Well, I appreciate that reminder, Chair, because you and the government members have had plenty of opportunity to either move this to the end of the meeting or to withdraw the motion, and thus far have not seen fit to do so.
I feel bad that we are in fact wasting witnesses' time, but we are trying to establish a point here that a committee should not be used for partisan witch hunts. That's exactly what this motion would have done, hence the amendment to bring in the Minister of Finance and have him form part of the motion, because, in some respects, he's far more important than is the Minister of Natural Resources. He actually gets to set the schedules for depreciation, accelerated writeoffs, and subsidies for various companies, etc., both on the oil-producing side and on the energy-producing side.
Certainly, in order to be able to have a fair study, you need to be able to see what the accelerated writeoffs, the depreciation, and the programs are with respect to alternate forms of energy; hence, probably if the study does go forward, the Minister of Finance would be a critical witness.