In our written material, we indicated that we support the recommendations made by the witnesses for the non-governmental environmental organizations that appeared before the committee on, I believe, March 10. One of those recommendations included environmental justice principles.
I should tell you that the Canadian Environmental Law Association, which was founded in 1970, was premised on the assumption that existing laws to protect the environment then—and, I would add, now, 50 years later—are not self-regulating; that governments can only do so much; and that where the effectiveness of government regulation ends, it must be enhanced by members of the public having the ability to use various instruments, whether it's information-gathering, appeals, or civil actions, to supplement what government is either not able to do or not willing to do.
Environmental justice is a modern version of the principle that CELA was established on 50 years ago, so we obviously support it. We think it's past due that it appear in CEPA.