Canadian Heritage committee  You're absolutely right.

Canadian Heritage committee  I've been on several of these. If the ambassador were to say don't do this, we probably wouldn't do it. We'd probably want to know why.

Canadian Heritage committee  There are two sides to that. One is our representative and our ambassador or high commissioner in a different country; the other is that we deal with the ambassadors here. If we're going to another country, we'll liaise with the ambassador here. If we're going to China, for examp

Canadian Heritage committee  I'd say yes to both. It's certainly possible. As was mentioned earlier, there are baselines or benchmarks for most of this stuff when it comes to some of the elementary things involved, such as flying of flags at events, and so on. The flexibility comes in recognizing the juris

Canadian Heritage committee  That was about the Prime Minister being first.

Canadian Heritage committee  I haven't discussed it at that level. I can assure you that I did discuss it with the premiers' communications staff and with government communications staff. Then I brought it up with the chief of protocol, and they all thought it was a good, simple process. Maybe it's not the m

Canadian Heritage committee  It is simple, yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  If I may, I'll answer that, because that actually brings up the point that I didn't get to in my notes. There's a very simple solution, I think, to a lot of this, if it just could be agreed to on a coast-to-coast basis. I did speak to most of the other chiefs of protocol about t

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a compilation of all the different areas that most protocol offices deal with. For example, Mary mentioned the orders of address, how to send a letter to Buckingham Palace, if you're asked to do that, the order of flags at ceremonies and state funerals, and all that kind of

Canadian Heritage committee  Regarding state funerals, you mean?

Canadian Heritage committee  This comes back to one of the points about just common sense, in many respects. Casting things in stone or writing them down, I think, doesn't work all the time. It's good to a point. There are these orders of precedence I mentioned. On the east coast, the military or the navy g

Canadian Heritage committee  I did.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. On the order of precedence, one of the key points is this: there is a national order of precedence, but there are also 13 other orders of precedence. The reason is, none of the provinces or territories actually can agree with how the national order of precedence works or i

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, everyone. As the chairman mentioned, I'm the chief of protocol for the Province of Manitoba. I'm probably one of the longer-serving chiefs of protocol in Canada. I've been the chief of protocol there for 14 years. I've served