I'm just checking. James, do you hear me now?
Okay. I'm glad you're listening. That makes me feel good on this Friday morning.
That's the first part of my amendment. It is that we simply strike “that this study consists of no fewer than 5 meetings” and allow that to be determined at a later date, after we have the first meeting. I'm totally in agreement that the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Foreign Affairs be invited to appear before this committee, along with their officials.
We can leave in “no later than July 22nd”; however, we believe that it is the convention of all the committees of the House that the clerk seeks the availability of ministers and their schedules. I would change that part to “as soon as possible”. That would be a scheduling activity by the clerk to ask the ministers to appear as soon as their schedules allow. My understanding from the ministers' offices is that there is willingness and readiness to appear. There's no reluctance or desire not to appear; it's just that scheduling and putting a date of July 22 in place could be problematic for one or both of these ministers.
That's the second part of this amendment.
The third part was that after “the Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada”, we add “the Ambassador of Germany to Canada and the Ambassador of the EU to Canada”. It's that we not only hear from the Ambassador of Ukraine, but also other affected countries. We would hear that through the ambassador of Germany and the ambassador of the EU, who is resident in Canada.
That's the third part of the amendment.
The last part of the amendment is in the last sentence after the last semicolon. We would strike the words “and that committee members submit lists of additional witnesses by July 19th, 2022” and actually keep this to the witnesses we strike today, which would be the Minister of Natural Resources, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the ambassador of Ukraine, the ambassador of Germany to Canada and the ambassador of the EU to Canada. We think that would be an effective one or two meetings—whichever we are able to schedule—and we would be able to get enough for our committee to engage on this important topic.
That is my amendment. Just so it is clear, I would be amending that by striking the line “that this study consists of no fewer than 5 meetings”; striking “no later than July 22nd, 2022”, and changing it to “as soon as possible”; adding “the Ambassador of Germany to Canada and the Ambassador of the EU to Canada”; and striking the last part, which is “and that committee members submit lists of additional witnesses by July 19th, 2022”.
I would close by reiterating that we think this is an important piece of work for this committee to do. We think it should be quickly done. We think this committee has an important responsibility to hear from those ministers and also to hear from those ambassadors to understand the implications of this on Ukraine and its war effort against Russia, as well as from Germany and the EU and their requirement for energy security as they face the winter. Frankly, as the European Union is a huge contributor to the war effort in Ukraine, we need to understand the effect on Ukraine of Europe not having energy resources and its ability to support Ukraine in this illegal war.
That's my amendment. Thank you very much.