Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing today.
First of all, I want to say that I was very pleased to hear your statement, Dr. Shapiro, in your earlier response to Ms. Redman, I think, that you realize perception becomes reality when you deal with political sensitivities and you deal with members of Parliament.
You'll recall appearing before this committee in the last Parliament, dealing with one of my colleagues, Deepak Obhrai, in a very sensitive situation, and what readily became political reality once you had confirmed with a journalist that an investigation was under way.
I was pleased to hear you say that you recognize today that there is a reality and that you would now proceed differently by basically saying “no comment”. If a journalist phoned you and asked whether it's true that so-and-so is being investigated, you would say “no comment”, rather than “yes” or “no”. As others have noted, simply by making the statement that yes, you are looking at this, immediately that particular member of Parliament is branded, for lack of a better term. I was pleased with that.
But I want to follow up on something else that I think I heard you say. In reference to a question from the opposition, you made a comment about being interviewed on a talk show. Do you believe that it's part of the mandate of the Ethics Commissioner to appear on talk shows?