Yes, and I think Mr. Dubé was helpful in reminding you that we are not the government. We're Parliament and we are not of one mind at this committee. We're Parliamentarians who have many minds, frankly. We represent three parties, and even within our parties we have a diversity of opinions. We are not able to answer a specific question because our committee has not written its report. We're not here, frankly, for you to consult with us. That's not why we're here. We're here to consult with you.
Our task tonight is to listen to you, as we've been doing. We've been taking notes. It's all being written down. We have several people working at making sure we get the information. At the end of the process, which goes on for many weeks—we don't even know yet how many weeks it will go on—we'll issue a report about what we heard, and then, from what we've heard, we'll make recommendations to the government through Parliament. That's the Canadian system of Parliament.
We're here to hear you. We've been hearing you. There are themes emerging. One of the things that our analyst does is a summary of evidence, where we write down the themes. We obviously have to do this. The meeting here is different from the one in Vancouver, which was different from the one in Calgary, which will be different from the one in Montreal, and which will be different from the one in Halifax.
Expert witnesses are different from the general public. We'll have briefs coming in. I expect that hundreds of briefs will come in, if not thousands, and there will be people who don't go to meetings because that's not their preferred choice of expressing their opinion. They will express it through writing us a brief or they will speak directly to the minister who is doing a consultation, who has already had, by the way, 8,000 submissions last week.
All 338 Members of Parliament will be consulting. We're the committee doing this, but every one of you has a member of Parliament. I would encourage you to speak to your member of Parliament regardless of what party they are in. Tell them your opinions. Frankly, MPs listen. That's our job.
We're still listening, so Miguel is next.
I just have a note that this public meeting is recorded, by the way. All our meetings are recorded. A transcript is prepared. That is a public document. You can see what we heard. You can see all our meetings and what we hear, and then you'll see our final report when it gets to Parliament to see whether we fairly represented what we've heard.