Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the finance committee. It's wonderful to be here.
I normally sit on the environment committee. We studied this at the finance subcommittee on the environment, but we also studied changes to the Environmental Assessment Act at the environment committee. We heard from a number of witnesses, all of whom had excellent recommendations. We didn't agree with all of them, but there was a suite of recommendations there.
What's happening with this budget bill does not reflect the testimony we heard at our committee. For example, industry representatives said one way to actually streamline and make sure these assessments are done efficiently is to properly fund the agency. You don't see that kind of recommendation here. You don't see that in the budget bill.
The NDP has brought forward amendments to try to make this bill better when it comes to environmental assessments. We heard from witnesses who said we will see lawsuits as a result of this. There will be lawsuits. We heard witnesses who said there's only one chance to get this right when it comes to environmental assessment. The environment commissioner talked about things like the Sydney Tar Ponds, where there wasn't an environmental assessment, and now we're on the hook for it, for $1 billion. About half of that is federal money.
We need a robust environmental assessment system.
The environment commissioner also talked about the fact that currently we do 4,000 to 6,000 environmental assessments a year. That's going to go down to about 20 to 30 a year—not 20,000 to 30,000, but 20 to 30 assessments per year. This is not the way to make changes to the Environmental Assessment Act. The NDP believe strongly that the act needs to be modernized. We are 100% behind making amendments to the act, but this is not the way to do it. I would suggest that this finance committee heed the NDP's dissenting report when we did study the Environmental Assessment Act, because there are some very good recommendations in there.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.