Thank you, Mr. Moore. I'll do my best to try to answer the question.
What I'd like to do is begin the answer by taking you back to one of the questions that you included in your comments, which was the hypothetical--and I emphasize that it was hypothetical--situation of if the commission had recommended 30%, and I'll leave off to the side the observation that of course it didn't, that it recommended another number.
From the Canadian Bar Association's perspective, the important principle here is, first of all, not the number itself. The commission has explained how it has come up with the particular number, and after the number has been articulated by the commission it's quite clear from a constitutional perspective that the analysis then evolves into one that is process based.
So that leads to the second question that I think you've posed for us, in looking for some help from the Canadian Bar Association for the benefit of the commission, which is what is an adequate response from the government? There I have to go back to the problem the Canadian Bar Association has with the process and the detail of the government response itself, because you correctly observe that the government has explained the choice of a different comparator to derive a particular number.
The problem is that the rationale they layer into the response starts from something that doesn't explain the relationship between the need to deviate from the commission report and the--to quote from it--“economic and financial position” of the government itself. So we have this void where we have to take a leap.... We've been told in this process that “Canadians expect that any expenditure from the public purse should be reasonable and generally proportional to all of these other economic pressures and fiscal priorities.” But there's nothing we can draw out of the report that explains why the number that's been recommended by the commission is not reasonable and generally proportional. That's where the breakdown takes place, from the perspective of the Canadian Bar Association.