Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm sure John is right that the words “sound science” don't occur in the act. However, what Mr. Lourie was identifying was the reality of the kinds of activities and discussions going on in a swirling range of activity around the law. The law is just the centrepiece, of course.
In my presentation I made reference to barriers within CEPA, which this committee at least has the ability to make strong recommendations on. However, another place where this kind of language can be used is in the policies, directives, and guidelines that officials also make reference to—the set of the rules they have to follow. For example, there's a federal framework for the application of precaution in science-based decision-making, one that emplaces precaution—at industries' and governments' insistence—in the context of a risk management framework, whereas there's a fundamental disagreement that precaution is about doing things differently.
Now, that argument isn't so important, so much as how do we place more precautionary measures into processes.