Environment committee  Environment and Climate Change Canada has a separate enforcement branch specifically organized to be separate from the program so as to give it as much marge de manoeuvre as possible, and it does indeed use the various tools in the way you describe. You can envisage a pyramid whe

Environment committee  If I'm going too fast, slow me down. I'm obviously happy to answer questions after my presentation. I mentioned earlier that some parts of CEPA are designed to codify in domestic law international obligations. Slide 15 speaks to two of those situations, where we have a very co

Environment committee  I'm glad somebody laughed. I had to try. But the statute has extensive authorities and is used to address a wide range of issues. Let me turn to the kinds of authorities we have under the statute. Of course, environmental and health decision-making needs to be science based

Environment committee  Like my colleague, I will make my presentation in English, but I would be happy to answer any of your questions in French or in English. Like my colleague, we're very pleased to participate in this review. CEPA is an extremely important statute for environmental protection in Ca

Environment committee  I'll provide a little bit of background. Health Canada was formed before the Great War. Environment Canada was formed in 1971. Until 1988, Environment Canada operated on the basis of using various statutes that pre-existed the department. In 1988, Parliament consolidated a number

Environment committee  The short answer is no.

Environment committee  We can give you more information, but in general I can tell you that all these large ecosystem initiatives—the ones for the Great Lakes, Lake Simcoe, the St. Lawrence action plan, the Lake Winnipeg Basin stewardship fund, the Atlantic ecosystem initiatives funding program—are lon

Environment committee  It's a little longer than 10 years. CESI dates back to an initiative of the national round table in about 2004. The indicators have been updated continuously since then and expanded, and are now reported under the Federal Sustainable Development Act. But I would emphasize that E

Environment committee  As Mr. Goetze is a poor simple physicist, I'll take that.

Environment committee  I'm sure Dr. Goetze has more to elaborate on this, but the basic issue at the moment is twofold. One, there is a federal jurisdictional issue. If you put that stuff in Lake Ontario, you would be depositing deleterious substances into water frequented by fish. You would have viola

Environment committee  Or we have evidence that the substances that you're depositing are posing a risk to the environment or to human health, and that's why Dr. Goetze and his team have initiated the study that he referred to earlier.

Environment committee  If I might add to that as a non-scientist, I would nonetheless repeat the caution that has been made to me many times, which is that this data provides a snapshot. On the one hand, it's comparing against a long-term trend, and then we have a snapshot. The question is, then, is t

Environment committee  The department does participate in a number of water boards, which in some cases provide advisory services, but in some cases actually control water flow and participate in monitoring water quality, for example, at the point where water crosses a border. Slide 15, for example,

Environment committee  There are two issues there. One is funding. I believe the minister is going to be appearing in front of this committee within the next couple of weeks to address estimates. Questions on the government's decisions around overall funding are best addressed to the minister, I might

Environment committee  I'll start, and I think perhaps both of my colleagues might be able to add more detail. The primary jurisdiction over fracking is provincial. Environment Canada could have jurisdiction if, for example, there were evidence that substances that had been assessed as toxic and adde