Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The issue we have is that we've heard from a good number of witnesses, some of whom are in the midst of reporting to the various entities that they need to put this together for us.
The presidents of two organizations in particular, Imperial Oil and the Alberta Energy Regulator, have come here and told us that they have messed up. They've asked for the opportunity to build back some goodwill with their organizations and the communities that they have to serve.
There are also indigenous benefit agreements that some of the first nations and other indigenous organizations noted could have been affected had there been a spill. The lack of communication, of course, is what caused fear, concern and anxiety in those communities.
There's a lot that has to go through the process here. We're hoping that this process to provide us with the final report from each of these organizations occurs within the next couple of months.
October is a long way away for us. With October being a long way away, I don't think our water study.... Unless, Mr. Longfield, we're going to be very astute and quick at this one, I think we'll still be in the midst of our water study. At that point in time, when we actually see the data we have, I think we will have the opportunity to call back the senior members who presented this time.
The way this motion has been presented, before the regulator even presented his thoughts, presupposed that he wasn't going to present fairly. It is political as opposed to resolutional, if you will. How do we get involved, and how do we make sure that we're looking after people?
The environment is our focus here, and making sure that the reporting requirements for those environments are met solidly. I think we have lots of time to consider this motion, not the motion that was dropped on the committee prior to the AER president even testifying, because that's going to have some poison in it in itself.
Let's go through the full.... As I say, there's going to be a report from Imperial about what happened from their perspective, and there's going to be a report from the AER about what happened from their perspective. We're going to have to look at those.
I think it's incumbent upon us as a parliamentary committee to look upon those and what the path is going forward to give some assurances to the communities that we care about, all the way along my colleague Mrs. Goodridge's riding, that are affected by the operations at Kearl. That's our role here. I don't think we need to presuppose, as indicated in the motion as written, that there was not a forthright indication by all of these officials of what happened.
We could park this resolution to a point later in the session—before October, of course—when we actually do have the documentation that tells us, “Here's what happened”, “Here's where the screw-up occurred”, “Here's what we'll do to fix that going forward“, “Here's who is responsible to whom,” and then we come in and say, “How did this happen? Okay. Where did these gaps emerge?”
If it's necessary at that point in time, I think that's the proper timing of it, as opposed to a motion that presupposes that the AER wasn't going to give one of our members the answers that she thought she needed.
I do think there's been a great display of information from all of these organizations, and a great display of the fear and anxiety of the communities along the Athabasca and Slave rivers that are affected by these operations.
That would be what I would propose going forward.
Perhaps the mover, Ms. Taylor Roy, would like to withdraw this motion to look at the documentation that will be due. As Mr. Kurek said, there have been commitments made to provide us with all of the information required.
It's going to be a tome; we know that. We're going to have to go through it.
The details in that tome are going to be important to us in considering what our role is and how we make a report on this part of our water study. I think if we need further clarification after those presentations, we have all the time in the world to do that.
I would ask the mover to think about that and to think about when it is most productive to have this motion put forth so that we can actually ascertain our role in determining a better outcome for the people affected by the actions of both the regulator and Imperial Oil.
Thank you.