Thank you. I appreciate your appreciation.
I think going to Calgary would be a grand idea. We heard from the government that they don't want to go anywhere. They didn't qualify their comments. They said public hearings outside Ottawa would be a circus. They said public hearings outside of the Ottawa bubble would be a gong show. If that's what they honestly believe, let's go to the heartland of conservatism—Alberta—and we'll go to Calgary or we'll go to Fort McMurray.
They can pick any place they want where they feel the safest. Maybe we could hold hearings in the mines and they would feel safe there. Nobody could get at them—no bombs, no placards. That might be an idea. It's available. It's just an idea, Chair. I'm just trying to be helpful in throwing out all these ideas.
So we could go to Calgary. I'd love to go to Calgary. I can never get enough of Calgary. It's a beautiful city in a beautiful province. Let's go there. There's no hidden agenda here, Chair. There's a lot of sound and fury; I accept all of that. But there are not games in this motion. There are not.
At no time—I think I can say this. I'm not divulging secrets. At no time did I indicate to the government, when we had our short-lived negotiations, that certain cities either were or had to be on the list or off the list. We didn't get that far. At no time in our early discussions about shaping the parameters of our discussion did I say that there was somewhere we had to go or somewhere we couldn't go. So this business of its being a gong show and a circus....
Fine; let's go to some cities that the government is going to choose. Let's go to whatever area of the country they feel comfortable and safe enough in to actually say to Canadians, “Excuse me, what's your opinion?” Wherever they want to go to do that is fine.
Yes, there are a couple of places we'd like to go, that we think are a good idea. I raised Iqaluit, which I thought would make a lot of sense in terms of the ease of getting there from here, etc. I won't repeat those arguments, but I raised that issue as an example of somewhere we could go.
We could go to Saskatchewan. We held our last retreat in Regina; we could go there. Really, there's nothing scary about Saskatchewan. My dad was from Saskatchewan. I'm very proud to have Saskatchewan blood. I don't think they're scary people. I'm sure we could safely fly you in and out and guarantee that you won't be.... Well, you might be upset, but you won't be hurt.