Environment committee  What we recommended was actually doing it as regulations. There are provisions in the act now to set regulations, so you can actually do that in regulations as opposed to legislation.

Environment committee  Yes, that's correct. The integration of them all. I would just point out a caution. If it takes a long time to set sound reasonable targets, and it's not something that could be done overnight. You pick the areas of highest priority first.

Environment committee  I don't disagree. The Federal Sustainable Development Act is usually thought of as setting environmental targets, but you need targets across these other areas. They may be better set in different places. When you look at our federal sustainable development strategy now, the pro

Environment committee  That's an excellent and challenging question. This obviously is a very complex institutional environment that we work in. People have mentioned the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration. I look at some of the examples we've had in British Columbia dealing with things li

Environment committee  Not specifically. That's something that has to be worked out with the government, but clearly the responsibility for sustainable development strategies has to be accountable to the highest levels in government. Whether that should be to a senior cabinet committee through the PMO,

Environment committee  I don't think it is critical as to where it is. I think the commissioner is doing an excellent job. There are constraints. If there are no measurable targets and objectives, it's hard for the commissioner to evaluate progress. You have to go back to the starting point, have some

Environment committee  On the question of a central agency, you need to elevate sustainable development into a central function as opposed to being done largely within a branch within a particular ministry. Really, the key is the need to set clear targets. We prepared the draft legislation that would

Environment committee  I agree, and if you look at the sustainable development strategies that we have, they're really a compilation of individual departmental initiatives. You need to start at the other end with a clear statement of what you want to achieve, clear targets that are over the short, medi

Environment committee  Yes. That's exactly the point and the starting point has to be clear, measurable targets: short-, medium-, and long-term. For example, you could even have a quantitative target for greenhouse gas reductions of 30% by 2030, but if you don't have short- and medium-term targets to

Environment committee  Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to participate in this process. I'd like to begin by briefly summarizing our own experience in sustainable development research at Simon Fraser University. For the last several decades we have been examining sustainable de