Environment committee  How do we get politicians to do it?

Environment committee  Monsieur Bigras, I find it hard to imagine a sustainable development strategy that would not include a strategic environmental assessment under this legislation. That would be one of the tools for assessing projects, policies, and proposals in an SDS. It may be that it is one of

Environment committee  Right now the policy-makers, the legislators, are running off in 12 different directions. This is a template, just as we've had a template in the past--the one Mr. Toner referred to--a deficit-cutting template. This is a template for sustainable development that will impose on de

Environment committee  It can't without there being a heck of a big stink about it.

Environment committee  That's because this does not mandate or stipulate one ounce of reduction or pollution prevention. It's just the next step. The battle will come when the first strategy has to be—

Environment committee  Then the government can battle within itself, and the different parties and so on can battle.

Environment committee  I have a comment on that, Mr. Regan. We are dealt the constitutional hand that we are dealt in this country, and we have to work within the confines of the Constitution on a wide spectrum of issues. There is a precedent for this type of policy, though, in the U.K. It had to dea

Environment committee  As I said at the outset, Mr. Anderson, this bill does not stipulate or mandate one ounce of emission reduction or pollution prevention, in and of itself. The bill creates a framework, which then hands it to our leaders, you people, to sail the ship of sustainable development in t

Environment committee  The model act we drafted was principally around making some substantial progress in the way the federal government carries out sustainable development strategies. You're quite correct that in the original version of our draft we included a provision for an independent environment

Environment committee  I can offer one brief comment, and then leave it to my colleagues. I believe the timeline in clause 10 is the one we had in the model act. The point about the 30 days to table the regulations for the targets has been raised a number of times. Over the three years the cabinet com

Environment committee  By virtue of the Constitution, this bill can only apply to items that fall within federal jurisdiction. And a lot of items on which the government makes policies, plans, and proposals fall within federal jurisdiction. As I said at the outset, and as is stated in the proposed legi

Environment committee  Coal is problematic for reasons I can explain, if you'd like. I think they're fairly obvious. Until carbon capture and storage technologies have been perfected, then coal is highly problematic, non-sustainable.

Environment committee  Well, no one is talking about stopping any type of energy fuel source tomorrow. What we're talking about and what we're looking at is a slow and well thought out consistent phasing out of non-sustainable fuel sources, while other fuel sources--including wind, solar, geothermal, t

Environment committee  No, absolutely not. I have to disagree with Mr. Newman's statement, if that was in fact the statement Mr. Newman was making. This bill would apply to all federal departments, but also to federal policies, plans, and proposals. Otherwise, it becomes, really, largely another depart

Environment committee  Subsection 4(8) is the section in question. It deals with the national SD strategy. It says that—sorry, it's subsection 8(4): The minister shall...submit a draft of the National Sustainable Development Strategy to the Commissioner for review and comment, including whether the t