Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Perhaps you could help me and tell me which part.

Finance committee  For exemptions that would now be introduced in the act and that are in the regulations, as I mentioned previously, a body of experience is developed by those federal departments and agencies. They assess these types of projects for a period of 14 years to demonstrate, based on th

Finance committee  Let's start with the parliamentary review of the act, which is, as you know—and that's what you were referring to—a statutory requirement that was added to the amendments to the act at the end of the last review of it in 2003. This is still a requirement. Part 20 of this bill doe

Finance committee  I don't think he has any question, so I'm not sure.

Finance committee  Essentially, when I mentioned that, I was referring to a broad consensus among stakeholders, many of whom had been asked about and had supported consolidating those responsibilities to do environmental assessment in a central organization. The reason for that is that you end up w

Finance committee  As we speak, Mr. Mulcair, these projects are excluded by regulation. If one of those projects were to raise environmental concerns, it would remain excluded. With the proposals contained in Part 20, the minister of the environment would have the power to require an environmental

Finance committee  That's not what the experience acquired by Transport Canada and Infrastructure Canada shows.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  With regard to the three components covered by the bill and the exclusions, as I said, experience acquired over a period of 15 years shows that these projects cause no major effects. They have been excluded for a year and will continue to be excluded. Let's talk about assigning

Finance committee  There's nothing in Part 20 that provides for a transfer of responsibilities to the National Energy Board. The National Energy Board's responsibility for environmental assessments will remain essentially the same, even if Part 20 is adopted. Part 20 states that the responsibilitie

Finance committee  To what aspects of Part 20? I have a different take on Part 20, but is there something particular in Part 20 that enables you to draw that conclusion?

Finance committee  The proposal that we consolidate the environmental assessments in advance, which is included in Part 20, is a longstanding request by all sectors and stakeholders.

Finance committee  Why they would not be?

Finance committee  As we mentioned earlier, those projects and classes of projects were excluded a year ago by regulation. The rationale at the time was essentially based on the experience acquired mostly by Transport Canada and Infrastructure Canada involved in conducting environmental assessments