Environment committee  I would say that the implementation of the processes, the comprehensive studies, and panel reviews is doing quite well. As I noted, there are problems. I think the largest gap, and the major loss between the guidelines order process and CEAA, was on strategic environmental asse

Environment committee  No.

Environment committee  The current definition is social and economic impacts of the environmental impacts, which is a little bit artful in its formulation, I think. So we would fully support the full inclusion of environmental, social, and economic impacts, except that I have difficulty with this balan

Environment committee  First I would like to say that MiningWatch is a non-governmental organization. It is not an aboriginal organization, although we have strong aboriginal representation on our board of directors and in our membership, and so on. So we're speaking from the perspective of working wit

Environment committee  They are access to information, access to money, and access to technical capacity to do their own work in relation to these processes. I think you've heard from the Assembly of First Nations about their overall perspective. I would simply say that it needs to be discussed with th

Environment committee  This could take a while.

Environment committee  The agency has had a quality assurance program in place for some years. It has delivered some mixed results because of its limitations in actually looking at the projects that are being assessed and the assessments that are being undertaken. One of the more difficult aspects of t

Environment committee  Specifically there needs to be a mechanism in place, and I would say through the agency. There is not capacity in place or processes in place at the departmental level, say, at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, to review the broader recommendations of an environmental asses

Environment committee  In terms of self-assessment, and here we're essentially talking about screenings—there's been a lot of discussion about the thousands of screenings that take place that aren't significant—I would say there has to be a great deal of care not to throw out the baby with the bathwate

Environment committee  It was a question of the public and organizations that aren't monitoring the legislative process like we are even knowing that this is happening and being able to prepare themselves or participate. In previous similar processes the agency or other government bodies had been in th

Environment committee  First I would say that there have been improvements with the public registry of documentation with the agency's organization of information. Unfortunately, there's no way that a lot of the documentation can be made public. Apparently, this is due to the interpretation of the Offi

Environment committee  Absolutely, yes, and the assumption is generally that an environmental impact statement will be presented that is competent and coherent. Unfortunately, sometimes it's just a cut-and-paste job from the last similar project and doesn't even accommodate the realities of that projec

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to appear before you on this important topic. I apologize that my speaking notes were not ready in time for translation, so you don't have them in front of you, and also that my colleague, Ramsey Hart, was not availa

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  It would appear to be precisely an attempt to reverse the court decision. It takes the elements the court ruled on and reverses them in law, because they're not there now. The Supreme Court was very clear as to the intentions of Parliament in passing the law in the first place.