Welcome, Senator Harder. As leader of the Trudeau government in the Senate, I assume that you support the Liberal government's promise of openness and transparency. As a new senator, I hope you support our collective efforts over the last three years to be more open and transparent in the Senate.

I understand that the process used for your appointment required that you received support from at least one organization. From the advisory board's report, that organization could have been the Bank of Montreal, the Canadian Labour Congress or the RCMP, among others.

In this spirit of openness and transparency, could you please tell the members of this chamber which organization sponsored you?

Hon. Peter Harder (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question. It was the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Senator Batters: Thank you, sir. We appreciate knowing that, because it could be important to know when there might be an issue of potential conflict of interest when the Senate studies or votes on a bill that affects any of those more than 300 organizations that are listed in the advisory board's report.

Could you please tell us which organization sponsored your six new Senate colleagues? If you do not have that information, could you please undertake to provide this chamber with that information?

Senator Harder: I do not have that information, and I will seek as to whether or not I'm able to provide that. Thank you.