Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I think that's right.

Foreign Affairs committee  There are many different things to say here, so I'll try to stay focused. First, I'll just mention that the person heading up De Beers in Botswana is a Canadian, Jim Gowans, our former chair. Botswana is, unfortunately, an exception within Africa: it's one of the most successf

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you to the committee for inviting us to speak to you today. I am here with my colleague, Ben Chalmers, vice-president of sustainability, who is also responsible for MAC's new international social responsibility committee.

Environment committee  I would just point out that if you look at the quality of environmental review that goes on, it's tremendous. The amount of attention that is brought to all aspects of a major project is huge. I'm thinking of this image of the daughter of someone who is involved in the Mt. Mill

Environment committee  Could I jump in, though you didn't ask me, just to point out...?

Environment committee  Industry, environmental groups, and first nations are calling for the renewal of that funding.

Environment committee  I'll give you two that come to mind. Well, Australia's environmental assessment can take as little as six months. Even with our improvements, which are significant, we're still much slower than Australia.

Environment committee  I wouldn't have enough knowledge to say, but I'd be surprised if Australia was much different from Canada.

Environment committee  Their distribution of power is different from ours, so there could be reasons there as well. The other example I'll give you is Baffinland. This goes back a couple of years, but they were going under a Nunavut review board environmental assessment for their bulk sample—this is a

Environment committee  I would agree, and I gave the example earlier of British Columbia, where the province had the federal government do the environmental assessment for ports. Again, it speaks to the issue of best-placed regulator.

Environment committee  You're probably used to having groups like us come and complain and demand lots of change, but in light of the 2010 amendments, we're not doing that as much. Because of the amendments, federal and provincial governments on environmental assessments are working much more closely t

Environment committee  We used to joke, when I was with the Mining Association of British Columbia, that the federal government—this is pre-2010 amendments—would take the provincial comprehensive study, change the cover page, write an executive summary, and call it their own—but they'd take about three

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  I guess the point we were making is you've done that now. You've actually done a very good job, at least for the mining sector, for those who do comprehensive studies and panels. They're now well run, there's someone in charge, and you have timelines. We think there's a better u

Environment committee  I would agree the timelines are working. As I mentioned earlier, we're finding the agency is implementing the act and the subsequent regulations very well. The delays we experience now are no longer in the environmental assessment phase. It's really in the post-EA phase, around