Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  That is correct.

Finance committee  No, I have not.

Finance committee  As the custodian of cabinet confidences, I would take the same principled approach to every case. Chair, given that the member has opened the door to the SNC-Lavalin case, I think it is worth pointing out that I indicated to the Ethics Commissioner that had he grounds for belie

Finance committee  I would just say, Chair, that the Ethics Commissioner and I did have an exchange of letters. I was entirely prepared to hear from him with respect to his reasons and the grounds for requesting further information, and there was no further request. The matter stayed there. I do no

Finance committee  Well, I would never presume to limit the suspicion of members of the opposition, or any members of the House, but I would say that as a servant of the executive branch, I applied the principles of cabinet confidence in terms of whether disclosure outweighed the public interest. I

Finance committee  Gladly, Chair. One can imagine that if there were not any application of principles at the outset of the exercise, even neutral public servants might be inclined to look at one document and say: “Oh, this will be awkward, and we won't release it, but this one will be all right,

Finance committee  I am completely confident that public servants consistently did their job and applied, according to the principles that had been set out, all of the examination of the records. I'm very satisfied.

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  That quote is indeed accurate. It sounds very much like something I would say and did say.

Finance committee  Yes, but I have to be clear. I'm a bit of a stickler about these things. The public service serves Canadians in some of our functions very directly. The agent at a call centre serves Canadians very directly. The agent at a Canada Revenue Agency call centre or service centre does

Finance committee  My advice, to the very best of my ability—and I don't want to personalize it, as this is true of all public servants—is impartial in the sense that [Technical difficulty—Editor] to have an interest in the partisan benefit or interests of the government of the day, or any other pa

Finance committee  No, Chair, I did not. This was delegated responsibility to other public servants. I would like to point out that—

Finance committee  Okay.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, to the best of my recollection, the documents were about the WE Charity only. As for the names of the officials, I just wanted to know the names of the responsible deputy ministers in the departments.