There are two parts to the question. The first part relates to projects that are of federal interest that are not currently being assessed. Elaine Feldman gave an example last week. She talked about these in situ SAGD oil sands projects and how, if they are not having some effect on fish habitat, there will not be a federal assessment, whereas for oil sands, mines usually do destroy fish habitat, and hence there's a federal trigger. Why is that? In both cases, they're producing huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. That was the first point.
With respect to what we call strategic environmental assessment, how do you actually build sustainability into federal decision-making? I should say that there is actually a cabinet directive that applies right now and says that as cabinet memoranda are developed, there's supposed to be an analysis of the environmental effects. That's supposed to happen. It used to be the case that some public information emanated from that. Now it doesn't.
I think there's a case to be made for legislating a strategic environmental assessment process, so that as part of the normal course of events in developing decisions and policies for the federal government, the environmental effects would be considered as a matter of law. I wrote a paper on that 10 or 15 years ago. I prepared a draft bill, actually; it's part of the paper I wrote. I can provide that to this committee if it's of interest.