Mr. Speaker, in Canada, Indian and Northern Affairs makes the decision on whether it will lease those rights. However, when it does that, it requires no environmental impact assessment and there is no public scrutiny.
In the case of the National Energy Board's review of applications to actually drill, there is little opportunity for the public to intervene because, unlike provincial review bodies, such as the one in Alberta to which I give credit, the National Energy Board provides no costs to the public to intervene, whether or not they are first nation communities, Inuvialuit, Inuit or people from Nunavut. There is no support in intervening so they can hire experts and legal counsel, and many of these hearings are held at a far distance. In fact, the NEB hearing that was about to commence to weaken the rules for drilling off the Arctic coast was to be held in the high Arctic, so there was no way that communities outside of that area could intervene.
We need a review because the government is going in the direction of turning over more and more decisions to appointed agencies instead of binding rules by the elected government. That is why President Obama has stepped in and called for a review and is ratcheting the broad discretion that has been granted over far too many decades to regulatory agencies that are unaccountable to the people.