Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague on the environment and sustainable development committee for his speech, a bit of which touched on the bill before us. It is a pleasure serving on the committee with him. We have a lot of fun together. We do not often agree, but that does not mean that we cannot have a good time.
I would like to hear from the hon. member, given that his previous government shredded every federal environmental law that I worked for 40 years to develop. Given that the current Liberal government has broken its promise to move expeditiously to restore all of those shredded environmental laws, what does the member think can be done to the bill before us to strengthen it? I know that there is a dilemma when there are certain changes that we want to make to bills. There are limitations.
I was not yet on the committee when it reviewed the Federal Sustainable Development Act, but I am well aware that the report called for some rather substantive changes to the bill, including shifting to a whole-of-government responsibility for reviewing whether all the departments and agencies were actually doing a sustainable development assessment of their policies, proposals, and laws. We know that the government is adding more government departments and agencies, but the commissioner essentially said that is a pointless exercise if the government does not make the departments and agencies do those assessments and provide them to the ministers and to the cabinet.
We note that the bill would give an option to the Treasury Board to provide direction on the environmental impact of the proposals. One of the main criticisms the commissioner had of the current act was that it is only limited to environment; it does not cover all of the 17 sustainable development goals. I wonder if the member could speak to the reforms he thinks are necessary to make the Federal Sustainable Development Act deliver what it is supposed to.