I think I can. I've worked a lot with the round table over the years, and it is accountability.
The initial round table idea came out of something called the National Task Force on the Environment and the Economy. That was when the Brundtland Commission, the World Commission on Environment and Development, came to Canada in the mid-1980s. The Canadian Minister of the Environment set up a round table, or a multi-stakeholder group, made up of people from industry, environmental groups, universities, and ministers. They enjoyed working together so much they said let's institutionalize this process and report to the Prime Minister.
That's the big difference. The round table does its work on behalf of the executive. It responds to requests from the Prime Minister; it's doing that right now. It's doing some very good work on long-term emissions reductions into the middle part of this century. But it's working on behalf of the government; it's part of the government. It's at arm's length, but it responds and answers directly to the round table.
Does it do good consensus-building work? I've worked with them on a number of projects over the years, and they bring together people from all the different groups, put them around the table, and try to find the common ground. Based on that, they come up with sort of a state of the play: Where are we at? Where can we go? What can we recommend to the Prime Minister on this?
I think a mistake was made, because this Prime Minister downgraded the reporting to the Minister of the Environment instead of to the Prime Minister—but that's just my point of view.