Mr. McKay, speaking now as legal counsel in the context I earlier suggested I would be doing this, I have to stay within the confines of what we're here about, which is an allegation of misleading the House. There may have been a whole host of comments about that document and the insertion of “not”, in a variety of places, particularly in the media. It's an intriguing notion and has all the elements of something one wants to sleuth through and find out how it got there, but what is it relevant to?
It seems to me that certainly where a document is signed by the parties to it, and the document is of a contractual nature, and someone afterwards changes that document in a material respect, and then takes that amended document and attempts to use it to advance some gain of a fraudulent nature, you're into a serious, serious misrepresentation.
If, however, the document was an internal document—and you've heard the testimony of the minister this morning that it was the way they did business on that occasion, and I admit it may not be a very good way of doing business, but that was the way they did business on that occasion, that it simply reflected the ultimate decision—then one might ask oneself whether it's all that critical how that “not” got into the document and whether she was or was not fully truthful on how that “not” got into the document.