Thank you, Mr. Cotler.
You have summed up well two things. First of all, you have summed up the position the Canadian Bar Association has attempted to articulate in its reasons, and second, you've drawn out of the government response the conundrum the Canadian Bar Association had with respect to the two reasons given by the government in its particular response. Without question, the statute entitled the government to look at the overall economic and current financial position of the federal government. But when we looked at the three paragraphs of the response, which was the first response given, we couldn't slot it into the constitutional mandate that was articulated by the federal government, which was to develop a rational and logical reason to depart from the commission.
Again, and we say this with all respect to the federal government, something more than a bald expression is required constitutionally. That presented a difficulty, because we then didn't know how, and the extent to which, it ended up influencing and infiltrating the remaining reasons that were given by the government in its response.