Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In the spirit of giving a full explanation, I'm proposing this amendment to respond to the other place's amendment, to the “precautionary principle” formulations in the preamble.
In paragraph 2(1)(a) of the act, the ENEV committee of the Senate, as you know, amended the English version as subparagraph 2(1)(a)(ii) to remove the word “cost” from the phrase “cost-effective measures” in an attempt to better align the English provision with the French provision, which simply refers to “mesures effectives”.
However, the discrepancy between the English “cost-effective measures” and the French “mesures effectives” is not a translation error and in fact is consistent with the English and French versions of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development upon which the provision is based. In order to avoid misalignment and to ensure that the key notion that precautionary measures be cost-effective remains in CEPA, the government proposes to correct the purported translation error by amending the French version of the act rather than the English.
That was a long explanation, Mr. Chair, but I hope that clarifies things.