Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to the witnesses who are here with us and those who are elsewhere, in Quebec City or anywhere else.
The more witnesses we hear from and the more we read about the topic, the more we realize that creating environmental legislation is no small task, to say the least.
Like my colleague Mr. Kennedy, I am trying to find my way in all this and to work out an approach. It seems to me that we can choose two routes, the first being to work from current legislation. Since I got here in 1997, we have been called on to work on the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Is it not better to strengthen current legislation and make the state and its citizens subject to clear obligations in environmental protection, rather than to create new legislation for every member of the public? Is it not better to work from the legislation we have at present and make sure that those laws are strengthened and enforced, instead of creating new legislation?
In the situation at hand, we have no case law at our disposal. But there is environmental case law stemming from the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. I should make it clear that I am not dismissing the principle of environmental law. It exists in Quebec and in Ontario too. But do you not think that we should further strengthen the laws we already have rather than make new ones for everyone?