Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also was honoured to be asked to sit on this committee. I will just give you a little bit of background, which you do have in my resumé. I was born on Prince Edward Island and I've spent most of my life there, except for one year in New Brunswick at a c

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I received a call from the provincial government, from the office of our minister. I was asked to answer a few questions and than I read in the newspaper that five names had been submitted to your committee. That is how I was appointed. I took no steps personally, as I did not ev

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Does Mr. Vij understand French?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can answer in English. It might be just as easy. As for working with the Senate and that, I have never been a government employee, so I don't know all the rules and regulations that they all have. But as a citizen of Prince Edward Island, I can tell you that, if you look at my

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much for your comments. When you do a lot of volunteer work, you can learn a lot. Whenever I sat on a committee, I left knowing more than when I arrived. When you work with a lot of people, you find out what they do, how they do it, what works and what doesn't. I

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I have. I have 15 employees in my business. When we hire, of course we look for people who have the necessary skills. You have to be able to judge whether they will be able to do the job in the enterprise or not. As Mr. Vij said, we need to know, when we hire, if the person

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I received a call from the Premier's office.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes and I was asked a bunch of questions, as I'm sure the others were. I think he picked five names, at least that's what was on our paper, so it was our Premier's office.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I thought of that after.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think Mr. Vij pretty well answered those questions because—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but I feel that we were asked here to defend our CVs and I feel we were not prepared for those questions. Had we been given different information....

Procedure and House Affairs committee  With what's already been said, I feel that is enough.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The government could be all on one side some day and they could pass what they want, but with having the Senate there, it's for sure going to be, as they call it, the House of sober thought. You can't have somebody pass laws that are not good for all of Canada because a group of