Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I've found this discussion to be fascinating. I sat for a number of years on an environmental assessment board in the Northwest Territories. I know there are some things that are different between CEAA and the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. One of the key elements, and I think this relates to a very important principle in our country, is the cumulative impact assessment. Within CEAA there were opportunities to look at future developments. If we had a mine in one area, and two or three other mines were being planned in that area, we could look at them and see what the combined impact of those mines would be, for example, on caribou herds. The linear disturbance of those might change the feature.
In the new act, is there any sense that we will be looking at future developments, that we will be considering the cumulative impact of developments? We're living in a world where there are seven billion people. We're living in a world where you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in this country.
What is your industry's take on cumulative impact assessment? How does it fit in with what's happened in this bill?