Thank you. I appreciate that.
The reason I was responding to those pieces, Mr. Chair, is that I feel like there's sleight of hand happening when the Conservatives say, “Well, you know, this Liberal government is anti-energy, and that's what this is all about.” That's what was just said, so I was responding to say that in fact our Liberal government has been supporting energy production here and energy exports from our country. I didn't want to leave that unanswered. I felt I had to respond to that as a piece of it.
I could go for quite a while about this, but I won't—at least, not at this moment. However, if I'm going to respond to the challenge that the Liberal government doesn't believe in the development of Canadian energy, with offshore wind, nuclear, critical minerals and what we're doing with hydrogen.... We're doing so much in so many different ways. We have agreements with international partners and we are supporting our allies, so I think it's very much a misrepresentation to say it in that way.
I will also clarify the point about the study versus a PBO report. I, along with everybody around this table, very much agreed that we should do this study on the TMX. It is an important study. I agreed with it and voted for it, but I feel that sending the PBO report to the House of Commons without the context of the full study leads us onto a path where we're going to have one debate that is on only one page of the whole report, essentially, in the way it works out.
My argument is that it wouldn't be the best way to go ahead. I think we should complete the report. We could do that. We actually have the time ahead of us right now to be able to do that. Finish the TMX report and then we can put it all in. The PBO report is part of it because a PBO officer came and spoke.
That's very much where I'm coming from in all of this.
Now, if I understand it correctly, the motion that was brought by Monsieur Simard—I'm reading it in English—is:
That, given the Parliamentary Budget Officer's statements in the Trans Mountain pipeline system report 2024 released on November 8, 2024, the committee expresses concern about the financial uncertainty regarding the government's ability to sell the Trans Mountain pipeline system at a price that avoids a net loss to taxpayers and asks the chair to report to the House as soon as possible.
What I would propose is an amendment to that motion to replace the words “expresses concern about the financial uncertainty regarding” with “recommends”. I'd then add “should do everything in its” following the word “government's”. I'm moving that amendment to the motion.