Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The very words of this provision say that this act applies to “all decisions emanating from a federal source”, and Mr. Warawa picked up on that as being quite uncertain. I just refer to it to buttress what I said earlier about the fact that for sure, agreements between the federal government and an aboriginal group would fall into that category. Quite frankly, a decision emanating from a federal source is likely broad enough to include an act of Parliament, unless that act of Parliament specifically said it was to be free of the influence of this pernicious bill.
Having said that, I had a conversation yesterday with an officer of the University of Waterloo. I asked her if she knew we were studying a bill that meant that if the University of Waterloo received funding to build a new building on their campus and they went through a federal environmental assessment in order to implement that, and spent x number of millions of dollars doing that, and complying with federal government regulations, and spent x number of years doing that, the project could still be derailed by a lawsuit at the instance of virtually anyone who could apply to a judge to either set aside the building or modify it? She was quite horrified to hear that that would be possible. I think most Canadians would be horrified if they knew what we were studying at this committee.
Thank you.