I see. So what the judge or tribunal will be looking for when determining costs in clause 17 isn't so much about whether the authority was reasonable in its initial determination of what needed to be cleaned up. Instead, it's looking to see whether the contractor or the province was reasonable in cleaning up what they were told to clean up. It's looking at whether they padded their budgets or did more than they were authorized to do. When you say “reasonableness”, it is directly linked only to what the government ordered done. It's not reasonable in the sense of what reasonably should be done to clean up the environment. That question was answered further up.
On November 30th, 2009. See this statement in context.