Thank you.
Now we're debating the motion to just ignore....
My NDP colleague walks into a committee for the very first time, looks at a report that he probably hasn't read a word of about fossil fuel subsidies, which is a misnomer, and he says, “I don't want to even talk about the body of what's in this report. I just want to go right to the vote and accept it as is.”
I can see that his job in Parliament is probably a little suspect if he is going to think that somebody else is going to write the report that we have to sign our names to. He's a visitor at this committee. He can take a look at all of the input we've actually added along the way here, through the seven committee meetings that he has referred to. We've actually talked to the analysts about, “What did this witness say here? Can we reference it? Can we add some value. Can we include some data?” Inasmuch as it is this witness said this and this witness said this, in the end, we're presenting a report from Parliament that is supposed to be substantive.
Mr. Bachrach will know—I've had this discussion with my parliamentary colleagues before—I would question if he has ever participated in a report in Parliament that he can refer to any of his constituents referring...and that's because they're probably not worth the paper they're written on.
The fact is that we actually go through this and actually provide some detailed perspicacity to it and actually look at what's happening here. Where did these opinions come from? Where is the background? Who is saying what here, and where are the numbers that actually substantiate what is going on here?
Some of these opinions that we're reporting on here are indeed just that. Having those opinions—especially when they're counter opinions, one to the other—exposed with the sunlight of actual data and what is happening in the world, what's happening in the industry, what's happening in Canada is part of our job. We're parliamentarians. We're not here to just sit back in our chairs, smoke our cigars and say, “Yes, the analysts wrote this. The witnesses said this, and that's all our job is here.”
In the end we have a parliamentary report from a parliamentary committee, the House of Commons Standing Committee on on Environment and Sustainable Development so we had better put some detailed work into this.
As for Mr. Bachrach's comments, who as I said, hasn't read this report and doesn't understand the witnesses, the references, the industry, he is coming in here and saying, “We should just flush it. Get it out there. Don't even ask any questions about what's in there.” Well, I strongly differ with him.