I'm just saying, Chair, that when I saw your note that you sent to us, which I appreciate, you said that it was somewhat misleading to assign exact numbers of witnesses to each party, but you told us at the last meeting that that was how the decisions were made.
I'm very surprised, because I went into this—I was at the subcommittee, where we talked about witnesses—and it was never, ever, indicated that was how it going to be done. When I count up the witness lists, I count up 13 witnesses for the Liberals, 9 for the Conservatives, not counting today, four for the Bloc and four for the NDP. Certainly we were not given the allocation we were expecting.
If some people had to cancel because we had multiple votes, I understand that. Also, given a study of this importance, if we are down to what we had today—seven meetings, really, with witnesses—that does meet the test of what we had agreed to, which was to hold 12 meetings. We talked about possibly holding 10, but we're down to seven meetings now.
Again, some of my key witnesses.... I'm not being picky because they were my witnesses who I think are key voices for the study. I don't have a problem hearing from the agricultural sector. I don't have a problem hearing from the forestry sector, but I certainly question why key regional leaders on the just transition are not involved, why the Just Transition Centre is not involved, Canada's Building Trades Unions, Destination Zero and Oil Change International are not involved. The Indigenous Climate Action group and Indigenous Clean Energy spoke to us. They were ready to testify, and now they have been dropped.
To me, that damages my credibility of going out and making efforts to talk to witnesses and to ask them to testify.
The Athabasca Chipewyan will face a huge impact from oil increases because they're the ones who are dealing with the question of tailings. They have a stake in this.
The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs may have cancelled in frustration because of the continual votes, but it seems to me, given the importance of indigenous buy-in on this question, that we should try to make arrangements. We should try to see if we can reschedule. We shouldn't just say, “Oh well, too bad. It's done. Let's get this thing done.”
I will just end by saying—