Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would make the same comments that we made with respect to the previous Bloc motion, BQ-2. I'll just repeat them, if I may have your indulgence.
Amendment BQ-2 is about reporting. These provisions would be added to the various considerations that the government could take into account when developing regulations. So they are not mandatory by any means. Nothing in section 330(3) would be mandatory, but they would be factors the government could take into account. So the Bloc amendment would add three additional considerations, and I'll just speak to each of them.
The first one is proposed paragraph 330(3.2)(j), the environmental and energy balance sheet. The concern that we have as officials has to do with the vagueness of the terminology used here. There's no principled opposition, but I'm frankly not sure what this would add to the legislation, given that environmental balance sheet is not a term of art. As for energy balance sheet, we're not sure what the precise considerations would be that this would enable the government to account for.
If the objective is to allow the government to account for the full range, for the full spectrum of possible environmental implications, then we already have that authority in CEPA. Indeed, the essence of CEPA is to provide the government will a full range of authority to address environmental and health impacts of products, including fuels.
I would make the same comment with respect to proposed paragraph 330(3.2)(k), with a similar comment, although life-cycle analysis is becoming a clearly understood environmental term of art. Again, I would emphasize that CEPA already provides clear authority to regulate throughout the life cycle of a product.
I would make the same point with respect to proposed paragraph 330(3.2)(l) when it refers to environmental impact. That's exactly what CEPA is focused on. So it's not clear to me that this provision would add anything to the act. Indeed, by adding these provisions here you might raise an issue of statutory interpretations, in the sense that if it's necessary to add this clarity here, perhaps in some way this implies that this authority does not exist already in CEPA elsewhere. It would be our position, and it has been since CEPA was first drafted in 1988, that this full life-cycle approach is implicit in the act.
The final point I would make is with respect to the word “social”. Again, CEPA as an environmental protection statute does not currently, nor is it intended to, enable the government to establish different regulations based solely on social considerations. Indeed, one might argue that at least some parts of CEPA--for example section 93, in part V, the toxics provisions of CEPA, which this provision would affect--are premised on the criminal law head of power. I think it is fairly clear that one wouldn't be able to establish a criminal law based on a regulation that differentiates among regulatees strictly on the basis of social considerations.
So just to reiterate, I think there's a potential redundancy with respect to most of the proposed amendments here, some vagueness, some possible confusion that they would create with respect to the authorities that are already implicit in the act, and certainly with respect to the world “social”. I think the amendments would take us well outside the existing scope of the statute.