Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, in terms of witnesses appearing in front of committees, they do not necessarily, as a right, have an entitlement to counsel at the cost of the committee or have an entitlement to lawyers. There is some divided authority on that, but most of the authority indicates that not everybody gets to have a lawyer paid for by the process. They can bring their own if they wish. Nothing prevents them from doing that.

In terms of the Minister appearing with respect to the tape, there was an agreement by the Minister to attend in any event to deal with the facts that were within her knowledge that gave rise to the allegation of bias being made in the first place.

In a larger sense, quite apart from the tape issue, she is an individual from whom the committee expressed an interest to hear and who indicated to the committee she would be willing to appear.