Madam Speaker, we came into office with major energy projects under review. We had to make decisions on how those reviews were to be handled in the short term while we looked at permanent reforms to the environmental assessment process in Canada.
The member will know that as a part of those interim principles, we established more consultation, not only from government but also from an expert panel that made its way up and down the line, speaking extensively and meaningfully with indigenous communities and others who had an opinion. As a matter of fact, on the website there were literally tens of thousands of opinions expressed by Canadians from coast to coast to coast. That is not something that the process had allowed before.
We knew that the National Energy Board, as it was currently constituted, did not have the confidence of Canadians, so in the case of those projects under review, we added more opportunities and a different set of criteria, leading to the decision that in the opinion of the Government of Canada, this project was in Canada's interest.