Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. McGuinty. There are areas of government activity--and the contaminated sites, chapter 3, which we tabled last week, was a good example--where central agencies have been involved in a rather forceful and so far quite effective way. So to say that central agencies

Environment committee  Our pleasure.

Environment committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Vellacott and Mr. Chairman. In terms of an overarching, government-wide sustainable development strategy, that might well take some time to put together. It depends on how much use Environment Canada is able to make of the collectors, by topic, t

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, the job hasn't been done yet. One criticism of audits is that we're always looking back and criticizing what has happened. I would like to suggest to you that there's a whole lot more to audits than that. Look at where we're sitting today: we looked back, we found

Environment committee  Well, if I may, Mr. Chairman, I think the review is a sensible thing to do at the beginning of all of this. Doing it in a year is good timing. It allows the results to then be put into play for the next round with a year to spare. That's plenty of time to get at least some of the

Environment committee  Yes, Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Chairman, it's looking at how we are implementing our mandate, and part of our mandate deals with sustainable development strategies. As a matter of fact, it's kind of a strange situation in the sense that they are required to be produced under the audit

Environment committee  I don't know. That's a very good question. It won't be cheap, but I really don't know, sir.

Environment committee  No, I can't. It will be made public when we report on our performance next year, I would think.

Environment committee  No, I can't do that either, Mr. McGuinty. It depends on whether they are going to be hiring outside consultants in terms of out-of-pocket costs. They may want to do that.

Environment committee  They would be the driver of the review, in this particular case Environment Canada, the Deputy Minister, Michael Horgan.

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, that's another good question. I got at that a little bit just a few minutes ago, when we talked about the recommendation we made. We're recommending that the government do a review, because sustainable development and the sustainable development strategies that fit

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman and Mr. McGuinty, I have a couple of comments on that. Bill C-288 requires that the commissioner's office, our office, do an audit--if I can put it that way--in May of 2009 of the take-up of the plan. We are making arrangements now to do that. We are in the early

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, Mr. Warawa, this is a very good question. We just don't think that this process is really very well known. I suspect that one of the reasons it isn't, perhaps, is that we maybe haven't done our job as well as we might have. I think our website isn't the easiest to u

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  Mr. Chairman, yes, sir, I am. I'm delighted that the.... I think it will take a year to do a meaningful review. The fact that the results will be available in October 2008 is, I think, good timing. The only thing I think we need to flesh out—not we, but the government department