Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, folks, for coming on short notice and for being as direct as you can be before a committee. We certainly express our thanks to you for that, and to the scientist, who we certainly hope gets his job back, because he did the public a service by indicating there was a secret document.
We did pass a motion yesterday at this committee requesting the document from the Government of Canada, but it does seem, according to the chair's comments yesterday, that there is concern that we might still be denied it. But certainly the committee has passed a motion, and we will see whether we're denied by the Government of Canada what should now be public information.
I want to make it clear in the beginning that our concern about this document and what might take place at the CFIA is not with the CFIA itself. You've heard the comments from the government members; they do a tremendous job to try to make it look like we're attacking the regulatory authority. We're not; we're expressing our concerns about a government whose Prime Minister is really a Prime Minister in charge of governing but doesn't believe in government, and who believes in taking away many of the national authorities of the federal government and decentralizing and deregulating and turning everything over to the provinces and markets. So this document, in our view, fits his mould. So we're concerned and the questions we're expressing are for the people who direct and allocate funding to the CFIA, that is, the Government of Canada.
To the so-called document, I take from what you said, Ms. Demers, that when we heard from the CFIA yesterday...they're in a funny position in which they can't really answer any of our questions because they can't talk about the document. They didn't deny there was a secret document. So their answers mainly went to the past, to past budgets, and not to future directions. We understand that.
My question specifically to you is, does this now alleged secret document exist, and have you seen it?