Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is my pleasure to appear at the committee's invitation. With me is Mr. Joseph Castrilli, who is also a lawyer with the Canadian Environmental Law Association. I will speak very briefly, with a couple of introductory comments, and Mr. Castrilli will use the bulk of our five minutes or so to highlight a couple of the main points we've addressed.
We were asked to look at the constitutionality of this bill, and that's the specific context for our comments. I should add that the Canadian Environmental Law Association is a 38-year-old, federally incorporated, not-for-profit organization, and it is also an Ontario legal aid clinic. We are strictly non-partisan. We provide advice with respect to proposed and possible law reform, both federal and provincial--and municipal for that matter. We do that with all political parties.
In our efforts we are always supporting multi-jurisdictional work within Canada's constitutional framework. We advocate that there's an important role for municipalities, provincial governments, and for the federal government. We do our work in that way because different scales of effort matter in different issues. This is certainly one of those areas where that is true, where efforts by some of Canada's large municipalities are important, as well as provincial governments and the federal government.
We also will be pleased to assist the committee further after our brief overview and to provide our suggestions and advice as to possibilities going forward.
With that, I would like to ask Mr. Castrilli to highlight two of the heads of power that we addressed in our brief.