Government Operations committee  That is correct.

Government Operations committee  Not at all.

Government Operations committee  I've been around so long, nothing strikes me as odd.

Government Operations committee  As I said--

Government Operations committee  I was asked to explain the issues in dispute. In the course of my explanation I would have spoken about mediation attempts we had had and the result of various mediation attempts. You probably know that mediation is essentially the default position of the courts; they want us to go to mediation.

Government Operations committee  I knew before I attended the two meetings that officials of the Prime Minister's Office would attend. That's all I knew before the meeting, and I wasn't any wiser after the meeting about why they had attended. One of the minister's staffers asked me to go through it. It is a commercial file.

Government Operations committee  They could have been; but on the other hand, if you wanted me to explain something to somebody, you probably would say you would like to hear about this or that, and whether it was just the minister's office that wanted to hear about that, whether they knew that's what the Prime Minister's Office wanted to hear.

Government Operations committee  I don't recall being asked a single question by either Mr. Soudas or Jean-François Béland. For example, I tried to remember whether.... I'd been asked whether the briefing happened in English or French, for example.

Government Operations committee  I did not. I have a recollection that I walked into that meeting, and the others were already there. It was the minister's office that conducted the meeting.

Government Operations committee  We presented at the January 25 meeting. We tabled a list of the legal actions. Yes, we had that. But I didn't make my own notes, because I was doing the presenting. I cannot both speak and write notes. So I don't have my own notes of the meeting. Normally, when I walk into a meeting I have two minutes to take note of who's chairing it and who's there.

Government Operations committee  We did not have someone taking notes. That varies. In my long experience of briefing ministers, it varies with the practice of the various deputy ministers' offices. I've worked with four different deputies at the Department of Public Works alone. Each of them has a different practice with respect to note-taking, meetings, minutes, etc.

Government Operations committee  The third would have been in the minister's office.

Government Operations committee  We brief regularly. I was thinking that I've been briefing ministers for 20 years. I've been briefing through different governments. It is not day to day, every day, that the Prime Minister's Office attends, but it has happened before. I had nothing to do. For me the telling thing is that I walked away from that meeting without being asked to get back on any particular issue, without being asked if I would look into this or find out about that or decide whether something else was possible.

Government Operations committee  They were less than an hour. They were maybe 45 minutes or an hour, or in that time range.

Government Operations committee  I will try. I can do it in English, but not in French. There are six files between us--the crown--and Rosdev. Three files are instituted by Rosdev; three files are instituted by us. To understand the background, you have to know that in the case of both leases--for both L'Esplanade Laurier and Les Terrasses de la Chaudière--we do not control.