Maybe I can start that off, and, Kevin, you can fill in some details as we go, because that's an interesting question.
We actually started to look at this program back in 2002-03, when we found, as a department, we were doing 12,000 to 12,500 environmental assessments a year. Obviously that wasn't sustainable; we didn't have the people to do that.
We started out using an instrument called operational statements. Now, there was no reference to operational statements in the legislation at the time, but we piloted them and wanted to see what the impact would be. We used them for things like culverts. We certainly used them for irrigation of drainage ditches on farms. We used them for anything that was really repeatable and predictable. We simply posted the requirements the department needed to help an individual—and usually they were individuals—to either avoid or mitigate impacts on fish habitat.
That sort of evolved over time. What you're seeing in the new legislation, the use of standards, which won't be prescribed in regulations, really, in my view, amounts to the next step. Quite frankly, we will see the potential in the years to come for the Minister of Fisheries to actually, through regulation, establish standards for things like water flow and that sort of thing. Here we would be publishing what we think are the required steps to ensure that there is no impact, or minimal impact, on fisheries habitat. So that is a new element to the act.