Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would also like to thank the witnesses for being with us today.
Everyone agrees that we need to establish a sustainable development strategy, and that this strategy must come from the senior levels of government. Unless I am mistaken, 25 years ago, the Prime Minister's Office issued a directive which, in principle, forces departments to carry out a strategic environmental assessment. As far as I know, the directive starts at the top and it is supposed to filter down. You have worked with the Commissioner of the Environment and I still remember the tile of one of the chapters, which was: “Strategic Environmental Assessment”. The Department of Finance is dragging its feet. But, the fact is that this directive has been in place for 25 years now, and has been renewed two or three times.
There is a commitment at senior levels, but there is no implementation further down the ladder. So, the question is: we may well talk about a national sustainable development strategy that casts a wide net, but should we not be ensuring that strategic environmental assessment is a legal obligation? There has to be an obligation—not in the form of a directive, but in a form that can give it greater weight. Can you tell me whether, in some countries, such an approach has been favoured as a means of forcing departments to carry out a strategic environmental assessment? We may well talk about strategy, and departments can always develop them, but in actual fact, if there is no legal obligation, I am not convinced it will go very far.