Environment committee  I might just clarify. I think on the latter, we are able to say whether the policy has been implemented as it was set out. I'll give you a very concrete, explicit example, and we talk about various policies here. The key one is the 1986 habitat policy, and our concern led to a re

Environment committee  Thank you, Chair. This was a particularly strong team in terms of knowledge and background. The two principals who are here, Kevin Potter and Eric Hellsten, have spent many, many years—actually, probably longer than they wish to admit—in audits in this area. Kevin and I both wer

Environment committee  Primarily it's auditing. It's expertise that has been gained over, as I say, several decades of work and awareness of these issues. We refer quite often in this report to the fact that many concerns remain that were identified in previous audits and that the department said that

Environment committee  It is very complicated, indeed. If you do not mind, I will answer in English. Because of the split of jurisdictions, Mr. Chair, one of the key things we looked at for both the relationship of DFO with the provinces and Environment Canada and the provinces was to ask if they had

Environment committee  Yes, that is correct. The agreements are different from province to province.

Environment committee  Thank you. I got my memory back. The second point is a very important point. We talk and hear about certain projects being special in that they're very large-scale. The way in which most projects happen is that it's possible to have some other compensation. When you're talking a

Environment committee  I'll start by speaking more generally than about the oil sands specifically. We had a lot of concerns about how Fisheries and Oceans was dealing with development projects of any sort. We had a lot of concerns about improper quality assurance. When we looked at files on projects

Environment committee  I have not much to add, Chair, to Scott's response, other than to say that we know how important this is. It is certainly not a simple task, but we pointed it out before in audits. The policy under which this is required is now 23 years old. There have been several questions abou

Environment committee  Well, they're planning to do so.

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I should say, we were just looking back and forth at each other because we're all chomping at the bit to respond to that one. There are really two concerns. Scott has mentioned the first one. They've set up this agreement, and one of the key things was an

Environment committee  In essence, yes.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Chair. Knowing you have a few minutes, I'll use them. We were very pleased with the questioning and the interest of the committee on this topic. There are a few things I might highlight. I think that a lot of the discussion, quite appropriately, was around the action

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I was starting to feel a little unloved here.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for that question. There have been several questions, I think, that really get to this question: how important are all these agreements? We said in the report they're essential, and they are essential. I think what's really important on this subject is all of the dire

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. The information they've provided—the update on what they've done—is certainly quite comprehensive. Perhaps I could use this opportunity to comment a bit on some of the earlier questions as well. These are really important issues for Canadians, absolutely. We all un