Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to our panellists here today. This is a very important topic that is certainly on the minds of many people in our home constituencies and right across the country.
Ms. Russell, it's good to see you again. I want to direct my first question to you.
In preparation for today's meeting, we read fairly extensively from the report of the interagency task force, a U.S.-based organization, as I understand it, that looked at this issue of speculation over the last five years and the degree to which it's in fact causing oil prices to increase and at what the cause and effect circumstances are.
In their interim report, which just came out at the end of July, they indicate that they really can't see any evidence of that; that when they employ what's called the Granger causality test to that transaction, it would in fact indicate that the price of oil comes after the fact, not the other way. In other words, the positions that are taken by the so-called speculators or investors are taken after price changes. One might conclude from this that the price changes are affected by supply and demand factors and that the investment positions that are taken follow.
This seemed to be fairly consistent through the course of their conclusions—and I will point out that thus far It is an interim report.
Do you have any comment on that? Certainly what you discussed earlier painted a different picture.