Mr. Housefather, I think you will find that the three parties sitting on this side of the table agree these witnesses should appear.
Your comment about us having witnesses.... Your fear seems to be that these three proposed witnesses will only give one side. You said, “Well, we can bring in an equal number of people to say the opposite.” I think, with the witnesses from PSPC and others, you are bringing in an equal number of people.
Having sat on this committee for seven years, I can guarantee you that every single time PSPC or any government department comes in, they are defending one side, and that's their side. No one from PSPC is going to show up and say, “Yeah, you know, you caught us. We blew the bank on this.” It's nonsensical to have a one-sided study only to hear from the bureaucrats saying how great a job they're always doing, saying there are no cost overruns and no government could have possibly done it better, so let's not hear from anyone else on this—case closed and let's move on.
I appreciate what you're trying to do, but we're trying to figure out why the costs have gone so high and are so overrun when people have come forward saying, “You know, we could have done it for a heck of a lot less.” If we only hear from one side—the bureaucrats saying what a great job they've done, how many lives they've saved and how much money they've saved Canadians—we're not going to hear the full story.
I think my colleagues with the NDP and the Bloc have recognized, per our original witness list, that we've compromised and whittled it down quite a bit. I think they're comfortable with the compromise of adding them to a third meeting—or two meetings and then the third meeting is one hour—but I think they need to be part of this discussion.
Perhaps Mr. Johns will be a mediator.