Environment committee  That second reference to “the committee” is referring back to the earlier one identified under “Regional Assessments and Strategic Assessments” in proposed sections 92 and 95.

Environment committee  For the minister to have an ability to pause the clock, regulations would have to be put in place.

Environment committee  There's no obligation for those regulations to come forward. There are provisions in the bill for the clock to be paused based on the regulations.

Environment committee  The original language that referred just to “activity” enables us, from a regulatory drafting perspective, to be able to identify certain types of activities for which the minister could suspend the timeline. Then this additional language, “respecting circumstances”, was a regula

Environment committee  If I understand your question, it's whether there is discretion for the federal authority to decide.

Environment committee  The amendment would actually change that. Currently, there is discretion, but the amendment would obligate them to invite public comment, and there would be a new time period associated with that.

Environment committee  Yes. They must post that notice, and that invites the public to provide comments.

Environment committee  That's correct.

Environment committee  I'll just make one comment on it. Like Christine noted earlier, the project list drives where impact assessment happens. On federal lands, there's no provincial oversight. Recognizing that, this act puts in place provisions for an assessment process. It selects federal lands as

Environment committee  Maybe I can speak to that part. In order for us to get to the conditions in the decision statement, we're relying on the impact assessment to do that. Whether it's adaptive management plan or the other conditions, all of that information has to be assessed for us, in order to de

Environment committee  There are a lot of different measures within proposed section 22 that would need adaptive management and the requirements associated with those would be part of the policy approaches laid out.

Environment committee  That's correct.

Environment committee  That's correct.

Environment committee  I'd say that our experience with adaptive management has been variable, in terms of success. There's not a legislative definition of that. Part of the benefit of having that referenced in the act would note that there is the possibility when we come out with a decision statement

Environment committee  Thanks for giving us a few minutes to think it through and talk it over. I am going to start by kind of contextualizing it before speaking to the specific amendment. Adaptive management has been part of the environmental assessment for a very long time. In our experience, havin