Finance committee  Thank you, Chair. Pretty much every federal environmental law gets challenged constitutionally. You can't avoid that. Every one in the last 30 years has been upheld except for this one. Yes, I'm a big believer in co-operative federalism. We should try to collaborate with provincial and indigenous governments on environmental assessment as much as possible.

Finance committee  Probably the most important one is just to say the same thing for air pollution that the bill now says for water pollution, that significant air pollution that crosses national or provincial borders should be subject to federal environmental assessment. There are other things that could be added on to that.

Finance committee  I don't want to disagree with what I said in the op-ed. I'll try to remember. Really, it goes to the two powers. In terms of the criminal law power, which is the basis of most federal climate regulation, the court didn't deal with that power at all. In fact, it reiterated 30 years of constitutional jurisprudence, underscoring the fact the federal government has broad authority over the environment, particularly over cross-border matters.

Finance committee  Provinces are able to regulate emissions that occur in their province, but what they're unable to do is deal with impacts that occur outside their province. Similarly, if there's a large project in the U.S., air generally flows west and north in Canada, so if you're in Quebec, northern Canada or the Maritimes, most of the pollution you're getting, or much of it, is coming from upstream.

Finance committee  Gas emissions...that's right. That's the nub of the problem. To be fair, the federal government has brought in a number of strong climate laws in the last seven years. It actually has a pretty good track record. We have probably done more in the last seven years than we did in the previous 30, so there's a lot of good progress being made on tackling climate change and building a clean economy.

Finance committee  I am not an expert. I'm not an expert on how difficult it is to amend a budget implementation act. I have never been involved in doing that before. I would certainly say that it would be important to amend this to fix this sooner rather than later, before major projects go forward.

Finance committee  There are a number of different ones. One of the two main ones would be the power over matters of criminal law, and that's what underlies the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Most of the climate regulations that have come in have been brought in under the criminal law power, including back in the Harper years.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everyone. I'm here today to discuss the Impact Assessment Act and the need to address the matter of trans-border environmental impacts. I'm going to give my statement in English, but I can answer any questions you may have in French if you wish.