Mr. Speaker, Irwin Cotler, the well-respected former justice minister and attorney general spoke on the radio today, by way of analysis. I will quote him and it may take a little while, so please, bear with me.
It states, “There is an inherent tension between the two roles. As Minister of Justice, you are a member of cabinet with other ministers. You're bound by cabinet secrecy and cabinet solidarity, but as Attorney General you have to speak, to use her words, 'truth to power', and it may contradict with what some of the other ministers might feel. They then speak to you out of their political hats, but they don't always realize when they speak to you that you are wearing not only a political hat but that you are wearing also a legal hat. When it comes, as in the matter of prosecutions, there is another dimension of independence and the rule of law all bound up, so there are these psychological dynamics and you can have a situation where the people whom she spoke with, each of them may have felt that when they were speaking to her they were giving her information that they felt was important for her to know or to help her make up her mind. Yet when she experienced it coming from 10 different people, then she experienced it as being a concerted and sustained pressure, which she deemed to be inappropriate. So they may have felt they were acting in a proper manner from the point of view of intention, but the consequence ended up being felt by her as being inappropriate.”
This points to a potential difference of perspective and I think the member should take it into account. If she's—