Environment committee  Certainly, and this usually is called the purpose of the undertaking. If you have the purpose and the alternatives to serve that public interest purpose defined properly at the beginning, much of the rest gets easier and clearer.

Environment committee  Certainly the ultimate responsibility should be with those who are accountable, and the decisions--

Environment committee  Yes, they are the accountable people. And the final decisions--and there should be a decision, in my view, under this act--should be the responsibility of elected officials, informed by proper process and transparency and full engagement, including on the trade-off questions am

Environment committee  The significance test is inevitably complex because it depends on the specifics of the circumstances. Hoping to have a simple answer that can simply be quantifiable is attractive but I don't think it's practical. The term has certainly been abused, but the better way around that

Environment committee  Certainly, I think we need a positive legacy and we will more likely get all of these factors considered openly in an integrated manner, if it's required by law and we avoid the trade-offs being made in closed circumstances without accountability and transparency.

Environment committee  We do the identification of major undertakings now typically as indicated by what goes to a panel. There is an established process by which there is at least some judgment of that kind. However, the criteria that are most obviously useful are the ones that are setting some kind o

Environment committee  Okay.

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, members, and colleagues. I'm Bob Gibson, a professor at the University of Waterloo, but I'm not representing the university or any other special interest. I've been working on matters related to the design of environmental assessment processes for longer th