Tools are available under the Environmental Assessment Act--the screening report, as I mentioned--so you don't have to do every environmental assessment from scratch. For anything that falls into the class screening, you could have class screenings for small bridges, those kinds of things.
The second point is that in terms of delaying the process, the environmental assessment process itself is not that lengthy on paper. Not every project has to be sent out for public consultation. It's a discretionary decision under the act whether or not to invite the public to participate. Second, when public participation is involved in a screening level environmental assessment, the mandatory period of time to review the documents is only 30 days. Technically, then, under the environmental assessment process, at most you could be looking at a 30-day delay. So I'm not exactly sure if I understand why the EA would be such a deterrent.
In terms of the difference between the number of applications and the number of approvals, it would be interesting to see how often the environmental assessment process actually improved the original proposal. For the most part when we participate in EAs, we're not trying to use the process to stop a project from going forward. We're trying to make sure that whatever somebody wants to do is fine as long as it doesn't infringe on any of the public rights and what terms and conditions should be attached to that proposal to make sure that swimmability, drinkability, fishability, navigation, and these other issues are addressed.