented testimony of Ms. Picolotti, from Argentina. If you had received a request for review from an NGO, such as MiningWatch, concerning what is currently going on in Argentina, would you have been able to investigate the NGO's allegations without the prior consent of the mining companies concerned?

See context to find out what was said next.