I'll try to quickly go through them one by one.
I think there are two tracks to this. One is what we've heard from our constituents and the public at large about what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. This initiated from a modern-day well.
To be clear, Geoff, I talked to my staff. It was getting ready to produce. It was only seven months old. From what we understand, it was in its first phrase and had not yet become a full-production well. It's a small point, but it may be important.
In terms of the length of time, the number of meetings, and the breadth of it, those are Mike's questions. How much do we open this up? How much do we concentrate on this? My concern would be that it could initiate a very long conversation about the Arctic writ general and about every drilling project on land or in the water. It may be useful for the committee to do that at some point, but it wasn't necessarily the intention of this.
This is pretty specific. For offshore oil and gas developments, what rules are in place? How does it work? What is the Canadian context in reflecting on what happened in the gulf?
Of course, we're not going to hear from the chief engineer of British Petroleum, who is hopefully deeply engaged in trying to fix the meltdown in the gulf. I also know that British Petroleum is an enormous company, and they haven't stopped producing in other wells. I would suspect they have other people available who can speak to how the wells work here in the Canadian context.
That's what I want to know. I don't necessarily want to know what happened in the gulf and what the mistake was, because I don't think we're going to find out, Chair. They'll announce it publicly and in the Congress before they do it here.
My suggestion to the committee is that I want to be very open to other witnesses and other ideas, but I would recommend the following. We could take a look at the specific question in front of us with respect to deep ocean drilling in the Canadian environment and in the Canadian context. What are the rules? What are the plans? What's happening right now? What risks are there? What safeguards are in place in terms of preventing blowouts?
I think the responses would be very important for us as well, particularly when talking about the Beaufort. It's one of the things people in the north most often say to us. What would be the responsibility of Canada right now if there were a blowout?
There are other areas. Of course, there's the east coast. There's a proposal to lift the moratorium on the west coast. The Gulf of St. Lawrence has been in the news as well. It's been proposed as a potential drilling site. Those are all of interest.
It becomes a larger conversation. The idea of what's happening in deep-water wells would become lost in that, because it's very big. It's the national energy direction. I don't want to say the “P” word, but that's what's going on in the national context.
For our sake and for the best interests of the public, we could have a couple of meetings to answer your question, Mike, and to focus on the question before us. If people want to have more witnesses, of course, we'd be open to that. But to get at what happened, what it means for us, and whether it could happen here, I think expediency is important.
The second phase would be to go in depth. David and I, as well as others, have talked about a larger conversation on resource development, the rules that are in place, and all the rest of it.
I want to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I think the start date should be sooner rather than later, to be frank with you. I think if the committee were to have a one-month navel-gazing process to think about this and think about that, it wouldn't necessarily serve the public. They're concerned about this right now.
We can call witnesses who know something about this in very short order. They're out there. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the NEB, British Petroleum, and the Nunavut and Inuvialuit groups are all present. We know where they are. We know where they live. We can call them in short order.
That's my suggestion to the committee. Let's get at this issue first. We can then have a much deeper conversation on energy exploration and development of the offshore for both the shore and deep water. It would be an interesting conversation as well, but I think it would miss the public section of it right now.