Yes, I agree with my colleagues on this issue, not surprisingly. It's just impossible to feel that we've covered this in a couple of hours. I would be in favour if this motion said we have one meeting and we call in DFO officials to gain an understanding of their involvement in the environmental review process related to Taseko's Prosperity mine. That I would agree with, because it never hurts for us to know what their involvement is. They are a responsible authority in this, along with Transport Canada, and in 2007 they referred this to Environment Canada to conduct a review panel and then participate in that.
So that's largely what they would tell us. I think we can certainly all read the report. It's online, available to be read. It's a lengthy one, and you can certainly see what DFO's involvement was there.
So I would support that kind of a two-hour meeting where we talk to DFO officials, but I think we certainly cannot think we have covered the issue by calling in the first nations involved, because they will probably tell us how they were consulted or weren't consulted, and then we would have to hear from the proponents themselves, with their view of how they were involved in the whole process, but certainly their involvement with the first nations. There are local people like the mayor and council of Williams Lake, the closest major community to this project, who would probably want to be heard, as well as other environmental groups that would want to have their say as well.
I think the point we need to understand is that we either study it or we don't, but if we just want to hear from DFO officials and find out first of all what their role was in this, what advice they gave the panel and so on, I'm okay with that, but to hear just a little bit of this.... As a British Columbian who has followed this with some interest, this is a pretty complex issue, as Mr. Cannan has said, and not one that we could do justice to in a couple of hours.
So at the very least, if this passes in this form--I hope it doesn't; the amendment, I think, improves it a little bit. It seems to me we need to specify in some way that it goes back to the steering committee to figure out what happens in these two hours and who is going to be heard. We can't just assume that what we've heard from Mr. Donnelly is that first nations have asked to come. A lot of people ask to come to this committee, and we don't hear from them all because we just can't. So somebody, I would suggest the subcommittee, would have to make a decision on how we fill those two hours most effectively, and fairly, I think, as well.
But as a point of order, is this amendment on the floor? Has it been moved or is it just being talked about?