Government Operations committee  Exactly.

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely. We obtained approximately $1.5 million in savings just from this one initiative of reducing the burden around these vehicle regulations. We found that we were able to get the information we needed without this additional burden.

Government Operations committee  Absolutely.

Government Operations committee  I do not have an opinion on the exact wording of the act.

Government Operations committee  The estimation of the administrative burden that we can reduce from existing regulations in order to balance any additional administrative burden from new regulations is an ongoing exercise. Our experience with the one-for-one rule is that it has encouraged us to focus very carefully on our existing stock of regulations, review them, and see what opportunities there may be to reduce administrative burden where it exists.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on behalf of Environment Canada about Bill C-21, the red tape reduction act. My name is Mike Beale. I'm the assistant deputy minister for environmental stewardship at Environment Canada. I'm here today with Stewart Lindale, who is the director of regulatory innovation and management systems at Environment Canada.

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, the minister did in New York announce her intention to issue a notice of intent to regulate in the area of HFCs. That is important, in a sense, because of the relationship between the two environmental issues of climate change, on the one hand, and ozone depletion on the other hand.

Environment committee  I will answer in English, if I may. When I look at paragraph 1.19 of the commissioner's report, the commissioner states that “detailed regulatory proposals have been available internally for over a year”. She doesn't say regulations. “Regulatory proposals” is a broader concept that involves more initial work to develop a set of regulations, and that work certainly is well under way.

Environment committee  We've talked about the vehicle regulations. The magnitude of those emission reductions is really very significant. On the coal-fired electricity regulations, similarly, we were able to tailor them to the circumstances of the sector. In the area of coal-fired electricity, we were facing a situation where we had a fleet of coal plants that in many cases were nearing the end of their useful life.

Environment committee  Yes, that is accurate.

Environment committee  Maybe I could just add a few words on the regulatory side. As part of the sector-by-sector regulatory approach, we have working groups established with respect to different sectors. I would say there's a significant involvement of provinces in that work. In addition, there's a series of bilateral engagements with, as Chris indicated, a view to trying to make sure that Canadian industry is not being hit twice, for example, with different regulations, or that there are not two different kinds of regulations applying to them.

Environment committee  The minister recently announced the second phase of our light-duty vehicle regulations. The first phase, which is already in place, addresses vehicles up to the 2016-model year. We had previously published draft regulations for the next phase, which would go from 2017 and onwards.