I am just tying it all together, Mr. Chair.
They are saying no to Mr. Nuttall and they are saying no to this; it all ties together. It's all relevant to the data that helps manufacturers and other people make decisions. It helps—or it should help—policy-makers in this country make the decisions.
What are we seeing from the Liberals so far? In short, they are breaking the promises they should have kept and they are keeping the promises they should have broken. That's really a one-year summation of what we are seeing here.
I have a list of other things I had to say, but I'll save them for later.
For heaven's sake, a few more people could come to a committee and could either be tacked onto the end of an existing panel or be on a separate panel. Some of these people probably live in Ottawa or Toronto, so it wouldn't cost much to get them here, or they could appear by video conference, and there really would be no cost. Perhaps some good points can be made. I'll leave it at that for now.
When you look at the intent that the Liberals had in the early part of November last year in regard to the independence of committees.... There is no independence of the committee. This is a whip-driven system, the same as it was before. We saw last week that when the going gets tough, the Liberal whip's office comes right down here lickety-split and starts providing advice to the Liberal members.
In an independent system, the members have complete autonomy in their committee, and the only time you should see the whip's office in here is when they are providing a sheet for substitution. That's another point you should bring out.