Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question. The process with respect to the selection of witnesses was done in camera. Although the Reform Party has chosen to put that in the public domain, I will not go there, only to say that I have gone on record on CBC Newsworld as commenting that the House leader for the Reform Party, after the selection of witnesses, thanked me for being very fair and reasonable in terms of including a number of people from the riding of the hon. member for Skeena who wanted to be included.
To Mr. Conrad, whom he is allegedly quoting, I suspect some person from his riding, I would say that in fact we did hear from these kinds of people. There was a Mr. Barton who is a Nisga'a person who filed a number of charges in the courts. One of the courts, the court of appeal, heard the case in Kamloops and ruled against him although there were a couple of court cases wherein he brought charges against the Nisga'a people and was found seriously wanting in those charges.
I can report that he would say that if there is anyone who is grassroots it has to be Mr. Barton. We accepted him and embraced him to come before our committee in Terrace. We heard him for about an hour and a half in his testimony and we understood very clearly where he was coming from. I do not accept at all the suggestion or allegation that we are not listening to grassroots people.
The hon. member is quite right. I have spent quite a bit of time in my professional life working with folks from first nations. I think they would be quite surprised indeed to learn that the Reform Party somehow was their spokesperson.