But, Professor Macklin, EDC's testimony.... If you had the opportunity to review the testimony that was made at this committee, you would understand; those are the standards that EDC is currently applying.
The difficulty is that in the legislation, in Bill C-300, the fact that EDC would be obliged to withdraw the funding that they had already committed puts them in an impossible position that they cannot go ahead and commit it in the first place. The worst possible time for EDC to be withdrawing funding is if a corporation happens, for a period of time, over a period of events, to be in non-compliance. That's the worst possible time, because the pressure that EDC can bring, on behalf of the Canadian people, is that we will withdraw. Under Bill C-300, they would be forced to withdraw. That forcing of a withdrawing is at the worst conceivable time. When they could be bringing financial pressure on the corporation, all of a sudden they have to withdraw; in fact, I submit to you that they would not be doing it in the first place.
Now, $22 billion to $24 billion is not an incidental amount of money. That's far more than anybody in this room can imagine. To suggest that withdrawing $22 billion to $24 billion of support by EDC in a 12-month period from the external exploration companies will not shut down some of the projects....
I don't want to be harsh, but I think that's kind of naive.