Environment committee  I think there are other ways to deal with the issues of fossil fuels and the issues you raised than the environmental assessment process. I'm not ruling out that the environmental assessment process can be used in that regard, but I think there are ways for those issues to be add

Environment committee  That's an interesting question because, as Mr. Hazell referred to, the enforcement of environmental assessments in Canada has had an interesting history, to the extent where, for example, in British Columbia, you get an environmental assessment certificate at the end of the day.

Environment committee  I'm going to rely on the statements I've made with regard to the issues I saw.... I'll leave it at that.

Environment committee  No, it's quite all right, and I regret that I cannot speak to you in the other official language. However, I will respond by saying that my boots-on-the-ground experience is that we still have issues with regard to a lack of harmonization of processes in Canada, driven, by and l

Environment committee  Well, for years I've heard the discussion about strategic environmental assessments. The Ontario class environmental assessment was, in many respects, almost a strategic environmental assessment. It dragged on for six years. I'm very concerned about the use of the environmental

Environment committee  Well, cumulative effects are being dealt with.

Environment committee  CEAA already deals with cumulative environmental impacts. So I think there is a mechanism for that to be dealt with in the federal process, and it's increasingly being adopted in provincial processes. You have to remember that the environmental assessment process in Canada, the f

Environment committee  I'll just repeat what I said earlier. I would be in favour of the somewhat radical idea of doing away with this whole law list trigger concept and going to defined, prescribed regulations that have thresholds on size and impact on the environment, but I realize that's probably ou

Environment committee  Hundreds.

Environment committee  Well, as I indicated, I tend to get involved in the larger projects, but sometimes the proponents can actually be small. You could have a small mining company, for example, that's been trying to develop a project for several years, all the way up to a large mining company that ha

Environment committee  That's a big issue with regard to some resource extraction industries, but for other industries perhaps not as much. Market timing is a key issue. You always run up against this with regard to investments in those industries. People say they have a window where the market is at

Environment committee  Very frequently.

Environment committee  I would refer to the word “frequently”.

Environment committee  Well, lawyers always like certainty, because clients like certainty.

Environment committee  It's a very uncertain process in CEAA. For example, Mr. Hazell referred to this RA concept. I know the major projects management office is doing the best they can on this, but for a long time you'd have RAs fighting over which one was going to take the lead. You'd start to guess.