Environment committee  Mr. Cullen, thank you for sharpening that point a little bit. Let's not worry about six years down the road; let's worry about next week or three weeks hence. We have fourteen chapters on the table with you right now, and many of them don't tell a very pretty picture. I was try

Environment committee  Mr. Cullen, are you speaking of the sustainable development strategies of individual entities or about the failure to live up to commitments?

Environment committee  Well, Mr. Lussier, I've had quite a little bit, actually. I've been thinking about the Suzuki Foundation proposals for quite a while, since they came out. We looked at them last summer. I had a chat with Mr. Godfrey last summer about that. I had no idea there was going to be a bi

Environment committee  Well, it was this morning. Someone, I guess it was Mr. Regan, asked me if I had the final version. I think I do, but I'm not quite sure. At any rate, I have a close to final version, Mr. Lussier.

Environment committee  That's what I was getting at.

Environment committee  Certainly there is a section in this bill that talks about consequences. It gets right at that issue, and I was very glad to see it. Mr. Godfrey, what is the section of the bill that deals with consequences for not following along and implementing the strategies? At any rate, t

Environment committee  Just imagine that we are sitting here six years down the road. The commissioner has come out with a report on the second one of these strategies and the related departmental or entity strategies. Let's suppose we've found that there were three or four goals set up for the governm

Environment committee  Mr. Bigras, I know the commissioner in Quebec, Harvey Mead, and we've chatted a number of times about issues. He's just getting started, as you know. Certainly we would be talking about issues regularly as we do our work, but the way this bill, as I understand it, would be intro

Environment committee  If I may, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say two things about that to Mr. Bigras and to the committee. Make no mistake, what the initial drafters of the bill a while back were after is something that I quite believe in too, as does my office, and that is the concept of a nationa

Environment committee  Mr. Bigras, certainly the strategic environmental assessments are being reviewed now, as the government reviews the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and I would expect that the review would include consideration of whether they should be legislated as opposed to just being

Environment committee  Mr. Bigras, the words that I had initially had to do with how broad the scope of the originally proposed bill would be. It seemed to sweep in all levels of government, and I wasn't sure whether the commissioner situated within the Auditor General's office or an independent commis

Environment committee  Let me simply say, Mr. Godfrey, that as with any government initiative--or, I would propose, any draft bill we're looking at--in a very real sense the devil's in the details. It depends what goes in the schedule. It depends what the targets are that are put forward and so on. I

Environment committee  Yes, I think it will. I must say, again, I'm a strong believer in this overarching framework or plan that this bill would enshrine in law. But I think it's important, when putting something like that in place, to do it in a practical way, in an iterative way. Even if the overal

Environment committee  Mr. McGuinty, we've had a very good look at this bill as it's been evolving, and have talked to Mr. Godfrey, of course, from time to time. I'm very confident that what we see here in this bill is something that the existing commissioner's group can do. I would go further and say

Environment committee  Thank you for inviting me to appear before the Committee today to discuss Bill C-474. With your permission, I will make three brief comments. First, while I had some concerns about the bill as originally drafted, for the most part, I am satisfied that the Commissioner of the Env