National Defence committee  Let me say two things. First, on this point about the seriousness and what we know now and didn't know then, at the time I was involved, all we knew was that there was a person with a complaint. We didn't know what that meant. We didn't know anything about the nature of that, or

National Defence committee  Listen, as I indicated before, I think everyone who was aware that someone had raised something—not even knowing what it was, but that someone had raised something—would want the outcome to be that whatever that is gets properly looked at, absolutely. I think everyone shares that

National Defence committee  I certainly agree that the outcome of the issue not being looked at is not what anybody would have wanted at the time, either then or in hindsight. What I think is important to consider is what options were available at that time to actually do anything in addition to what was do

National Defence committee  I certainly didn't mean to restate things in some way that changes that. You are right that I understood at that time that Mr. Walbourne had more that he wanted to say. What that more was, I don't know and I don't think anybody knew at the time. I think what you see by focusing

National Defence committee  I don't have a perfect recollection. I am confident that the first time we would have discussed this issue in full, either with my having spoken to the minister's chief or with Ms. Telford having spoken to the minister's chief, we exchanged all the information we knew at that tim

National Defence committee  I don't have a specific explanation that I would speculate about as to why I was asked to place that call. I don't think it's—

National Defence committee  The nature of the role was not defined in relation to specific departments or specific issues that would fall to me. The way the office was structured at that time, there would be a policy team where all—

National Defence committee  I recall speaking with Ms. Telford about this issue. I don't have any recollections of speaking with anyone else in the Prime Minister's Office at that time about the issue—

National Defence committee  I am being very careful today to answer about what I know and not to speculate about what I don't, so what I am trying to say to you is I know that I spoke to the chief of staff. That's how my involvement in this issue originated. I would have been dealing with her and making sur

National Defence committee  As I indicated in my opening statement, I did not brief the Prime Minister on this issue, and I'm not aware of any briefings of the Prime Minister on this issue, so I'm not in a position to answer your question. That's really as much as I can say on that.

National Defence committee  At that time, as I indicated, we didn't know any details about what the allegation was. Our focus at that time was on making sure that the allegation got to the right place. The only person who I understood at that time had information about what was the allegation was Mr. Walbou

National Defence committee  I don't have any notes about this issue.

National Defence committee  At the time I was involved in this issue, what we had was a suggestion by Mr. Walbourne that there was a complainant who had an allegation, which we assumed could be a serious allegation. We knew nothing else, and our job was then to make sure that allegation got to the right pla

National Defence committee  You can't go further up the chain than giving it to the Clerk of the Privy Council, and I did that, and I had confidence that he was taking carriage of this matter and that he and his people would do everything they could to make sure it was dealt with appropriately.

National Defence committee  I just want to reiterate that I definitely spoke directly to Ms. Sherman. I believe I spoke to her on more than one occasion. There was email correspondence. I think there were phone calls. She was the point person, I understood, in the Privy Council Office to be dealing with thi