Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Christopherson. As you know, one of the primary institutional roles of Her Majesty's loyal opposition is to hold the government to account. Of course the fact that the government has been adding these offices at a rapid pace has made our job more difficult. We hav

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I'm just going to get one number, Mr. Chair.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm going to get one number and—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's fine.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It was signed by Nicolas-Dominic Audet, who was the first person hired, and it shows—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —on his hiring form here in the House of Commons that his address for his work is in Montreal. He was the first shared employee.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You told me I was going to get a chance to answer, but I'll have to wait for the next one.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely true.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely true.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That would be completely the case, Mr. Woodworth, were it not for one fact that gets in the way of your narrative: the fact that every single month of rent has in fact been paid for by the NDP itself. When we looked at this at the beginning, we said that there was never going t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, the rule that you are trying to refer to is usually called ejusdem generis, but in fact the rule you should be trying to use is expressio unius est exclusio alterius.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That rule would have you understand that when you include something, you're excluding others.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  When you come up with a new rule on April 8, 2014, that says as of April 8, 2014, you can no longer do this, that means that prior to April 8, 2014, you could do this.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  By the way there's an excellent work entitled Bibliographie sur la rédaction et l'interprétation des textes législatifs, 375 pages, published in 1979 by the Éditeur officiel du Québec. I am the author of it and I'll be glad to give you a signed copy.