Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Lynne Hamilton]

I've never worked on the Hill.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

How long have you been a lobbyist?

[Lynne Hamilton]

Five years.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

It's really difficult to sit here knowing what has transpired here, knowing that it was completely inappropriate, knowing that this should never have happened, and you being the recipient of that confidential document and expecting us as members of the committee and Parliament to believe that at no point in time between when you received it on your BlackBerry and when you got a call from Mr. Ullyatt the following morning did you not know that there was something amiss here.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Young. Welcome to our committee, by the way.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I agree with Mr. Christopherson. I think we're flogging a dead horse here. As I mentioned before, I'm concerned with the process, that the process can so easily become abusive. Because people appear before committees and they have no right to remain silent. They can have counsel, but counsel can't participate: they have no right to ask questions; they have no right of reply. The list of rights they don't have makes me very uncomfortable with the process.

I think we've got the answers here. We had about four members of this committee asking the same questions and getting the same answers and making the same comments, that they don't find it believable.

I just want to say for the recordthat I find the testimony quite believable. I operated a business in government relations out of my home for eight years, and it's information overload. I would have gotten maybe 70 or 80 e-mails a day, and what you do is triage. You go through your e-mails, you zip and you decide what you're going to look at and you do it so quickly, it's based on who sends it to you. If somebody sends me a report, that's a person who sends me information that's helpful to serve a client. So you click on that e-mail. Then you make a split-second decision, am I going to print the report? And I often would do it.

I do it to this day. I still operate a volunteer organization called Drug Safety Canada. I do it on weekends at home. So I might go home and there are 50 e-mails. People send me reports, I click on them, and I print them. Now, if I look at it and I go to print it and it says 100 pages, I might not print it. But if it says 5, 10, 20, 30 pages, I print them and I carry them around. I read them on airplanes, I read them at airports, and I look at them later.

I just want to say I find it perfectly believable what Ms. Hamilton has said to us today. I thought it's important to say that for the record, having been experienced in the same in business and operating the same way out of a home office.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We have about one minute left in the hour.

Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'll be brief.

I don't know, Ms. Hamilton, if you know the answer to this question. How many pages was the report?

[Lynne Hamilton]

It was a stack. It's a good stack.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Great.

Monsieur Proulx, for a very quick one.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Hamilton, you've answered Mr. Lukiwski that you are not using any more the “I heart you” that you had been using previously. How come Mr. Ullyatt interpreted your “I love you” in your response as thanking him for supplying you with such a document? If he had received other e-mails from you before with the same “I heart you”, why would this one be different?

[Lynne Hamilton]

Can you clarify that question? I'm a little bit unsure.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

May I, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Very quickly.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

You said to us that you had been using this expression “I heart you”, instead of saying “thank you” or “love you” or whatever. Yet Mr. Ullyatt said when he received your answer for the acknowledgement to his e-mail containing that document, when he read “I heart you”, he understood that you were telling him “I love you for supplying me this confidential document.” Why would he think that, if he'd received previous e-mails from you with your “I heart you”?

[Lynne Hamilton]

I can't speak to what Mr. Ullyatt....

But I would want to say, and I will leave you with this, that I forwarded the document to no one; I shared the document with no one. I didn't tell anybody about it; I didn't tell my clients. I didn't do anything with it, and I think that's important to note.

I hope I've done the best I can to at least enlighten members of the committee about my situation that day, what had happened, and I appreciate you giving me time to chat.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much for coming today. It's been great having you here. We thank you for being here.

We'll suspend for just a minute. We have a small amount of committee business.

The committee will have to decide, are we going in camera for that committee business?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

In camera, okay.

Ms. Hamilton, thank you for coming today, thank you for your answers, and thank you for the documents you've shared with us today.

We'll suspend and go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]