Yes. In my case, after about two years—I think it was 22 months exactly since the investigation had been launched—we were worried about nothing happening from that investigation, given that no public updates were provided in that period. Also, I believe there's a statute of limitations in CEPA in terms of the two-year limit. If somebody doesn't bring forward an environmental protection action as a citizen within the first two years of an offence, then they can't do it afterwards. That's why I filed that request under section 17 for the minister to launch an investigation.
We were troubled that, out of the four violations I outlined in my request, three of which were critical—the import and the sale of those cars and also misleading and lying to the government and to the regulator—and were absolutely essential in terms of what happened with VW, the minister refused to launch an investigation, citing the ongoing investigation as a reason. That basically kept the public in the dark about what was happening.
Also, not to repeat myself, but just to highlight an important point, in terms of the investigation that the minister did open based on my request, which was on the continued sale of the 2015 half-fixed vehicles, over almost three years I received 12 progress update reports, and there was no information in those update reports about the status of the investigation. The report often just told me that officers were collecting evidence and, in many cases, the report would provide a timeline for when the investigation was predicted to be completed. In those 12 instances, whenever a time was provided, in most cases timelines were not met.
It was really a very puzzling process. It just made it very difficult to understand why the investigation was taking so long, and it was against the spirit of CEPA in terms of providing a mechanism for people to be able to take part in the enforcement.