Mr. Shipley, you're asking the witness to speculate on something that is clearly not within his expertise. Certainly in any court of law that question would be struck immediately.
If you have unique expertise, Mr. Blackburn, to speculate or to offer an opinion on what was happening in other regions of Canada, certainly the committee would be interested, but if you have no unique expertise on that, maybe you should at least state that in the beginning of your response to Mr. Shipley.