Thank you, Mr. Chair.
One problem I see here is that we are under some restrictions time-wise. That's why I certainly support the first amendment to get officials here.
I'm also of the view that the nature of...and I agree with other committee members that, after having the one meeting, there are still many questions about this transaction. I too want to get to the bottom of this and understand better. I have a sense, though, that these are questions of a more technical nature as opposed to political.
I'm not ruling out the possibility of eventually having the ministers in front of us, but if we can expedite a meeting or two by getting answers to some of those technical questions, especially around this Remote Sensing Space Systems Act, which came up in fairly regular detail at our last meeting on this, by Mr. Garneau and others....
My concern here is that with the overlay of the Investment Canada Act, here you have a situation where you have a transaction that's before the minister. As all members have suggested and have agreed, he is the only one who can make the determination that the 30-day extension can be put, which we can certainly ask him about when he's here on Thursday, but only he can decide. As well, because the Investment Canada Act requires this commercial confidentiality, are we going to be under some constraints there in terms of hearing what we need to hear about this transaction? For example, can government officials...?
We're in a real quandary here, I think. We'd like to know more, but to what extent is this commercial confidentiality going to impair our committee's ability to look further into this?
Perhaps the analysts, through you, Mr. Chair, could speak to this.