Madam Chair, in the context of the Conflict of Interest Act, I had the opportunity in the “Trudeau III Report” and in the “Morneau II Report” to deal with the issue of friends and to propose fairly clear guidelines. There are six or seven criteria that cover, for example, the frequency of association or the total duration of the relationship. Another criterion is whether one goes to the other person's home to eat a meal alone or in a group. These are indicators of a friendship.
Of course, everyone has their own definition of what a friend is. Some people have 4,000 friends on Facebook. They consider these people to be friends. Others will only have three or four people in their entire lives that they consider their friends.
So this definition is very difficult to map out. I would tend to have a fairly restrictive interpretation of the term “friends,” for it to play a role. It has to reach a certain threshold, because you don't want it to become ridiculous either. If I asked you to think about your friends and list the 10 closest to you, you would be able to do it, and so could I. You might want to think about not acting differently towards these friends compared to how you act towards other people, quite simply.