Finance committee  My name is Lawrence Hanson. I'm the director general of strategic policy for Environment Canada. I'm joined by my colleague Maxime Lessard-Lachance. The decision to dissolve the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy was a product of decision-making under the d

Finance committee  There are, I believe, two remaining reports to come forward from the round table. The first has to do with a reference from the Minister of the Environment asking the round table to examine provincial and territorial approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The second is

Finance committee  As the minister has indicated, it has always welcomed the historic work of the round table on a wide variety of issues. The reality is that the exact kind of analysis of trying to bring together sustainable development—i.e., the marriage of meeting economic and environmental goal

Finance committee  The department continues to do significant analysis and work on a wide variety of environmental issues and continues to promote the concept of sustainable development under the Federal Sustainable Development Act, under the federal sustainable development strategies, etc., and th

Finance committee  Obviously, different groups are focusing on different issues. If I were to look, for example, at the issue of climate change and energy, I think the Pembina Institute would be an example of that. The David Suzuki Foundation has done work, and the International Institute for Susta

Finance committee  I am not personally aware of comments made by these other organizations. That's not to say they haven't made such comments; I'm just not personally aware of public statements they have made on them. I'm sure that if there were some, we could track them down.

Finance committee  Yes, certainly there are more sources of advice and analysis on our environment now than there was at the time the round table was created.

Finance committee  I would say yes. I'll concede I'm less familiar with probably some of the earlier years of the round table, but I'm sure there would be lots of instances where they were proposing either policy directions that the government of the day was not necessarily pursuing or recommendati

Finance committee  A lot of their assets are going to be very basic things. Frankly, they're not going to have a lot of significant assets. It's really just going to be classic things that they have to run the organization, such as computers, technology, photocopiers, their rental agreements on off

Finance committee  Yes, I think it is. What we've seen in the environmental community has replicated itself across universities. This is obviously going to be multidisciplinary in terms of environmental issues and environmental economics, and the bridge between the two.

Finance committee  I'll speak to the issue of the kind of work these organizations do. I think it is safe to say that we in the policy world examine their work, analyze it, take note of it, and take note of it to ministers, etc., as appropriate. We meet with these organizations on a variety of issu

Finance committee  I believe it was 1988.

Finance committee  I think the issue is that if you look at the range of organizations, some will try to factor economic issues into their overall work. I think Pembina strives to do that. I think a lot of these organizations that are focused on sustainable development try to build that in, for exa

Finance committee  I suppose it does get into terminology questions of “advisory group” versus “think tank” versus “environmental organization”. But I think at the end of the day, the reality is that the kind of work the round table did was often to speak to various participants in the system, to d

Finance committee  Again, I would note there continues to be a regular and open dialogue with many of these groups and that analysis is taken seriously. We look at the work that is done by these organizations. We meet with these organizations. For example, there are very valuable work and analyses