The nine-month timeframe is a little bit of a misnomer in the act. COSEWIC, when it delivers its report, doesn't deliver it to cabinet. It goes to the Minister of the Environment. The Minister of the Environment then delivers it to cabinet. When he delivers it to cabinet, that's when the nine-month period starts.
When the minister has it, there's a lot of discussion there as far as consultation is concerned. You can have short consultation periods of only a few months. I've had extensive consultation periods going on for a year or more. There are a number of species—cusk, for example, and American eel—a lot of marine species, actually, that were assessed in 2006-07, which still haven't been presented to cabinet yet for that nine-month period to start.
There is a lot of discretion there already, but at the same time, we still aren't seeing some of the consultation happening during that period—which we would assume is what the minister would be doing during that period, along with the preparation of the socio-economic impact statement and the draft of the risk assessment strategies, the RAS.