Unfortunately, it's been a sort of mixed approach, and I think it's been declining through time.
About a decade ago, much fanfare was made about setting up CEMA, the Cumulative Environmental Management Association, which was going to set environmental limits and ensure that oil sands development would proceed responsibly. At the time, the federal government played a pretty active role in helping set up that process. In many ways, that's a way of handing off responsibility to another group, CEMA.
Since then I think we've seen continued declines in involvement from the federal government, and we've seen clear examples where although there seems to be some evidence of good work behind the scenes.... A particular example would be the DFO science that went into the phase one framework. I think there's a clear paper trail that said the DFO scientists did the right thing in identifying an ecosystem base flow that would have protected the river. Then the federal government seemed to capitulate and then that disappeared in a later draft.
There's certainly evidence that the federal government participates in hearings and seems to ask questions as another stakeholder, good technical questions, but we don't see leadership in terms of ensuring management frameworks are in place.
A classic example would be woodland caribou. Alberta's woodland caribou are in the worst shape of any herds in the entire country. The science shows that every herd in the oil sands region is on the route to extirpation, and the federal government has not identified critical habitat that would protect caribou. There are many issues like this that give you a sense of....