Mr. Chairman, I saw the minister regularly throughout that period and throughout my term as director of CSIS on a wide variety of issues.
With respect to that specific issue, it was my view that it was inappropriate for CSIS to be...or that the request was inappropriate, in a sense. Once the request had been made, we had to deal with it. The reality was that it fundamentally offended the principle that we would neither confirm nor deny any inquiry with respect to any individual. Therefore, since the letter would effectively have been public, it would have been beyond the control of the Government of Canada. It was essentially a public letter, and my advice was that we couldn't go there.