Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all our guests for being here. I'll start with Ms. Toussaint.
Ms. Toussaint, you said that making decisions within a clear time frame was important for you and for your association. We agree. Conservatives support Bill C-39's objectives of faster project decisions. However, the statutory one-year period that's found in part 1 only provides certainty if proponents know exactly when it begins. You said yourself that the incentives are to push much of the information collecting outside of the one-year timeline.
Under the so-called “Groundhog Day” proposed section 19, essentially it becomes an open-ended amount of time where the responsible authority gets to decide whether an application is complete. If that happens, the advertised one-year statutory promise is null and void. Would you support an amendment requiring government to determine, within a fixed period, whether an application is complete, so that the one-year timeline approval is actually meaningful?