I'm not sure how you could put them into legislation or even regulation. A lot of it has to do with the culture of how we do things. I find that if I would go to, for example, the provision of information to panels by all participants....
I would draw attention to something that I didn't mention in my submission. You know, our system relies on proponents to...and I know the term “self-assess” is used in a different mode than has been used all through these proceedings, which has to do with self-assessment by federal departments. Proponents are also expected to self-assess in the sense that they do the assessment of what they think the impact of their project will be. Not surprisingly, they try to put a good light on it; fair enough, as they should.
Trying to get information, for example during rounds of information requests, can sometimes take an enormous amount of time, and after a while one thinks, you cannot wring blood from a stone here.
I don't want to get too detailed about the kinds of...because I think they're very project-specific, or event-specific maybe. But I think there's an issue around the timely provision of information.
On the business of technical support to panels, once the parties have set up panels, they should think through the obligations that they have imposed on those panels and ask whether they've provided them sufficient resources to do the work they are expected to do, because they have not always.
I can tell you there was a certain point in our review on the Mackenzie gas project when we desperately needed assistance and we were told, “Don't worry. You don't need assistance. No problem. You've got 11,000 pages of transcript and 100,000 pages of evidence to go through. What's the problem?” Well, we didn't set that up.
So when you set up a process, you have to give very careful thought to what the consequences are of fulfilling the objectives that you have set to meet.
I don't know if that answers your question, but I've tried.