Environment committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to contribute to your committee's review of the Canada Water Act annual report for April 2013 to March 2014. Joining me today are Jim McKenzie and Andrew Ferguson, principals with our office. Fresh water is essential to the health of eco

Environment committee  I'm going to ask Andrew to respond.

Environment committee  What I was going to suggest, Megan, is that we can get back to you as well on the results of the 2011 study that we did. We did publish it. Unfortunately, this request to come today was on very short notice and I wasn't able to review that in great detail. Some of the questions

Environment committee  I'll pass it to Andrew. In 2012, before I become commissioner, we did do a study on fracking. Andrew and Doreen, one of our directors, both led that study, so they're best positioned to respond.

Environment committee  I can't tell you whether it is satisfactory or not because I did not do another audit, which we call a follow-up. What we did in 2010 was make a recommendation that Environment Canada should use a risk-based approach to develop its water management monitoring system. Mr. Goetze j

Environment committee  I have a seven-year mandate, and I have just finished my first year. So I have six years left. I do five chapters per year. There is a whole range of topics that we could look at. When our office did the risk analysis, the quality and quantity of water came to the surface. It's

Environment committee  In our 2014 audit, we noticed in looking at the monitoring governance system that many First Nations and Métis groups were removed from the table. They were still participating in specific monitoring projects, on the ground, for which they were still at the table, but they were n

Environment committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. We are very happy to appear before your committee this morning. It is very important to us that parliamentarians take an interest in our work. With me today are two audit principals, Ms. Kimberley Leach and Mr. Andrew Ferguson. With your permission, I w

Environment committee  We haven't seen it yet.

Environment committee  Yes. I don't know if they've acted on that quite yet. I will be coming back next week, and I can try to get you that answer.

Environment committee  I was just going to add that in one of my upcoming reports—and I believe it'll be tabled in May, although I'm doing so many I can't track if it's May or October—we're looking at the issue of adverse weather and whether Canada is ready for it, and the issue of the national buildin

Environment committee  Madam Chair, thank you so much for inviting us. I was just saying to Mr. Cullen that we have done a lot of audits in the last 20 years and we have a lot of expertise that will hopefully help the committee, so please feel completely free to call upon us at any time. Our job is to

Environment committee  No.

Environment committee  What we looked at were all the approval conditions from a period, I believe, of about 14 years. The population was about 1,049 pipeline conditions. We have in the Office of the Auditor General...a statistical genius is what I want to call him. I don't know exactly what his title

Environment committee  In some cases, yes, the tracking system was part of the problem. In other cases, though, it wasn't just the tracking system. The tracking system was part of the reason why they couldn't give us the information they needed to, but in some cases you could not say it was the trackin