Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I would make two comments with respect to this proposed amendment.
First of all, indeed, some of the authority that would be added here we believe would already be covered in subparagraph 140(1)(g)(iii), which would authorize the Governor in Council to issue regulations that would require proponents of fuel to submit information about the adverse health or environmental effects. And those adverse health or environmental effects could indeed relate to any point in the life cycle of the fuel. So that would cover proposed subparagraph (iii.2) and part of proposed subparagraph (iii.3), which refer to environmental impact. So I would respectfully suggest that part of the amendment is superfluous, to use your words.
I guess there are two other concerns. One is that some of the terms used here are somewhat vague, and I appreciate that they're intentionally broad. For example, the term “environmental balance sheet” is not a term of ours that officials in the Department of Environment would be used to, nor is it sufficiently precise that a potential regulatee would know that they might be subject to this provision, which is sort of a fundamental principle of drafting.
A third concern has to do with the final amendment here, which would give the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Health the authority under CEPA, which is an environmental protection statute, to recommend regulations regarding social impact. Again, I would echo the comments made by Mr. St. Amand. While this is undoubtedly well intentioned and is potentially well within the purview of this committee, I would request that the committee keep in mind, when dealing with all these provisions, that we are dealing with amendments to CEPA, not to an agricultural statute and not to a trade statute. These are amendments to an environmental and health protection statute. So the scope of that statute is very clearly constrained to protecting the environment and health and not to addressing social objectives or economic objectives. Certainly we have no history of using CEPA to collect social information or economic information, and one might argue that this amendment would go well beyond the scope of the statute the bill is amending.