With regard to the three components covered by the bill and the exclusions, as I said, experience acquired over a period of 15 years shows that these projects cause no major effects. They have been excluded for a year and will continue to be excluded.
Let's talk about assigning responsibilities for conducting in-depth studies to the agency. In our opinion, and in my opinion, that will lead to higher quality environmental assessments. We're talking about assigning the environmental assessment process to an agency whose main and sole mandate is to oversee the conduct of high-quality environmental assessments. Let's be honest, that's no longer the case of all the departments that have to enforce this act and that often have contradictory mandates and that aren't always purely environmental in nature.
By concentrating these responsibilities in an agency whose principal mandate that is, we think that will lead to higher quality environmental assessments. As I indicated, based on our consultations with all stakeholders over the years, there appears to be a consensus that this will lead to higher quality environmental assessments.
As regards the third component of the bill and of Part 20, that is to say granting the minister of the environment the discretionary authority to establish the scope of projects and making it possible to focus the environmental assessment on certain components of those projects, the terms and conditions of the application of those provisions will still have to be established when those amendments have been passed. However, Mr. Mulcair, the objective is not to reduce environmental protections.