Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Admittedly, I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage because I was away last week on parliamentary business when we were discussing this. Listening to Mr. Allen, I have to say he is making roughly the same point I was going to make. I don't see the point in having the minister here is to discuss more funding for solving what is essentially a technical problem--the leaks down there. Minister Raitt is very talented, but she's not a civil containment engineer or a nuclear engineer, so I don't really see the value in bringing her here and then asking technical questions.
When it comes to additional funding, that's essentially such a broad fishing mission that I don't see how it really gets back to the problem we're looking at, which is whether we need to take any political oversight or political direction in order to take care of any potentially dangerous radioactive or heavy water spills.
The only reason I can see for having the minister before the committee is in regard to some political or general policy directive as far as safety involving these things here goes. From my understanding of the issue, it is much more of a smaller technical problem at that level. The minister should be concerned, in that it's her entire department, and she wants to be responsible for everyone under her, but I don't really see how it would be necessary or even helpful to have someone who basically gives political direction come here and be asked questions about technical things. She'd just end up referring to her officials, whoever she brought on who handles those affairs for her anyway.