The job of the executive legal officer is actually to be of assistance to the Chief Justice in whatever needs she may have. The Chief Justice, as you know, is an enormously busy person who has multiple responsibilities. In addition to her duties as a judge, she must run the court in operational terms as well as in collegial terms. She is the chair of the Canadian Judicial Council, which is the body that is made up of all chief justices of Canada and has responsibilities for all matters that are of significance to the judiciary. She also chairs the National Judicial Institute, which is, as I mentioned, the body that provides training to federal judges.
I think the transferable skills there are twofold. First, in this job, one has to be absolutely aware of the strict confidentiality of everything that happens within the institution. Of course, as you can imagine, being on the right-hand side of the Chief Justice in all of her responsibilities, sitting in an office right next to hers, helping her deal with the duties that I've just outlined, I was made aware of a number of things that had to be kept absolutely confidential. I think this is a transferable skill here, obviously given the significance of the process that we're engaged in and the need to preserve the privacy of the applicants and the confidentiality of the process.
The other dimension is that the Supreme Court is a very important institution in Canadian life and in our constitutional architecture. I think working in there, seeing the collegiality of the court and the way in which the court operates, gives me a pretty good idea of the ways in which individuals engaged in public life need to behave. I think I can apply that kind of understanding to my assessment of the files that we have before us.