I think we have to differentiate between the gazetting consultation process and a more open one that might occur with, for example, the risk management process for road salt, which is a very robust process involving hundreds of stakeholders across Canada.
The gazetting process, which is what you get when you're involved in a risk assessment, is, as you know, simply publication in a magazine called the Canada Gazette. Unless there's an attempt to have people participate in that process, it really can be very obscure.
To be fair, certainly in the first phase of the risk assessment, it only happened because the salt industry stimulated conversations on it and actually went out and told municipalities and the provinces that there was this process for them to participate in. Had we not done that, there would have been very little participation in the whole issue of whether road salt should be listed on schedule 1 or not.
That could be improved, I have no doubt. Dick also mentioned that at that time, for some reason—I'm still baffled by it—in August 2000 Environment Canada felt that they had to hold a national press conference on the issue. We were given one day's notice about it. I don't frankly think that was public participation either. It did get some news coverage, obviously, on road salt as being toxic.
Just to summarize, I think the gazetting process is a little obscure, and if you want to enhance public consultation in risk assessment, I'd suggest that maybe Environment Canada could make it more robust.