Mr. Chair, I'll respond to that question in two ways.
One is to say that while the strategy does not change the application of the cabinet directive on strategic environmental assessments and does not change the roles—for example, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency has a key role in the administration of it, and the Privy Council Office has a key role in the administration of it in ensuring the orderly preparation of memoranda to cabinet—the federal sustainability strategy will in a significant manner support the application of that directive in the following way, by means of the second feature, which links to sustainable development.
In the current system, the sustainable development strategies were kept, if you will, to the side. They were not linked to the expenditure management system; they were not linked to the major processes of decision-making through MCs and through Treasury Board submissions. By linking sustainable development to the expenditure management system, we bring the information on sustainable development into the expenditure management system. That is precisely the information that is included in a memorandum to cabinet, which is where the scans and the assessments with respect to the directive apply. We'll bring better information into that decision-making process, and I believe that will enable the government to do a better job of operating the cabinet directive on strategic environmental assessment.
One of the issues is the quality of the information concerning environmental impacts, which is one of the key considerations in the scan and in deciding how to apply the directive. This strategy, once fully in place, once linking sustainable development and environmental goals and targets and implementation strategies into the expenditure management system, will thereby bring that information into decision-making documents, such as memoranda to cabinet, and in that indirect but powerful way will, I believe, support better application of the strategic environmental assessment.