I think everyone's had an opportunity. Let me explain, and let me assure you that this was not under any government pressure. I'll go through some of the history.
First, let me quote from the meeting of June 7, where I said in answer to a number of questions:
...I believe this group should be centred around the sherpa, who has been working for months and months on the negotiations. So you centre it around him and you put people, basically, on the economic side of it, the scientific side of it, the environmental side of it, and we have a round table, literally, at which everyone gets an opportunity to ask these people the questions they want about what happens. That's the intention of this meeting.
I went on further to say, in answer to another question:
Definitely we will try to achieve the balanced approach. That to me is the only successful way of doing this. We don't need just one side of any issue. So we've tried to live with that throughout all of our meetings, and I would intend to do that again.
So that was stated very clearly, and I think everyone agreed and nodded and said yes, that's certainly how we've operated.
Then, further on in that statement, names were put forward. Mr. McGuinty put forward people like Don Drummond, someone from the Pembina Institute, and later, Mark Jaccard. Mr. Warawa suggested Mr. Kirton, Mr. Myers, and Mr. Drexhage. I suggested David Mulroney, who was the sherpa who had been working on this all the time.
So between the clerk and I, we started to work on this, starting with the sherpa, the centre point, which I think everyone understood.
Mr. Mulroney was contacted a number of times by the clerk, with no result. I then personally tried to contact him, ultimately going through many circles, and by about seven at night I was told I would have an answer by the next morning. This is now Tuesday of this week.
David Mulroney was contacted and was unavailable throughout that day. Don Drummond was unavailable totally. Matthew Bramley was available. Don Drexhage was not available. John Kirton from the University of Toronto was not available. Jayson Myers was not available. David Keith was not available. Lorne Johnson was not available, and Finn Poschmann from the C.D. Howe Institute was available.
So that's where we started making these phone calls and finding out who was available for Thursday, which is what the committee wanted to have happen.
Finally, when I did get hold of Mr. Mulroney, the sherpa, he said, “Well, I would love to come before the committee and explain what happened at the G-8 through all stages of development of the process.” That is what I understood Mr. McGuinty wanted to have happen--to understand our position, what happened, from people who were actually there.