Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses.
This has been a wide-ranging discussion, as were previous conversations on this topic. I want to pull it back and say that, in my view, we've really come to three questions that the committee, the government and Canadians need to tackle.
One is about oversight. It's an independent board. It's designed to be at arms' length. It is subject to the Auditor General. It doesn't mean that the government doesn't have a role. The question is the nature of the role. That's question one. Certainly, as parliamentarians, we have a role.
A second question would be about the model. Those previous oversight questions lead to the question of the model. Is GOCO the right model? Should we be exploring Crown models? I understand the policy rationale of the Harper government in creating a GOCO model for this. It seems to me to be designed to pull in the kind of expertise we are now a bit worried about. That does not seem crazy in the current context.
This leads to my third question, which is about our relationship with the United States and our comfort with the integration of our nuclear systems, our need for their technology and our comfort with provisions and agreements that we've come to with them in the past.
The three questions are on the oversight, the model and our relationship with the United States. Fundamentally, I'm hoping we can take this whole ball we've been given and put some framework around it.
Within that, I want to understand a bit more about the model. Mr. McGoey, this is for you. We've heard from previous witnesses some contradictory comments about intellectual property. Who controls IP, how is IP established and how is IP managed by the combination of AECL, CNL and the vendors that were successful in receiving the contract?