I think that's an excellent question. There are some very fundamental decisions, if you will, that the committee needs to make about the kind of advice it provides to government about the act.
I think we have tried to suggest to you that in implementing the act and in the learning process we've gone through, we've struggled to balance a number of things. One, of course, is the environmental protection imperative in the act. The other is the enabling of partnerships and the provision of long-term predictability to our partners. That occurs no matter what the environmental legislation is; that's a common theme across all of our legislation. The relative emphasis we place on those two is something that this committee should--if you don't mind me giving advice--comment on. And advice is needed.
The additional challenge that this particular piece of legislation poses to us is the highly prescriptive nature of the legislation and the requirements to take a very process-specific set of steps for every species. There are important judgments that government needs to make, and that we make on a day-to-day basis in terms of our implementation of the act.
As my colleague Mr. Wong has explained, it's not that our hands are completely tied. Of course we make judgments. When a species has been listed but does not exist, is there any merit in taking additional action? No. But we've had to go through certain steps to get there, and we have expended taxpayers' dollars to get to that point.