Transport committee  One of the federal authorities is responsible for carrying out the assessment and making the decision. I should perhaps add that there is no approval that results from the environmental assessment process. It is not a process that results in a certificate or an order in council.

Transport committee  That's right.

Transport committee  Perhaps I can answer part of that. With respect to the amendments to NWPA, I think the changes being proposed to the legislation would identify minor works from a navigation perspective. That doesn't mean there wouldn't be the possibility of an environmental assessment being und

Transport committee  Depending on the nature of the project, there may be a provincial process that applies. If there is another federal trigger for EA, usually when there are impacts to water, we turn to the folks at DFO and the Fisheries Act to undertake an assessment.

Transport committee  I'm not sure I can clarify that, but I could add to it, I think. The way our environmental assessment process works is that if a federal permit is required for a project—as defined in regulations, there are certain permits that trigger the act—then before that permit can be issu

Transport committee  I can do that, and hopefully I don't go over time. It's not a simple question, unfortunately. Essentially, very often what we have is a situation in which we have a major development proposal. Let's take a mine, for example, or a pipeline project. The federal decision with respe

Transport committee  I will provide part of the answer to your question, and Ms. Flood will give the rest. To begin with, I should say that the issue is not that the agency does not have the resources it needs to carry out assessments, but that it is not the agency's role to do so. Its role is to coo

Transport committee  I can speak to that. We're certainly aware of those concerns as well. For some years now we've been looking at ways to improve the efficiency of the federal EA process. The most recent initiative was the major projects management office, which was established to enhance the eff

Transport committee  Getting back to the point that was made earlier, I think what we're looking for is exactly that. It's to make sure we focus our EA resources and our regulatory resources on those projects that we feel have the most likelihood of adverse environmental effects. In the case of relat

Transport committee  If I understand your question correctly, it would be a very small percentage. The way our process works is that before a federal authority, such as Infrastructure Canada or Fisheries, or Transport in the case of NWPA, makes a decision with respect to the project that would allow

Transport committee  I'm not sure. I could take a guess at that. Of course every department has EA responsibilities, and there are crown corporations and so on. I don't think I have those numbers for you, I'm sorry.

Transport committee  If you spoke to other departments, I'm sure they would say they could use more staff.

Transport committee  I'll answer that one, if you don't mind. I should probably clarify that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency doesn't actually conduct the environmental assessments. The assessments, as Mr. Smith mentioned in his presentation, are actually conducted by the individual depa

Transport committee  Currently we have a total of just over 150 staff. Of those, probably 50 or so are in regional offices across the country.

Transport committee  Perhaps I can respond to that by prefacing my remarks a little bit. From our perspective, from an environmental assessment perspective, there are two aspects of the process that we see as being important. One is that the quality of the assessments are there, that an appropriate