Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And I thank the departmental officials for being here. As my colleagues have expressed, though, we are very concerned that we had three ministers here for 35 minutes beyond their own statements. In each of the cases, there were obviously many, many more questions to ask the ministers. We certainly hope that as a committee we'll have that consensus to bring the ministers back the week after next when we start our hearings.
As you are here, I'll follow up on a question I asked Mr. Oliver, with our colleagues from the Department of Natural Resources. I asked him to define how “directly affected” is being interpreted within Natural Resources. He seemed to indicate that people or organizations that are concerned about climate change might be excluded from the public hearings around this process. I'm not sure if he was expressing a personal opinion or whether he was expressing a departmental evaluation. So I'll ask you the same question I asked Mr. Oliver, which he didn't seem able to respond to.
Is it persons living two, five, or ten kilometres away from a project who are excluded? Is it people who are expressing certain opinions, such as tying in these new projects to climate change, who are excluded? Are they excluded on the opinions they're voicing? Are they excluded because they're not directly affected because they live 100 metres beyond the exclusion zone? What are the criteria the department is using to evaluate whether somebody can actually attend and give voice to their opinion in the public hearing process?