Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Oblath, you came from Houston. I am glad to see you here, but you basically repeated word for word the letter written by Lorraine Mitchelmore, the president of Shell Canada. Shell could have saved itself some money, in terms of conveying its message, or saved on travel expenses. You are not required to repeat the same thing.
Mr. Houle, you started off on a bit of a bad foot by saying that safety is at risk because of this committee, as you do not have the time to complete the permit request necessary to dismantle equipment. I would point out that there is an injunction against the dismantling because you do not have the permits needed to go ahead.
Now, to the heart of the matter. Let us get down to business, whether you want to sell the refinery or not.
The reason we had to ask you to appear before the committee is that we have the feeling that someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We have the feeling that someone is lying to us. We have the feeling that a lot of people worked very hard to make a sale happen, to save 800 direct jobs and 3,500 indirect ones. But today we will talk about saving the energy security of not only Quebec, but also Canada as a whole.
First of all, I would like to thank my colleague Dan McTeague because he got the ball rolling at the time with a motion. It was withdrawn to ensure a proper negotiation process.
Second, I want to thank all of my colleagues because there is no partisanship today: everyone agrees that we need to ask the real questions to figure out how to protect an industry and our nation's energy security. So this affects not only Quebec, but the entire country.
We want to know two things today: whether you want to sell and whether there is a buyer. It is not complicated.
So, first off, we just want to know....
Mr. Oblath, you were there for the last negotiation with Delek US, if the news is not speculative. Is that correct? You were there at the end in discussions with Delek US, to see if they were a buyer?