Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the question and also for the very significant contribution he made to our committee when we studied this question. All of us on the committee were truly grateful for his presence and his contribution.
I concede that we did not go as far as our report suggested. Sometimes politics is the art of the feasible. However, I think it is a significant start toward the New Zealand model.
The commissioner will have the task of ensuring that every ministry of the government will have to table before the House within two years strategies for sustainable development. Strategies for sustainable development as such obviously will touch on policy and programs because sustainable development is effectively how we integrate the economy to the environment within a framework.
As the Minister of the Environment stated, environment will not be carried just by the Minister of the Environment in the traditional sense; every ministry will become a sustainable development ministry. Furthermore, by law it will have to produce to Parliament within two years a strategy of sustainable development.
This is looking forward and not backward. Obviously the strategies will look to the future. If at the time the strategies are tabled in Parliament Canadians or parliamentarians are not satisfied, the commissioner will be subject to petitions on every aspect of these strategies. He will have the power to report once a year to Parliament on the status of these stratgies, which will have to be updated every three years through Parliament.
Therefore, I do believe it is a significiant step forward. It may not go as far as the New Zealand model, considering that New Zealand is a country of 3 million people and we are a country 10 times larger and far more complex. At the same time, I am convinced that it is a significant step forward.