Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I also wish to thank the witnesses for attending to speak to my bill. I really appreciate the effort you put into your testimony and the analysis.
I want to congratulate both offices. Commissioner Vaughan's ears are probably buzzing for all the compliments I give for the work his office does. I want to extend them as well to the Ontario office. After 15 years, I think it has shown itself to be an invaluable office. Thank you for your good work.
My first question is for Commissioner Vaughan. Thank you for your points on seeing that there are no inconsistencies, under your point three.
Under your point five, I want to review your mandate a bit to see what you think about an argument for why it may not be conflicting. It's actually interesting, listening to Mr. Miller's testimony, that he seems to be paving the way for the argument I'm about to make, which hadn't occurred to me.
That is, of course, that various entities can be mandated under different pieces of legislation. Of course, the Commissioner for the Environment and Sustainable Development is mainly mandated under the Auditor General Act. But over time, the commissioner has also been given an extended mandate under a lot of other pieces of legislation.
Of course, it may well be argued that having established the commissioner's office under the Auditor General's office may lead to a mindset of approaching matters in “the way things are done”, rather than with an approach as a separate commissioner for environment. I think that's a very interesting point.
Mr. Vaughan, I've looked at a number of statutes that you are mandated under. It appears to me that your mandate already moves your office towards being more forward-looking, not just waiting until the government has acted. It's similar to the provision in clause 26 of the environmental bill of rights. Let me give a couple of examples.
For example, subsection 9(4) of the Federal Sustainable Development Act empowers your office to “review and comment as to whether the targets and implementation strategies can be assessed” in advance of final cabinet approval. Again, that's forward-looking, making recommendations so that potentially there could be changes before the final determination by the cabinet.
Secondly, sections 21.1 and 23 of the Auditor General Act mandate your office to provide sustainable development monitoring—reporting towards sustainable development—and to consider a wide array of factors that mirror the environmental bill of rights; again, it's forward-looking.
Section 10.1 of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act requires your office at least every two years to submit a report to Parliament analyzing progress in meeting those obligations under that law and reporting any other observations and recommendations.
Is it not a reasonable argument that in undertaking those analyses you would also consider whether the government has exercised its discretion to enact laws, promulgate regulations, or even in its Budget Implementation Act to give consideration to sustainable development, environmental protection, and so forth? Is that not very similar to clause 26?
I'm sorry if that's a complicated question.