Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Allen, if there's any time left.
I have the latest WikiLeak. We might well call it a Wikipedia leak. According to Wikipedia, the word “tar” is used to described natural bitumen deposits. The use of that word is a misnomer, since chemically speaking tar is a man-made substance produced by the destructive distillation of organic material, usually coal. Coal gas as a fuel has been almost completely replaced by natural gas. Coal tar, as a material for paving roads, has been replaced by the petroleum product asphalt. So naturally occurring bitumen is chemically more similar to asphalt than to tar, and the term “oil sands” is more commonly used in the producing areas than “tar sands” because synthetic oil is manufactured from the bitumen.
This is a serious committee. It's a standing committee in our nation's House of Commons. As such, we want to be accurate. So unless we're trying to make a juvenile slur, I would ask that we refer to the oil sands as such.
The witnesses mentioned they're not for profit. Through you, Mr. Chairman, I would like to know exactly where they get their funding from.