As the minister noted in her opening remarks, one of the goals is to ensure that we are getting good projects to market. The process that has been designed through the proposed legislation aims to ensure this by bringing regulatory certainty to the process through assessments by one agency, but working in close collaboration with regulators, whether they be regulators such as Transport Canada or a life-cycle regulator, so that you can have that certainty of process in assessment.
We've also looked at the reduction of the timelines in order to ensure.... We heard a considerable amount of feedback throughout the last 14 months that the process takes too long and that we need to reduce the time. We have reduced the timeline, as was noted, from 365 days to 300 days and from 720 days for panels down to 600, to ensure that we can do these in a more efficient, effective way. It is important to note as well that the decision-making process needs to be done in a timely fashion. This proposed legislation also puts in a legislated time frame for the decision process.
Throughout the proposed legislation there are a number of points at which we are trying to ensure regulatory certainty so that Canada can continue to be competitive.