I want to start by thanking Darren and other Liberal members of the committee who agreed to allow me to put a question to the minister.
I thank both ministers for being here.
Preparing for this morning, I reviewed your mandate letters and found that the Prime Minister used identical language in the letter to Minister Carr and Minister McKenna on the subject before us today.
I'm going to read it into the record that you are to “...restore robust oversight and thorough environmental assessment of areas under federal jurisdiction”. To determine what areas of federal jurisdiction will be recipients of this review, and robust oversight, I turn to the recommendations of the final report at the expert panel, in which the expert panel, under findings and recommendations at page 18 says the following:
Federal IA should be only be conducted on a project, plan, or policy that has clear links to matters of federal interest. These federal interests include, at a minimum, federal lands, federal funding and federal government as proponent, as well as...”
In the interest of time, I won't read out the 11 sub-categories, but they're all important: species at risk, fish, marine plants, indigenous peoples and lands, and so on.
My question, particularly to Minister McKenna since the IA portion of the legislation is under her name, is whether she agrees with the high-level panel that this is the minimum level of federal review as required by her mandate letter.