Natural Resources committee  I felt I could respond to a couple of other elements of your question, Mr. Harris. I certainly agree with the concept of large-scale perspective and everything in balance, and I agree with the concept of recognizing a natural treasure in the boreal forest and a national economic treasure in the oil sands, and with a large-scale perspective getting the right balance.

Natural Resources committee  I am the latter, and so I offer my apologies. I am not familiar with the document you are displaying. I believe that when you were in Fort McMurray, you met my supervisor, Mr. Don Thompson. That would be part of his portfolio, but not part of mine.

Natural Resources committee  I think it's fair for me to note that both I as an industry person and the Canadian Boreal Initiative as a collaborative of various perspectives have come today and stressed the importance of good science. We've heard a couple of views of the current status, the current quality of understanding, the consensus that science is useful, and we believe, speaking for the industry, that we have a lot of knowledge through serious effort over many years.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, our research is collaborative. We have a lot of dialogue between companies, and perhaps individual companies would have their own areas of emphasis. Through dialogue, we work to ensure that the overall program makes sense and is sufficiently comprehensive. As I stressed a couple of times, by corporate policy, all the work we do of an environmental nature and particularly of a reclamation nature is in the public domain, both by the way we execute the work, working with universities, and through efforts to make the information available.

Natural Resources committee  As you note, the oil sands industry has two main approaches to recovery of the bitumen. One is mining, which is the very large-scale, open pit land disturbance, and the other is the in situ process. There are numerous in situ processes, but as far as land disturbance and forest disruption are concerned, they are similar.

Natural Resources committee  These are excellent questions, and very well expressed. I appreciate it; I'll try to do them justice. First, with respect to the magnitude or quantum of research, Syncrude spent $1.5 million this year. Collectively, with other companies plus matching funding from NSERC, the scale of reclamation research in the oil sands today is about $5 million per year.

Natural Resources committee  On the concept of balance, the concept of a thoughtful public interest determination around the rate and location of expansion of the oil sands industry, industry fully supports a balanced approach, and there are lots of tools that we can include in our tool chest. As a regional issue management challenge, I think we should use all the tools available to us.

Natural Resources committee  I believe so, yes. Now, in a purely mechanical sense, a developer is required, as part of an environmental impact assessment, to include a cumulative effects assessment. I know there are people who have a degree of skepticism around the quality of that, but I have been a regulatory affairs practitioner in the past and I actually believe that the cumulative effects assessment prepared by each company is a genuine effort to reflect the situation as of that point.

Natural Resources committee  Good afternoon. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, it's a real pleasure to speak with you today on the topic of reclamation of site closure for oil sands mines. My perspective is that of a land reclamation practitioner. As the manager, land and environment, at Syncrude, I work with a team of technical specialists who are actively rebuilding the landscape at Syncrude's oil sands mining operations.