Environment committee  Thank you for that question. You're quite right. There are new dollars that are coming into the agency. Those grant and contribution dollars are flowing into four new programs. We have existing funding that goes into supporting projects, so that's our participant funding progra

Environment committee  There are provisions that allow the minister to extend the timeline for up to 90 days in the various stages of assessment that you referred to. In addition, if after having extended it for 90 days there were a desire for additional time for the review, the question would have t

Environment committee  That's correct.

Environment committee  Section 52 allows the minister to request subsequent information in cases in which there's not sufficient information to take a decision. This is a discretionary power that is there in cases of need. The whole intent of the legislation, however, is built around getting the info

Environment committee  There is the potential for that through this provision, if it were needed to support the actual decision-making.

Environment committee  The only provisions to extend the timelines are those I mentioned, in which the minister would have the ability for a 90-day period. Beyond that, because of the section 52 provisions, it's not something that could actually be adjusted.

Environment committee  In most cases, we have in-house expertise within the federal public service, just because of all the various departments we're able to rely upon. As I mentioned, however, there are cases in which we might have uncertainty or conflicting views around science. That typically happen

Environment committee  I'd have to check, as to the actual individuals, but it would have been to academics who were—

Environment committee  Yes, certainly.

Environment committee  The strategic assessment provisions in the act require certain obligations, in terms of the process itself. We've been building a policy framework around that requirement. There are thus provisions around public participation, indigenous engagement, indigenous knowledge. All of t

Environment committee  Sure. This is going to be published later this year for public comment, to drive all strategic assessments going forward.

Environment committee  I have a couple thoughts on that. One is that, under the Impact Assessment Act, outside of that convention, there are obligations and provisions for us to cooperate with other jurisdictions where there are potential transboundary effects. We've seen some of that already with the

Environment committee  If I'm understanding the question correctly, the national interest test that was in the former legislation was actually in the National Energy Board Act, whereas in our legislation it was always a decision around significant adverse impacts. In the Impact Assessment Act now, it

Environment committee  I'll take over the weighting. If I understand the question correctly, you're wanting to understand how we consider all of the factors in the final public interest decision.

Environment committee  There's the requirement in section 22 of the act to look at all of these different factors. As I mentioned, that would get scoped down in the early planning phase to a subset of what we potentially could look at. That, then, will inform the final report and the public interest de