Environment committee  Congratulations to the oil sands industry for reducing their per barrel emissions, but the reality is that the emissions in the oil sands industry and greenhouse gases continue to increase, and they're the largest growing source of GHG emissions in the country. It can't go on. Th

Environment committee  There has been a lot of support for the idea of having a tribunal and doing actual environmental assessments, as Rod was saying. I just want to make sure it's clear that this idea, the CRTC-like body or the tribunal, is different from what others have been talking about. That is

Environment committee  There are two questions. Why do we need a more expansive project list, or one that would actually include law list regulations? The bottom line is that federal decisions, under whatever legislation they're made or wherever they are on federal lands, should be based on sustainab

Environment committee  Yes, I do agree. Ultimately, there's a complete shift in global investment. Renewable energy now receives more investment than the oil and gas industry globally. A transition is under way. It's going to be a tough one. We really have to focus on just transition for workers. Abso

Environment committee  Yes, go ahead.

Environment committee  Could I just say that I don't think substitution is a good idea. It's a bad idea. The reason is that federal departments and agencies have decisions to make, and they have to make decisions based on the best information they can gather. To hand over that authority to look at the

Environment committee  Sometimes an environmental assessment of a park bench is necessary. If it's adjacent to a mountain caribou path, that might be something to take a look at. But I completely agree that having 5,000 legally required assessments every year under CEAA 1990 was too many. Having a coup

Environment committee  You just asked the question about early engagement. The early engagement idea—

Environment committee  —was intended to help industry get through projects more quickly. It was designed for them. The idea is that if we can do early engagement with communities we can reduce the amount of paper that's produced, identify the issues, get communities on board, and get things done more q

Environment committee  Just one...?

Environment committee  Very quickly, the idea in the bill of having this expert committee identify regional assessments is a fabulous idea.

Environment committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Stephen Hazell. I'm with Nature Canada. I have a long history with environmental assessment. I worked for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency when the initial regulations for CEAA 1995 were developed, so I