I'll just interject for a minute.
As has already been pointed out by Mr. Valeriote regarding page 870 of O'Brien and Bosc, the parliamentary tradition has been that because vote 1 deals with most of the general operations and administration of a department, there is some latitude given by the chair for very wide-ranging questions.
For the benefit of our witnesses I want to go to pages 1068 and 1069 in Chapter 20 of O'Brien & Bosc, which says:
In addition, committees ordinarily accept the reasons that a public servant gives for declining to answer a specific question or series of questions which involve the giving of a legal opinion, which may be perceived as a conflict with the witnesses' responsibilities to the Minister, which are outside of their own area of responsibility, or which might affect business transactions.
I'll leave it to the discretion of the witnesses to answer questions that they're comfortable with.
I'll turn it back to whomever wants to tackle the comments by Mr. Kellway.