Transport committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I have to say I'm very happy to be here this afternoon, and thank you for taking the time to listen to us on a very important subject. I hope we'll be able to answer the many questions that I'm sure you'll have. Since January 2008, I have

Transport committee  Monsieur Proulx, what you have to remember is that the plan for Canada's capital is an extremely important document.

Transport committee  It needs to have buy-in from everybody, all Canadians. How do we engage them? Right now, it doesn't even need the approval of government, only the approval of the board of directors. We're happy that it needs the approval of government. As to your question on Parliament, it woul

Transport committee  There could be a question surrounding the time this adds to the process.

Transport committee  We are already part of the planning, but we are eagerly looking to play an even bigger role in facilitation and leadership. The only caution is municipal governments. I have a lot of respect for municipal governments. They have their responsibilities, and our role has been mainly

Transport committee  As a matter of fact, in the plan for Canada's capital, one component that we're looking to add this time, with this new clarification, is a framework on transportation. We didn't have one in our last plan, but we intend to address the issue this time around.

Transport committee  Mr. Nadeau, I hope that this will answer your question. Since 1997, when the board ruled on the boundaries of Gatineau Park, there has been no sale of land within these boundaries to private interests. There have only been purchases. As you know, within the boundaries of Gatine

Transport committee  You know that the 17% is covered by a management and operation agreement with Quebec. The agreement that was signed with the province requires reciprocal approvals from each party on what will be done with this land. So if we wanted to do anything at all with that 17% of the area

Transport committee  The land you are talking about, the 17% in the 1973 agreement, falls under this agreement. It was an exchange.

Transport committee  To answer your question properly, I should first explain how we proceed at the moment. Since I arrived at the NCC, staff have been assigned to purchase land inside the park. We get in touch with people and we go by market value. So the people have to want to sell and we have to

Transport committee  I think that there are two sides to your question. Of course, we are in favour of the park's environmental integrity. With regard to priorities, I would like to caution you about one thing. In managing Gatineau Park, conservation is a priority, as we decided in the 2005 master pl

Transport committee  If I may, on that point, what's interesting is that in the last two years, in terms of the executive committee that was in the legislation, this board has never made use of the executive committee because the board meets more regularly. With the technology today, the board is inv

Transport committee  It's interesting because you're really pointing at one of the big challenges of the NCC in terms of acting locally with a national mandate. You're talking about these communities—and I'm assuming you're talking about the municipalities here—and we have a national mandate. So when

Transport committee  There is a lot in that question. I've often heard the Gatineau Park and the greenbelt referred to as the two lungs of the capital region. They are really two very important assets in the region. We consider them both national treasures that we have the mandate to manage and take

Transport committee  I was just going to say that if you do a search in the act as it was, there's not even a mention of environment, but if you look at the amendments now, there's a lot of environment and ecological integrity in there. For us it is right in line with where we want to go. What it mea