What seems curious to me--and this follows up on my colleague's point--is the perception of a conflict of interest...in order for the government that's choosing to hand this to the very ministry that has so botched this up, with no apparent sanctions, as you say, for bad behaviour or reward for good.
It seems to me there is an opportunity for members of Parliament to finally get involved deeply in this and to provide some of the lessons and sanctions. If there are other lessons in other departments, if it's pay bonuses or the lack thereof, or it's reprimands or public accounting, I don't particularly care what it takes; if government issues orders, which they rarely do, that are progressive enough to handle the issue, and they're still not carried out, if we could only match the amount of rhetoric and announcements to actual performance....
Every minister of the environment, going back five or six, has claimed that this is a central piece of their tenet, and consistently, the only consistency across individuals and parties has been the failure on this front: Health Canada failure; CIDA failure; Immigration; Department of Fisheries and Ocean, for goodness' sake; Indian Affairs; Justice. Overall, unsatisfactory and failing.
I don't know what my colleague's impression is, but I am not feeling the confidence today in reading the report again of handing this simply to Environment Canada, for all their best intentions, and feeling that we can walk away from this file. If this has so many implications, as you say, in terms of protecting Canada's environment, whether it's climate change or other issues, I don't think it's proper for us to allow the Privy Council to simply decide to keep it in-house.