Ethics Commissioner on the tapes themselves

From the report about the tapes:

There has been a great deal of media coverage in relation to the existence of the tape recordings that Mr. Grewal had made of his conversations with various parties. They are, of course, what sparked this present inquiry. However, from the outset of this inquiry, I wished to proceed on the basis of obtaining the direct testimony of all of the parties involved before deciding whether it would be necessary to rely on the tapes as primary evidence in support of my findings and conclusions. In this way, any questions associated with the provenance, quality, integrity, translation and transcription of the tapes could be addressed at a later time. Even though we had all of the tapes audio enhanced for the purposes of translation and transcription, I was not satisfied that an accurate and reliable transcript could be prepared in relation to the conversations which took place in Punjabi. Indeed, throughout this inquiry there were strong objections by those parties represented by counsel regarding the use of the tapes in support of the inquiry. At the conclusion of this inquiry, I did not consider it necessary, in the face of the wealth of the primary corroborated evidence of all of the witnesses to rely on the contents of the tapes in reaching my conclusions.