This is a very important one brought forward by a number of the lawyers who testified, including Professor Meinhard Doelle from Halifax.
After line 27 on page 50 we would add 91.1 just before the heading “Regional Assessments and Strategic Assessments”. That would impose a clear responsibility on federal authorities to carry out the regulatory duties, powers, or functions with respect to the approved projects to ensure effective implementation of the follow-up programs. It would ensure transparency of the results provided through a central federal registry.
It would require the federal authorities to actually perform their duties and functions. We dealt with this before on enforcement. That was why I raised the question about what exactly the impact assessment agency would do. You do an environmental impact assessment and then you need to go back to the regulatory authorities who are charged in their mandate legislation to actually give licences or give approvals and so forth. This would require that they take into consideration the recommendations and the directions under the impact assessment and actually deliver the responsibilities and then make it known on the central registry that they have taken those actions.