Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Warawa, it certainly is proceeding. We have a group of about 40 or 45 environmentalists who are also auditors, who are highly motivated young men and women. We have a report due for October that is going to be the statutory work—work on petitions, work

Environment committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We are simply delighted to be here to discuss our 2007 annual report. It was tabled in the House of Commons on October 30. I am accompanied by our two principals, Andrew Ferguson and Richard Arseneault. This report covers two issues funda

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, certainly that committee he referred to hasn't met recently. We can find little evidence, actually, that there's been very much of substance going on at the centre to drive these strategies as part of an overarching government process to put in place sustainable dev

Environment committee  For the most part, I would agree with you, but on the last couple of points, not necessarily. There is validation of commitments made on a department-by-department basis. We do that as part of our mandate, and we report 11 of those in this particular chapter. But in terms of hav

Environment committee  Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Chairman, I haven't really looked at other countries in any detail on this. We're hoping that this will be done by the government as it conducts the review that they have committed to undertaking. In terms of overarching goals, this year the Department of the En

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, that's a very good question. We debated long and hard on how to craft this recommendation, Mr. Godfrey. We felt very strongly that we needed one recommendation--that it was time to pause and reflect before going forward for a fifth round. This begged the question,

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, Mr. Godfrey, we've been calling for an overarching sustainable development strategy for the Government of Canada for some time. The government itself committed to putting one in place, I think by the middle of 2006, and it isn't here yet of course. We still believ

Environment committee  Are you asking for me to comment on the private member's bill, sir?

Environment committee  I will go as far as to say that I think there is a need--we all think there's a need--to have an overarching strategy. There's a need to have sufficient guidance given to the government as a whole and individual departments to make that strategy work. In particular, there's a nee

Environment committee  Well, Mr. Chairman, if I may suggest, it would depend on what was in the bill. There are certainly things one would want to consider.

Environment committee  Almost.

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, Mr. Bigras, yes, the panel, as I understand it, has virtually completed their work. They had a very busy summer, as I understand it. I don't know whether you've appeared before them; I certainly have, and our group has. I don't know how many people they've intervi

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will respond to those two questions from Mr. Bigras. In terms of the green ribbon panel, certainly when the panel provides its report to Mrs. Fraser, she's going to spend some time studying it, I suspect, with people on the executive committee. She fu

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lussier, I certainly hope so. Let me explain what we've done to select these 14 chapters. We've looked back over the history of this office, and we've tried to select some of the key recommendations we've made to Parliament and to the government over that perio

Environment committee  No.