Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to amend Mr. Oliphant's amendment. He suggested the addition of two witnesses: the ambassador of Germany to Canada and the ambassador of the European Union to Canada. I would like to amend that to add more witnesses.
I'd like to hear from the Deputy Prime Minister. I find it odd that this announcement was made by the Minister of Natural Resources. Under his department, the permitting is not a responsibility. It is really a responsibility of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and, frankly, it rises to the level of the Prime Minister. Knowing that it's very difficult to get a Canadian prime minister to appear in front of a committee, I will settle for the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
It's really important that Minister Freeland appear in front of our committee to explain this decision. This rises to that level because President Zelenskyy himself, as a head of government, issued a very strongly worded condemnation of this decision. This is not at the level of a minister-to-minister issue. This rises to the level of a deputy prime minister. We would really like to hear from Minister Freeland on this issue, so we would like to have her as a witness.
In addition, we would like to invite the Ukrainian foreign minister to appear. Recognizing that President Zelenskyy may not be available to appear, we would like to request and invite the Ukrainian foreign minister, whose government has been so affected by this decision, to appear. If that foreign minister is not available, then obviously we are more than happy to hear from Ukraine's ambassador to Canada. That's the second witness we'd like to invite to our committee.
Third, we would like to hear from the Ukrainian World Congress. This is particularly important, in addition to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, because the Ukrainian World Congress has filed an application with the Federal Court arguing that this decision may not be legal or it may be inconsistent with Canadian law. We would like to hear from them as to exactly why they believe this decision is not consistent with Canadian law, so the Ukrainian World Congress is a third witness we would like to hear from.
Finally, we'd like to hear from other witnesses, such as foreign policy experts who have spent their lifetimes studying the geopolitical dynamics of that part of the world and particularly how natural gas politics has an impact on that part of the world. This is not simply a decision about one, two or half a dozen gas turbines. This is a decision that is about where Germany and Europe are going to get their natural gas in the coming months and years.
Germany is constructing two new liquefied natural gas terminals off their northern coast in the Baltic Sea. When Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, Germany quickly made a decision to approve and expedite the construction of two new LNG terminals in the Baltic Sea off the German coast. The German economic minister has said publicly in recent weeks that Germany expects those turbines to be operational early in 2023. Germany, within the space of 12 months, has been able to construct two new LNG facilities in order to import natural gas to replace Russian natural gas. They have been in discussions with governments around the world, pleading with them to provide those additional supplies.
We know they have been in discussions with the Norwegians as well as the Qataris. We need to understand where the Canadian government has been in those discussions because this is a critical piece of the puzzle. It's not simply about saying that the government should not have granted the export permits for turbines to Germany. It's also the corollary of that discussion: If Germany is not going to get its gas from Russia, where is it going to get its gas?
Surely Canada, as the world's fifth largest natural gas producer, is part of this solution. We need to hear from experts who can talk about the issue of Canada's providing natural gas for Germany. It's particularly appropriate in the lead-up to Chancellor Scholz's visit in the next month to Canada where, as I understand it from reading public reports, officials are saying the number one issue will be if Canada can provide more natural gas to Germany in order to get Germany weaned off Russian natural gas.
We need to hear from a group of witnesses, people like Marcus Kolga, who has written about this recently, Balkan Devlen and Thierry Bros, who is a professor of political science at Sciences Po in Paris, who have spent a lifetime studying this issue, not only of gas issues—