Environment committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here. My name is Margaret Meroni, and I'm the chief enforcement officer at Environment and Climate Change Canada. I'm here today with my colleagues Heather McCready, the director genera

Environment committee  Thank you for the question. You're right. There is a split between the reactive or responsive and the proactive enforcement work we do. Generally when we look at the numbers, we see that where we take action there is about a 40-40 split in terms of percentages, with 20% of our w

Environment committee  I'll defer to Heather to respond, and then we'll see if an additional information request will be needed.

Environment committee  The officers are completely autonomous in terms of the actions they take. That was what I had referenced in my speaking points. The establishment of an independent branch in part creates that separation as well, so that we do not discuss any of the actions the officer wants to

Environment committee  Thank you. That was a report that was related to the public service employee survey that was conducted in 2014, and the report that you're referencing specifically was an action plan that identified some of the additional commentary through the PSES, the Public Service Employee

Environment committee  Okay, because it did end up in the media. Sorry, I thought that was the reference that you were making. To that end, we established the action plan, and that was undertaken and issued by my predecessor, the prior CEO. Upon my appointment earlier this year, I committed to taking

Environment committee  We extrapolate statistics.

Environment committee  I think he's making reference to a law that currently isn't on the books and, as we had discussed even before we came into the room, certainly after engaging with the groups that create the regulations and after hearing these concerns, we'll be ready to enforce that which is read

Environment committee  At this time, we are focusing on where we are. We are obviously statutorily obliged to report—through the annual reports for CEPA, the Fisheries Act, and the Species at Risk Act—so we provide the information. We also provide information through the reports on plans and priorities

Environment committee  Unfortunately, we don't really have the ability to comment on them, because we are not the ones who would develop regulations or instruments to deal with the recommendations as they are presented. We would defer to our program colleagues, who are the risk managers, to take into c

Environment committee  Certainly, in that regard.... Absolutely, if the committee does determine that those recommendations will go forward, we will look at what the organization, the department writ large, is considering in that regard. Where we get involved in terms of any potential drafting of instr

Environment committee  They're not on the books yet. They're still going through the gazetting process.

Environment committee  Could I add one final point in terms of the administrative review process? There is also the venue where requests for review can be made to the chief review officer. It's an independent entity to look at the review process.

Environment committee  Part of the challenge is that it is a significant undertaking, because there is so much data that does get entered into the system. Where we focus our efforts, currently, is in establishing information available to the officers to guide and inform the work they're doing. We've b

Environment committee  We don't get involved in the discussions on equivalency. Those are within the regulatory group of the department, so the protection branch or the—