Natural Resources committee  Right now, we're not able to make those long-range decisions, because we don't have the data infrastructure in place, so ultimately, this will help us. It's more than just creating the data. We have to create other systems within the government that will allow us to make that lon

Natural Resources committee  We don't actually have all of the information coming from multiple sectors, multiple utilities, multiple industry groups. It's very limited right now in the overall data aggregation capacity. There is this historic difficulty of getting information out of Statistics Canada, becau

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I would agree with that. I think the hard part, really, is to stay ahead of the systems that will help us do this, to not get bogged down in the bureaucracy of data collection, and to really try to be as open and transparent as possible in regard to the new technologies that

Natural Resources committee  Credibility and trust around data are fundamental in this, and I think the way those get built is to actually have something that has a degree of independence to it so that it is an agency that wouldn't just be kind of ripped out or altered or influenced at the whim of government

Natural Resources committee  I was on the board of directors of the Ontario Power Authority for many years, so I might be able to answer that question. I would disagree that we don't have data on that. There is a lot of data on that. The question is, who has access to that data and who uses it in the right

Natural Resources committee  I'll jump in quickly.

Natural Resources committee  I would say the first step would be defining what it means to create something like this. I think that's defined. I think the work that Allan has done at CERI has pretty much defined what this thing needs to look like. This is a classic example that perfect can't be the enemy of

Natural Resources committee  The first thing is that the federal government has to get their act together in terms of what NEB, NRCan, Transport, and Environment are doing. There has to be some internal consolidation of what data is being gathered right now in the federal government. Then I would say there n

Natural Resources committee  I think the technical answer was the need to reduce government expenditures. A major government review took place in the 1994-95 period of the Liberal government of the day. That led to significant cuts across the board. My experience is that often things that look easy to cut li

Natural Resources committee  I believe that 100%. I think it's a combination of building, as they did in the U.S. and in Europe and the U.K., a credible entity first of all that has value to people. It has to be credible. It has to have value. It has to deliver products to people. It has to be well managed.

Natural Resources committee  Merci beaucoup. My name is Bruce Lourie, and I'm president of the Ivey Foundation. The Ivey Foundation is a 70-year-old philanthropic granting and policy research organization. We have today a programmatic mission to help Canada transition to a low-carbon future using evidence-

Natural Resources committee  The reality is that we're kind of bumbling along blindly, and by blindly I mean we have limited information. We have a lack of access to that information, and a lack of transparency around the information we have and how it's used. I really wonder how we can have an intelligent

Environment committee  It would seem to me, too, that the number of times we have to go to cabinet or where there's a point that discretion is inserted, it really makes it very hard to implement the precautionary principle, because at that point it becomes a political decision, not a decision about the

Environment committee  I will use mercury as an example--again, I'm sorry if I dwell on mercury, but it is a subject I know well. If we compare the actual restrictions and regulations on products and emissions between Canada and say Asia, Europe, and the United States, we would find that Canada certain

Environment committee  I forget the exact OECD ranking. In terms of environmental performance, I think Canada is 27 out of 28 on the OECD ranking. I think the UN ranking, as well, has Canada near the bottom of the pack of industrial nations.