So “Governor in Council” is scratched and it becomes “Minister”. “Secretariat Office” is gone. It's “within the Department of the Environment” instead of the “Privy Council Office”. We're scratching “support the activities of the Cabinet committee on sustainable development”, because it's no longer relevant.
So it would read:
The Minister shall establish a Sustainable Development Office within the Department of the Environment to develop and maintain systems and procedures to monitor progress on implementation of the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy.
The Office shall, at least once every five years after the day on which this Act comes into force, provide the Minister a report on the progress of the federal government in implementing the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy. The Minister shall cause the report to be laid before the House of Commons on any of the first 15 days on which that House is sitting after the Minister receives it.
Environment Canada established an office to monitor the report...and strategies implementation. The Privy Council Office would automatically act as the secretariat to the cabinet committee, so it's unnecessary to specify this in the statute.
Changing the secretariat to an office, which is only meant to better reflect the actual duties of the organization, is a good idea, I believe. A secretariat connotes an organization that is in support of another entity. This would not be reflective of the role given the amendments. The term “Office” would better reflect the oversight and monitoring function proposed for the organization than would “secretariat”.
These changes maintain the overall spirit of the clause while preserving the Prime Minister's ability, and this is critical. The Prime Minister has to maintain the ability to structure his cabinet in a manner that best suits the needs of his or her government. It also makes sense to include the monitoring and reporting role of the secretariat in this clause rather than in a new clause 13, as proposed by Mr. Godfrey--and I'm not sure if that's off the table. He can elaborate on that. So that's why we have the monitoring in there.
Are there any questions?