Procedure and House Affairs committee  Is there any possibility in your mind that she was making the request of the Speaker of the House of Commons? Would she have made this request had it been any other Speaker in the House of Commons?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Fraser, for being here today. When I was listening to you speak earlier about Mr. Fergus, I don't know, but perhaps you were a little humble in your relationship. Mr. Fergus referred to you as a role model. He said that you're somebody that he looked up to and learned a lot from.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Your relationship certainly was unique. I mean, you were quite close with him. I'm sure that, as you indicated, you meet a lot of people and get to know a lot of people. The impression we were left with from Mr. Fergus was that you had a very close relationship that was perhaps much...well, not perhaps.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Your wife, who we now understand was the one who requested, if I heard that correctly, would have known about that close relationship, obviously.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  She left her children with him to babysit. When your wife made this request of Mr. Fergus, do you think there was any possibility that she was making the request of him as the Speaker of the House of Commons, or do you think she was making the request as an individual, Greg Fergus?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm just trying to picture the correspondence here, and I'm hearing that there might be an opportunity to get a little more detail on that later. I'm just trying to picture how this went down, for lack of a better expression. Mr. Fergus is contacted by your wife, who is clearly not going through the channels of the official correspondence with the Speaker's office.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We had to sit through it. We can confirm that it was.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Finally, I heard you say earlier in response to a question that you filmed the video between two meetings.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You were in your Speaker's robes. You were at a meeting. You were on your way to another meeting. You said, “I need to film this video for my role model”—that's not what you said but I'm paraphrasing—so you went into your office, the video was filmed in one take and it was done.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Okay. Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You stated in your introductory comments—and I think it's something that no question has really picked up on yet—that you've been friends with Mr. Fraser for a long time. How long, approximately?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You said that Mr. Fraser supported you quite a bit over the years. I think you even—correct me if I'm wrong, as this was in the translated part from the French—said he was very supportive of you when you were getting together with your wife. Did I hear that correctly?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I heard you say he was a role model to you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My wife went through exactly the same thing.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's fair to say that your relationship with Mr. Fraser goes well beyond partisan activities or the Liberal Party of Canada, the Liberal Party of Ontario or the Liberal Party “generally speaking.”