Unfortunately, Mr. Cullen didn't answer my question. I'll change the terminology and maybe we can get an answer from Mr. Cullen.
Every group was asked if the plan should be costed, and every witness group, and Mr. Layton, said yes. Maybe now Mr. Layton is reconsidering. The last group of witnesses we heard from used the term “impact analysis”, and they said, yes, Bill C-377 should have an impact analysis. They recommended that Bill C-377 not go forward until an impact analysis is done.
I'm looking for a report that I had here, or actually a statement, from the Commissioner of the Environment, Madame Gélinas. She was referring to previous failures on the environment and she was referring to the Kyoto target. She said:
We expected that the federal Liberal government would have conducted economic, social, environmental, and risk analyses in support of its decision to sign the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 [...] we found that little economic analysis was completed, and the government was unable to provide evidence of detailed social, environmental, or risk analyses.
This is the Commissioner of the Environment, and she is warning indirectly in her words, if we heed her wise words, that it didn't work before. What Mr. Cullen is proposing didn't work before, and it won't work with Bill C-377. We've heard every witness group say that Bill C-377 needs to have this impact analysis, just as the former Commissioner of the Environment recommended should have happened before but didn't.
My question again, through you, Chair, to Mr. Cullen, is why is the NDP resisting what the witness groups are saying, that we need to have an impact analysis? If he doesn't want to use the term “cost analysis”, the term “impact analysis” is much greater, much more in-depth.
Why is he resisting having that done?