Thank you to all our witnesses.
The reason we undertook this study to find, obviously, the cross-country benefits is partly that there just seems to be a permeating sense that Alberta is the only province that benefits from energy development, oil sands development. It's easy to villainize something when you don't appreciate the benefits in your own backyard from something. The discussion—and we see it here today—has been couched in terms of we aren't realizing any benefits versus couching it as though it would be nice to maximize the benefits.
The other way it's couched—and Mr. Leach sort of leaned to this—is that we've presented this either/or discussion. Certainly I think we as a government have been trying to make sure that we've been promoting the responsible resource development angle, which means we aren't proposing an either/or scenario. We understand that care and concern for the environment and natural resource extraction aren't mutually exclusive things.
Ms. Kennedy, I have a couple of direct questions for you just to get it on the record. Would you agree with the characterization that the oil sands is dirty oil?