Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment about this panel of experts as well. I had the opportunity to speak to some of the NDP members or people tied with the NDP government in Saskatchewan and I encouraged them to pick some experts to put on that panel who really understood the problems of non-renewable resources. However they told me that the instructions they had received from the federal Liberal government was that it did not want any experts who had preconceived ideas on this subject. In other words, it wanted experts that knew nothing about the topic.
To me experts are people who have studied something, understand it very well and have some well thought out ideas on the matter, but apparently that is not what the government wants. It wants people who do not know anything about the issue to be on the panel of experts, which is quite amazing.
I can think of Mr. Mansell at the University of Calgary who would be an excellent person to have on the panel. Brian Crowley from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies would be an excellent person to have on that panel. Mr. Courchesne at Queen's University would also be an excellent person to have on that panel. They have all spent a lot of time studying this formula and criticizing the defects in it, but I doubt whether any of these people will be appointed to the panel because they have preconceived ideas on the topic.
The sort of sentiment here in Ottawa is that things should be controlled and run out of Ottawa because everyone in Ottawa knows best. I have the suspicion that what would really trouble the centralists, the Trudeau types of people who wanted everything run out of Ottawa, is that it would be dangerous if a province like Newfoundland developed its non-renewable resources and became an economic powerhouse in Atlantic Canada, became a true major have province, a place for investment where people could go, and a collection point for economic activity.
The people of the Trudeau centralist idea of government would find that whole notion dangerous and would not want it to happen. They would not want people to get on their own two feet, really be in control of their own destiny and maximize all their abilities and talents in that region.
I wonder if the member would be able to respond to that kind of concern.