Mr. Chairman, of course I can't comment on what may or may not have been the motivation of the minister or anyone else involved in this matter in whatever they did or did not say, but I take Mr. Martin's point about it being of interest to Canadians generally, the basis on which funding is or is not provided. That is what the minister is responsible for. It is not unlike a situation where a minister says he or she made a certain decision based on legal advice, and then the committee wants to see the legal opinion.
The short answer to that is it doesn't really make any difference what the legal opinion is. The minister made a decision. The minister is responsible for the decision, and the minister should explain what it is about the law that led him or her to that decision.
The minister is the one who is accountable, and to examine the advice given is to go into the entrails of government operations, which may or may not be appropriate, depending on the circumstances. In this case here, as I said earlier, who put the “not” in the document--