ENVI Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

• 0933

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.)): Good morning to you all. We have a quorum.

There are two brief items that we'll mention when the numbers are greater than at the present time. We will have a brief discussion about amendments to Bill C-5, and another about the conference call this morning at the Department of Foreign Affairs with the European members on climate change.

Perhaps we may first welcome Dr. Smith and David McGuinty from the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. We're glad to have you here this morning.

The meeting is triggered by the normal practice of committees to call on Canadians who are serving on a board and who have been recently appointed or reappointed. So this will, in light of the recent reappointment of both, give an opportunity to members of the committee to become acquainted with the work and the effectiveness of the round table.

Without any further delay, I would invite you, Dr. Smith, to take the floor. Again, welcome to this session.

Dr. Stuart Smith (Chairman, National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's always a pleasure, of course, to see you personally, and it's a pleasure for the round table to have an opportunity to interact with members of Parliament, particularly on the environment committee, whose activities we follow very closely, as you can well imagine.

• 0935

I'm going to be very brief, and then David McGuinty will present an overview of some of the projects we've been working on for the last year or so. He has some materials that I think have been given to the clerk already. If not, there are some that he will give out.

I thought I would start by saying what we've been trying to do as our general strategy. I've had two three-year terms, and I'm now on a third term, but at this point I've accepted only for one year. I've encouraged the government to seek a replacement for me after that time, and I'll probably be finished with my term towards the end of June of next year. So that will be seven years, and during that time we've seen quite a change at the round table.

When I first appeared in front of this committee, which was only about a month or two after being appointed, as the chairman will remember, I suggested that we would try to run the round table in a way that really took advantage of the fact that it was a round table, that it was multi-stakeholder in nature. Whatever our personal views may be with respect to the need to protect our environment—and I have a long record going way back in respect of my environmentalism—I felt this particular federal agency had to be something other than a government-funded NGO. In other words, it couldn't simply be an advocate on the part of the environment, much as all of us there are personally strong advocates on behalf of the environment. As an organization our feeling was that the best value the government could get would be if the round table could bring all players forward together, move the yardstick, so to speak, albeit a little at a time, bring everyone along. We felt that was the real purpose of the round table. Simply to advocate, while a very valuable thing in itself, was not enough, as far as we were concerned, to justify the government's expenditure. We had to be unique, in the sense that we could have industry, the NGOs, and government all moving together at the same time, and we had to find common ground where possible.

What I said to your meeting—if you dig out the record from way back—was that I want to find common ground where we can, and where we cannot find common ground, we want to be sure that everybody who participates in our activities will be clear at the end of the day on what it is they are disagreeing about. So our point was consensus where possible and absolute certainty that we can clarify the disagreements where we cannot reach consensus.

We felt that would inform the public policy process in a way that would make the round table a valuable organization, and our test of its value would be two things. Would we be able to get the active participation, cooperation, and trust of all sides? That's not an easy thing to do. It's a very difficult thing to have total trust and active participation from the Business Council on National Issues and the Sierra Club at the same time, but that's what we set out to do. Second, we had to be tested on what came out at the end of the day from the process we engaged in. Was it of value to the government? Could governments generally, including the provincial ones, because they also have a lot of important environmental responsibilities, find what we had to say useful? That was the second test we set for ourselves, and all of this is within a mandate that is, as you know, to promote sustainable development.

Promoting sustainable development, to us, did not simply mean going around carrying on an advertising campaign for sustainable development. For us it meant that we had to make more and more people understand what this concept was, actively come to grips with it on individual issues. So it wasn't so much a theoretical discussion of sustainable development we thought we had to engage in as taking our oceans policy, health policy, greenhouse gas policy, going through one thing at a time, dealing with the development of resources in the north policy, all these kinds of policies, and asking what sustainable development means in the context of that given issue. Can we get all the parties involved, can we move forward towards sustainable development, which is a direction rather than a goal in itself, and can we at least clarify for Canadians where we've reached an impediment such that we can't go any further and what the nature of that impediment is?

• 0940

Have we succeeded? I would like to have succeeded even more—I'm an ambitious guy by nature—and I would like, for example, to have become a household word in Canada by now. Well, we are certainly not.

However, we have succeeded in two senses. We do have the active participation of almost every non-governmental organization in the environmental field in Canada in all our projects. In the preservation of nature I think we have half a dozen, if not more, organizations involved. We have the active participation of all the business organizations in Canada, all the trade associations, the major businesses. They're all working with us.

At the end of the day, our reports have been helpful to the various government departments, and we have a very good record of success with our recommendations being acted on in the Ministries of Health, Natural Resources, Environment, and particularly Finance, where for the 2000 budget we made about half a dozen suggestions, and almost all of them were implemented in one way or another in the budget itself.

For example, we were given a specific mandate from the Minister of Finance to develop indicators of sustainable development and environment that can be used on a national scale, so that at the end of the day, the Minister of Finance can say, here's what's happening to GDP, but here's what's happening to natural capital. We're going to be showing natural capital as an account, so to speak, and the question will be, are we drawing down that account at the expense of future generations? That's what sustainable development means to us. To us it's an intergenerational question: are we living high at the expense of the future? That will be demonstrated, and we got quite a nice allocation of funds to carry that work out.

One month ago we received another allocation from cabinet committee to undertake a program by the end of January or early February to inform Canadians about emissions trading as a mechanism for dealing with greenhouse gases and other pollutants, but particularly with greenhouse gases. So if and when the government has a program they wish to bring forward, the ground will have been prepared and businesses will understand exactly how these systems work, the people who are affected by this, consumers' organizations, and so on. They will all understand the purpose of such a system, the pros and cons, the media will understand it. So we'll have informed discussion over the next few months on this subject. We have been preparing materials for this and setting up meetings across the country, and we have received $1 million to do that.

I feel, then, the fact that we have the trust, the engagement of all these groups, and that the government is asking us to do this kind of work for Canadians indicates a fair degree of success.

As one last word, how do we do our work? We do our work by, in a sense, replicating ourselves. The Order in Council appointments are just 24 or 25 people from different walks of life, industry, NGOs, academics, labour, aboriginal organizations, and so on. But we're a central council, we can't be experts on everything. So when we go into a given topic, be it air quality, water, aboriginals, conservation of nature, whatever, we have to bring in experts, but we bring in experts from all the different stakeholders. So they may be expert, but they're expert with the point of view of a given group of stakeholders. They come in, they do the work together, they meet, and thus we replicate ourselves. We have mini-round tables on all those topics. Ultimately, the final report has to go through the senior round table—that's us—but the work is carried on by these smaller groups, and members of our round table are participating in those mini-round tables.

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I myself direct two of those because I choose to—I don't have to—one on indicators and one on eco-efficiency, that is, how industry can measure its impact on the environment in a standardized manner, so that you can compare one year with another, one company with another. We're trying to standardize that, and we have the cooperation of about 14 large Canadian companies. As a matter of fact, a workbook on eco-efficiency produced by our committee has just been printed for companies that want to do this. It shows you, if you're a factory manager and you want to standardize the way you measure your use of energy, materials, water, what you count. It sounds simple, but it's not simple, because you have to decide what the boundary is, where you count it, what happens if you're buying from a supplier, and so on. All the rules are listed here to make it easy for people to do that. Many companies are finding this a useful thing to do.

I'm going to stop and ask, with the chair's permission, that David McGuinty present to you some of the work we've been doing on actual topics and carry it a little forward.

Mr. David J. McGuinty (President and CEO, National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy): Actually, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to speak very long, Mr. Chairman. My apologies. I almost didn't make it in this morning.

What we've handed out to you this morning is a single sheet of paper, on which you'll find what we call a circle chart. It's a very quick illustration of the active programs at the National Round Table. The very centre, the oval shape, is the membership of the round table. We draw from that membership three or four members at a time, and then create satellite or replica round tables, which then go out and conduct programs. As Stuart pointed out, it's a question of adding to and buttressing the abilities and the expertise of the members, to make sure we have the right kind of personalities on that journey.

One thing he omitted to mention was that we learned very early on in the conducting of processes that we absolutely need to have senior government officials working with us. Because the members of the round table are drawn only from civil society, there are no politicians or government officials who sit as members. We had to find a way to engage senior officials of government, so that we could make sure we have their input, serving as a check and balance in our work. We would draw, for example, the most relevant assistant deputy minister from the most relevant departments, and they would then sit with us on the committees that actually govern the work. That way we have a direct conduit to the deputy, and we cover the political end of it, the ministerial end of it, and the official end of it. We usually write to the deputy minister of the most affected department and ask them to nominate the assistant deputy minister, so that we have that presence.

In all the work we do we're at once a deliberative body, something of a policy shop, we do a lot of background analysis that informs the debates. At the end of the day, what makes us, I think, a little different from other deliberative processes is that we spend a lot of time at the back end of a process communicating the findings. We can never guarantee to the people we convene that we're actually going to make a difference in practical outcome. Of course, we make a difference by convening people who normally don't work together, but when it comes to actual outputs and recommendations that are practical in nature, we can't guarantee, and we don't guarantee, that we can make a change.

But we think that through the processes we've designed, eventually, when we come forward with recommendations, we're putting forward what we call recommendations with a greater weight of authority. If we go to the finance minister, the health minister, this committee, or any other group or person who is in a position of authority, including the private sector, or even civil society actors or ENGOs, we can say we're speaking on behalf of a huge cross-section of Canadian society, not one single constituency, which is what government usually receives—we're here to speak on behalf of a trade association, or we're here to speak on behalf of an ENGO. What we're able to offer is something that has gone through all this debate, and we think sometimes the recommendations are more balanced.

I have here a whole series of reports in English and in French that represent some of the more recent work for the round table.

• 0950

I'm going to lose my voice shortly, so I'm going to mention just one last thing, which is the annual pre-budget submission we make to the minister's office and the government as a whole. What we usually do on an annual basis is go through the reports and the work we've completed, and we find measures that are expenditure related—they could be fiscal, they could be tax changes—and we make fundamental recommendations for the budget process. That's where a lot of our recommendations end up, if not only there. We try to weave together the appropriate storyline and the appropriate submission every year, so that it does go forward in the budget process.

Linked to that very closely on this circle chart is our work on ecological fiscal reform. I think for Stuart and me, and for the entire team, it's become clear that the apex at which sustainable development really begins to matter, when you cut down to the fact that we operate in a capitalist, free-market system, simply has to be the place at which economic and environmental policy meet. It's a start, and we are now working much more coherently in this area of ecological fiscal reform.

The Europeans call it tax reform. We don't talk about ecological tax reform, because we think we're missing part of the picture. The British call it tax shifting. We're looking at the concept of tax shifting, but we're really trying to show here, particularly to the hard-core neo-classical economists who run this country and others, in western democracies at least, that there is another way of looking at tax policy, incentives and disincentives, and expenditures, and we ought to perhaps be looking at our policies through another kind of lens. We're calling it the EFR, ecological fiscal reform lens, and that's starting to resonate with some folks around Ottawa and the federal government. So it's a program that we're pursuing very actively.

That's all I'd like to say now. Perhaps we can open it to questions and other comments from Stuart.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, both.

Mr. Mills, would you like to start?

Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to both of you for coming.

First, I'd like to know the method of choosing the 25 or so participants. How exactly is that done?

Also, you mentioned communication and the importance of that. It's a sore point with me that so many things are happening, yet sometimes here we don't even know about all these things, let alone those out in the hinterland, where business and the like don't hear about where they can get the information. How do you work at that? I know making it better is a big challenge.

Mr. David J. McGuinty: Can I just clarify, Mr. Mills? Do you mean the members of the round table or the members who sit on the committees or task forces that govern the work?

Mr. Bob Mills: I'm thinking of the round table itself.

Mr. David J. McGuinty: Those members are all appointed through the Prime Minister's Office by the Prime Minister directly. From time to time we're asked to supply gaping holes in the kinds of sectors we need represented or the appropriate geographic balance, and there's a gender balance question, obviously, and sectoral balance. So what we can do from time to time is simply inform the Prime Minister's Office that we've lost two members from this part of the country, and we need to have a couple of folks from that part of the world, or we've lost, for example, two prominent environmentalists, we need two new environmentalists. We need to have the appropriate balance, so that, as Stuart mentioned earlier, we can, both de facto and de jure, operate as a fully multi-stakeholder place, where the real interests are being brought to bear. So that appointment process is governed by the folks who run it out of the Prime Minister's Office.

As to visibility, Stuart and I, in great round table fashion, disagree from time to time on this. Sixty-five per cent of Canadians have never heard of Finance Canada. So if we're trying to make the NRT a household name on a $5 million annual budget, it's a tough row to hoe. That being said, I think our visibility is way up. Not that I would say that anywhere near 30 million Canadians know who we are, but I think the folks who are working in this field know who we are. I think the folks who are getting to our virtual library, with 190 research papers and fundamental work, now know who we are. The folks we reach out to in over 100 presentations and speeches a year between members and staff know who we are.

Every MP receives a copy of every report that's published. Every deputy minister and assistant deputy minister in the provinces and the federal government gets our reports. All the ministers at the provincial level and the CCME get our reports and are briefed regularly. Our newsletter goes out to 25,000-odd Canadians who are involved in these issues. Furthermore, we've just launched a very new cutting edge, what we're calling an e-advocacy campaign. We realized that we have not fully tapped into the power of the Internet, and so we have redesigned the way in which we're actually building webs of support, so that our work can become better known to a larger cross-section of Canadians.

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Certainly, given the expense of convening people—and this is an expensive business—and preparing the right kind of analysis, what's left over for being able to widely disseminate to 30 million Canadians is often not very much.

Mr. Bob Mills: My question concerning the appointment process comes from the fact that I have attended round tables, not in environment, but in another area, and have found a number of the people there—I'll be very blunt—were political appointments and, because they came out of the Prime Minister's Office, not necessarily the best representatives of a particular area. That's always troubling, in the sense that I see all the round tables that exist as non-partisan, and yet, naturally, the Prime Minister and his office are going to appoint those they know best. I see it as a problem with the appointment process. I don't know that you particularly want to comment on that, but certainly it's a problem I've observed in my years down here.

Dr. Stuart Smith: Well, I've lived the same problem, Mr. Mills. I used to be head of the Science Council of Canada, and I served two governments, a Liberal government and a Conservative government. The deal I tried to have with the Liberal government was that we have a double veto, that is, I can veto anything you folks are suggesting, you can veto anything I'm suggesting, so at the end of the day, we at least get a decent sprinkling of good members, even if we end up with a few political appointments who may be questionable in respect of their actual abilities for the job. I had that deal going with the Liberals, and we got reasonable appointments. Then with the Conservatives, they wouldn't do that deal, but oddly, they actually made better appointments. I no longer had the control over it, but I found I was getting a better group of appointees.

In this situation all we can do is make suggestions to the Prime Minister's Office, and in its wisdom, the Prime Minister's Office I'm sure does.... Well, I shouldn't say I'm sure. My guess is that if I were running the office, what I'd probably try to do is strike a balance between the occasional political debt one is paying as a favour and making damn sure the organization has good people. We have people like Mike Harcourt, not exactly a well-known Liberal. We had with us at first Pierre-Marc Johnson, not exactly a well-known Liberal. So we had all kinds of folks who were clearly there for their abilities, not because of any political affiliation.

Are there a few members of our table—don't expect me to name them—who are perhaps there more because of their political work than because of their actual involvement in these issues? I suspect so. When we complain, it's because we don't have enough really strong members, and I've got to say that the Prime Minister's Office listens to us on those occasions. When we say, listen, we're starting to get to the point where critical mass is an issue here, we need some really strong people, we get them.

We just had three reappointments, for example. We had Mike Harcourt, who you all know, former premier of British Columbia; he now runs the sustainable cities work at the University of British Columbia—terrific fellow. We reappointed Jean Bélanger, who is now retired; he formerly was an assistant deputy minister in the government, and then he was the president of the Canadian Chemical Producers' Association—a highly respected man in the industrial field, doing tremendous work for us. We have Angus Ross, who was the head of a large reinsurance company in Toronto, very well known in the financial services sector, and a great environmentalist. He was the one who, on behalf of the insurance industry, pointed out just how dangerous climate change was to the economy of North America and Europe.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mills.

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[Translation]

Mr. Bigras.

Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Mr. Smith and Mr. McGuinty.

My first question is rather general in nature. I also have a second question on climate change.

I will now ask my first question. As you know, we are currently living in a time of some economic uncertainty. We do not know whether or not we will be facing a recession in a few months. Perhaps we will, perhaps we won't. My question pertains to reinvestment in the environment.

When we are heading towards a recession or a crisis, the Department of the Environment is often one of the first sectors where the government cuts back, whereas business tends to cut back on all of those measures required for the environmental protection of, for example, workers and citizens. My question is, therefore, as follows: Should we be heading towards a recession, towards a crisis, or an economic slowdown, what fiscal approach would you advocate? Do you think that we should reinvest in the environment? Do you think that we should be more cautious? How should the government react?

I know that you participated in the pre-budget consultations, but we must remember that these consultations were held at a time when the economy was very different from the one we may be dealing with in a few months' time. I can understand your position—actually, I did not read your document—during these consultations, but in a more difficult economic situation, what approach would you advocate?

Mr. Stuart Smith: Mr. McGuinty may want to say something as well on this issue. The approach that we are suggesting to the government is one that involves stages, steps.

For example, we suggested that the national parks system be completed. This is going to cost a great deal of money. If we don't have the money required right now in order to do this, we can start by taking certain steps. We may suggest that we increase the protection outside the parks that exist right now and establish corridors between the parks. This is only an example. If we cannot complete the system, as would be our preference, we can at least do certain things that we can afford right now. It's a matter of proceeding step by step.

You are right when you say that, in times of recession, the first victim, aside from the unemployed, is the environment. The capacity we lost during the last recession has yet to be rebuilt. We lost this capacity at both the provincial and federal level. We are hoping that we will at least continue to rebuild this capacity and not destroy it a second time.

Would you like to add something?

Mr. David McGuinty: Thank you, Mr. Bigras.

As far as the budget process is concerned, this year we focused on five themes based on the recommendations that we made and the reports that we have produced over the past three years.

As Dr. Smith mentioned, the common thread that runs through these five themes is, indeed, the issue of capacity. For instance, in a recommendation pertaining to Canada's northern Aboriginal communities, we clearly showed, during a three-year period, that the biggest problem with respect to energy, the pipeline and everything pertaining to northern Aboriginal communities, is the ability of these people to participate in the new economy.

In our recommendation pertaining to health and the environment, we clearly established that the problem pertained to capacity within Health Canada. This is also true for the approval process for toxic substances, etc.

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The fact that we are entering a period of economic uncertainty does not, in our opinion, constitute a valid reason for not proceeding. It's a question of quantity, a question of degree. How can we begin or continue developing our skills, implementing measures, allocating resources or changing some legislation or incentive or disincentive levels? We and the 25 members of the Table feel that now is not the time to cut back on investments to build Canada's capacity to protect the environment.

Mr. Bernard Bigras: Do you believe that on the contrary, some sustainable development projects should be fast-tracked because indeed, we probably are heading towards a recession, or we may be heading towards one, moving towards a time of uncertainty? I understand that we shouldn't be slowing down, as you pointed out. I completely agree with you. But do you believe that some of the measures found in the plans you have suggested should be implemented more quickly?

Mr. Stuart Smith: In a way, a recession isn't always the worse time to introduce changes. For example, it is much easier to introduce measures to use energy more efficiently and thereby reduce greenhouse gases during a recession than during a time of economic expansion, because we can then benefit from the advantages of such measures. There are some things like that where we can move ahead more easily during a recession.

Do you have anything else to add in general?

Mr. David McGuinty: Generally speaking, no.

Mr. Stuart Smith: We can do all we can to protect investments, but when it comes to efficiency, for instance, industry is far more interested in efficiency during a recession than during a time of expansion.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bigras.

Mr. Tonks, Ms. Redman, Mr. Bailey and the Chair will be speaking next.

Mr. Tonks.

[English]

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, I want you to know I've had some opportunity, through the urban task force, to communicate back and forth with the round table, and I'm extremely impressed with the work that's being done.

My question is perhaps to seek a little clarification for the committee on the degree to which you integrate a strategy once you have decided that you're drawing up indicators on whether we're drawing down on the national capital or not. It seems to me that cities are part of the tactical group that's going to define the progress we're making in a whole variety of areas.

Could you just outline...? What kind of a chart did you call this?

Mr. David McGuinty: A circle chart.

Mr. Alan Tonks: I noticed that, for example, when you talk about a sustainable cities initiative, you could cross-reference with health and the environment, climate change, indicators that might be on ecological fiscal reform, brownfields and contaminated sites. Just about every little cluster of activity could channel back into a cities initiative, and your indicators probably would help you evaluate what we're doing.

Under sustainable cities initiative, could you outline the progress you think this initiative is making and where you see it going from where it is right now, how you are going to get the buy-in, how your indicators are going to tighten that up, if you will?

Dr. Stuart Smith: The indicators I don't think will be aimed directly at this, Mr. Tonks. The idea of the indicators is to give an overall picture of where the country stands as a whole. It's not going to give a message that any one person or group or section within the economy will immediately see itself reflected in. So I don't think the indicators are where you're going to see a lot of effect on the cities.

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On the other hand, with the sustainable cities initiative, there are two parts, the part we already did and the part we're starting to do. The part we already did was more trade related. That is to say, we found that there are cities all over the world—the world is becoming a very urban place—with huge environmental problems, in Canada, certainly, but there are much bigger ones outside Canada. We have a great deal of expertise in our cities now, both in government and in private sector organizations, in dealing with those problems. Yet while Canadians were often being asked in other countries, other cities, to go in and do an assessment of the needs, the contracts to do the actual work were going to other countries. So we felt that Canadians should be doing that work, not just advising on it.

So we recommended to Industry, to Trade, and to Environment, that we create a cluster, from the trade viewpoint, of all these kinds of environmentally related industries, so that they could prosper by doing some good in the world—they could do well at home by doing good in the world. They could go out and export Canadian expertise and further develop the Canadian reputation in the environment. We felt this would help the Canadian environmental industry, which is important to our own sustainable development. We've done that by focusing on a number of cities. The Department of Industry took it over, and it's been extremely successful.

Now we're moving into a second phase of the work, which David can explain.

Mr. David McGuinty: The original sustainable cities initiative was launched by the Prime Minister, Mr. Tonks. Now the joint management of the initiative by Industry Canada and International Trade is focusing on eight pilot cities, where they are coordinating the participation of city teams, for example, with the city of Shanghai or Katowice, Poland, or Santiago, Chile, where we have comparative advantages, where we have cities in Canada that are comparable in size and challenge to those cities. In fact, it's now being, frankly, driven by many ENGOs, many universities, and large companies, like SNC-Lavalin, and four or five banks, who are driving it because they see this opportunity as absolutely incredible, at $440 billion U.S. a year for the next 20 years. We've already pointed out that Canada is getting nothing like its fair share of these procurement opportunities, as was mentioned earlier.

Where are we going now on phase two? It's split. We've recognized we need to raise more concern in Canadian cities about the fact that we're urbanizing and that the quality of life in cities is where it's likely going to be at for most Canadians. In fact, we've just now begun discussions with people at Maclean's magazine to try to convince them that we ought to have an annual ranking of cities, the way we do universities. So if we have 50 Canadian cities on the list, maybe the city in the 48th or 46th position may say, we don't really want to be there.

I've just come back from a month of touring across the United States, unfortunately when the planes hit. I met with a great many municipal leaders and mayors, in Denver, the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago, and Philadelphia. I'm hearing the same thing over and over again: the boards of trade and the business groups in the United States are largely driving this desperate need to clean up cities. For example, Houston is under a huge cloud, literally and figuratively, as the filthiest air quality area in North America, and they're desperately trying to overcome this problem, as Denver was 15 years ago.

So we're working now with this concept of popularising the need to become more engaged in your city, and we think the ranking might have some impact.

The second thing we're doing is looking at the question of quality of life in cities through another lens, one nobody else appears to be looking through, not the task force the Prime Minister struck, not the FCM, not the big city mayors, who are clamouring for more taxation powers, for example. We're looking at cities now by considering what we can do on the tax side. Have we really examined the fiscal possibilities here, to create incentives or disincentives in the way we design our cities, the way we drive our cars, use public transit, and so on? This is something we're finding out hasn't actually occurred to any extent.

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So the new lens through which we're looking, again with Mike Harcourt and a team driving it, is this ecological fiscal reform. If we increased development charges—this is a large source of revenue for most cities— tenfold, if we increased them twentyfold, on green lands, green fields, what would the impact be, if we had at the same time, for example, incentives to come and rebuild in the centres of cities, reclaiming the centres of cities, or overcoming some of the brownfield and contaminated site problems we have? We thought that was a strategic niche we could examine that would help flesh out the panoply of possibilities when it comes to fiscal changes, the way we spend money, the way we encourage or discourage behaviour on investment.

Mr. Alan Tonks: Okay. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mrs. Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I found it interesting that last summer, I believe, Venice held a livable cities conference, because that's probably a city not without challenges for fresh water and garbage disposal.

Welcome, gentlemen. It's nice to see you.

My question is pretty simple, but I don't know if the answer is. Dr. Smith, you said it was your intention to be a household name and you're not there yet. What's preventing you from being a household name?

Dr. Stuart Smith: Well, I don't know. Anything I say is likely to sound like an excuse. I don't look for excuses. I accept challenges, and if I fail, I come and tell you, I'm sorry, I didn't succeed. I had hoped that by now we would be a household name. Looking back on it, you can argue we don't have a lot of money. You become a household name sometimes by recommending things that are extremely controversial, even if they never happen. Of course, the nature of our work turns out to be that we're trying to find ways to dampen controversy, not increase it. There are plenty of organizations out there whose job it is, and rightly so—I contribute money to those organizations myself—to create controversy. But my job here I see as actually bringing people together, and somehow bringing people together doesn't create as much news as pulling people apart.

The other thing is, let's be honest, environment has not been a big issue on the public agenda for these seven years. It's starting to come back now after Walkerton and maybe a little with climate change, but it certainly has not been the major issue over the last seven years. If you're talking about something that isn't a big issue, it's very hard to get people interested.

So I guess, looking back on it, it's partly that we're a small agency without a lot of money, partly that we've put most of our attention into actually being recognized in this town—I think we've succeeded there—and in the community of environmentally interested persons—I think we've succeeded there. Third, we're on an issue that wasn't that big with the public, big with the media. Fourth, our nature is to bring people together, illuminate differences, but not attack the ramparts. I think for all those reasons we didn't make a lot of news—whether it's just a failing on my part, I don't know, but those are the excuses anyway.

Mrs. Karen Redman: What needs to change in order for you to become a household name?

Dr. Stuart Smith: You could, of course, vastly increase our budget. But realistically, I think the public has to become engaged in environmental issues, and the media have to start looking. What I've always said is, I want us to be the place the media look for balanced and reasonable descriptions of where the society is at any given moment on a given subject. That's just starting to happen, but since the media are not interested in any environmental subjects, they're not turning to us. Little by little, we think, as the climate change issue heats up, so to speak, they will turn to us, because we've done a lot of the balanced work on emissions trading, for example. We've done far more work on emissions trading than anybody in this country has done, so we will get better known as these things occur.

Again, as long as we can do effective work, maybe being a household word isn't so important. If we're moving the yardsticks, maybe we shouldn't be looking for credit. Somebody told me when I was chairman of the Science Council, you can do a heck of a lot of good in this town as long as you don't want any credit for it.

Mrs. Karen Redman: My riding is Kitchener Centre, and water and air quality were probably the two issues I heard most about from my constituents this summer.

Let's hope the media continue to seek well-balanced, rounded opinions. Perhaps one of the impediments is that you're not saying outrageous things, as you said, and because of the balanced, thoughful view, I hope you get more ink in the future.

Dr. Stuart Smith: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

The Chair: Thank you, Mrs. Redman.

Mr. Bailey.

• 1020

Mr. Roy Bailey (Souris—Moose Mountain, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Smith, I might draw a little analogy. Just before the House went to recess I met with the biotech people at the Food Biotechnology Centre, and during the comments I said, you people have done a lousy job in PR; you have let your factual information be completely buried by oceans of emotionalism. They have now gone to the airways and they are doing something. I don't think, sir, it's as hard now, as Karen has mentioned, to sell the concept of environmentalism itself. It's becoming easier, and I wasn't appointed to this committee, I volunteered, because of my interest for many years in this.

I'd just like you to make a reference to the factual material you have regarding environmental things, the emotion of the public, and how you counteract that.

Second, I'm really concerned with the cooperation of the provinces. It's a dual portfolio, like many of our portfolios, and I often hear from the province in which I live that they need more money from Ottawa in order to do this, Ottawa isn't as strong on this point as they would like it to be, and so on. Is that a cop out for the provinces? I see on your round table these people come from every province. So the provinces are not shut out from the round table, as I understand it, but they have all kinds of representation there.

Dr. Stuart Smith: On the cooperation with the provinces, very quickly, we have provincial representation in almost every one of those replica round tables we're talking about. Furthermore, the executive head of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, which comprises all the ministers of environment, from the federal government and all the provinces and territories, attends all our meetings. David and I attend the meetings of the CCME whenever we have an issue we think is of interest to them. We try very much to involve the provinces, but we're a federal agency and they know we're a federal agency, so we have to recognize that there's always that little tug both ways.

Our responsibility and accountability are to the federal government, but we've always involved the provinces. We have excellent relationships. We did woodlot management in New Brunswick. We had the whole provincial government with us, and in fact, when we met down there on this very subject, the premier of the province came and announced changes in taxation in compliance with what we were suggesting. So we work very closely with them.

On the subject of facts versus emotion, there are plenty of folks out there who use emotion to make their case. Sometimes they darn well should, because these issues deserve a lot of emotion. Sometimes they are, in fact, very disturbing matters, and emotion is the only way you can get public attention. Obviously, emotion is important if the matter is important. But it's not our job to do that. We're not out there to advocate using emotion. What we do is bring the people in—and believe me, we get emotional presentations at all these meetings.

I remember we had a meeting in Halifax, and people were just telling us.... Take the tar ponds in Cape Breton. We saw enough emotion there, I can tell you. But at the end of the day, we have to say, can we move the yardstick? After everybody has expressed their emotions and everybody has had their argument, then we have to say, can we agree on anything? If we can't, can we at least agree on exactly what's preventing us from agreeing? What that does, oddly enough, is get everybody's emotions calmed down, and at that point it absolutely amazed me. It brings people closer.

I thought that at least we'd serve the function of illuminating the differences, but when people know that the differences are going to be very carefully illuminated, the differences start to disappear, people start to move toward the other person's position. If you and I are having a disagreement for some reason, I may make a perfectly modest suggestion that you wouldn't have trouble with, but you know where I'm heading, so you start opposing me right away. But if you know that at the end of the day, you'll be able to draw a line and say, beyond here, I'm not going, then you don't have to oppose everything I say.

• 1025

So people get closer, that's what we've found. We try to dampen the emotion—let everybody express it, but at the end of the day, say, okay, we've heard everybody, we understand, now can we move forward?

The Chair: I have a couple of questions I would like to ask, and I have a comment to make too. But before that, I learned some alarming information this morning before we started on amendments and their numbers on Bill C-5. So because this room has to be vacated at 11 o'clock, I will have to interrupt our meeting with the witnesses at somewhere around 10:40, so that we can have a brief discussion and understanding on how we start tomorrow on amendments. So I would ask your indulgence in staying until the end, and I would ask also our witnesses for their indulgence in excusing us for cutting the meeting a little short.

The questions are these. Let us start with a broader picture. The social dimension is missing from the round table, which is a very important one when talking about sustainable development, as both of you have this morning. That is the mandate that has been given to you, and I suppose that if you could redesign the round table, you would have the three dimensions, rather than just the two, namely the economy and the environment. I don't know. But the absence of the social dimension is a serious one if you are intent on pursuing the goals of sustainable development. In particular, there is the absence from your chart of studies related to social shock absorbers that could be required whenever very serious decisions have to be made in relation to renewable natural resources. When it comes to the moratorium on cod, for instance, and the 30,000 communities that are affected, certain economic shock absorbers have to be invoked in order to protect the social texture on the Canadian east coast, just to mention one example.

So I'm asking why the item of renewable natural resources is not part of this scheme, which is a very comprehensive one in itself, whether you have ever contemplated, in discussion or in a round table, the social dimension of sustainable development.

I'm also asking this in particular, Dr. Smith, in relation to your opening statement. If you're pursuing, as you do, understandably, consensus and you need the consensus of everybody, as you indicated, in order to arrive at a document that is conclusive and useful, you have to proceed at the speed of the slowest train, in other words, to get everybody on board at that particular round table. That, however, has the disadvantage of making you arrive at the destination after all the others, arriving at consensus, for instance, on climate change, as was the case last April, when the rest of the global community had already decided there is a problem that has to be tackled. So is this pursuit of consensus so phrased that you need to have everybody on board, or are you making decisions that are based sometimes on partial consensus, because otherwise, you will miss the boat entirely?

Dr. Stuart Smith: As usual, Mr. Chair, those are excellent questions. Let me deal with the social dimension first.

• 1030

Sustainable development, of course, is often thought of as having three elements, economic, environmental, and social. There's no question that our focus has been more on the economic and environmental. But I have to correct an impression I may have inadvertently given you from this chart that David and I have been speaking about. We most certainly do include the social dimension in many of the projects we're doing.

In the aboriginal and northern development issue the social dimension was clearly the most important one. If you look at our document, you'll see that most of our recommendations have to do with the educational and social development of the aboriginal communities in the north, our point being that if you want the environment protected in the north, it's the aboriginal communities that are going to protect it, and if they themselves don't have the capacity to protect it, it's not going to get protected. So there's the clear interplay between social, environmental, and economic: if they don't have the money, they can't develop their resources, and if they don't do it in an environmentally proper manner, they end up with exhausted resources and no social structure afterwards, so everything is defeated, including the environment. There's a very clear interplay in the aboriginal one. If you have a chance to look at that study, you'll see it's a total interplay of the so-called legs of the stool.

Similarly, you mention the cod fishery. When I became chairman, one of the very first items we had was a community-based piece of work in Newfoundland, which we published, having to do with the social impact on the cod fishery and, moreover, the way in which the local fishers had been ignored in their warnings, which went back much farther than the ones that came out of DFO. We made a clear statement that this has caused great social disruption and that they should have been listened to.

The one we put out on oceans dealt with co-management of the ocean resources, and it dealt very strongly with the social dimension of maintaining the coastal communities: without the coastal communities, you had nobody to co-manage with. So the social dimension is definitely part of it.

As for the idea of the social shock absorbers, I can't say we specifically have taken up those you mention, Mr. Chairman, but we've certainly talked about the social dimension of sustainable development wherever it seemed to be most relevant. I'm sure David McGuinty could add something to that.

On the issue of consensus, you and I actually agree entirely, because when I came in, under the previous regime consensus had been the order of the day, everything had to be consensus, and what you ended up with were huge cracks covered with wallpaper of words. So you had all sorts of wordsmithing that was done to allow everybody to go home and say, don't worry, I didn't agree to anything that's going to cause us any trouble. They ended up with these weasel words, which everybody could live with, but made no progress whatsoever. When you went to the minister and said, here's what we've concluded, he said, this is garbage; this is of no value to us; what can we possibly do with this?

So rather than move at the speed of the lowest common denominator, which is the point you're making, the slowest train, we have said, look, consensus where possible, but the one thing you've got to know when you sit down at our table is that we're not going to get up until we have absolutely agreed on what it is we don't agree about. That's a whole lot different from saying we're just going to go to consensus and find weasel words to cover the cracks. We say there's consensus where it's real, but then we say exactly what we're disagreeing about.

When I go to see, for example, the Minister of Finance, and I make a recommendation to him on behalf of the round table, I can say to him, the round table has concluded that you should do this and this and this. You have consensus this far. At this point everyone will agree with you. Nobody is going to bite you when you say this. When you go to this point, here's who is opposed and here's why they're opposed, and here's who is in favour and here's why they're in favour. So we recommend you do it, but remember, you're going to get flak from this side, and you might want to do something to deal with that flak ahead of time.

This is very valuable to a minister of natural resources. You've been a minister yourself, so you know how valuable it is to have that kind of information, so that you know, if you do what needs to be done, to what extent everyone will agree and to what extent you've got to mend a few fences and keep a few people happy.

So that's what we do. It's not lowest common denominator. I agree with you, if you go to the lowest common denominator, you end up wordsmithing, and you get nowhere.

The Chair: Thank you. I have two brief questions.

• 1035

Are you contemplating, or have you ever contemplated, also including in your chart a round table on renewable natural resources?

Dr. Stuart Smith: In fact, we did one on wooodlots. What you're seeing on this chart is the current active files, but in my tenure there and David's tenure there we did a very large one on the management of private woodlots, which was a renewable resource, and the social dimension was front and centre in that one. We are making other recommendations now on renewables.

The Chair: I can see a tremendous potential for a study on whether we are or are not on a sustainable path with respect to forestry and with respect to fishery.

Dr. Stuart Smith: In the indicators work we have eight cluster groups now producing possible indicators that can be used at the national level to indicate the degree to which we're using up our capital. Clearly, forestry and fisheries are two examples of that. We have a cluster group working on water and fisheries, and one working strictly on forestry. That's one way we hope to attack it, to draw public attention to the state of these industries.

The Chair: Finally, are you in a position to supply this committee with a study on the benefits of Kyoto, on the energy efficiency that can be achieved in Canada and the economic benefits flowing from energy efficiency, a quantified analysis? Because the emphasis is on costs in the debate right now, and the benefits have been forgotten or have disappeared beyond the horizon. We need a strong input from the side of those who have conducted studies on the benefits from energy efficiency.

Dr. Stuart Smith: The answer is, no, we do not have such a study. I don't know that it's our role to do that kind of study. It would be our role to bring together people who have done that study with people who emphasize costs and come out with a more balanced statement to Canadians. But we are not ourselves a research shop in the sense that we would be able to put together the research designed to do what is essentially an economic study of benefits—or costs, for that matter. We tend to rely on other people's work, and we bring those people together as experts and have them butt heads. So I don't know that we would do that kind of work on our budget. We're not primarily a research shop. It's work that has been done and needs to be further done, but it's—

The Chair: If you're looking at indicators, you might as well go into costs.

Dr. Stuart Smith: Absolutely, but it's a question of whether we're going to look at what work is out there that we can use for indicator purposes or go and do our own work. As for actually starting our own work to figure out what is the cost of this or the benefit of that, we're not that kind of think-tank. We convene people who have expertise, and then we draw from that some way to advance the yardsticks. If we had to start doing our own research in that regard.... This is the sort of thing Environment Canada should be doing, and those tables that were set up on Kyoto. They have money to order subcontractors to do that work. We haven't seen it as our role, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you.

I'm sure there would be other rounds of questions, but we have to change course at this point. We thank you again for your appearance. We wish you well, Mr. McGuinty, in recovering your voice, and Dr. Smith, thank you for your devotion to the public good.

Dr. Stuart Smith: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to members. Merci beaucoup et à bientôt.

The Chair: I would ask members of the committee to stay for a few minutes. I would appreciate very much your comments on the following observations and on the following suggestions.

• 1040

This morning the clerk informed me that he might be receiving a large number of amendments in addition to the ones he has already received. It was my understanding that he had 250 by the end of last week. Apparently, that is below what will be the real figure. There are members who have not yet brought in their amendments. I'm told, for instance, that Mr. Herron has 100 amendments still to present, more or less. Madam Kraft Sloan has a number of amendments that have not been presented, but the number is unclear. Madam Redman or the government, one of the two, has still to produce amendments, and they are in the range of 10 or 12, I'm told. That means that the total number of amendments, which we were hoping to have received by last Wednesday, as urged by the clerk, is now swelling to something like 360, if we are lucky—it may be larger than that. This means that unless we agree on a method for examination of amendments that is prompt and efficient, we will be here until next summer. I don't know that you would welcome that prospect.

It was not my intention to raise it today, but I'm forced to do it in the light of what the clerk told me before the start of this meeting. I'm proposing tomorrow, as normal, to start with clause 2, that is the procedure, and the amendments that are for clause 2 we hope are all in. They will be presented in alphabetical order according to the name of the party. I propose, when calling an amendment, to call on the proponent of the amendment to speak, possibly for one minute. Another minute will be given to whoever on the committee wishes to speak against. Then I shall call for a vote. I invite your comments on this procedure, because whatever we agree upon this morning will be then communicated by the clerk to those who are absent.

Keep in mind, finally, that I've avoided like the plague setting deadlines for amendments, although I was very tempted to do it last week for Friday, because I don't believe it is a good practice, it does not generate happiness in the family around the table. But if things continue to drift this way, I will be forced to draw a line indicating that after a certain day amendments will no longer be received, which will then generate phenomenal discussion, time will be wasted, and nothing productive will be achieved.

So you have before you my thinking on this matter, and the next 15 minutes, because we have to relinquish the room at 11 o'clock, are devoted to your comments. I hope you will give me some clear mandate to proceed along similar lines.

I see Mr. Knutson, then Mr. Mills, and Madam Redman.

Mr. Gar Knutson (Elgin—Middlesex—London, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I sent what I thought were four amendments over to legislative counsel, and he in his wisdom divided them up, and four became forty or fifty.

My recommendation would be that we go through the bill and pass the clauses where there are no amendments on the table. So we'd do a quick once-over and get the easy stuff out of the way.

• 1045

As for the amendments I'm proposing, I'd be quite happy to present them as a block and have one vote for all of them, rather than have a debate on each little consequential amendment. That would cut a potential 40 or 50 votes down to four. I don't know if other people feel the same way, but that would be the easiest thing for me in presenting the arguments, and I think it might be easier for others as well.

The Chair: Thank you. That's very helpful.

Mr. Mills.

Mr. Bob Mills: I have a comment on the process. Some of the amendments we put forward are minor, and obviously, one speaker for and against would be more than adequate. There are some, however, that are more substantial, and I think that more than one person should have the opportunity to express their point of view before we vote. That's why I would hesitate at this point to set that rigid a system, because I do think there will be those variations within the recommendations. We will cooperate to speed things along as quickly as we can, but there are some areas where I really feel we need more depth.

The Chair: Madam Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I actually have a point of clarification.

It's been my experience on other committees that government amendments are dealt with first. When you say you're going to do it alphabetically by the last name of the proponent, does that includes government amendments?

I realize that Mr. Knutson is making his intervention and suggestion in the spirit of moving things along, but there may be more than one amendment on any given clause, and his suggestion would preclude a fuller discussion. Although the chair or the committee will have to decide on what kind of precedence we attribute to multiple amendments on one clause, dealing with an individual's group of amendments may preclude that and may not result in the fullest discussion of the bill.

I'm wondering if this committee has turned its thoughts to an ending line for amendments—and I know you've already outlined some of the pitfalls of that—as well as when we would see clause-by-clause finishing. This bill has substantively been around for seven years already, and with that many amendments, I don't think any of us want to be here for another seven years.

Also for clarification, I'm assuming that any amendments that come in would have 24-hour notice, as well as being written.

The Chair: Monsieur Bigras.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: I tend to agree with Ms. Redman. I support what you've suggested for clause-by-clause. I think that's a good way of proceeding, particularly since some of the amendments are technical and could be fast-tracked, as Mr. Mills said.

However, I do think we should set a deadline for submitting amendments, because we cannot begin clause-by-clause study of a bill until we have received all the amendments. Furthermore, since we had the entire summer to work on this, I think we must cut off the tabling of amendments before we begin clause-by-clause consideration of this bill.

Otherwise, it will make no sense. After all, we can't begin consideration of the bill while other amendments continue to arrive at the clerk's office. So I think we must set a deadline for tabling amendments and that deadline should precede clause-by- clause. If we all decide that the deadline should be today, so be it. However, I would like this deadline to be set before we even begin clause-by-clause consideration.

The Chair: Do you have a particular date in mind?

Mr. Bernard Bigras: It's up to the chairman to suggest a date. Myself, I won't be making any such suggestion.

Have you consulted Mr. Herron and the representative of the New Democratic Party?

The Chair: I'm very surprised that he didn't table his amendment, because the clerk sent out the notice a week ago.

[English]

Mr. Gar Knutson.

• 1050

Mr. Gar Knutson: On the point of a deadline, I took my amendments over to legislative counsel, expecting them back in a week, and they took over two weeks to get back. It's no knock on any one individual, but I found that process was slower and more cumbersome than I had anticipated. We don't have a lot of control over how quickly they come out of legislative counsel, so I'd be careful about putting a firm deadline on it.

The Chair: All right. Do I take it that there is consensus that a deadline be set?

Some hon. members: Yes.

Mr. Gar Knutson: The deadline to get the amendments to the clerk or to get them to legislative council?

The Chair: To the clerk.

Mr. Bob Mills: We've had all summer, as Mr. Bigras just said.

Mr. Gar Knutson: Yes, but some of us have been waiting to see what the government's going to do, because if the government were going to do it, we didn't need to go through the work.

Mr. Bob Mills: So it's all Karen's fault.

Mr. Gar Knutson: The seven years is the point.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: I don't understand, Mr. Chairman. The government party just said it: this bill has been tabled several times. So they must have formed some opinion of it quite a while ago. I don't understand why the government party has not had enough time to prepare its amendments given that an army of officials work for them and can prepare amendments for them. The opposition parties often lack resources.

Myself, I had the time to do it. We had to work part of the summer. I don't understand why the government party did not have the time to prepare its amendments. That is why I insist on a deadline and that the deadline precede the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill.

[English]

The Chair: Madam Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have the government amendments right here. I'm happy to table them at the end of this meeting.

Perhaps a way around this conundrum would be if this committee agreed to set a line in the sand and say all amendments must be received by a certain date; after that only with unanimous consent would it consider other amendments. Then we would at least shore up when we're getting amendments. As things unfold, if this committee unanimously decides that it will entertain another amendment subsequent to that date, that will then be an option.

The Chair: All right.

Mr. Bailey.

Mr. Roy Bailey: I think that is an excellent recommendation, for this reason. We could get into clause-by-clause, and then see something we collectively think could improve this a whole lot. But with a clear-cut deadline, we wouldn't be able to do that. So asking for unanimous consent would indicate the wish of this committee. I think that's an excellent idea.

The Chair: Then let me reply briefly. I think that Bob Mills is quite right, there has to be some flexibility on the more complex amendments. Therefore, the one-minute rule should not be one that places hardships on the proponents of the amendment. But I hope that while we will apply flexibility, we will try to keep the presentation of amendments as close as possible to one minute, wherever possible, and wherever it is not possible, of course, it will be understood that there are good reasons for that. Let us hope that this will be the exception rather than the rule.

On the deadline, I will ask the clerk to communicate it to those who are absent. If you are in agreement that the deadline be tomorrow at noon and if I don't hear from you at this meeting, that will be the understanding.

• 1055

As to the alphabetical order, it has been the practice of this committee until now to present amendments in alphabetical order. Sometimes the nature of the amendment is such that it takes precedence over all the others. So if it is an overarching amendment, regardless of alphabetical order, it has, for procedural reasons, to be taken into account first. But when that is not the case, when amendments are of a separate nature, all at the same level, then they will be seen in alphabetical order, as has been the practice so far. I will consult with the Speaker's office on this to be absolutely certain. This is the practice we have adopted in the past.

Are there any other comments? Madam Redman?

Mrs. Karen Redman: It has been my experience on other committees as well that there are groupings of amendments, and I would anticipate that this would happen to expedite things, so that if there are clauses that have no amendments, we would deal with those.

The Chair: Yes.

Finally, on the suggestion of Mr. Knutson, it is a very tempting one, and probably we will be forced to deal first with the easy clauses. The problem is that when you have adopted the easy clauses, from 2 to 120, you have gone through the whole bill, and then you have to go back, you have approved clauses that sometimes have relevance to those that have not yet been approved, and you find yourself in a pretty difficult spot. So I will be very cautious in adopting that measure. It is certainly very tempting, but it is a small relief to go through the easy clauses for the sake of having adopted them and still be facing the bulk of the work, which is what takes most of the time. But I will see whether this is possible by proceeding clause by clause within the bill itself.

Madam Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you.

Not to press this issue too closely, but I was talking about when we would see a finish line. I'm not asking for one today, but there's been a lot of political will on this committee to move this issue forward, as we realize it's very important to Canadians and endangered species. So I would ask, through the chair, whether we are looking at additional meetings to expedite this. Are we going to stick to our usual timeframe? It's just to provide greater certainty for committee members unable to attend, should it come to that.

The Chair: We are adding a meeting on every Wednesday afternoon, which means that we can sit beyond 5:30, hopefully until 6:30. That will give us three solid hours in addition to the meetings on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and we may try, if we can get the room, the clerk tells me, to have longer meetings also on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that we don't have to adjourn at 11:00.

Are there any further comments?

As to the date of completion, Madam Redman, only a clairvoyant could answer your question, and I don't belong to that category yet—but I will try.

Thank you for your assistance and guidance. This meeting is adjourned.