Environment committee  Yes, definitely.

Environment committee  We're supporters in our sector of good-quality, early planning around environmental protection, which gets embedded into how you propose to do a project, and you're open to challenge that in an open and transparent process. So the central point of good EA is to make sure that's e

Environment committee  A strategic early review to get to an early public interest decision.

Environment committee  With respect, the CEAA legislation itself contemplated from its origins that there are reasonable alternatives. That's why they have a clause about substitution, which has been used very sparingly and came into force with the change to the National Energy Board Act enabling parti

Environment committee  That's fine, certainly.

Environment committee  I think you'd have to look at section 52 of the National Energy Board Act and recognize that the origins of their mandate are very much a fully embracing public interest--

Environment committee  Pardon me.

Environment committee  First, no doubt you would have heard from those suppliers that labour is of high concern, and certainly it is. So I'm not sure what the specific topics of that conference were, but I've been to many myself that are focused on that aspect. However, getting to decision-making in a

Environment committee  I think again that we have to be clear. Environmental assessment has as its primary purpose early planning. There has to be a focus on whether there is something to be worried about and, if so, how we are going to address it. To me, that's the fundamental premise and the most imp

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  I think there's a lot of merit to consider that possibility, particularly where they are routine. If the purpose is early planning and you've essentially done the early planning by applying best practices, that's a good tool. We should be leveraging that much more directly. We

Environment committee  I think what's important is to get to early decisions about whether or not a particular project is in the public interest, and that means keeping a focus and a rigour and a discipline in that early planning stage on strategic issues that are of high importance. And if you get to

Environment committee  We found that it was important to achieve what clarity was possible in some of those kinds of fixes. The coordination was critical. We need to be able to simplify EA and focus efforts on things that matter most. Our central belief is that you have to be focused on outcomes rath

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  For the most part, if there are interests of federal jurisdiction, there is currently an overlap through permitting. But central to a national-interest perspective and modernization in Canada, we need good EA across the board and attention to best-placed regulator and equivalency