In my opinion, Mr. Laframboise, it was perfectly appropriate that I not be a party to the negotiations. We are talking about a company selling its own assets and another company that wants to buy those assets. I was not bringing any value to the process. So, as I see it, it was perfectly normal for the two companies to negotiate on their own.
The reason I asked the committee to wind up its activities—something we did in mid-June—is that I realized, through my discussions with Shell officials, and even in the letters they began to send me, that we were becoming a problem for them, and I did not want to be a problem. The committee's aim was to act as facilitator. So I had no desire to have the opposite effect.
The fact is that we had completed our work: we had found, not one potential buyer, but several potential buyers. One of them is here today, because that particular buyer is the one that went furthest in the negotiating process with Shell. So, the committee, including Claude and myself, had found potential buyers and had done its work. We therefore decided to wind up our activities. Was that really necessary? No, but I had the sense that this was becoming very important to Shell, and I did not want to make an issue of it. I therefore agreed to have the committee wind up its activities.