Environment committee  We'll endeavour to provide the report that the member was seeking. I will say that a fair bit of effort went into the appointment of the 25 members of the committee and there's a pretty high level of confidence that we'll receive good direction and good advice from those members

Environment committee  —which is the efficiency by which you use resources. I would say the analytical frame around that is a useful one, and it informs indirectly any number of environmental economic policy analysis elements that we do. We're increasingly beginning to look across the life cycle in te

Environment committee  In response to the member's question, there are two elements. The first is that in developing the proposed federal sustainable development strategy, a lot of work went into looking at the weaknesses of the existing system. Part of the review of the weaknesses included very care

Environment committee  As I understand it, the legislation that created the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development came into force in 1995.

Environment committee  The former system of sustainable development strategies, replaced by the Federal Sustainable Development Act, came in with the same legislative amendments that created the commissioner.

Environment committee  I believe that program--I think the honourable member may know the history better than I do--was created based on the advice of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy with respect to indicators. I believe it has had approximately a 10-year run, which would pu

Environment committee  I would turn to my colleague on that.

Environment committee  I guess both the benefit and curse of having a large team is that you actually can't bring the sum of all of their knowledge to bear at any one point in time. I have an extremely limited specific knowledge about those particular eco-efficiency metrics. I am aware that the OECD is

Environment committee  The honourable member is exactly right. The first departmental sustainable development strategy will come into force in 2011-12. When the government comes to seek supply from Parliament in 2011-12, the part IIIs, the reports on plans and priorities, would include in them very spe

Environment committee  I think the answer is yes--with a bit of a comma. I think the member's absolutely right that what this does is it creates transparency on where there are strong targets, where there are weak targets, where there are no targets. It creates transparency over time where the implemen

Environment committee  We have de facto created a sustainable development office. I'm the assistant deputy minister of the strategic policy branch, and within my branch I brought together two directorates, the directorate responsible for the Canadian environmental sustainability indicators program and

Environment committee  I think it does in a manner. I think the honourable member is right that by bringing it into the expenditure management system, it brings it more directly into those decision-making things, the deliberations of cabinet informed by memorandum to cabinet, the deliberations of Treas

Environment committee  With respect to the concern that the honourable member has just expressed, I would say that I probably wasn't quite precise when I was talking about transparency. The transparency that we're focused on and the transparency that we're committed to provide as part of this strategy

Environment committee  That's a great question, and it speaks to the previous example with respect to the clean air agenda. It was very difficult under the former system to find enough information in the 32 sustainable development strategies to even piece together, without the puzzle box, with just the

Environment committee  I think in responding to the question there are two dimensions. One of them is, I guess, with respect to the role of Environment Canada. Given that the purpose of the act is to make environmental decision-making more transparent for parliamentarians, I would submit that it make