First of all, let me thank you for your very kind words about my achievements. I'm truly humbled and grateful for your comments.
Let me make two points on this, first on accountability. I'd like to say that I've spent much of my career, particularly the last 10 or 15 years, honing my skills on accountability, such as how I held people accountable within the University of Alberta. I was the person who was ultimately answerable to the board of governors and, in fact, to the Government of Alberta on the issue of accountability as an institution, as an individual on behalf of my executive, on behalf of management, and on behalf of the academics and our staff. I'd like to think that I understand accountability reasonably well enough to be able to assess that.
When we are looking at candidates, our terms of reference were, I think, constructed to some degree with that in mind. One of the things that I think is evidence of an individual's being able to be accountable is really what they set out to do in their lives professionally and in their communities. Were they in positions that involved making laws or supporting individuals who were making laws? We use the evidence collectively that came from their CV, from references, and from the nomination by organizations in order to ask if these individuals are capable of being accountable for the task before them. I think that was the criteria they used, and we use our own experience about what it means to be accountable at those kinds of levels to come to that conclusion.