I'm glad to see you're a U of T grad.
I wanted to follow up perhaps on Mr. Cullen's questions. I had a brief experience in the private practice of law in New Brunswick, and I've often wondered about people who work as legal advisers in a context as complicated and as treacherous as Parliament or the House of Commons. You'll have people asking you, and I hope in good faith, for legal advice or a legal opinion with perhaps completely contradictory objectives. They're hoping you'll say that such-and-such is possible, or such-and-such is not, or that something is wise or is unwise.
On the exact same issue, probably more than any other function...and I was trying to imagine a large crown corporation like AECL or an organization like the National Capital Commission, which, as you correctly noted, at various times on various issues becomes politicized, often around different development initiatives, different policies, or decisions they make obviously in this city.
In my experience as a parliamentarian...and it's different, to be fair, in a minority context than in a majority context, where there's a bit more predictability, both in committee deliberations and in votes of the House itself. But one thing that I was struck by, albeit in the minority context of either Mr. Martin's or Mr. Harper's government before 2011, was the ability of parliamentarians or committees to get access to information.
This is not in the context of the legislation, of the statute, but to be able to dig out or tease out particular information from governments or in some cases from other parliamentarians. The Senate process that may be undertaken in the coming weeks will again sort of touch on this idea of the ability of people to get information that people claim as parliamentary privilege or, in the solicitor-client context, as solicitor-client privilege.
In your experience, either at the NCC or at...and you'll forgive me if I don't understand the extent to which access to information applies to the National Capital Commission or to AECL. I see in your resumé that you were involved in the access to information and privacy context, so I assume it fully applies to the NCC.