I would like to add two points.
Concerning the strategies, the commissioner has talked about developing good strategies. One of the things we also do in our audit work is make sure, once they're developed and once the minister tables them in Parliament, that the departments are really in fact living up to those commitments. A lot of our audit work is picking samples of commitments that they promised and finding out if they have delivered or not.
In this coming report we have a chapter, as has been mentioned, concerning the results of that work. In past years we found very mixed results. In some cases some very important action had been taken, and in other cases the departments had really dropped the ball on important commitments.
It's important to be clear that the government has a number of tools to achieve sustainable development. We've talked today about one in particular--the sustainable development strategies tabled every three years in Parliament--but there are other very important tools. One of those is strategic environmental assessment.
That process began in 1990, when cabinet directed departments to ensure that every time a new policy idea came forward to cabinet or just to the minister alone, the environmental aspects of it would be properly identified.
We looked at how well that whole process was working two years ago. We were very critical that departments had not taken it seriously, and we were quite concerned that a number of government decisions were being made without proper attention to the environmental aspects.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.