First, no doubt you would have heard from those suppliers that labour is of high concern, and certainly it is. So I'm not sure what the specific topics of that conference were, but I've been to many myself that are focused on that aspect.
However, getting to decision-making in a way that's strategic and timely does not at all meaning rushing, but not languishing either--so we can know, as you said, if it's in the public interest or not, and if it's not, then we will invest elsewhere.
The central point here is that for a group like the National Energy Board, this is not at all a departure from common practice that has been in play for decades. CEAA screenings are routinely done by the NEB currently, and many of those screenings can be very large, leading to full public hearings. A good example was 147 kilometres of looping through Jasper National Park. It rated as a screening under the definition of CEAA, but by any measure was clearly a critically important project.