Environment committee  I would say that the House of Commons and Senate would pass some sort of legislation or we could have regulations. I think the act has the ability to establish regulations for a list. I would see the government establishing what those lists should be. There would probably have to

Environment committee  Well, that's a very good point, and we allude to that, I think, in our presentation, in my musings that we've lost touch with the fact that EA was born in the sixties, when we didn't do anything to plan our projects. In planning and revising CEAA, we need to be aware of the fac

Environment committee  I actually have first-hand experience. I'm personally involved as a consultant on three comprehensive studies that are under way. What we're seeing is a clear understanding of who has authority--that would be the agency--with the amendments. Then the timeline regulations are caus

Environment committee  No, I have not. In fact, I don't think the administration of process has a whole lot to do with the quality of environmental assessment. If anything, the fact that people are focused on it seems to keep people thinking clearly about what needs to be done and what's involved.

Environment committee  Yes, precisely; that is a solution. We've offered in our submission a number of different ways in which resources could be focused on very important matters of environmental assessment--that is, understanding the project and environmental effects and developing mitigation and so

Environment committee  Briefly, almost all of the larger assessments involve multiple triggers and more than one agency. If you're affecting a large area of land, you're going to affect migratory birds and maybe fish and so on, so almost all of the assessments of those larger projects do involve many a

Environment committee  To me, in the case of, say, a mining project, which is largely the jurisdiction of provinces when there's an environmental assessment being conducted, if there's some minor trigger--a small component of the project requires a fisheries authorization--it doesn't make a lot of sens

Environment committee  As I mentioned in our discussion, triggering can occur in four different ways. There's a “federal coordination process”--I do put that in quotations--of federal agencies figuring out who needs to do an environmental assessment. That process takes two, three, four, sometimes five

Environment committee  As Ed said, a list isn't necessarily a perfect process, but it does work. The World Bank and the IFC and various other IFIs use a list approach. It has a number of project attributes. That could include things like how it affects the habitat of, say, an endangered species, or som

Environment committee  Thank you for that question. In reality, we see really little environmental value added by multiple jurisdictions working on an assessment and time being spent on sorting out who should be doing the assessment, who has administration, and harmonizing different processes. To us,

Environment committee  It slows it down and increases the debate. I don't think it improves projects necessarily. Certainly debate does improve projects, but duplication of process or competing processes that are not really actually well harmonized, even when they're supposedly harmonized, do not reall

Environment committee  Thank you, Michael. The CCA believes the Government of Canada should continue its effort to improve administration of federal environmental assessment, recognizing that substantial legislative reform is necessary. We believe this committee should consider the following interr