Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I just want to follow up on a couple of points. The first is around something that Mr. Fraser pointed out when he used the example of FCM.
I absolutely agree that it doesn't matter whether a witness has received participant funding to provide some sort of feedback to a department, on any given question that they are being asked, and for us then to invite them to committee so that we as committee members can ask questions of them. That, to me, is like two different sets of testimony. One is what's being considered by the department based on the specific questions that they were asking. The other is what committee members from all parties would potentially ask, which perhaps would be very different questions from those asked by the department.
I would never preclude a witness who has participated in another parallel study from being a witness to this committee just because they received participant funding. My concern, and I think I've laid it out, is that we are receiving briefs from another study as though this committee heard from those witnesses.
Now, I have been in committees before where, if there are other studies available, a motion is made to also look at the testimony from another study. I think that's most appropriate. But to presume that the study this committee is conducting on the Navigation Protection Act and the consultation process that was undertaken by the minister through Transport Canada are one and the same—that's where my issue lies.
I believe that this committee, due to the very composition of it, with members from all parties sitting on it, would perhaps ask very different questions of witnesses than would a government department, or even the minister's office. This is where I am highlighting that I do not believe that the briefs that were received as a result of the consultation process called for by the Minister of Transport should just automatically become part of the testimony that this committee is hearing. Yes, there are communities that receive participant funding and they were responding to a specific consultation process by the Department of Transport.