Mr. Chair, I will repeat what I said, and what everyone has been saying, from the outset. We have had a committee that considers itself non-partisan all along. Today, I would recall that, contrary to what Mr. Samson stated before the cameras, Ms. Meilleur may have had a fine résumé, but the other candidates may also have had fine résumés. Ms. Meilleur's problem is that she is 100% Liberal. This is one of the first times that an appointment has not been unanimous in Parliament or in the Senate. We must stop hiding behind grand principles, because this is really what the problem is here.
It goes even further. Ms. Meilleur says one thing to the Standing Committee on Official Languages, and another to the Senate. I think that is unacceptable. She misled the Standing Committee on Official Languages and the Senate on the same issue. On May 18, when Mr. Mulcair asked her whether she had talked to Graham Fraser, she said that he had told her to apply. And where did he meet her? In the street. Yesterday, in the Senate, she said that she had a telephone conversation with Mr. Fraser, and that she had gone to a restaurant with him. So we have two completely different versions of the story.
Every time a senator asked her about the anglophone community in Quebec, she was not able to answer. She knows nothing about the reality of this community, and she does not even know its name. Does that sound smart to you? We are talking about the Commissioner of Official Languages. She even ended up saying that she would be the commissioner of the francophonie. Listen, as much as we want to be nice and not get into it, it does not make sense, and we're not the ones saying it. She was the one who said it, to this committee and to the Senate. She did not say the same thing in both places. If that's what transparency means to you, we'll have to talk about it because I do not agree.
This is about the appointment of a senior official of Parliament, who should not have any political stripe. Just because someone was in politics in the past does not mean that they cannot aspire to become a commissioner some day. That does not preclude anything.
However, last June, she resigned from her position as a minister in Ontario, saying that she had to take time for her family because her husband was very ill. Two months later, in August, she met everyone in the Liberal Party, and now she wants to become the Commissioner of Official Languages. This is not a part-time position! If her husband was very ill, his condition could not have improved in a month. Read the “blues” of her appearance before both Houses, and you might realize that what we are saying is true. What we want to know—