Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue 16, Evidence of June 3, 2003
OTTAWA, Tuesday, June 3, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, to which was referred Bill C- 9, to amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, met this day at 5:12 p.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Tommy Banks (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: This is a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, in consideration of Bill C-9. We have with us today as a witness Mr. Stephen Hazell, the Executive Director and General Counsel for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, CPAWS. I believe he has some things he would like to tell us in respect to this bill.
Mr. Stephen Hazell, Executive Director and General Counsel, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society: Mr. Chairman, honourable senators, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you today about an important bill, Bill C-9.
First, I would like to say a word about my organization and myself. I am a lawyer by training, who specializes in environmental law. I have worked in the area of environmental assessment for quite a number of years. Formerly, I was the director of regulations and legislation for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, CEAA. I worked for Bob Connelly, who is sitting over there. I helped develop the regulations that were necessary for the original Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to be brought into force.
I am now working for CPAWS, a non-profit charity that focuses on protecting wilderness. We have about 30,000 members and supporters across Canada. We call ourselves ``Canada's grassroots voice for wilderness.''
The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has been involved in all sorts of environmental assessments of different types of development projects over the years. Sometimes we are participating in panel reviews; sometimes we are litigating; sometimes we are proposing mediation processes. I wanted to mention one of them in particular.
There was a proposal for a logging project and road through the study area of Bruce Peninsula National Park. We did not want that to happen because it was an important natural area, so we were fighting the developer on it. Ultimately, we suggested to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency that perhaps mediation might work; the agency went with it and the mediation worked. We protected the land. The land was ultimately sold to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, so everybody won.
My organization is one that occasionally would take the government to task; sometimes we will sue, but we are always willing to try to cooperate wherever we can.
Perhaps another thing I should mention by way of qualifications is my book, Canada v. the Environment, which I think is the only book-length work on federal environmental assessment that has been published. Perhaps that is partly why I am here today.
I would like to say a few words about Bill C-9 and then talk about the world beyond Bill C-9, which is my primary focus these days.
Bill C-9 represents a modest achievement within limited legislative terms of reference. Many of you will know that the government went through a five-year review process that was required under the act. That was a reasonable process and a reasonable job that was done. However, at the end of the day, the minister decided that amendments to be brought forward would be very tightly scoped. As a result, the bill that you have before you offers very few opportunities to address what I feel are the key challenges facing federal environmental assessment. That is why I say it is a modest achievement.
There are some significant amendments in the bill, some of which were proposed by the government when they introduced the bill into the House. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable development added some other amendments. I will mention a few of them.
Perhaps the most prominent is the amendment relating to Crown corporations, which will bring many Crown corporations under the auspices of the act. This is a tremendous thing. When I was at the agency, one of my responsibilities was developing a regulation for Crown corporations. That did not happen. It was not a priority for us, and there was a lot of opposition from the Crown — so this is a very important amendment.
Other amendments that I feel are important are those requiring follow-up programs. The seven-year review proposal is a useful amendment, as are the amendments relating to transboundary panel reviews. There was a technical problem with that section. We think now that the amendment that is in the current bill will allow transboundary panel reviews to be ordered by the minister.
The appointment of federal environmental assessment, EA, coordinators is a useful advance because trying to get different federal authorities to work together with respect to some specific projects where federal involvement is required has often been like trying to herd cats. The recognition of Aboriginal traditional knowledge in the environmental assessment process is another important change as well.
I make the argument that this is all good stuff. This will all help streamline the process and make the operation of CEAA better than it was before, but I do not think it really addresses the key challenges that we face. I want to spend what time I have just talking about a few of those challenges. As a bottom line, I would have to say that this environmental assessment legislation is widely accepted formally as a tool for achieving environmental protection and sustainable development, but in practice, it is too often viewed as a problem to be managed and a burden on approval of industrial developments. It is often seen as a drag on the good stuff that we want to get done, rather than as a tool to make things better.
What are the challenges facing federal environmental assessment in the future? I think right now we have far too much of an emphasis on process and not enough on achieving results on the ground. This is why we do the environmental assessments. We do not do this environmental assessment work just to hire people in Ottawa, or wherever, to tick off boxes. We have this process to make our projects better, to make them more environmentally sound, and to weed out the ones that should not be constructed in the first place. We need more of an emphasis on that.
Thor environmental assessment agency has recognized that this is an important issue, actually achieving results on the ground, and they produced this booklet, Making a Difference. If you read through the projects that are described in this book, you will see an anecdotal approach to describing the benefits. That is part of the problem. We do not have a systematic way of identifying what performance we want; what the indicators are; how to measure whether a particular environmental assessment will do any good on the ground in terms of the benefits to either communities or to the environment. That is one issue on which we have to get a handle. In 1995, the government spent about $45 million on environmental assessment. What are we getting out of it?
The second challenge is with respect to enforcing environmental assessment responsibilities. The environmental assessment agency, under the current legislation — and I do not think it will change much under the bill — has very little control over what federal authorities do. It is a little better under the bill. There are some tools of which I hope the agency will take full advantage. However, there is no way to enforce the act, in the way we would understand that term around this table. That is a challenge we have to address.
A third challenge is how to use environmental assessment as a constructive tool to improve projects. As I mentioned, environmental assessment is often seen as a drag on development. Too often, we are simply trying to mitigate or alleviate the bad, rather than saying how can we make this project better? We should ask, ``Is there some way can I use the environmental assessment to make this particular dam better or this logging road better?'' That thought process is not there. It is all on mitigating the bad stuff.
Another challenge is how we deal with the really big projects that are of importance across the country. In some ways, the federal approach has been not to sweat the big stuff. We do a good job in assessing smaller projects, but sometimes the bigger projects are not assessed at all. In the case of, say, the CANDU reactor sale — $1.5 billion of Canadian government loan guarantees for projects that were not assessed at all, or they were assessed inadequately, through a screening or a comprehensive study. For the Tolko Project in northern Manitoba — an area the size of New York State — the only assessment that was done on that project was of a bridge and two abutments. It is a gigantic area and clearly of national significance. This is not some minor item; this is a big project.
The challenge is to figure out how to identify these big projects and makes sure the federal government is there to ensure a decent job is done. Too often, it is left to the provincial governments, or increasingly, there is not any decent provincial law, so nothing really happens.
Another challenge is how to address the cumulative effects of projects on the environment. There is an important provision in the existing law that requires assessment of cumulative effects, but by and large, that provision has not been enforced. The agency has terrific guidelines on how to assess cumulative effects. There has been good work done at that level, but applying them is difficult. CPAWS sued the government successfully in the case of an open pit coal mine that was to be located near Jasper National Park. As a result of that lawsuit, the government — in the form of a joint panel review — came back to the project and actually did a pretty decent assessment of cumulative effects. However, by and large, that does not happen.
How do we make that happen? We are destroying our environment by small cuts. It is often not the big projects, it is this accumulation of small projects that individually may not have significant effects, but when you take them altogether, they certainly do.
Another challenge is how to achieve existing federal environmental commitments through environmental assessment. We have plenty of commitments, do we not? We have biodiversity commitments, legal commitments, climate change, and ecological integrity under the Parks Act. There are commitments among the federal and the provincial governments to set aside 12 per cent of land through protected areas. There are all sorts of commitments like these. Do we use the environmental assessment system to help the government achieve those commitments? By and large, we do not. In some areas there has been progress, but the important issue is how we actually use the tools that we have to deliver on, say, Kyoto.
In respect of promoting a meaningful public participation, when I was at the agency in the late 1980s, early 1990s, there were 14 panel reviews running at the same time. All of those panel reviews engaged the public in different parts of Canada. Now I think there are roughly two. Before the act there were 14 panels, with the act there are two panels. One of the purposes of the act is to foster or promote meaningful public participation. I do not see how that trend is consistent with the purpose in the act.
There are reasons for that. I am not saying panels are the be all and end all; they are not. However, as an indicator of the government's commitment to involving the public in environmental assessment, that troubles me.
In respect of incorporating Aboriginal perspectives, there are a number of environmental assessment regimes under land claims agreements across this country that do not necessarily mesh very well with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. We need to consider how we make the system work. There is an environmental assessment regime in Northern Quebec, there is one in Nunavut, and there is one in the McKenzie Valley that actually excludes the application of CEAA. Therefore, it is a bit of a dog's breakfast across the north. We need to figure out how to deal with that, and at the same time, we incorporate the perspectives that Aboriginal people bring to bear.
It is particularly important in the light of the Delgamuukw decision where there is a constitutionally entrenched right to be consulted on developments before they go forward.
There is another type of environmental assessment that has to do with government policies, programs and plans, and it is called ``strategic environmental assessment.'' This is really a fundamental challenge. It does not relate to projects such as dams or hydro projects or oil sands development. It relates to government policies and how government policies are set.
In 1990, the Clerk of the Privy Council issued a cabinet directive; it was weakened in 1999. That directive basically says to ministers, ``Before you bring forward a proposal to cabinet, you are supposed to do a strategic environmental assessment.'' This cabinet directive is not a legally binding document, but it is issued by the clerk, so you would think it would have some weight. This has, by and large, not been applied rigorously, and we think it should.
Where do we go from here? As I think many senators will know, the House of Commons committee is preparing a report on its vision of what a reformed federal EA process might look like. The bill is has been passed and gone forward, but they have said that it is really limited in its scope and they are thinking about the big picture and will present some ideas to the Canadian public and to the House on where we might go from here.
In conclusion, I would say that if this committee is looking to involve itself further in environmental assessment — which I would strongly encourage — the best role you could play would be to think about these larger challenges that we face and not focus so much on the particular bill that you have in front of you. As I say, it is a modest achievement. There is some good stuff in there, and I would be disappointed if, by circumstances beyond all of our control, the bill did not pass the Senate.
The Chairman: Are you saying, in effect, that Parliament ought to address its attention more to the substance of the environmental act itself rather than to this particular bill of amendment?
Mr. Hazell: Ultimately, it might work that way, but I think that both houses have an ability to look at issues that go beyond existing legislative frameworks.
With respect to a strategic environmental assessment, how do we ensure that government policies actually have some sort of environmental analysis that go into them? For example, the current budget had some provisions that increased the tax credit for businesses using company cars. What sort of analysis was done by the Department of Finance on what that would mean in terms of increased greenhouse gas emissions? I submit to you probably zero. I know from speaking with a former assistant deputy minister of finance a few weeks ago, there are, in his estimation, roughly three people in the whole Department of Finance that have any sense of environmental issues. We need this stuff desperately, and it is not happening.
The Chairman: That may bump into another question. Everything seems to bump into everything else. Senator Kenny was the author of a bill, which has passed into law, that would have an effect on those government cars, but we will deal with that separately.
On that matter of the mine on the eastern slope of the Rockies, which government did you sue?
Mr. Hazell: The action was brought against the federal government because the federal government has the legal obligation to conduct cumulative environmental assessments.
The Chairman: Thank you. When you were giving us the first example in which you said that you had succeeded in getting an arbitrator involved and it ended up being a win-win situation, did everyone, including the contractor, win?
Mr. Hazell: That is correct. The developer was paid for the land. He sold the land to the Nature Conservancy, so he was a winner, but he was not necessarily a happy winner.
Senator Spivak: This is a broad question, and it might be ruled out of order. It does not relate here.
We spent time looking at how this bill could be changed to be a stronger bill, being aware of the problems of not opening up the other bill. It seems to me that political will is at the heart of these issues. You can have all the legislation you want. What would you think of looking at ministerial discretion and saying, in some future legislation, that when it is a huge project like the Tolko project, or a major project such as re-opening a nuclear plant which could affect millions of people, that the minister ``shall'' appoint an independent panel.
Mr. Hazell: I would support that as long as we were careful about how we develop the categories of projects that were subject to that requirement. That is the trick. At the agency, we developed these various regulations, many of which were lists of projects. We spent a lot of time figuring out, should this sort of project be excluded from environmental assessment or should this project be subject to a comprehensive study, which is a more elaborate and detailed form of assessment than a screening. Those sorts of things are difficult. I do think that we can have too much in the way of law.
You are absolutely right that it is a question of whether we want to do this stuff or not. If we do not want to do it, let us not waste our $45 million a year and spend it somewhere where we would actually get some environmental benefits.
Senator Spivak: If you are looking at 11 million hectares and huge clear-cutting, you are looking at something that does affect other things.
The other question is about the definition of ``project'' and the definition of ``scoping.'' I understand that one of the problems is — and this is why the court so narrowly interpreted that little bridge — the narrowness of the definition of ``project.''
Mr. Hazell: There are some issues there. The Environmental Assessment and Review Process, EARP, guidelines order that preceded CEAA used the phrase ``proposal,'' which is a much broader phrase than ``project.'' The government said ``proposal'' is too big a thing, so we should scope it down. ``Project'' is a fairly narrowly defined term. Perhaps it is too narrow. I do not think that in the Tolko case it was a question of the court saying it had to be this small. I think the court was saying that it was within the discretion of the government to make it that small.
Again, we need some leadership on this. There are agency lawyers here who can contradict me, but if the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, DFO was the lead responsible authority and if they had wanted to do more work and treat it more seriously, they could have. The Minister of Environment probably had authority to do a panel review as well. If the political will had been there, more could have been done.
Senator Spivak: In terms of leverage, would you suggest that one look at the discretion or at the scoping? How can we take a sharp surgical stroke to make this work? I think that most Canadians would like to see a balanced and proper conservation view of Canada's natural wilderness. What is gone is gone.
Mr. Hazell: I totally agree. I do not see an easy fix for this bill.
Senator Spivak: I am not asking about this bill. I am asking with regard to your suggestion that we should undertake our own review. What are the pathways into this if we undertake this course?
The Chairman: Are you referring to a review outside the purview of this bill?
Senator Spivak: Yes.
The Chairman: I want us to stay focused on this bill. We do have a special review ongoing wherein we can examine whatever we want. I do not want to dissuade Mr. Hazell from answering your question, but I would we stay within the context of Bill C-9.
Mr. Hazell: I am not sure that I can answer it in the context of this bill. Even looking at the bigger picture, I do not think there is anything easy and quick that we can do.
One way through it would be to try to develop a category of projects that everyone can agree are big projects. The federal government has a role under the peace, order and good government clause. These are matters of national concern. Exporting nuclear reactors to China is, I think, a matter of national concern, especially when there is $1.5 billion of federal loan guarantees in the kitty. That was disgraceful.
There are a number of projects such as that, for which you could say should have an automatic panel review. That would help deal with some of these scandalous situations.
Senator Milne: I understand that when you appeared before the House of Commons on the previous incarnation of this bill you said that it represented a missed opportunity in the five-year review. However, the five-year review did reveal a lot of loopholes in many pieces of legislation. Do you think this bill closes some of those loopholes?
Mr. Hazell: It does close a few. The bill does some good things. I am delighted that Crown corporations are now considered to be federal authorities. This is good stuff. There are some advances, but it is within a limited framework. My attitude toward this is: ``What is the big picture? Are we really achieving results on the ground? What are the environmental benefits of doing all this environmental assessment, or this sound and fury signifying nothing?''
Senator Watt: To what extent does Bill C-9 improve the environmental process that already existed under the federal government? How is it different from the existing process? How does it affect the federal and provincial governments' ability to combine the two processes?
Mr. Hazell: How does it affect harmonization?
Senator Watt: Yes.
I believe that the Government of Canada has jurisdiction and the right to intervene in the matter of navigable waters. It also has the ability to intervene in provincial projects with regard to inland spawning areas of sea fish and other areas on which you may be able to enlighten me.
Does this take away from the federal government's ability to intervene in provincial projects? Perhaps you elaborate on that.
Finally, you mentioned that the traditional knowledge of Aboriginal people is not necessarily incorporated into the system. Can you explain what you mean by that? What is missing and what do we need to do?
Mr. Hazell: This bill does help in terms of improving the process overall. It helps in many ways. Many of them are process-related items that make things a little easier.
With respect to the point on harmonization, the bill will assist in the harmonization process with the provinces by virtue of the appointment of federal environmental assessment coordinators. Many times with a big project, provincial decisions have to be made and federal decisions have to be made by several responsible authorities. Having a environmental assessment coordinator who would have some power to herd the various federal actors will help the overall process because it will ensure the federal authorities are moving forward with one voice in terms of working with their provincial counterparts. That is one way in which it will specifically help to harmonize.
With respect to the federal heads of authority under the Constitution, you mentioned navigable waters, fisheries, migratory birds and others. The feds do have a number of specific heads of power through which they make decisions relating to the environment and those tend to be the focus for the current Environmental Assessment Act, at least on the regulatory side. Beyond the regulatory side, an assessment is triggered whenever the federal government provides money for a project. An assessment is also triggered when there are federal lands involved and when a federal authority itself is proposing the project. Therefore, there are a number of ways in which the federal authority can get involved, but you have identified some of the regulatory heads.
With respect to traditional Aboriginal knowledge, I note that there are some changes proposed to the act in the bill that would allow the consideration of traditional Aboriginal knowledge in the conduct of environmental assessment. That is a good thing. The problems in doing that, though, are more operational and cultural than they are legal. It is a question of having western-based scientists accept work that is done by Aboriginal people who are out hunting and fishing.
When I was wearing a different hat at the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, we did some work with the community of Sanikiluaq looking at the environmental effect of large dams in Northern Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba on the Hudson's Bay ecosystem. We tried to figure out ways to bring the western scientific community together with the Cree and Inuit system of knowledge to have a better understanding of the ecosystems and the effects that a large dams might have.
Senator Watt: Are you saying that when it comes to traditional knowledge, there is a lack of understanding as to what traditional knowledge can bring into the process? For that reason, then, it is not being thought out well enough of in terms of how traditional knowledge should be weighted in the environmental assessment and social impact aspects.
Mr. Hazell: Much of it relates to cultural differences. Scientists go about their job in certain ways. Those are not the ways of the Aboriginal people, who are out on the land observing all the time the world around them and how it is changing. It is difficult for those two systems of knowledge to really mesh well. It is not that it should not be done. I think the current bill points in a direction saying this should happen. They are recognizing that this is important stuff, that Aboriginal people — hunters and fishers in particular — are out on the land 12 months of the year whereas scientists may be there only during the summer season. There is a lot of knowledge there upon which we should be drawing.
The Chairman: Are you saying, though, that this bill improves the likelihood of traditional knowledge having attention paid to it?
Mr. Hazell: Yes, that is correct. It specifically refers to it. That is an important advance.
Senator Watt: It needs to be worked on. That is my understanding of it.
The Chairman: At least traditional knowledge is referred to in the bill.
Senator Watt: At times, the authorities do not like to use the words ``social impact.'' It is hard to separate environmental and social impacts.
What is your view on that? Should we be more optimistic and pushing for this social impact concept into the process? What do you think?
Mr. Hazell: That is a very good question. Some environmental assessment regimes have, in essence, become environmental and social impact regimes. I believe the Yukon process — which perhaps this committee has reviewed — does that.
The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement includes social impact analysis as well as environmental analysis. Most do not; most focus on the environment. I do not have a set view on that.
In favour of focusing on environmental assessment, I would say that the environment is always about the long-term. It is about generations from now and what we leave to our children and grandchildren. There is a tendency for that to get lost in decision-making. The minister must have a decision; or an agency has to regulate this or that. It is easy to forget about the environment.
It is perhaps not so hard to lose sight of social issues because people are directly affected who have political representatives who can say, ``If I do this, then I am not going to be able to fish for cod next year.'' You have people who can stand up and fight. The environment does not have that.
Senator Eyton: Someone around the table commented that business favours intelligent environmental assessment and that they would like to know where they stand and how to plan. The difficulty with the environment assessment processes is that as you expand the process, as you add more people and more interests, it takes time. Of course, time in business terms is the enemy. A development 10 years out in financial terms is not worth anything. Five years may be a little, two years is okay.
I know you think Bill C-9 is, in your words, ``a modest improvement.'' You talked about directions that we may go in time. Can you make any suggestions as to how you can achieve both an appropriate and a compelling environment assessment in a timely way? Time is the single biggest problem for business in dealing with all of this.
Mr. Hazell: The panel reviews have been a problem in the past because they tend to go on too long. That is what scares business. They say that a panel review that will take two to three years and that is too long and that their opportunities disappear.
One thing to think about is: How do we shorten panel reviews so we can have good public involvement, but get it done in a timely way? There are ways to do that.
One issue that has plagued the agency from time to time in the past — and it is not as much of a problem now because they have very few panels — is the fact that ministers appoint panel members. They are looking to hire folks of the same political stripe. I remember one particular circumstance where the minister of the day held up the panel review for six or eight months because the people who were being put forward were not quite the right political shade. This was a big problem. How do you get around that?
Senator Eyton: That would have been a Liberal government.
Mr. Hazell: I could not possibly say.
The way to get around that is to have rosters of experienced panel members. You have a list and you say: ``We are doing a panel review of a uranium mine. Joe, Ginny and John, you are on and away you go.'' You want a nuclear engineer, but you have a roster of folks and you pick them. The political element is removed and you save yourself months. I am not saying it is always the case. That is one way to shorten up the time frame. There are many other ideas. I do not think we have really explored how to make panels more time-efficient and more focused.
Panels do not have to look at everything. Senator Watt will remember, with the Great Whale project, the terms of reference were incredibly thick. We do not need the look at every darned thing. We should scope it down and focus on the problematic stuff and go after those issues rather than try to look at every possible environmental effect. That takes some good will and advance work. There are ideas out there and it is just a question of spending time to think about them.
Instead, we are going with the same panel review process we have always had since the EARP Guideline Order was issued; it has not changed since then. You will have the same reluctance on the part of proponents to have their projects go to panel reviews. You get skewed decisions within the bureaucracy on whether or not a project is likely to cause adverse environmental effects. There is a huge bureaucratic imperative away from a finding of significance, because if you find significance or uncertainty, you have to go to a panel review. They avoid that at all costs.
The Chairman: Do we take any comfort, as some have, from clause 12 of the bill that refers to the environmental coordinator having the power to establish, after consultation, timelines for the assessment?
Mr. Hazell: That is good; that is useful.
The Chairman: May it help?
Mr. Hazell: It may help. This is really within the context of the lower level type of environmental assessment screenings and comprehensive studies.
The Chairman: That is the vast majority of them; is that correct?
Mr. Hazell: That is 99.99 per cent of them.
Senator Christensen: As a matter of interest, this five-year review certainly had public input. Did you have input into that review as part of CPAWS?
Mr. Hazell: At the time, I had only been with CPAWS for approximately three years; I was not involved. At the time, I was in the private sector as a consultant.
Senator Christensen: You are referring to the review for Bill C-9?
Mr. Hazell: Yes. The five-year review terminated several years ago now.
Senator Christensen: So it was not a five-year review as such?
Mr. Hazell: No, it did not take five years. The idea was that the review was required to take place five years after the act was declared in force.
Senator Christensen: You are not aware of whether or not there was input?
Mr. Hazell: I did have some small involvement in the five-year review at the time, yes.
Senator Christensen: Therefore, Bill C-9, while it certainly does not meet all of the wish list, is an improvement over what we have now?
Mr. Hazell: I would say so.
The Chairman: Mr. Hazell, thank you very kindly. You have given us some comfort and some heads up on some things that will be useful to us.
Honourable senators, I will now entertain a motion, should it be your pleasure, that we move to clause-by-clause consideration.
Senator Kenny: So moved.
Senator Spivak: May I ask a question? Is it intended that we should make any observations with this bill or not?
The Chairman: That is entirely up to the committee, senator, as always.
Senator Spivak: I guess we will do that after we go through clause-by-clause?
The Chairman: We can. I want to admonish senators that, for a very few minutes after we complete clause-by-clause, if we do, that there are several housekeeping items with respect to future business. I would like to spend several minutes on that today, if we may.
Honourable senators, we have a motion from Senator Kenny that we move to clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-9. Is it agreed that we should do so?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: Is it agreed, honourable senators, that the committee move to clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-9 which is an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act?
We could not find what seemed to be a logical grouping of clauses. We often go to groups of clauses and deal with them. I could not find, nor could the clerk find, a logical grouping of clauses in order to proceed with this.
There are two ways we can proceed, if you will permit me make suggestions. I am more than happy to entertain other suggestions.
Before I proceed to those suggestions, shall the style stand postponed?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: To the clauses, we can either deal with clauses 1 through 34 in one fell swoop or we can deal with the clauses one at a time. I cannot find and I cannot propose to you a logical grouping of the clauses. I would be willing to entertain suggestions.
Senator Kenny: Inasmuch as I do not anticipate amendments as I look around the room, the ``fell swoop'' seems to be the preferred option, Chair.
The Chairman: Would anyone prefer that we do otherwise? Good.
I will ask the question, shall clauses 1 through 34 carry?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: Carried. Shall the title carry?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: Carried. Is it agreed that this bill should be adopted?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: Carried. It is agreed that the Chair should report this bill at the next sitting of the Senate?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: Does the committee wish to attach any observations to the bill at the report stage?
Senator Spivak: I would make such a motion, Chair, because I think we have it right here pretty well. I have some material, which I could give to the clerk, that might suggest dealing only with Bill C-9, not with future study.
It might be wise to point out that while this bill has many good things, there are other things that could be done.
Senator Milne: That is difficult to do within the context of a particular bill that only opens up part of the act. It may well be something that this committee wants to do in the future. However, I do not know how we can attach something like that to the report of a bill.
Senator Spivak: I am thinking that the committee could say that it was decided not to have amendments — or in whatever way you wanted to say it — but here is what could have improved this bill, not future bills.
The Chairman: If we are talking about any attachment to this bill or any observations with respect to it, we would only be able to entertain things that relate specifically and directly to Bill C-9.
Senator Spivak: That is right. I am in the hands of the committee.
Senator Milne: I have to say that I sympathize with Senator Spivak. There are things that desperately need to be done in the environmental assessment process. However, I do not think the spot to put them in is in remarks to this bill. I suggest that we report the bill without observations.
The Chairman: We have already moved to report the bill unamended.
Senator Spivak: We have not voted on that yet, have we?
The Chairman: Yes, we have. Absent a specific direction from the committee, it would be my intention to make that report tomorrow. I am not sure if it would be possible, Senator Spivak, to make observations by tomorrow. Do you think that would be doable?
Senator Spivak: No, I am not hung up on this, Chair.
Senator Milne: They would have to be observations that we all agreed with.
Senator Spivak: Yes. We might not be able to do that, if you are anxious to get this passed. That is fine.
Senator Eyton: Could we not make that observation within the debate and discussion of this committee but not attach it to the bill? There should be some reference to the fact that we believe that more could be done and should be done, but, for the moment, we are passing on Bill C-9. In the words of Mr. Hazell, it is ``a modest improvement.''
Senator Kenny: Senator Eyton's comments are apropos. There is also occasion for senators to comment at third reading.
The Chairman: I understand there to be a consensus that we will report the bill tomorrow with no observations attached and with no amendment. We have already decided that. We may wish, perhaps at third reading and otherwise, to make future observations in respect of the general question of environmental assessment.
Am I reading the wishes of the committee properly?
Hon. Senators: Yes.
The Chairman: Thank you. I believe that that concludes the public business. I would ask senators to remain for a few minutes.
The committee continued in camera.