You're designing a system, sir, that believes that proponents don't have their ducks in a row. Why not design a system that says that if people come forward with a project, we will look at it within 45 days and outline the deficiencies, and then within 15 days after that, they have to respond? We start the clock.
They have to then get that information in, and they may end up with a no. Nothing that Mr. Feldberg has said says that the Groundhog Day clause is not a problem. Once the clock starts, Bill C-69 essentially lets the government suspend or extend the one-year clock without a narrow list of reasons, without limits on each pause or on an automatic restart.
Mr. Chair, legitimate pauses do need to happen, but why should the government get to referee its own deadline? Is this a real clock—a real hard stop of a year—or a hockey clock, with the final three minutes of a game lasting half an hour?