Mr. Speaker, I am going to preface my comments by saying that I am not aware of the particulars of that project.
A panel review is supposed to be a core of fundamental strength of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act process itself. To be a core of strength, it has to be utilized once in a while. In my view that project likely has an immense amount of need to be done given the amount of traffic that occurs along that Windsor corridor. However it still does not mean that we do not have an open process where we could ensure that the public could ask those hard questions if they had some serious concerns about the proposed construction of the project itself.
I would like to add that perhaps a comprehensive study might be strong enough under the existing act. If there are serious questions and the community wants to seek an independent review from a panel perspective, under the current act the minister has the capacity to say that there are still more questions and that he will refer it to a panel review. The minister now has to say that it will be either a comprehensive study or a panel review. He has denied himself the flexibility to go both ways in that regard.
If I had to answer it, my instinct would be that there is nothing wrong with a comprehensive study if we still have the panel review in our tool kit. The minister has extracted that capacity and that is probably one of the most significant flaws of this bill that we have been asked to review.