Procedure and House Affairs committee  Let me say that the criteria that have been laid out are very clear. We cannot deviate from that. That's our mandate. We would look at every single individual based on his or her merits and contributions. Clearly, if they have been considered worthy candidates by their communi

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for your kind words. Let me say in conclusion that I am very honoured to serve Canada. I am very committed to this country. This is a great country with a great democracy, and I am very privileged to have a chance to meet with all of you. I woul

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think if you look at the criteria that I set out, one of the things that I think is important is the fact that we want to ensure, at least through this process, that there is representation of minorities: of linguistic minorities, ethnic minorities, first nations, indigenous pe

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think there were two things at the University of Alberta, certainly as president, that I focused on. At UBC, I was vice-president, research, so I had a very different portfolio. As president, there were a couple of things that we were working very hard on. First of all, we wor

Procedure and House Affairs committee  One of the criteria that we have been tasked with is to ensure that we have a balance of candidates. We have the issue of gender, ethnic, linguistic, minority, and indigenous peoples, but also breadth of expertise in order to have a well-functioning Senate. As long as we can ensu

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I served on the Science, Technology and Innovation Council for a few years. Our role there was essentially responding to advice from the Minister of Industry Canada as well as creating a report called “State of the Nation” in which we attempted to comprehensively provide the mini

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would say that much of our advice was indeed taken very seriously, and there were many occasions on which the advice was implemented.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  MaRS is a technology transfer incubator organization in Ontario. It's located in Toronto. It was started off by John Evans, who is a very distinguished Canadian and who passed away recently, sadly. MaRS stood for medical and related sciences district. Their role is to take discov

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I was very fortunate, because first of all, I grew up in Sri Lanka. I spent a couple of years in England as a child, and when my father was studying I was in California for two years, and of course, in Canada. I consulted for about a hundred companies around the world when I

Procedure and House Affairs committee  First of all, let me thank you for your very kind words about my achievements. I'm truly humbled and grateful for your comments. Let me make two points on this, first on accountability. I'd like to say that I've spent much of my career, particularly the last 10 or 15 years, honi

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll make two points. First of all, we are currently working on our report, so I can't speak to it, because it's by no means complete. But let me point to the website and the form that the organizations were asked to fill out. Perhaps that form will give you a better understandin

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Our report is not complete so it's difficult for me to comment, because I don't know what we will collectively end up with, but let me say that our obligation according to the terms of reference is to provide statistics to the Prime Minister. Beyond that, I think it's too early f

Procedure and House Affairs committee  At this point I can say our process is well under way. Until the process is concluded, it might be best if I left that answer until we can finally give you some sense of timing.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would say not directly, other than developing a very good understanding of the role of the public service in Canada; a good understanding of the long-term trends that Canada is facing as a country; and the importance of modernizing, perhaps many of our systems in support of gov

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm happy to reinforce what our chair offered and to add to it. One of the things we were trying to do in phase one was to ensure that we got the word out very broadly. Hence, as a group—the three federal members and all of the provincial members, which are three provinces and tw