I would like to move ahead with the calendar we have before us. We have a choice to make as well, but I was looking forward to hearing the witnesses today from the Green Building Council and the FCM. But we'll have to take a look at our schedule and try to sort things out.
We have witnesses on Thursday, and now we have witnesses next Tuesday, but we still haven't set a schedule for our own hearings on the integrated energy partnership, and I think that's frustrating the members on the government side. I hope it's frustrating the members on the opposition side, because we should have been at that and had that done already.
Mr. Trost talked a little about the past and this committee. One of the things we did last year, in terms of that forestry report, was put a report together that everybody agreed on. The credibility that's given to reports that come out with all-party agreement has always amazed me. I think we were looking forward to trying to make sure we did one with this integrated energy partnership. Hopefully we can still work toward that. But if we're going to start splitting hairs on issues where there are none, as we see in other committees where the parties don't agree, you end up not being able to present a report that's unanimous.
One of the things I've noticed is that unanimous reports do get consideration. The government treats them seriously and industry treats them seriously. We certainly want to move ahead on this energy partnership, but maybe I'll talk about that in a few minutes.
I want to come back to the motion we're dealing with here. It's frustrating. I understand Mr. Cullen has to try to make his political points here, but that's the only thing happening on this motion, because even in the wording of it there are no new developments. We all sat here for the testimony and heard the witnesses who came forward. We heard Mr. Binder from the CNSC. I thought he gave a very clear presentation of the responsibilities of the CNSC and how they have fulfilled them in this case. I guess I was surprised by how clearly he said there was no threat to human safety in any way, shape, or form when these leaks took place.
Mr. Cullen heard that as well as we did. Mr. Binder was clear on several occasions. He said he was surprised there was so much public attention on such an event, when it was handled so cleanly and clearly by both the regulator and the operator. That really said it all to us. There isn't anything new here, and I think the minister is probably going to take that position as well when the opposition tries to force this through. If they pass it, I think the response will be that there are no new developments; we don't have anything to talk about here; and we're not sure what you're asking for, because there was nothing new on the leaks, other than the fact that there was no threat to human health and safety. The leaks were contained, and Mr. Cullen knows that. We were told several times that no water from the leaks ended up in the river. The leaks were contained, the product was stored, and it has been properly taken care of.
As Mr. Trost pointed out, every industrial operation has leaks at times, and the real issue is what they do with them and how they handle them. In this case we were assured by both the operator and the regulator--who is the one responsible for this--that there was nothing there. There was no threat to human health and safety. There was nothing in terms of the shutdown that we need to explore. We've received full information on the shutdown and what took place there, and there was certainly nothing on the side of human risk.
So I guess it's a little frustrating to have sat here now for most of our hour--when we were planning to get to this schedule--talking about a motion that is unnecessary. If the committee wants to invite the minister to come to committee they can do that, but the invitation should actually deal with some part of reality so she can then come and say, “Here's the issue we're going to deal with”.
The amendment passed, so I'm going to come back to my criticism of that. We had the opportunity to discuss the impact of additional spending on both Chalk River and AECL, and the opposition chose to use very little of their time to do that. So I don't know why we're coming back to trying to hold another meeting when we were good; we cooperated. The opposition asked for one meeting on these issues. We went along with that and felt that was reasonable. Then we thought we'd move on to something we could actually work on together.
So again, there were no contradictions there. Mr. Allen read out the testimony and I'm sure he'd read it again if people didn't hear it the first time. The tritium levels are within the limits that are laid out. They talked not only about the nuclear standards, but also the international standards for tritium, and the rates there are within, by far, those set parameters.
The CNSC came as a regulator and told us that this was contained. There was no contradiction between the witnesses, in spite of what Mr. Cullen wants to try to create. I think what probably happened here is that the opposition came to that meeting with some great expectations that they were somehow going to find something and that there was going to be a news story, because they've been trying to keep a dead news story going for a few weeks on this issue. They got here, and were very disappointed to find out that, again, there was nothing. As Mr. Binder put it, there was no risk to anyone's health or safety.
As Mr. Hiebert or Mr. Allen talked about, I wish we could move on to substantive issues rather than dealing with trivial ones.