Environment committee  I think I addressed that, Mr. Chairman. No, it was not true.

Environment committee  Well, in seniority, I feel like I'm aging rapidly, but I'm a deputy minister, the associate deputy minister. I guess the deputy minister, Michael Horgan, who's been here, is there at Environment as well.

Environment committee  No, it's probably not entirely accurate.

Environment committee  It would be very roughly comparable, Chair, but of course it isn't an apples-and-apples comparison. Ms. Dobriansky is, without doubt, a very senior official in the State Department. It would be important to mention that the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality of the White House was also in the U.S. delegation, and that, again, is not a comparable reference.

Environment committee  He was fully engaged, particularly in the work of bilaterals and in the negotiations, and sometimes in meetings that would be called by the president of the COP to work on particular language or a problem. That was an issue I would say perhaps half a dozen or certainly four times in the last 24 hours of the conference.

Environment committee  There were some, yes, and some no.

Environment committee  I was the Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, at Health Canada.

Environment committee  Of course there has been an evolution, most notably as a result of the science, the work of the International Panel on Climate Change. I think the level of intensity and of urgency has increased. A number of elements of the agreement, the protocol, are in a sense coming due. For example, the review under article 9 of the protocol is an issue that we faced this time for the first time.

Environment committee  I'm the Associate Deputy Minister of the Environment.

Environment committee  After spending a number of years on Parliament Hill, I entered the public service in 1991, I believe.

Environment committee  No, not particularly, although I think it is well known that there are other countries, a significant number of countries, in the same position as Canada.

Environment committee  It certainly took longer to finalize things than the scheduled meeting, although I might point out for the interest of the committee that this is by no means the only time that this has happened at a COP. Some of my colleagues have been around this much longer than I, and they could tell me the number of times that it's happened.

Environment committee  Some countries did and some didn't. We share with the EU and with Japan, for example, a commitment to the long-term goal of reduction by 50% by 2050 in emissions. There are other medium-term goals, some of which are, I might say, in the process of being spelled out. The EU, for example, is prepared to contemplate a reduction of 30%, I think, by 2020, conditional on other countries joining in that commitment.

Environment committee  I think Canada's position is regarded with a mix of views. Obviously the European Union, for example, would like us to go farther sooner. The issue of the baseline is of course one that is always on the table in order to ensure that we are, in the end, comparing apples to apples, and we agree with that.

Environment committee  All I can say, Chairman, is what the government has clearly indicated. It does not believe that it will, in the time remaining, be able to meet the particular agreements arrived at in the Kyoto Protocol, but it is committed to the--