Thank you for the question, Mr. Vellacott and Mr. Chairman.
In terms of an overarching, government-wide sustainable development strategy, that might well take some time to put together. It depends on how much use Environment Canada is able to make of the collectors, by topic, that I mentioned a little earlier, coming out of these existing sustainable development strategies. They've asked departments to tell them, over six subject areas, “What programs and activities do you have under each of these?” Now, if that's useful to Environment Canada and the government of the day in coming up with an overarching set of goals, an overarching strategy, then it might not take that long to put something in place.
The best person to ask, of course, is the Deputy Minister of the Environment--who perhaps should be sitting here with me today--but I would think something could be done for the next round of strategies, which would be tabled in December of 2009, with that something being at least the beginning of an overarching strategy, maybe one or two elements of that, and having those one or two elements back down into sustainable development strategies of at least some of the government departments.
That would be a very good start, and that would be a long way from where we are today, sir.