Thank you.
I think Mr. Vellacott made some very good points. It is the responsibility of this committee to deal with the CEPA review. We have ENGOs that want us to deal with the CEPA review, and we have a legislative requirement to deal with it. The committee, right from day one, said we were going to begin the CEPA review.
We now have a motion before us to deal with Bill C-288, which is a private member's bill that we have until February to complete. It appears that the committee now wants to put a private member's bill, Bill C-288, from the Liberal member. The previous government had the reputation of not doing very much on Kyoto, on the environment. Basically we have the previous government trying to railroad this committee and force us to abandon our legislative requirement, which is the CEPA review. I'm quite concerned about that.
I'm also a little concerned about Mr. Godfrey's comment on a work plan. He passed out a work plan last week. It involves a list of themes and recommended witnesses and goes on until November 21. We have a requirement to deal with CEPA, yet what was proposed on Thursday of last week was this work plan from Mr. Godfrey. We're changing from meeting to meeting. If we're going to deal with Bill C-288 and there is a genuine desire to deal with it in a proper way, we need to take a serious look at Mr. Godfrey's work plan.
What's being proposed by Mr. Rodriguez today is to fast-track, ram it though, we don't care what witnesses have to say, let's just deal with this in a couple of meetings. This government takes the environment seriously and hearing from witnesses very seriously. If we're going to deal with Bill C-288 it needs to be done properly and not haphazardly. The previous government had a reputation for doing things haphazardly, making plans on the back of a napkin, and we don't support that.
What Mr. Godfrey proposed last Thursday is a reasonable approach, but it needs some work. We need to enhance the themes and the list of witnesses. So we have prepared a list of witnesses and themes to add to the work plan.
But this committee has a legislative requirement to deal with CEPA and a moral responsibility to deal with CEPA for the coming generations and the environment. So I'm going to move an amendment to the bill on the floor right now. We have a motion, and I would like to move an amendment in both official languages. We have handed it to the clerk. It removes everything after the word “bill”, which is about halfway through the motion, and inserts the following:
after the mandated 5-year review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) is complete or until after the winter break (Christmas recess), whichever comes first.
That is my motion for an amendment.