I don't know what my particular role will be on those. I do know that even in my short time here I've seen that in moving forward and making progress on the environmental files one very quickly finds out that you have to have a very intensive dialogue with not only stakeholders, whether it's businesses, NGOs, whoever, but also with other jurisdictions. By that, I would include those outside of Canada and within Canada.
So nothing has been specifically identified, as far as I'm aware of, that I'll be involved in with CEC or CCME, other than the fact that since I've been here we have actually had a CCME meeting, and I was involved in the preparation for that, not in a direct and central way. It was interesting to see the range of issues that federal and provincial ministers can discuss as they try to tackle the environmental challenges.
Going forward, as I said, I don't think we'll be able to make as much progress as we need to on the environmental front if we don't find effective ways to work together with the provinces. Whether that's through the CCME...I'm not really commenting on the forum because I really don't know enough about it, but I know we need to work together with them. Similarly, if we're going to work together internationally and with the United States, could the CEC be a forum? I don't know in particular. But I think we're going to have to find ways to have very good dialogues about the policies we're contemplating, the implications they may have for the environment and for the economy, and those fora can prove to be very useful.
Just drawing on my other experiences, it is much like the tax area, where you have similar types of fora, both domestically and internationally, that can be very effective in trying to make sure we are understanding the issues we face. When you go across different countries, one of the things I have found is that we are actually grappling with many of the same issues, and there's a lot of commonality in thinking and analysis that's gone into it. It's a useful opportunity to share and maybe try to find some of the best practices that were discussed earlier. What my particular role will be, it's early days, but obviously there'll be a lot of dialogue on both those fronts.