Environment committee  There may be other issues involved, so I couldn't say without knowing the details of that particular bush. Generally speaking, if it's adding a few hundred acres next to the 200 acres they have, I wouldn't have a problem. But there may be other issues that are a concern. We'd have to look at the details.

Environment committee  Make it fairer. Make it fairer for the public to participate. Make it fairer for industry to participate. The agency needs to be invested in. It needs to be expanded. It has to have professionals who are responsible for public consultation and aboriginal consultation. It has to have professionals who are professional in judging and making the decisions it has to make.

Environment committee  I agree that there should be a joint panel for the Ring of Fire. One of the problems we've seen in the changes is that we've given greater latitude to the minister to determine what has to be assessed and how it should be assessed. These shouldn't be political decisions. They should be public policy decisions that are put before an independent agency.

Environment committee  We fundamentally disagree with doing that, especially with the offshore boards. If you actually read their mandates, they were set up to promote the offshore development, and they're also assessing the projects. So how do you get unbiased advice to government from an agency if you say, “Your job is to promote this, and your job is also to assess it”?

Environment committee  I would like to refute what was said about the Mackenzie hearings. If you look at the record closely, you'll find it was industry that caused most of the delays, especially in the last process. Imperial Oil was unable to provide the proper information in a timely way. It repeatedly asked for recesses, which resulted in a four-year process.

Environment committee  We need to keep it independent. It should be independent of the regulators, those who are sitting on panels, when it gets to panels. They should be seen as neutral, and not be people who are associated with the industry they're assessing. What I didn't get to say earlier was that when I appeared at the hearing for the nuclear plant at Darlington, sitting in front of me as the assessors were a nuclear engineer who had spent his life working for AECL and the Atomic Energy Control Board, and a former government minister who was responsible for and strongly supportive of nuclear power.

Environment committee  They absolutely count. It's the reality. So we need to have a system that's independent and that we can rely on, and there must be sufficient support and resources for the public to participate. The system now is incredibly Machiavellian. You apply for some funds to support your submission and you get a letter back telling you how much you'll get.

Environment committee  That's exactly what we need. We should be making societal decisions about how we want things to be developed and then work out the details of the projects as they come forward, instead of leaving it entirely up to projects to come forward from industry or from municipalities, or anywhere, and they're not part of a plan.

Environment committee  I'm concerned about the whole process of consultation, that some of the changes that have been made will limit public consultation in the future, even possibly affect the--

Environment committee  We would agree. If there are things that shouldn't be done, we should identify those right away; then the process could be used to modify the ones that were going forward. This is part of the democratic process in our society. We should look at this as not just a technical grading of proposed projects but of how society wants to go forward and what kinds of development it wants.

Environment committee  Absolutely. Consulting with people who have hands-on experience with the process and using that as the basis for making recommendations to the minister is far superior to the minister's making recommendations to the people who are actually involved in the process. In terms of our sector, as environmentalists, we don't have the same access to resources to bring people together and move them around the country to actually do that.

Environment committee  Absolutely. [Technical difficulty--Editor]...sometimes separately. There was a process built towards the last review in which the government actually went out and sought advice before it went forward to the committee; then it went to the committee and there was further consultation.

Environment committee  She asked me. I'd actually say that it would be your job. The only way to force a government to honour international treaties is for that government to be honourable with the international community and for members of Parliament to continue to raise the issue that Canada is in violation of a binding international agreement.

Environment committee  I would think it's absolutely germane to the discussion. Yes, it should be a right; it should be enshrined that we are not going to use this country without protecting the environment, so that we can pass it on to our children and our grandchildren. We support that. We have supported efforts to have a Canadian environmental bill of rights drafted and presented.

Environment committee  As I said, I'm going to speak on three issues today. The other two are the decision to give responsibility for environmental assessment of energy projects to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and finally I'd like to talk about the perceived bias in the system.